How pleasant it would be each day to think, To-day I have done
something that will tend to render future generations more
happy. The very thought would make this hour sweeter. It is absolutely
necessary that something of this kind should be discovered. First, we must
lay down the axiom that as yet nothing has been found; we have nothing to
start with; all has to be begun afresh. All courses or methods of human life
have hitherto been failures. Some course of life is needed based on things
that are, irrespective of tradition. The physical ideal must be kept
steadily in view.

CHAPTER VIII

AN enumeration of the useless would almost be an enumeration of
everything hitherto pursued. For instance, to go back as far as
possible, the study and labour expended on Egyptian inscriptions
and papyri, which contain nothing but doubtful, because laudatory history,
invocations to idols, and similar matters: all these labours are in vain.
Take a broom and sweep the papyri away into the dust. The Assyrian
terra-cotta tablets, some recording fables, and some even sadder--contracts
between men whose bodies were dust twenty centuries since--take a hammer
and demolish them. Set a battery to beat down the pyramids, and
a mind-battery to destroy the deadening influence of tradition.
The Greek statue lives to this day, and has the highest use of
all, the use of true beauty. The Greek and Roman philosophers
have the value of furnishing the mind with material to think
from. Egyptian and Assyrian, mediaeval and eighteenth-century
culture, miscalled, are all alike mere dust, and absolutely
useless.