as a panacea.
It becomes in consequence (for such is the force of nature) the
foundation of elaborate institutions and elaborate philosophies, into
which the contents of the worldly life are gradually reintroduced.

When human life is in an acute crisis, the sick dreams that visit the
soul are the only evidence of her continued existence. Through them she
still envisages a good; and when the delirium passes and the normal
world gradually re-establishes itself in her regard, she attributes her
regeneration to the ministry of those phantoms, a regeneration due, in
truth, to the restored nutrition and circulation within her. In this way
post-rational systems, though founded originally on despair, in a later
age that has forgotten its disillusions may come to pose as the only
possible basis of morality. The philosophers addicted to each sect, and
brought up under its influence, may exhaust criticism and sophistry to
show that all faith and effort would be vain unless their particular
nostrum was accepted; and so a curious party philosophy arises in which,
after discrediting nature and reason in general, the sectary puts
forward some mythical echo of reason and nature as the one saving and
necessary truth. The positive substance of such a doctrine is
accordingly pre-rational and perhaps crudely superstitious; but it is
introduced and nominally supported by a formidable indictment of
physical and moral science, so that the wretched idol ultimately offered
to our worship acquires a spurious halo and an imputed majesty by being
raised on a pedestal of infinite despair.

[Sidenote: Epicurean refuge in pleasure.]

Socrates was still living when a school of post-rational morality arose
among the Sophists, which after passing quickly through various phases,
settled down into Epicureanism and has remained the source of a certain
consolation to mankind, which if somewhat cheap, is none the less
genuine. The pursuit of pleasure may seem simple selfishness, with a
tendency to debauchery; and in this case the pre-rational and
instinctive character of the maxim retained would be very obvious.
Pleasure, to be sure, is not the direct object of an unspoiled will; but
after some experience and discrimination, a man may actually guide
himself by a foretaste of the pleasures he has found in certain objects
and situations. The criticism required to distinguish what pays from
what does not pay may not often be carried very far; but it may
so