Dawn (Daybreak): Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

PARTING WITH SOMETHING.—To give up some of our property, or to waive a right, gives pleasure when it denotes great wealth. Generosity may be placed in this category.

WEAK SECTS.—Those sects which feel that they will always remain weak hunt up a few intelligent individual adherents, wishing to make up in quality what they lack in quantity. This gives rise to no little danger for intelligent minds.

THE JUDGMENT OF THE EVENING.—The man who meditates upon his day’s and life’s work when he has reached the end of his journey and feels weary, generally arrives at a melancholy conclusion; but this is not the fault of the day or his life, but of weariness.—In the midst of creative work we do not take time, as a rule, to meditate upon life and existence, nor yet in the midst of our pleasures: but if by a chance this did happen once we should no longer believe him to be right who waited for the seventh day and for repose to find everything that exists very beautiful.—He had missed the right moment.

BEWARE OF SYSTEMISERS!—There is a certain amount of comedy about systemisers: in trying to complete a system and to round off its horizon they have to try to let their weaker qualities appear in the same style as their stronger ones.—They wish to represent complete and uniformly strong natures.

HOSPITALITY.—The object of hospitality is to paralyse all hostile feeling in a stranger. When we cease to look upon strangers as enemies, hospitality diminishes; it flourishes so long as its evil presupposition does.

THE WEATHER.—An exceptional and uncertain state of the weather makes men suspicious even of one another: at the same time they come to like innovations, for they must diverge from their accustomed habits. This is why despots like those countries where the weather is moral.

DANGER IN INNOCENCE.—Innocent people become easy victims in all circumstances because their lack of knowledge prevents them from distinguishing between moderation and excess, and from being betimes on their guard against themselves. It is as a result of this that innocent, that is, ignorant young women become accustomed to the frequent enjoyment of sexual intercourse, and feel the want of it very much in later years when their husbands fall ill or grow prematurely old. It is on account of this harmless and orthodox conception, as if frequent sexual intercourse were right and proper, that they come to experience a need which afterwards exposes them to the severest tribulations, and even worse. Considering the matter, however, from a higher and more general point of view, whoever loves a man or a thing without knowing him or it, falls a prey to something which he would not love if he could see it. In all cases where experience, precautions, and prudent steps are required, it is the innocent man who will be most thoroughly corrupted, for he has to drink with closed eyes the dregs and most secret poison of everything put before him. Let us consider the procedure of all princes, churches, sects, parties, and corporations: Is not the innocent man always used as the sweetest bait for the most dangerous and wicked traps?—just as Ulysses availed himself of the services of the innocent Neoptolemos to cheat the old and infirm anchorite and ogre of Lemnos out of his bow and arrows. Christianity, with its contempt for the world, has made ignorance a virtue—innocence, perhaps because the most frequent result of this innocence is precisely, as I have indicated above, guilt, the sense of guilt, and despair: In other words, a virtue which leads to Heaven by the circuitous route of Hell; for only then can the gloomy propylæa of Christian salvation be thrown open, and only then is the promise of a posthumous second innocence effective. This is one of the finest inventions of Christianity!

LIVING WITHOUT A DOCTOR WHEN POSSIBLE.—It seems to me that a sick man lives more carelessly when he is under medical observation than when he attends to his own health. In the first case it suffices for him to obey strictly all his Doctor’s prescriptions; but in the second case he gives more attention to the ultimate object of these prescriptions, namely, his health; he observes much more, and submits himself to a more severe discipline than the directions of his physician would compel him to do. All rules have this effect: they distract our attention from the fundamental aim of the rule, and make us more thoughtless. But to what heights of immoderation and destruction would men have risen if ever they had completely and honestly left everything to the Godhead as to their physician, and acted in accordance with the words “as God will”!

