OF SALVATION
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��Is he one who promiseth ? Or one who fulfilleth ? One who conquereth ? Or one who inheriteth ? An autumn ? Or a plough ? A physician ? Or a con- valescent ?
Is he a poet ? Or a truthful one ? A liberator ? Or a subduer ? One who is good ? Or one who is bad ?
I walk among men as among the fragments of the future, of that future which I see.
And all my thought and striving is to compose and gather into one thing what is a fragment and a riddle and a dismal accident.
And how could I bear to be a man, if man was not a poet and a solver of riddles and the saviour of accident !
To save the past ones and to change every ' It was' into a 'Thus I would have it' that alone would mean salvation for me !
Will that is the name of the liberator and bringer of joy. Thus I taught you, my friends ! But now learn this in addition : will itself is still a prisoner.
Willing delivereth. But what is the name of that which putteth into chains even the liberator?
' It was ; ' thus the gnashing of the teeth and the loneliest affliction of will are named. Impotent against what hath been done, it is an evil spectator of all that is past.
Will is unable to will anything in the past. That it cannot break time and the desire of time, that is the loneliest affliction of will.
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