In the beginning he possessed innocence: the world appeared to him as beautiful, Man as good, and the future as immeasurable. The great illusion of Rousseau was his--a "natural man" himself, believing in the "natural man," a romanticist, a credulous, not too sincere, "beautiful" soul--a youth with the qualities of youth. But a day came when unwillingly and painfully his soul forced his eyes open and compelled them to look, and he saw without illusion; the cruelty beneath smiling Appearance, the red claw, and conscienceless, inappeasable appetite. Looking at Man he found him a powerless little creature, condemned to a few years in this world, cut off by Death, and even during his life circumscribed by invincible limitation. Nevertheless, this man disdained to hide his head in the sands of illusion; and immediately he became altogether more worthy of respect, more real, almost sublime. A noble resignation to Life now characterized him; the classical writers, especially the Greeks with their naturalistic pessimism, seemed to him the highest thing; and he accepted the theory of Original Sin. All honour to him when he reached, after a painful journey, this spare but real conclusion! All honour to this pessimist who would not deceive himself! One day, however, the thought came to him, "Even if pain and necessity be the truths of Life! There is something within me which can turn these, also, to account! I can transfigure them. Pain, Struggle, Change--these will no longer enslave me; for these shall be my slaves!" At that moment he became a Dionysian: he had turned the corner of pessimism, and had gained freedom. Original Sin was no longer true for him; for a new truth had dawned in whose light the old was quenched. From an illusive freedom in the beginning, through bondage to necessity, to a new freedom--the history of the Dionysian. The pessimist is more profound than the "natural man," but the Dionysian is the most profound of all. He burrows deeper than pessimism itself; he grows, the most happy of men, out of the very soil of pessimism. 200 _Tragic Affirmation_