THE DARKENING OF THE HEAVENS.—Do you know the vengeance of those timid people who behave in society just as if they had stolen their limbs? The vengeance of the humble, Christian-like souls who just manage to slink quietly through the world? The vengeance of those who always judge hastily, and are as hastily said to be in the wrong? The vengeance of all classes of drunkards, for whom the morning is always the most miserable part of the day? and also of all kinds of invalids and sick and depressed people who have no longer the courage to become healthy? The number of these petty vengeful people, and, even more, the number of their petty acts of revenge, is incalculable. The air around us is continually whizzing with the discharged arrows of their malignity, so that the sun and the sky of their lives become darkened thereby,—and, alas! not only theirs, but more often ours and other men’s: and this is worse than the frequent wounds which they make on our skins and hearts. Do we not occasionally deny the existence of the sun and sky merely because we have not seen them for so long?—Well then, solitude! because of this, solitude!

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ACTOR.—It is the blissful illusion of all great actors to imagine that the historical personages whom they are representing were really in the same state of mind as they themselves are when interpreting them—but in this they are very much mistaken. Their powers of imitation and divination, which they would fain exhibit as a clairvoyant faculty, penetrate only far enough to explain gestures, accent, and looks, and in general anything exterior: that is, they can grasp the shadow of the soul of a great hero, statesman, or warrior, or of an ambitious, jealous, or desperate person—they penetrate fairly near to the soul, but they never reach the inmost spirit of the man they are imitating. It would, indeed, be a fine thing to discover that instead of thinkers, psychologists, or experts we required nothing but clairvoyant actors to throw light upon the essence of any condition. Let us never forget, whenever such pretensions are heard, that the actor is nothing but an ideal ape—so much of an ape is he, indeed, that he is not capable of believing in the “essence” or in the “essential”: everything becomes for him merely performance, intonation, attitude, stage, scenery, and public.

LIVING AND BELIEVING APART.—The means of becoming the prophet and wonder-worker of one’s age are the same to-day as in former times: one must live apart, with little knowledge, some ideas, and a great deal of presumption—we then finish by believing that mankind cannot do without us, because it is clear that we can do without it. When we are inspired with this belief we find faith. Finally, a piece of advice to him who needs it (it was given to Wesley by Boehler, his spiritual teacher): “Preach faith until you have it; then you will preach it because you have it!”

KNOWING OUR CIRCUMSTANCES.—We may estimate our powers, but not our power. Not only do circumstances conceal it from us and show it to us time about, but they even exaggerate or diminish it. We must consider ourselves as variable quantities whose productive capacity may in favourable circumstances reach the greatest possible heights: we must therefore reflect upon these circumstances, and spare no pains in studying them.

A FABLE.—The Don Juan of knowledge—no philosopher or poet has yet succeeded in discovering him. He is wanting in love for the things he recognises, but he possesses wit, a lust for the hunting after knowledge, and the intrigues in connection with it, and he finds enjoyment in all these, even up to the highest and most distant stars of knowledge—until at last there is nothing left for him to pursue but the absolutely injurious side of knowledge, just as the drunkard who ends by drinking absinthe and aquafortis. That is why last of all he feels a longing for hell, for this is the final knowledge which seduces him. Perhaps even this would disappoint him, as all things do which one knows! and then he would have to stand still for all eternity, a victim to eternal deception, and transformed into his enemy, the Stony Guest, who longs for an evening meal of knowledge which will never more fall to his share! for the whole world of things will not have another mouthful left to offer to these hungry men.

WHAT IDEALISTIC THEORIES DISCLOSE.—We are most certain to find idealistic theories among unscrupulously practical men; for such men stand in need of the lustre of these theories for the sake of their reputation. They adopt them instinctively without by any means feeling hypocritical in doing so—no more hypocritical than Englishmen with their Christianity and their Sabbath-keeping. On the other hand, contemplative natures who have to keep themselves on the guard against all kinds of fantasies and who dread to be reputed as enthusiasts, are only to be satisfied with hard realistic theories: they take possession of them under the same instinctive compulsion without thereby losing their honesty.

THE CALUMNIATORS OF CHEERFULNESS.—People who have been deeply wounded by the disappointments of life look with suspicion upon all cheerfulness as if it were something childish and puerile, and revealed a lack of common sense that moves them to pity and tenderness, such as one would experience when seeing a dying child caressing his toys on his death-bed. Such men appear to see hidden graves under every rose; rejoicings, tumult, and cheerful music appear to them to be the voluntary illusions of a man who is dangerously ill and yet wishes to take a momentary draught from the intoxicating cup of life. But this judgment about cheerfulness is merely the reflection of the latter on the dark background of weariness and ill-health: in itself it is something touching, irrational, and pitiable, even childlike and puerile, but connected with that second childhood which follows in the train of old age, and is the harbinger of death.

NOT YET ENOUGH!—It is not sufficient to prove a case, we must also tempt or raise men to it: hence the wise man must learn to convey his wisdom; and often in such a manner that it may sound like foolishness!

RIGHT AND LIMITS.—Asceticism is the proper mode of thinking for those who must extirpate their carnal instincts, because these are ferocious beasts,—but only for such people!

THE BOMBASTIC STYLE.—An artist who does not wish to put his elevated feelings into a work and thus unburden himself, but who rather wishes to impart these feelings of elevation to others, becomes pompous, and his style becomes the bombastic style.

“HUMANITY.”—We do not consider animals as moral beings. But do you think that animals consider us as moral beings? An animal which had the power of speech once said: “Humanity is a prejudice from which we animals at least do not suffer.”

THE CHARITABLE MAN.—The charitable man gratifies a need of his own inward feelings when doing good. The stronger this need is the less does such a man try to put himself in the place of those who serve the purpose of gratifying his desire: he becomes indelicate and sometimes even offensive. (This remark applies to the benevolence and charity of the Jews, which, as is well known, is somewhat more effusive than that of other peoples.)(10)

THAT LOVE MAY BE FELT AS LOVE.—We must be honest towards ourselves, and must know ourselves very well indeed, to be able to practise upon others that humane dissimulation known as love and kindness.

WHAT ARE WE CAPABLE OF?—A man who had been tormented all day by his wicked and malicious son slew him in the evening, and then with a sigh of relief said to the other members of his family: “Well now we can sleep in peace.” Who knows what circumstances might drive us to!

“NATURAL.”—To be natural, at least in his deficiencies, is perhaps the last praise that can be bestowed upon an artificial artist, who is in other respects theatrical and half genuine. Such a man will for this very reason boldly parade his deficiencies.

CONSCIENCE-SUBSTITUTE.—One man is another’s conscience: and this is especially important when the other has none else.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DUTIES.—When our duties cease to be difficult of accomplishment, and after long practice become changed into agreeable delights and needs, then the rights of others to whom our duties (though now our inclinations) refer change into something else: that is, they become the occasion of pleasant feelings for us. Henceforth the “other,” by virtue of his rights, becomes an object of love to us instead of an object of reverence and awe as formerly. It is our own pleasure we seek when we recognise and maintain the extent of his power. When the Quietists no longer felt their Christian faith as a burden, and experienced their delight only in God, they took the motto: “Do all to the glory of God.” Whatever they performed henceforth in this sense was no longer a sacrifice, it was as much as to say, “Everything for the sake of our pleasure.” To demand that duty should be always rather burdensome, as Kant does, is to demand that it shall never develop into a habit or custom. There is a small residue of ascetic cruelty in this demand.

APPEARANCES ARE AGAINST THE HISTORIAN.—It is a sufficiently demonstrated fact that human beings come from the womb; nevertheless when children grow up and stand by the side of their mother this hypothesis appears very absurd—all appearances are against it.

THE ADVANTAGE OF IGNORANCE.—Some one has said that in his childhood he experienced such a contempt for the caprices and whims of a melancholy temperament that, until he had grown up and had become a middle-aged man, he did not know what his own temperament was like: it was precisely a melancholy temperament. He declared that this was the best of all possible kinds of ignorance.

DO NOT BE DECEIVED!—Yes, he examined the matter from every side and you think him to be a man of profound knowledge. But he only wishes to lower the price—he wants to buy it!

