Natural laws we shall never modify, embarrass us
as they may; but there is still something in the nobler or less noble
attitude with which we watch their fatal combinations. In those romances
of Goethe and Victor Hugo, in some excellent work done after them, this
entanglement, this network of law, becomes the tragic situation, in which
certain groups of noble men and women work out for themselves a supreme
Denouement. Who, if he saw through all, would fret against the chain of
circumstance which endows one at the end with those great experiences?
1867.
CONCLUSION*
*This brief "Conclusion" was omitted in the second edition of this book,
as I conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young men into
whose hands it might fall. On the whole, I have thought it best to
reprint it here, with some slight changes which bring it closer to my
original meaning. I have dealt more fully in Marius the Epicurean with
the thoughts suggested by it.
Legei pou Herakleitos hoti panta khorei kai ouden menei.
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