Human, All Too Human

AGAINST NEGLECT OF THE EYES.—Might one not find among the cultured classes of England, who read the Times, a decline in their powers of sight every ten years?

GREAT WORKS AND GREAT FAITH.—One man had great works, but his comrade had great faith in these works. They were inseparable, but obviously the former was entirely dependent upon the latter.

THE SOCIABLE MAN.—“I don’t get on well with myself,” said some one in explanation of his fondness for society. “Society has a stronger digestion than I have, and can put up with me.”

SHUTTING THE MIND’S EYES.—If we are practised and accustomed to reflect upon our actions, we must nevertheless close the inner eye while performing an action (be this even only writing letters or eating or drinking). Even in conversation with average people we must know how to obscure our own mental vision in order to attain and grasp average thinking. This shutting of the eyes is a conscious act and can be achieved by the will.

THE MOST TERRIBLE REVENGE.—If we wish to take a thorough revenge upon an opponent, we must wait until we have our hand quite full of truths and equities, and can calmly use the whole lot against him. Hence the exercise of revenge may be identified with the exercise of equity. It is the most terrible kind of revenge, for there is no higher court to which an appeal can be made. Thus did Voltaire revenge himself on Piron, with five lines that sum up Piron’s whole life, work, and character: every word is a truth. So too he revenged himself upon Frederick the Great in a letter to him from Ferney.

TAXES OF LUXURY.—In shops we buy the most necessary and urgent things, and have to pay very dear, because we pay as well for what is also to be had there cheap, but seldom finds a customer—articles of luxury that minister to pleasure. Thus luxury lays a constant tax upon the man of simple life who does without luxuries.

WHY BEGGARS STILL LIVE.—If all alms were given only out of compassion, the whole tribe of beggars would long since have died of starvation.

WHY BEGGARS STILL LIVE.—The greatest of almsgivers is cowardice.

HOW THE THINKER MAKES USE OF A CONVERSATION.—Without being eavesdroppers, we can hear a good deal if we are able to see well, and at the same time to let ourselves occasionally get out of our own sight. But people do not know how to make use of a conversation. They pay far too much attention to what they want to say and reply, whereas the true listener is often contented to make a provisional answer and to say something merely as a payment on account of politeness, but on the other hand, with his memory lurking in ambush, carries away with him all that the other said, together with his tones and gestures in speaking.—In ordinary conversation every one thinks he is the leader, just as if two ships, sailing side by side and giving each other a slight push here and there, were each firmly convinced that the other ship was following or even being towed.

THE ART OF EXCUSING ONESELF.—If some one excuses himself to us, he has to make out a very good case, otherwise we readily come to feel ourselves the culprits, and experience an unpleasant emotion.

IMPOSSIBLE INTERCOURSE.—The ship of your thoughts goes too deep for you to be able to travel with it in the waters of these friendly, decorous, obliging people. There are too many shallows and sandbanks: you would have to tack and turn, and would find yourself continually at your wits’ end, and they would soon also be in perplexity as to your perplexity, the reason for which they cannot divine.

THE FOX OF FOXES.—A true fox not only calls sour the grapes he cannot reach, but also those he has reached and snatched from the grasp of others.

IN INTIMATE INTERCOURSE.—However closely men are connected, there are still all the four quarters of the heavens in their common horizon, and at times they become aware of this fact.

THE SILENCE OF DISGUST.—Behold! some one undergoes a thorough and painful transformation as thinker and human being, and makes a public avowal of the change. And those who hear him see nothing, and still believe he is the same as before! This common experience has already disgusted many writers. They had rated the intellectuality of mankind too highly, and made a vow to be silent as soon as they became aware of their mistake.

BUSINESS SERIOUSNESS.—The business of many rich and eminent men is their form of recreation from too long periods of habitual leisure. They then become as serious and impassioned as other people do in their rare moments of leisure and amusement.

THE EYE’S DOUBLE SENSE.—Just as a sudden scaly ripple runs over the waters at your feet, so there are similar sudden uncertainties and ambiguities in the human eye. They lead to the question: is it a shudder, or a smile, or both?

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE.—This thinker needs no one to refute him—he is quite capable of doing that himself.

THE REVENGE OF THE EMPTY NETS.—Above all we should beware of those who have the bitter feeling of the fisherman who after a hard day’s work comes home in the evening with nets empty.