A MORAL PRETENCE.—You refuse to be dissatisfied with yourselves or to suffer from yourselves, and this you call your moral tendency! Very well; another may perhaps call it your cowardice! One thing, however, is certain, and that is that you will never take a trip round the world (and you yourselves are this world), and you will always remain in yourselves an accident and a clod on the face of the earth! Do you fancy that we who hold different views from you are merely exposing ourselves out of pure folly to the journey through our own deserts, swamps, and glaciers, and that we are voluntarily choosing grief and disgust with ourselves, like the Stylites?

SUBTLETY IN MISTAKES.—If Homer, as they say, sometimes nodded, he was wiser than all the artists of sleepless ambition. We must allow admirers to stop for a time and take breath by letting them find fault now and then; for nobody can bear an uninterruptedly brilliant and untiring excellence—and instead of doing good such a master would merely become a taskmaster, whom we hate while he precedes us.

OUR HAPPINESS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT EITHER PRO OR CON.—Many men are only capable of a small share of happiness: and it is not an argument against their wisdom if this wisdom is unable to afford them a greater degree of happiness, any more than it is an argument against medical skill that many people are incurable, and others always ailing. May every one have the good fortune to discover the conception of existence which will enable him to realise his greatest share of happiness! though this will not necessarily prevent his life from being miserable and not worth envying.

THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN.—“Woman is our enemy”—The man who speaks to men in this way exhibits an unbridled lust which not only hates itself but also its means.

THE SCHOOL OF THE ORATOR.—When a man has kept silence for a whole year he learns to stop chattering, and to discourse instead. The Pythagoreans were the best statesmen of their age.

THE FEELING OF POWER.—Note the distinction: the man who wishes to acquire the feeling of power seizes upon any means, and looks upon nothing as too petty which can foster this feeling. He who already possesses power, however, has grown fastidious and refined in his tastes; few things can be found to satisfy him.

NOT SO VERY IMPORTANT.—When we are present at a death-bed there regularly arises in us a thought that we immediately suppress from a false sense of propriety: the thought that the act of dying is less important than the customary veneration of it would wish us to believe, and that the dying man has probably lost in his life things which were more important than he is now about to lose by his death. In this case the end is certainly not the goal.

THE BEST WAY TO PROMISE.—When a man makes a promise it is not merely the word that promises, but what lies unexpressed behind the word. Words indeed weaken a promise by discharging and using up a power which forms part of that power which promises. Therefore shake hands when making a promise, but put your finger on your lips—in this way you will make the safest promises.

GENERALLY MISUNDERSTOOD.—In conversation we sometimes observe people endeavouring to set a trap in which to catch others—not out of evil-mindedness, as one might suppose, but from delight in their own shrewdness. Others again prepare a joke so that some one else may utter it, they tie the knot so that others may undo it: not out of goodwill, as might be supposed, but from wickedness, and their contempt for coarse intellects.

CENTRE.—The feeling, “I am the centre of the world,” forcibly comes to us when we are unexpectedly overtaken by disgrace: we then feel as if we were standing dazed in the midst of a surge, and dazzled by the glance of one enormous eye which gazes down upon us from all sides and looks us through and through.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH.—“The truth must be told, even if the world should be shivered in fragments”—so cries the eminent and grandiloquent Fichte.—Yes, certainly; but we must have it first.—What he really means, however, is that each man should speak his mind, even if everything were to be turned upside down. This point, however, is open to dispute.

THE COURAGE FOR SUFFERING.—Such as we now are, we are capable of bearing a tolerable amount of displeasure, and our stomach is suited to such indigestible food. If we were deprived of it, indeed, we should perhaps think the banquet of life insipid; and if it were not for our willingness to suffer pain we should have to let too many pleasures escape us!

ADMIRERS.—The man who admires up to the point that he would be ready to crucify any one who did not admire, must be reckoned among the executioners of his party—beware of shaking hands with him, even when he belongs to your own side.

THE EFFECT OF HAPPINESS.—The first effect of happiness is the feeling of power, and this feeling longs to manifest itself, whether towards ourselves or other men, or towards ideas and imaginary beings. Its most common modes of manifestation are making presents, derision, and destruction—all three being due to a common fundamental instinct.

