that he could do would be to make other men brave like himself. This lonely, active, indomitable self he thinks the ideal type of perfection. For him the moral insight does not go beyond the approval of such life as this, indefinitely multiplied.
It is always a delight to follow this Titanism in its various shapes. Buddhism, as we know, is a religion wholly founded on self-denial, and it counsels austere self-extinction. And yet, by a strange freak of moral dialectics, it is Buddhism that has given us some of the best expressions of the Titanic individualism. In a Buddhist homily in the Sutta Nipâta[1] one may find such an outburst as the following, — one of the finest of the confessions of the Titans: —
“Having laid aside the rod against all beings, and not
hurting any of them, let no one wish for a son, much less
for a companion; let him wander alone like a rhinoceros.
“In him who has intercourse with others, affections arise, and then the pain which follows affection; considering the misery that originates in affection, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros.
“He who has compassion on his friends and confidential companions loses his own advantage, having a fettered mind; seeing this danger in friendship, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros.
“Just as a large bamboo-tree, with its branches entangled in each other, such is the care one has with children and wife; but like the shoot of the bamboo not chnging to anything, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros.
“As a beast unbound in the forest goes feeding at pleas-
- ↑ Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East, vol. x., part ii., p. 6 sqq.
