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THE LABYRINTH OF THE WORLD
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through them. Also were there here, as in that market-place, many implements and stumbling-blocks, wood, stones, and pits; when one stumbled, he tripped up the other also, fell and injured the other also; the other, unable to leave him, had equally with him to whimper, cry, and suffer pain. Thus did I understand that everyone in this state, instead of one care, anxiety, danger, has to suffer as many cares, anxieties, dangers as there are people to whom he is tied. And this state pleased me not.

(The awful Tragedy of luckless Marriage.)

6. While I was then gazing at some of these in the crowd, I beheld a tragedy. Two were joined together who were assuredly not of one will; one wanted to go this way, the other that; then they quarrelled, disputed, wrangled. One complained to the passers-by of this, the other of that; and then when there was nobody to arbitrate between them, they attacked one another, and cuffed and cudgelled each other in an ugly fashion. If some one reconciled them, after a while they quarrelled again. Some for a long time disputed in words whether they should go to the right or to the left, and as each obstinately insisted on what he wished, one with all his might flung himself in the direction he wished to go, and the other also in the opposite direction. Then there was a struggle and a mournful spectacle who would overcome the other; sometimes the man triumphed and dragged