MORAL MOSQUITOES.—Those moralists who are lacking in the love of knowledge, and who are only acquainted with the pleasure of giving pain, have the spirit and tediousness of provincials. Their pastime, as cruel as it is lamentable, is to observe their neighbour with the greatest possible closeness, and, unperceived, to place a pin in such position that he cannot help pricking himself with it. Such men have preserved something of the wickedness of schoolboys, who cannot amuse themselves without hunting and torturing either the living or the dead.

REASONS AND THEIR UNREASON.—You feel a dislike for him, and adduce innumerable reasons for this dislike, but I only believe in your dislike and not in your reasons! You flatter yourself by adducing as a rational conclusion, both to yourself and to me, that which happens to be merely a matter of instinct.

APPROVING OF SOMETHING.—We approve of marriage in the first place because we are not yet acquainted with it, in the second place because we have accustomed ourselves to it, and in the third place because we have contracted it—that is to say, in most cases. And yet nothing has been proved thereby in favour of the value of marriage in general.

NO UTILITARIANS.—“Power which has greatly suffered both in deed and in thought is better than powerlessness which only meets with kind treatment”—such was the Greek way of thinking. In other words, the feeling of power was prized more highly by them than any mere utility or fair renown.

UGLY IN APPEARANCE.—Moderation appears to itself to be quite beautiful: it is unaware of the fact that in the eyes of the immoderate it seems coarse and insipid, and consequently ugly.

DIFFERENT IN THEIR HATRED.—There are men who do not begin to hate until they feel weak and tired: in other respects they are fair-minded and superior. Others only begin to hate when they see an opportunity for revenge: in other respects they carefully avoid both secret and open wrath, and overlook it whenever there is any occasion for it.

MEN OF CHANCE.—It is pure hazard which plays the essential part in every invention, but most men do not meet with this hazard.

CHOICE OF ENVIRONMENT.—We should beware of living in an environment where we are neither able to maintain a dignified silence nor to express our loftier thoughts, so that only our complaints and needs and the whole story of our misery are left to be told. We thus become dissatisfied with ourselves and with our surroundings, and to the discomfort which brings about our complaints we add the vexation which we feel at always being in the position of grumblers. But we should, on the contrary, live in a place where we should be ashamed to speak of ourselves and where it would not be necessary to do so.—Who, however, thinks of such things, or of the choice in such things? We talk about our “fate,” brace up our shoulders, and sigh, “Unfortunate Atlas that I am!”

VANITY.—Vanity is the dread of appearing to be original. Hence it is a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.

THE CRIMINAL’S GRIEF.—The criminal who has been found out does not suffer because of the crime he has committed, but because of the shame and annoyance caused him either by some blunder which he has made or by being deprived of his habitual element; and keen discernment is necessary to distinguish such cases. Every one who has had much experience of prisons and reformatories is astonished at the rare instances of really genuine “remorse,” and still more so at the longing shown to return to the old wicked and beloved crime.

ALWAYS APPEARING HAPPY.—When, in the Greece of the third century, philosophy had become a matter of public emulation, there were not a few philosophers who became happy through the thought that others who lived according to different principles, and suffered from them, could not but feel envious of their happiness. They thought they could refute these other people with their happiness better than anything else, and to achieve this object they were content to appear to be always happy; but, following this practice, they were obliged to become happy in the long run! This, for example, was the case of the cynics.

THE CAUSE OF MUCH MISUNDERSTANDING.—The morality of increasing nervous force is joyful and restless; the morality of diminishing nervous force, towards evening, or in invalids and old people, is passive, calm, patient, and melancholy, and not rarely even gloomy. In accordance with what we may possess of one or other of these moralities, we do not understand that which we lack, and we often interpret it in others as immorality and weakness.

RAISING ONE’S SELF ABOVE ONE’S OWN LOWNESS.—“Proud” fellows they are indeed, those who, in order to establish a sense of their own dignity and importance, stand in need of other people whom they may tyrannise and oppress—those whose powerlessness and cowardice permits some one to make sublime and furious gestures in their presence with impunity, so that they require the baseness of their surroundings to raise themselves for one short moment above their own baseness!—For this purpose one man requires a dog, another a friend, a third a wife, a fourth a party, a fifth, again, one very rarely to be met with, a whole age.

