The foregoing reflections are a kind of practical summary of the criticism developed in the first six chapters of this treatise, a kind of definition of the practical position to which such a criticism is capable of leading whosoever will not renounce life and will not renounce reason and who is compelled to live and act between these upper and nether millstones which grind upon the soul. The reader who follows me further is now aware that I am about to carry him into the region of the imagination, of imagination not destitute of reason, for without reason nothing subsists, but of imagination founded on feeling. And as regards its truth, the real truth, that which is independent of ourselves, beyond the reach of our logic and of our heart--of this truth who knows aught? FOOTNOTES: [31] See Troeltsch, _Systematische christliche Religion_, in _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_ series. [32] _Die Analyse der Empfindigungen und das Verhältniss des Physischen zum Psychischen_, i., § 12, note. [33] I have left the original expression here, almost without translating it--_Existents-Consequents_. It means the existential or practical, not the purely rational or logical, consequence. (Author's note.) [34] Albrecht Ritschl: _Geschichte des Pietismus_, ii., Abt. i., Bonn, 1884, p. 251. [35] Thou art the cause of my suffering, O non-existing God, for if Thou didst exist, then should I also really exist. VII LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY CAIN: Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn To anticipate my immortality. LUCIFER: Thou didst before I came upon thee. CAIN: How? LUCIFER: By suffering. BYRON: _Cain_, Act II., Scene I. The most tragic thing in the world and in life, readers and brothers of mine, is love. Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicine against death, for it is death's brother. _Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte Ingeneró la sorte_, as Leopardi sang. Love seeks with fury, through the medium of the beloved, something beyond, and since it finds it not, it despairs. Whenever we speak of love there is always present in our memory the idea of sexual love, the love between man and woman, whose end is the perpetuation of the human race upon the earth. Hence it is that we never succeed in reducing love either to a purely intellectual or to a purely volitional element, putting aside that part in it which belongs to the feeling, or, if you like, to the senses. For, in its essence, love is neither idea nor volition; rather it is desire, feeling; it is something carnal in spirit itself. Thanks to love, we feel all that spirit has of flesh in it.