Unto your children shall ye make amends for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall ye thus redeem! This new table do I place over you!

“Why should one live? All is vain! To live⁠—that is to thrash straw; to live⁠—that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.”⁠—

Such ancient babbling still passeth for “wisdom”; because it is old, however, and smelleth mustily, therefore is it the more honoured. Even mould ennobleth.⁠—

Children might thus speak: they shun the fire because it hath burnt them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.

And he who ever “thrasheth straw,” why should he be allowed to rail at thrashing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle!