Sandt.—­Do you approve of the pursuit?

Kotzebue.—­Who does not?

Sandt.—­None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough.  May I ask you another question?

Kotzebue.—­Certainly.

Sandt.—­Where lie the paths of wisdom?  I did not expect, my dear sir to throw you back upon your chair.  I hope it was no rudeness to seek information from you?

Kotzebue.—­The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to truth and happiness.

Sandt.—­If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what rational happiness to expect?  To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth.  Nonsense is better than falsehood; and we come to that.

Kotzebue.—­How?

Sandt.—­No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to happiness—­I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe that the words are constructed of very different materials.  But here we are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a truth—­whether a Columbus or a Galileo.  Let us come down lower:  Show me a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet, the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or reduced to poverty.  The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links.  Who then, unless for others, would be a darer of wisdom?  And yet, how full of it is even the inanimate world?  We may gather it out of stones and straws.  Much lies within the reach of all:  little has been collected by the wisest of the wise.  O slaves to passion!  O minions to power! ye carry your own scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for more.  Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you, even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where the Old Serpent went before you.

Kotzebue.—­I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.

Sandt.—­I too am afraid it may be so.  My idea of happiness is, the power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease, comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.

Kotzebue.—­The idea is, truly, no humble one.