Nietzsche wrote of religion disparagingly as an intoxicant, and yet by his own religion he was intoxicated. No one ever acted more strangely or became more excited under the influence of personal religion than Nietzsche. It is no reproach to religion that it changes reasonable beings to emotional beings. And yet there is associated with religion a false emotionalism and sentimentalism that we call morbidity, a desire to be miserable and to make other people miserable, a wearing of weeds on festival days, pessimism and “God grant we may all be as well two months hence,” a living with death and a loving of the gruesome. Gloominess is a danger for the Slav soul as with us it is for the Celtic. The bright energy of the Teuton is lacking. It is not worth while _making_ things or working for _position_. The mind is free and questioning. There is no sense of— Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and the action fine, or of The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we ought to ask. Nature is “vainly sweet,” and the eye looks out on the recurring pageant of the seasons with unutterable ennui and sadness. And in life the petty circumstances, if congenial, are but playfully pleasant, but if uncongenial, seem surcharged with malice. The river that runs through life is easily dammed, floods the whole being of a man, and becomes stagnant, whilst poisonous mists lower over him. The joyful current ceases. It is a common disaster in Russia, the falling into a morbid state. A Russian poet writes: All earthly perishes, thy mother and thy boyhood. Thy wife betrays thee, yea, and friends forsake; But learn, my friend, to taste a different sweetness Looking to the cold and Arctic seas. Get in thy ship, set sail for the far Pole, And live midst walls of ice. Gently forget How there you loved and struggled; Forget the passions of the land behind thee; And to the shudderings of gradual cold Accustom thy tired soul, So that of all she left behind her here She craveth nought whatever, When thence to thee floods forth the beams of light celestial, which is a beautiful poem written for those who have become morbid. It is a beloved poem, and you may come across it written laboriously and exquisitely on tinted paper. But those who read it and love it will never “step into the ship, set sail for the far Pole”; it is not an invitation to join Shackleton, not even figuratively. It is for those who love and nurse their sorrows. They have not the power nor the wish to move. They are transfixed by mournful ideas, ideas that sing through the air as they come, like arrows, and yet console as with music. As another poet (Brussof) writes: