stands, as it were, on the chariot of the Church, that, instead of pure, simple doctrine, she preaches keen-witted ecclesiastic scholasticism, made her appear to me in a colder light, although the poet assures us that she shines and glows for ever.  At last she became indifferent to me; and although as a mere reader I acknowledge that Dante has acted appropriately, in accordance with his time and his purpose, I should as a sympathetic co-poet have wished to lose my personal consciousness, and indeed all consciousness, in that fire.  In that manner I should, no doubt, have fared better than even in the company of the Catholic Deity, although Dante represents it with the same art with which you, no doubt, will endeavour to celebrate it in your choruses.  I faithfully record to you the impression which the “Divine Comedy” has made upon me, and which in the “Paradise” becomes to my mind a “divine comedy” in the literal sense of the word, in which I do not care to take part, either as a comedian or as a spectator.  The misleading problem in these questions is always How to introduce into this terrible world, with an empty nothing beyond it, a God Who converts the enormous sufferings of existence into something fictitious, so that the hoped-for salvation remains the only real and consciously enjoyable thing.  This will do very well for the Philistine, especially the English Philistine.  He makes very good terms with his God, entering into a contract by which, after having carried out certain points agreed upon, he is finally admitted to eternal bliss as a compensation for various failures in this world.  But what have we in common with these notions of the mob?

You once expressed your view of human nature to the effect that man is “une intelligence, servie par des organes.”  If that were so, it would be a bad thing for the large majority of men, who have only “organs,” but as good as no “intelligence,” at least in your sense.  To me the matter appears in a different light, viz.,- -

Man, like every other animal, embodies the “will of life,” for which he fashions his organs according to his wants; and amongst these organs he also develops intellect, i.e., the organ of conceiving external things for the purpose of satisfying the desire of life to the best of his power.  A normal man is therefore he who possesses this organ, communicating with the external world (whose function is perception, just as that of the stomach is digestion) in a degree exactly sufficient for the satisfaction of the vital instinct by external means.  That vital instinct in normal man consists in exactly the same as does the vital instinct of the lowest animal, namely, in the desire of nourishment and of propagation.  For this “will of life,” this metaphysical first cause of all existence, desires nothing but to live—­that is, to nourish and eternally reproduce itself—­and this tendency can be seen identically in the coarse stone, in the tenderer plant, and so