Three modern seers / by Mrs. Havelock Ellis.

  • Edith Ellis
Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Three modern seers / by Mrs. Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    101/280 page 93
    welcome it. We certainly never seek it for a given end as we seek pleasure, Few of us believe with Nietzsche that it is the father of pleasure, or that it is the most educative and valuable of gifts. When Hinton wrote his little book on The Mystery of Pain, people were even more in the dark about its inner significance than they are to-day. Hinton saw very clearly what he calls the 44 forward ends ” of pain. To him pain, far from being an evil, is an essential element of the highest good, felt only as evil by us because of our want of knowledge and want of love. Even Oscar Wilde, in his Soul of Man under Socialism, which of course was written long before his true understanding of acute suffering, says: 44 Pain is not the ultimate mode of perfection. It is merely provisional and a protest. It has reference to wrong, unjust, and unhealthy surroundings. When the wrong, the disease, and the injustice are removed, it will have no further place. Its sphere lessens every day.”
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3