TO WHAT EXTENT THE THINKER LOVES HIS ENEMY.—Make it a rule never to withhold or conceal from yourself anything that may be thought against your own thoughts. Vow it! This is the essential requirement of honest thinking. You must undertake such a campaign against yourself every day. A victory and a conquered position are no longer your concern, but that of truth—and your defeat also is no longer your concern!

THE EVIL OF STRENGTH.—Violence as the outcome of passion, for example, of rage, must be understood from the physiological point of view as an attempt to avoid an imminent fit of suffocation. Innumerable acts arising from animal spirits and vented upon others are simply outlets for getting rid of sudden congestion by a violent muscular exertion: and perhaps the entire “evil of strength” must be considered from this point of view. (This evil of strength wounds others unintentionally—it must find an outlet somewhere; while the evil of weakness wishes to wound and to see signs of suffering.)

TO THE CREDIT OF THE CONNOISSEUR.—As soon as some one who is no connoisseur begins to pose as a judge we should remonstrate, whether it is a male or female whipper-snapper. Enthusiasm or delight in a thing or a human being is not an argument; neither is repugnance or hatred.

TREACHEROUS BLAME.—“He has no knowledge of men” means in the mouth of some “He does not know what baseness is”; and in the mouths of others, “He does not know the exception and knows only too well what baseness means.”

THE VALUE OF SACRIFICE.—The more the rights of states and princes are questioned as to their right to sacrifice the individual (for example, in the administration of justice, conscription, etc.), the more will the value of self-sacrifice rise.

SPEAKING TOO DISTINCTLY.—There are several reasons why we articulate our words too distinctly: in the first place, from distrust of ourselves when using a new and unpractised language; secondly, when we distrust others on account of their stupidity or their slowness of comprehension. The same remark applies to intellectual matters: our communications are sometimes too distinct, too painful, because if it were otherwise those to whom we communicate our ideas would not understand us. Consequently the perfect and easy style is only permissible when addressing a perfect audience.

PLENTY OF SLEEP.—What can we do to arouse ourselves when we are weary and tired of our ego? Some recommend the gambling table, others Christianity, and others again electricity. But the best remedy, my dear hypochondriac, is, and always will be, plenty of sleep in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. Thus another morning will at length dawn upon us. The knack of worldly wisdom is to find the proper time for applying this remedy in both its forms.

WHAT WE MAY CONCLUDE FROM FANTASTIC IDEALS.—Where our deficiencies are, there also is our enthusiasm. The enthusiastic principle “love your enemies” had to be invented by the Jews, the best haters that ever existed; and the finest glorifications of chastity have been written by those who in their youth led dissolute and licentious lives.

CLEAN HANDS AND CLEAN WALLS.—Do not paint the picture either of God or the devil on your walls: for in so doing you will spoil your walls as well as your surroundings.(11)

PROBABLE AND IMPROBABLE.—A woman secretly loved a man, raised him far above her, and said to herself hundreds of times in her inmost heart, “If a man like that were to love me, I should look upon it as a condescension before which I should have to humble myself in the dust.”—And the man entertained the same feelings towards the woman, and in his inmost heart he felt the very same thought. When at last both their tongues were loosened, and they had communicated their most secret thoughts to one another, a deep and meditative silence ensued. Then the woman said in a cold voice: “The thing is quite clear! We are neither of us that which we loved! If you are what you say you are, and nothing more, then I have humbled myself in vain and loved you; the demon misled me as well as you.” This very probable story never happens—and why doesn’t it?

TESTED ADVICE.—Of all the means of consolation there is none so efficacious for him who has need of it as the declaration that in his case no consolation can be given. This implies such a distinction that the afflicted person will at once raise his head again.

