Apparently one never denied it. Every philosopher, whether sane
or insane, naturally affirmed it. The utmost flight of anarchy
seemed to have stopped with the assertion of two principles, and
even these fitted into each other, like good and evil, light and
darkness. Pessimism itself, black as it might be painted, had
been content to turn the universe of contradictions into the
human thought as one Will, and treat it as representation.
Metaphysics insisted on treating the universe as one thought or
treating thought as one universe; and philosophers agreed, like a
kinetic gas, that the universe could be known only as motion of
mind, and therefore as unity. One could know it only as one's
self; it was psychology.
Of all forms of pessimism, the metaphysical form was, for a
historian, the least enticing. Of all studies, the one he would
rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy
so heartrending as introspection, and the more, because -- as
Mephistopheles said of Marguerite -- he was not the first. Nearly
all the highest intelligence known to history had drowned itself
in the reflection of its own thought, and the bovine survivors
had rudely told the truth about it, without affecting the
intelligent. One's own time had not been exempt. Even since 1870
friends by scores had fallen victims to it.
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