While we believe that too much stress has been laid upon the pathologic side of Pascal's and Nietzsche's characters, there is no evading the fact that both seemed tinged with what Kurt Eisner calls _psychopathia spiritualis_. The references to suffering in Nietzsche's books are significant. There is a vibrating accent of personal sorrow on every page. He lived in an inferno, mental and physical. We are given to praising Robert Louis Stevenson for his cheerfulness in the dire straits of his illness. He was a mere amateur of misery, a professional invalid, in comparison with Nietzsche. And how cruel was the German poet to himself. He tied his soul to a stake and recorded the poignant sensations of his spiritual _auto-da-fé_. At the close of his sane days we find him taking a dolorous pride in his capacity for suffering. "It is great affliction only--that long, slow affliction in which we are burned as it were with green wood, which takes time--that compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depth and divest ourselves of all trust, all good nature, glossing, gentleness.... I doubt whether such affliction improves us; but I know that it deepens us.... Oh, how repugnant to one henceforth is gratification, coarse, dull, drab-coloured gratification, as usually understood by those who enjoy life!... Profound suffering makes noble; it separates. ... There are free, insolent minds that would fain conceal and deny that at the bottom they are disjointed, incurable souls--it is the case with Hamlet." Nietzsche has the morbidly introspective Hamlet temper, and Pascal has been called the Christian Hamlet.