Past and Present

Chapter 4

All work, even cotton-spinning, is noble; work is alone noble:

be that here said and asserted once more. And in like manner too

all dignity is painful; a life of ease is not for any man, nor

for any god. The life of all gods figures itself to us as a

Sublime Sadness--earnestness of Infinite Battle against Infinite

Labour. Our highest religion is named the 'Worship of Sorrow.'

For the son of man there is no noble crown, well worn, or even

ill worn, but is a crown of thorns!--These things, in spoken

words, or still better, in felt instincts alive in every heart,

were once well known.

Does not the whole wretchedness, the whole _Atheism_ as I call

it, of man's ways, in these generations, shadow itself for us in

that unspeakable Life-philosophy of his: The pretension to be

what he