Master: One must be a great philosopher to be reconciled with actual reality. But I cannot be reconciled; I’m too proud, and to fight with it is out of the question. And I went away from that reality, I went away, to lose my despair in beautiful folly.
Friend: Permit me to remark upon this that to say that something is beautiful does not mean to say it is right, and I, in that case
Master: Better beautiful and wrong, than right and ugly; in both cases we’re a thousand miles away from final truth.
Friend: Yes, but if you judge in that way
Master: You understand, I was physically unable to bear any longer the society of those advanced fools. Lord, what a gang! They poisoned the whole air. If I weren’t sorry for the trees, I’d hang ’em all with my own hands; I’d drown ’em all in the sea, if I didn’t love the sea, I—I’d shove them all over a precipice, if only there were a precipice they wouldn’t overfill! Write for them? Write for that mercantile riffraff?!
Friend: But what are you occupied with here? What do you do, cut off from all the world?
Master: We’re busy with salting, boiling, pickling,
