Such considerations must appear to these pedants to be characterized by
a ridiculous vulgarity and a dilettante superficiality. (The
intellectual world is divided into two classes--dilettanti on the one
hand, and pedants on the other.) What choice, then, have we? The modern
man is he who resigns himself to the truth and is content to be ignorant
of the synthesis of culture--witness what Windelband says on this head
in his study of the fate of Hoelderlin (_Praeludien_, i.). Yes, these men
of culture are resigned, but there remain a few poor savages like
ourselves for whom resignation is impossible. We do not resign ourselves
to the idea of having one day to disappear, and the criticism of the
great Pedant does not console us.
The quintessence of common sense was expressed by Galileo Galilei when
he said: "Some perhaps will say that the bitterest pain is the loss of
life, but I say that there are others more bitter; for whosoever is
deprived of life is deprived at the same time of the power to lament,
not only this, but any other loss whatsoever." Whether Galileo was
conscious or not of the humour of this sentence I do not know, but it is
a tragic humour.
But, to turn back, I repeat that if the attainment of eternal happiness
could be bound up with any particular belief, it would be with the
belief in the possibility of its realization. And yet, strictly
speaking, not even with this.
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