KNOWING ONE’S “INDIVIDUALITY”.—We too often forget that in the eyes of strangers who see us for the first time we are quite different beings from what we consider ourselves to be—in most cases we exhibit nothing more than one particular characteristic which catches the eye of the stranger, and determines the impression we make on him. Thus the most peaceful and fair-minded man, if only he has a big moustache, may, as it were, repose in the shade of this moustache; for ordinary eyes will merely see in him the accessory of a big moustache, that is to say, a military, irascible, and occasionally violent character, and will act accordingly.

GARDENERS AND GARDENS.—Wet dreary days, loneliness, and unkind words give rise within us to conclusions like fungi; some morning we find that they have grown up in front of us we know not whence, and there they scowl at us, sullen and morose. Woe to the thinker who instead of being the gardener of his plants, is merely the soil from which they spring.

THE COMEDY OF PITY.—However much we may feel for an unhappy friend of ours, we always act with a certain amount of insincerity in his presence: we refrain from telling him everything we think, and how we think it, with all the circumspection of a doctor standing by the bedside of a patient who is seriously ill.

CURIOUS SAINTS.—There are pusillanimous people who have a bad opinion of everything that is best in their works, and who at the same time interpret and comment upon them badly: but also, by a kind of revenge, they entertain a bad opinion of the sympathy of others, and do not believe in sympathy at all; they are ashamed to appear to be carried away from themselves, and feel a defiant comfort in appearing or becoming ridiculous.—States of soul like these are to be found in melancholy artists.

VAIN PEOPLE.—We are like shop-windows, where we ourselves are constantly arranging, concealing, or setting in the foreground those supposed qualities which others attribute to us—in order to deceive ourselves.

PATHETIC AND NAÏVE.—It may be a very vulgar habit to let no opportunity slip of assuming a pathetic air for the sake of the enjoyment to be experienced in imagining the spectator striking his breast and feeling himself to be small and miserable. Consequently it may also be the indication of a noble mind to make fun of pathetic situations, and to behave in an undignified manner in them. The old, warlike nobility of France possessed that kind of distinction and delicacy.

A REFLECTION BEFORE MARRIAGE.—Supposing she loved me, what a burden she would be to me in the long run! and supposing that she did not love me, what a much greater burden she would be to me in the long run! We have to choose between two different kinds of burdens; therefore let us marry.

RASCALITY WITH A GOOD CONSCIENCE.—It is exceedingly annoying to be cheated in small bargains in certain countries,—in the Tyrol, for example,—because, in addition to the bad bargain, we are compelled to accept the evil countenance and coarse greediness of the man who has cheated us, together with his bad conscience and his hostile feeling against us. At Venice, on the other hand, the cheater is highly delighted at his successful fraud, and is not in the least angry with the man he has cheated—nay, he is even inclined to show him some kindness, and above all to have a hearty laugh with him if he likes.—In short, one must possess wit and a good conscience in order to be a knave, and this will almost reconcile the cheated one with the cheat.(12)

RATHER TOO AWKWARD.—Good people who are too awkward to be polite and amiable promptly endeavour to return an act of politeness by an important service, or by a contribution beyond their power. It is touching to see them timidly producing their gold coins when others have offered them their gilded coppers!

HIDING ONE’S INTELLIGENCE.—When we surprise some one in the act of hiding his intelligence from us we call him evil: the more so if we suspect that it is his civility and benevolence which have induced him to do so.

THE EVIL MOMENT.—Lively dispositions only lie for a moment: after this they have deceived themselves, and are convinced and honest.

THE CONDITION OF POLITENESS.—Politeness is a very good thing, and really one of the four chief virtues (although the last), but in order that it may not result in our becoming tiresome to one another the person with whom I have to deal must be either one degree more or less polite than I—otherwise we should never get on, and the ointment would not only anoint us, but would cement us together.

DANGEROUS VIRTUES.—“He forgets nothing, but forgives everything”—wherefore he shall be doubly detested, for he causes us double shame by his memory and his magnanimity.

WITHOUT VANITY.—Passionate people think little of what others may think; their state of mind raises them above vanity.

