If a patient fulfils all the orders of a sensible doctor, we say he behaves wisely. If he wantonly neglects his treatment, we say he acts stupidly. If a healthy person wished to inoculate himself with some dangerous disease--say phthisis--we should say he was mad, and forcibly restrain him. To such an extent are we convinced that disease is evil, health good. Well--on what is our conviction based? At a glance the question seems absurd. But then at a glance people would absolutely refuse to doubt the fixity of the earth, at a glance an ordinary person would giggle if he was shown the problem of the relation between the real world and the ideal. Who knows what would seem amenable to discussion to the ordinary person? The philosopher has no right to appeal to the ordinary person. The philosopher must doubt and doubt and doubt, and question when nobody questions, and risk making a laughing-stock of himself. If common sense were enough to settle all problems, we should have known everything long age. So that--why do we value health more than sickness? Or even further--which is better, health or sickness. If we will drop the utilitarian point of view--and all are agreed that this has no place in philosophy--then we shall see at once that we have no grounds whatever for preferring health and sickness. We have invented neither the one nor the other. We found them both in the world along with us. Why then do we, who know so little about it, take upon ourselves to judge which are nature's successes, which her failures? Health is agreeable--sickness disagreeable. But this consideration is unworthy of a philosopher: otherwise why be a philosopher, why distinguish oneself from the herd? The philosopher invented morality, which has at its disposal various pure ideas that have no relation to empirical life. Then let us go further. Reason should have a supply of pure ideas also. Let Reason judge in her own independent way, without conforming to conventional ideas. When she has no other resort, let her proceed by the method of negation: everything that common sense asserts, I, Reason, declare to be false. So--common sense Says sickness is bad, reason therefore asserts that sickness is the highest boon. Such Reason we should call autonomous, law-unto-itself. Like a real monarch, it is guided only by its own will. Let all considerations point in favour of health, Reason must remain inexorable and keep her stand till we are all brought to obedience. She must praise suffering, deformity, failure, hopelessness. At every step she must fight common-sense and utilitarianism, until mankind is brought under. Is she afraid of rebellion? Must she in the last issue, like morality, adapt herself to the inclinations of the mob? 44