THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
Werther, and therefore we wish to die! Poor children, it is
not death that you need, it is life. Since you have been in
the world you have died every day; is it from the cruel
pleasure of annihilation that you would demand a remedy
for the annihilation of your pleasures? No, life has never
deceived you, you have not yet lived. What you have been
taking for life is but the hallucinations and the dreams of the
first slumber of death!
All great criminals have hallucinated themselves on pur-
pose; and those who hallucinate themselves on purpose may
be fatally led to become great criminals. Our personal light
specialized, brought forth, determined by our own over-
mastering affection, is the germ of our paradise or of our Hell.
Each one of us (in a sense) conceives, bears, and nourishes his
good or evil angel. The conception of truth gives birth in us
to the good genius; intentional untruth hatches and brings
up nightmares and phantoms. Everyone must nourish his
children; and our life consumes itself for the sake of our
thoughts. Happy are those who find again immortality in
the creations of their soul! Woe unto them who wear them-
selves out to nourish falsehood and to fatten death! for every
one will reap the harvest of his own sowing.
There are some unquiet and tormented creatures whose
influence is disturbing and whose conversation is fatal. In
their presence one feels one’s self irritated, and one leaves
their presence angry ; yet, by a secret perversity, one looks for
them, in order to experience the disturbance and enjoy the
malevolent emotions which they give us. Such persons suffer
from the contagious maladies of the spirit of perversity.
The spirit of perversity has always for its secret motive
263