The strong man may try experiments, even though he
burns his fingers. The weak man had better not meddle with the
instruments and fiery fluids at all.
I am myself just strong enough to dislike sentiment, to turn faint
in the sickly, mawkish air. But I am not strong enough to charge it
with vivid life. Moreover, the danger of a strong character taking
up the anti-ascetic position is that he is apt to degenerate into a
man like Goethe, who plucked the fragrant blooms on every side, and
threw them relentlessly away when he had inhaled their sweetness.
That is a cruel business, unless there is a very wise and tender
heart behind.
Yet again, reconsidering the whole problem, I am not sure that the
whole suggestion, taken as advice, is not at fault. I think it is
making a melancholy, casuistical, ethical business out of what
ought to be a natural process. I think it is vitiated by a
principle which vitiates so much of the advice of moralists, the
principle that one ought to aim at completeness and perfection. I
don't believe that is the secret of life--indeed I think it is all
the other way. One must of course do one's best to resist immoral,
low, sensuous tendencies; but otherwise I believe that one ought to
drink as much as one's glass can hold of pure and beautiful
influences.
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