CONTEMPLATION.—In some thinkers the contemplative state peculiar to a thinker is always the consequence of a state of fear, in others always of desire. In the former, contemplation thus seems allied to the feeling of security, in the latter to the feeling of surfeit—in other words, the former are spirited in their mood, the latter over-satiated and neutral.

HUNTING.—The one is hunting for agreeable truths, the other for disagreeable ones. But even the former takes greater pleasure in the hunt than in the booty.

EDUCATION.—Education is a continuation of procreation, and very often a kind of supplementary varnishing of it.

HOW TO RECOGNISE THE CHOLERIC.—Of two persons who are struggling together, or who love and admire one another, the more choleric will always be at a disadvantage. The same remark applies to two nations.

SELF-EXCUSE.—Many men have the best possible right to act in this or that way; but as soon as they begin to excuse their actions we no longer believe that they are right—and we are mistaken.

MORAL PAMPERING.—There are tender, moral natures who are ashamed of all their successes and feel remorse after every failure.

DANGEROUS UNLEARNING.—We begin by unlearning to love others, and end by finding nothing lovable in ourselves.

ANOTHER FORM OF TOLERATION.—“To remain a minute too long on red-hot coals and to be burnt a little does no harm either to men or to chestnuts. The slight bitterness and hardness makes the kernel all the sweeter.”—Yes, this is your opinion, you who enjoy the taste! You sublime cannibals!

DIFFERENT PRIDE.—Women turn pale at the thought that their lover may not be worthy of them; Men turn pale at the thought that they may not be worthy of the women they love. I speak of perfect women, perfect men. Such men, who are self-reliant and conscious of power at ordinary times, grow diffident and doubtful of themselves when under the influence of a strong passion. Such women, on the other hand, though always looking upon themselves as the weak and devoted sex, become proud and conscious of their power in the great exception of passion,—they ask: “Who then is worthy of me?”

WHEN WE SELDOM DO JUSTICE.—Certain men are unable to feel enthusiasm for a great and good cause without committing a great injustice in some other quarter: this is their kind of morality.

LUXURY.—The love of luxury is rooted in the depths of a man’s heart: it shows that the superfluous and immoderate is the sea wherein his soul prefers to float.

TO IMMORTALISE.—Let him who wishes to kill his opponent first consider whether by doing so he will not immortalise him in himself.

AGAINST OUR CHARACTER.—If the truth which we have to utter goes against our character—as very often happens—we behave as if we had uttered a clumsy falsehood, and thus rouse suspicion.

WHERE A GREAT DEAL OF GENTLENESS IS NEEDED.—Many natures have only the choice of being either public evil-doers or secret sorrow-bearers.

ILLNESS.—Among illness are to be reckoned the premature approach of old age, ugliness, and pessimistic opinions—three things that always go together.

TIMID PEOPLE.—It is the awkward and timid people who easily become murderers: they do not understand slight but sufficient means of defence or revenge, and their hatred, owing to their lack of intelligence and presence of mind, can conceive of no other expedient than destruction.

WITHOUT HATRED.—You wish to bid farewell to your passion? Very well, but do so without hatred against it! Otherwise you have a second passion.—The soul of the Christian who has freed himself from sin is generally ruined afterwards by the hatred for sin. Just look at the faces of the great Christians! they are the faces of great haters.

INGENIOUS AND NARROW-MINDED.—He can appreciate nothing beyond himself, and when he wishes to appreciate other people he must always begin by transforming them into himself. In this, however, he is ingenious.

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ACCUSERS.—Watch closely the accuser and inquirer,—for he reveals his true character; and it is not rare for this to be a worse character than that of the victim whose crime he is investigating. The accuser believes in all innocence that the opponent of a crime and criminal must be by nature of good character, or at least must appear as such—and this is why he lets himself go, that is to say, he drops his mask.

VOLUNTARY BLINDNESS.—There is a kind of enthusiastic and extreme devotion to a person or a party which reveals that in our inmost hearts we feel ourselves superior to this person or party, and for this reason we feel indignant with ourselves. We blind ourselves, as it were, of our own free will to punish our eyes for having seen too much.