human
which Göthe confessed, and yet in his luxuriousness tried to ignore, because he could not explain--what if that broke forth over the graceful and prosperous student, as it may any moment! What if some thing, or some person, or many things, or many persons, one after the other (questions which he must get answered then, or die), took him up and dashed him down, again, and again, and again, till he was ready to cry,
gpt
I reckoned till morning that like a lion he will break all my bones; from morning till evening he will make an end of me ? What if he thus found himself hurled perforce amid the real universal experiences of humanity; and made free, in spite of himself, by doubt and fear and horror of great darkness, of the brotherhood of woe, common alike to the simplest peasant-woman, and to every great soul perhaps, who has left his impress and sign manual upon the hearts of after generations? Jew, Heathen, or Christian; men of the most opposite creeds and aims; whether it be Moses or Socrates, Isaiah or Epictetus, Augustine or Mohammed, Dante or Bernard, Shakspeare or Bacon, or Göthe's self, no doubt, though in his tremendous pride he would not confess it even to himself,--each and all of them have this one fact in common--that once in their lives, at least, they have gone down into the bottomless pit, and
human
--as the children used truly to say of Dante; and there, out of the utter darkness, have asked the question of all questions--
gpt
Is there a God? And if there be, what is he doing with me?
human
I will endure, though all the universe be against me; --how fine it sounds!--But who has done it? Could a man do it perfectly but for one moment,--could he absolutely and utterly for one moment isolate himself, and accept his own isolation as a fact, he were then and there a madman or a suicide. As it is, his nature, happily too weak for that desperate self-assertion, falls back recklessly on some form, more or less graceful according to the temperament, of the ancient panacea,
gpt
Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.