The "joy of life" whose perfume he had inhaled at Oxford through Pater's Renaissance now began to grow sour.
"Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.
"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament coarse, hard, and callous. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. The secret of life is suffering."
Let us add that Wilde derived his most dangerous doctrine from Baudelaire and Shakespeare's sonnets. And let us close with the new view of the Renaissance which he attained to in prison: "To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the Christ's own renaissance which has produced the Cathedral at Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante's Divine Comedy, was not allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance."
[1] Danish theologian.
Consequences of Learning.—As soon as a man buries himself in books he gets black nails and dirty cuffs, forgets to wash, to comb his hair, and to shave. He neglects his duties towards life, society, and men; loses spiritual capacities, becomes absent-minded, short-sighted, wears glasses, and takes snuff in order to keep himself awake. He cannot follow a conversation with attention, cannot interest himself in other people's affairs, does not see the face of the earth by day nor the stars by night. Behind his desire to investigate lies the insidious ambition to master his material, to become an authority, to tyrannise, to make a career for himself, and to receive distinctions.
If men only reflected what tyrants they obey—these black magicians who are called professors; who settle what we are to think and believe; who test and examine, reject and choose; who form committees, write handbooks, deliver lectures, and bestow prizes on those who accept their hypotheses.
And has it ever occurred to a student to criticise his teacher? No; he swallows everything uncritically. But if he goes into a church where he hears God's own word revealed by way of intuition to the prophets, then he begins to exercise his critical faculty; then he finds it very difficult to comprehend the simplest things; then he wants mathematical certainty, which he considers the highest while it is really the lowest.
Swedenborg says in one place: "Though goodness and truth are sent down through the heavens, when they reach the hells they are changed into evil and falsity; the brilliant light of the sun changes into ugly colours and its warmth becomes an evil odour."
Rousseau.—In my youth I read of an Englishman who shot himself because life was so wearisome. He had counted the buttons which he had to unbutton and button up every day—in his under-clothing half a dozen, in his day-shirt half a dozen, in his collar and cuffs half a dozen, in his waistcoat, trousers, and coat a dozen, in his boots, gaiters, and gloves two dozen. When he wanted to ride out he had to change, as he had also to do for dinner and the evening.