And
therefore it is despised by the reason. At bottom, philosophy abhors
Christianity, and well did the gentle Marcus Aurelius prove it.
The tragedy of Christ, the divine tragedy, is the tragedy of the Cross.
Pilate, the sceptic, the man of culture, by making a mockery of it,
sought to convert it into a comedy; he conceived the farcical idea of
the king with the reed sceptre and crown of thorns, and cried "Behold
the man!" But the people, more human than he, the people that thirsts
for tragedy, shouted, "Crucify him! crucify him!" And the human, the
intra-human, tragedy is the tragedy of Don Quixote, whose face was
daubed with soap in order that he might make sport for the servants of
the dukes and for the dukes themselves, as servile as their servants.
"Behold the madman!" they would have said. And the comic, the
irrational, tragedy is the tragedy of suffering caused by ridicule and
contempt.
The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people,
can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to
make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule.
I have already spoken of the forceful sonnets of that tragic Portuguese,
Antero de Quental, who died by his own hand. Feeling acutely for the
plight of his country on the occasion of the British ultimatum in 1890,
he wrote as follows:[66] "An English statesman of the last century, who
was also undoubtedly a perspicacious observer and a philosopher, Horace
Walpole, said that for those who feel, life is a tragedy, and a comedy
for those who think.
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