itself, and
wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure,--I tell
thee, Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever
the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of
Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of
injustice. What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some
Passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others
_profit_ by? I know not: only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness
be our true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound
Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull unimaginative
days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on
Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing
our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and
live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his Elect!"

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done,
shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and
receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair
world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the
shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day,
and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such
length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. "But what boots it (_was
thut's_)?" cries he: "it is but the common lot in this era. Not having
come to spiritual majority prior to the _Siecle de Louis Quinze_, and
not being born purely a Loghead (_Dummkopf_ ), thou hadst no other
outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old
Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rain-proof, crumble
down; and men ask now: Where is the Godhead; our eyes never saw him?"

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our
Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era
of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant
of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. "One circumstance I
note," says he: "after all the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for
me, what it is not always, was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me! I
nevertheless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my allegiance
to her. 'Truth!' I cried, 'though the Heavens crush me for following
her: no Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the pric