He said to me once when we were talking of the so-called horrors of the Middle Ages: ‘These horrors were really non-existent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present day life as something far more than horrible and cruel, far more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition, has its own characters, its own weakness and its own strength. Its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as a matter of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as the savage does in the midst of our civilization. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in the way between two ages, between two modes of life and thus loses the feeling for itself, for the self-evident, for all morals, for being safe and innocent. Naturally, everyone does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche’s had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today.’ — Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.
