Meanwhile the review article on Hartmann had a quickening effect on John. There was then a system in the apparent madness of the universe, and his consciousness had rightly foreboded that the whole scheme of things was something very insignificant. But a new philosophic system is not absorbed by a brain in a day. It only left a certain deposit and gave a keynote to his thoughts. As a theoretical point of view it was still obscured by his idealistic education, darkened by his inborn and acquired hatred of the upper class, and his natural tendency to seek his point of equilibrium somewhere outside himself. Taken on the large scale, life was meaningless, but if one wanted to live, one had to come to grips with reality, and adopt an everyday point of view, which alas! one very readily did. Enormous difficulties stood in the way of earning a living or making a name. Honour, viewed absolutely, was nothing, but in relation to the petty circumstances of life it was something great, and worth striving for. The Philistines did not understand that, and derived much amusement, when they saw him, pessimist as he was, toiling after distinctions. They, with their clock-work brains, thought this inconsistent, since they did not understand that the term "honour" has two values, an absolute and a "relative."
[1]In his pamphlet "The Conscious Will in the World-history" (1903), Strindberg takes the opposite view to that expressed here.
[1]In his pamphlet "The Conscious Will in the World-history" (1903), Strindberg takes the opposite view to that expressed here.