"But then as now I say, that the greater the Ideal, the heavier price we have to pay for it.
"The little ones, listening to arm-chair experts, multi-millionaires and faddists, indulge in the childish belief that they will be able to bring Elysium down into their Assemblies, Market-places, and their Social Life, by removing all severe conflicts, all cruelty, all relentless punishments, and similar necessities which are only the inevitable price paid for some great good. They think they will make the world more humane, by giving up any attempt at weeding out all the bad herbs among the human grass.
"They will never do it. If they want to have a Religion better than the one they have, they will have to pay an exceedingly heavy price for it.
"First is Calvary, and then comes the Resurrection.
"Religion is an Ideal, and hence very costly. If ever the general brotherhood of men should be realised, just for one year, the sacrifices to be paid for such a sublime ideal would be so immense that people would at once relapse into the other extreme.
"Nothing wiser ever fell from your lips, O Goethe, than your saying that 'nothing is more hard to endure than a series of three beautiful days.'
"We Greeks know it. We realised many an ideal; more than has been realised by any other people. Accordingly, we did not last very long. Do not covet the stars! Be satisfied with a little cottage in the midst of a small garden.
"But you were right, O Spinoza, that the whole essence of Man is concupiscence. He will desire and aspire after an endless array of things, all of which he wants to have for nothing.
"It is in vain that we tell him that there is no more expensive shop than that where gratification of desires is sold.
"In vain have all the Religions essayed to inculcate the lesson of resignation, one by threatening dire punishments on earth, the other by menacing eternal pains in yonder world.