Some Thoughts On The Epic

Nevertheless, the soul that is enslaved to war cries out for deliverance, but deliverance itself appears to it in an extreme and tragic aspect, the aspect of destruction. Any other solution, more moderate, more reasonable in character, would expose the mind to suffering so naked, so vio­lent that it could not be borne, even as memory. Terror, grief, exhaustion, slaughter, the annihila­tion of comrades - is it credible that these things should not continually tear at the soul, if the in­toxication of force had not intervened to drown them?

The idea that an unlimited effort should bring in only a limited profit or no profit at all is terribly painful.