"We should
regard the perturbations of the mind," says Spinoza, "not in the light
of vices of human nature, but as properties just as pertinent to it
as are heat, storms, thunder, and the like, to the nature of the
atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary,
and have fixed causes by means of which we endeavour to understand
their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in seeing them
aright as in knowing such things as flatter the senses." Let me have
the phenomena which are inconvenient as well as the things which flatter
the senses, and the chances are that my life will be a healthier and
happier one than that of the person who spends his time on a cloud
blushing at Nature's naughtiness.
It is often said that an ideal state--a Utopia where there is no folly,
crime, or sorrow--has a singular fascination for the mind. Now, when
I meet with a falsehood, I care not who the great persons who proclaim
it may be, I do not try to like it or believe it or mimic the
fashionable prattle of the world about it. I hate all dreams of
perpetual peace, all wonderful cities of the sun, where people consume
their joyful, monotonous years in mystic contemplations, or find their
delight, like Buddhist monks, in gazing on the ashes of dead generations
of devotees. The state is one unnatural, unspeakably repugnant: the
dreamless sleep of the grave is more tolerable to the active, healthy
mind than such an existence.
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