"I said, in the noontide of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave:
"My age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent:
"I have rolled up like a weaver my life; he will cut me off from the loom.
"From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
"Like a swallow or a crane, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward.
"What shall I say? He hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it.
"Behold, it was for my peace that I had great bitterness;
"Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption.
"The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day.
"The father to the children shall make known thy truth."
I saw beforehand what awaited me if I broke with the _Black Flags_. But I placed my soul in God's hands, and went forwards. I affix as a motto to the following book, "He who departeth from evil, maketh himself a prey."
The strangest thing, however, is that from this moment my own Karma began to complete itself. I was protected, things went well with me, I found better friends than those I had lost. Now I am inclined to ascribe all my former mischances to the fact that I served the _Black Flags_. There was no blessing with them!
[Footnote 1: A _roman à clef_ in which Strindberg fiercely attacks the Bohemians and emancipated women of Stockholm.]
=The Thirteenth Axiom=.--Euclid's twelfth axiom, as is well known, runs thus: When one straight line cuts two other straight lines so that the interior angles on the same side are together less than two right angles, these two lines, being produced, will at length meet on that side on which are the two angles, which are together less than two right angles.
If that is a self-evident proposition, which can neither be proved, nor needs to be proved, how much clearer is the axiom of the existence of God!
Anyone who tries to prove an axiom, loses himself in absurdity; therefore, we should not attempt to prove the existence of God. He who cannot understand what is self-evident in an axiom belongs to the class of people of a lower degree of intelligence. One should be sorry for such dullards, but not blame them.
The first point in the definition of God, is that He is Almighty. Thence it follows that He can abrogate His own laws. But since we do not know all His laws, we do not know when He employs a law which is unknown to us, or suspends a law which is known to us.