"'To Him who cares to Read.
"'I have a right to take my life, all the more so because not only does my act not interfere with the interests of a fellow-creature, but rather it contributes to the happiness, as it is called, of at least one person; a place and four hundred cubic feet of air will become vacant.
"'My motive is not despair, for an intelligent individual never despairs, but I take this step with a fairly calm conscience; that an act of this kind throws one's mind into a certain state of excitement will be easily understood by everybody; to postpone it from fear of what might come hereafter is only worthy of a slave clutching at any excuse, so that he might stay in a world where he cannot have suffered much. At the thought of going, a burden seems to fall from my shoulders; I cannot fare worse, I might fare better. If there is no life beyond the grave, death must be happiness; as great a happiness at least as sleep in a soft bed after hard physical labour. Nobody who has ever observed how sleep relaxes every muscle, and how the soul gradually steals away, can fear death.
"'Why does humanity make so much ado about death? Because it has burrowed so deeply into the earth, that a tearing away from it is bound to be painful. I put off from the shore long ago; I have no family bonds, no social, national, or legal ties which could hold me back, and I'm going simply because life has no longer any attraction for me.
"'I do not want to encourage those who are well content to follow my example; they have no reason to do so, and therefore they cannot judge my act. I have not considered the point whether it is cowardly or not—to that aspect of the question I am indifferent; moreover, it is a private matter; I never asked to come here and therefore I have a right to go when I please.
"'My reason for going? There are so many reasons and they are so complicated that I have neither the time nor the ability to explain them. I will only mention the most obvious, those which had the greatest influence on myself and on my act.
"'My childhood and youth were one long continuation of manual labour; you who do not know what it means to labour from sunrise to sunset, only to fall into a heavy sleep when the toil is over, you have escaped the curse of the fall, for it is a curse to feel one's spiritual growth arrested while one's body sinks deeper and deeper into the earth. A man who walks behind the ploughing cattle day in day out, and sees nothing but the grey clouds, will end by forgetting the blue sky above his head; a man who takes a spade and digs a hole while the sun scorches his skin, will feel that he is sinking into the parched ground and digging a grave for his soul. You know nothing of this, you who play all day long, and work a little only during an idle hour between luncheon and dinner; you who rest your spirit when the earth is green and enjoy nature as an ennobling and elevating spectacle. The toiler on the land never sees the spirit of Nature. To him the field is bread, the forest timber, the sea a wash-tub, the meadow cheese and milk—everything is earth, soulless earth!
"'When I saw one-half of humanity engaged in fostering their spiritual growth, while the other half had merely time to attend to their bodily needs, I thought at first that there existed two laws for two different species of man. But my intellect denied this. My spirit rebelled and I resolved that I, too, would escape the curse of the fall—I became an artist.
"'I can analyse the much-talked-of artistic instinct because I was endowed with it myself. It rests on a broad base of longing for freedom, freedom from profitable labour; for this reason a German philosopher defined Beauty as the Unprofitable; as soon as a work of art is of practical use, betrays a purpose or a tendency its beauty vanishes. Further-more the instinct rests on pride; man wants to play God in art, not that he wants to create anything new—he can't do that—but because he wants to improve, to arrange, to recreate. He does not begin by admiring his model, Nature, but by criticizing it. Everything is full of faults and he longs to correct them.
"'This pride, spurring a man on to never-ceasing effort, and the freedom from work—the curse of the fall—beget in the artist the illusion that he is standing above his fellow creatures; to a certain extent this is true, but unless he were constantly recalling this fact he would find himself out, that is to say find the unreal in his activity and the unjustifiable in his escape from the profitable. This constant need of appreciation of his unprofitable work makes him vain, restless, and often deeply unhappy; as soon as he comes to a clear understanding of himself he becomes unproductive and goes under, for only the religious mind can return to slavery after having once tasted freedom.