NON-ASSERTION OF OUR RIGHTS.—The exertion of power is laborious and demands courage. That is why so many do not assert their most valid rights, because their rights are a kind of power, and they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise them. Indulgence and patience are the names given to the virtues that cloak these faults.

BEARERS OF LIGHT.—In Society there would be no sunshine if the born flatterers (I mean the so-called amiable people) did not bring some in with them.

WHEN MOST BENEVOLENT.—When a man has been highly honoured and has eaten a little, he is most benevolent.

TO THE LIGHT.—Men press forward to the light not in order to see better but to shine better.—The person before whom we shine we gladly allow to be called a light.

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC.—The hypochondriac is a man who has just enough intellect and pleasure in the intellect to take his sorrows, his losses, and his mistakes seriously. But the field on which he grazes is too small: he crops it so close that in the end he has to look for single stalks. Thus he finally becomes envious and avaricious—and only then is he unbearable.

GIVING IN RETURN.—Hesiod advises us to give the neighbour who has helped us good measure and, if possible, fuller measure in return, as soon as we have the power. For this is where the neighbour’s pleasure comes in, since his former benevolence brings him interest. Moreover, he who gives in return also has his pleasure, inasmuch as, by giving a little more than he got, he redeems the slight humiliation of being compelled to seek aid.

MORE SUBTLE THAN IS NECESSARY.—Our sense of observation for how far others perceive our weaknesses is far more subtle than our sense of observation for the weaknesses of others. It follows that the first-named sense is more subtle than is necessary.

A KIND OF BRIGHT SHADOWS.—Close to the nocturnal type of man we almost regularly find, as if bound up with him, a bright soul. This is, as it were, the negative shadow cast by the former.

NOT TO TAKE REVENGE.—There are so many subtle sorts of revenge that one who has occasion to take revenge can really do or omit to do what he likes. In any case, the whole world will agree, after a time, that he has avenged himself. Hence the avoidance of revenge is hardly within man’s power. He must not even so much as say that he does not want to do so, since the contempt for revenge is interpreted and felt as a sublime and exquisite form of revenge.—It follows that we must do nothing superfluous.

THE MISTAKE OF THOSE WHO PAY HOMAGE.—Every one thinks he is paying a most agreeable compliment to a thinker when he says that he himself hit upon exactly the same idea and even upon the same expression. The thinker, however, is seldom delighted at hearing such news, nay, rather, he often becomes distrustful of his own thoughts and expressions. He silently resolves to revise both some day. If we wish to pay homage to any one, we must beware of expressing our agreement, for this puts us on the same level.—Often it is a matter of social tact to listen to an opinion as if it were not ours or even travelled beyond the limits of our own horizon—as, for example, when an old man once in a while opens the storehouse of his acquired knowledge.

LETTERS.—A letter is an unannounced visit, and the postman is the intermediary of impolite surprises. Every week we ought to have one hour for receiving letters, and then go and take a bath.

PREJUDICED.—Some one said: I have been prejudiced against myself from childhood upwards, and hence I find some truth in every censure and some absurdity in every eulogy. Praise I generally value too low and blame too high.

THE PATH TO EQUALITY.—A few hours of mountain-climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures. Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity—and finally liberty is bestowed by sleep.

CALUMNY.—If we begin to trace to its source a real scandalous misrepresentation, we shall rarely look for its origin in our honourable and straightforward enemies; for if they invented anything of the sort about us, they, as being our enemies, would gain no credence. Those, however, to whom for a time we have been most useful, but who, from some reason or other, may be secretly sure that they will obtain no more from us—such persons are in a position to start the ball of slander rolling. They gain credence, firstly, because it is assumed that they would invent nothing likely to do them damage; secondly, because they have learnt to know us intimately.—As a consolation, the much-slandered man may say to himself: Calumnies are diseases of others that break out in your body. They prove that Society is a (moral) organism, so that you can prescribe to yourself the cure that will in the end be useful to others.

THE CHILD’S KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.—The happiness of a child is as much of a myth as the happiness of the Hyperboreans of whom the Greeks fabled. The Greeks supposed that, if indeed happiness dwells anywhere on our earth, it must certainly dwell as far as possible from us, perhaps over yonder at the edge of the world. Old people have the same thought—if man is at all capable of being happy, he must be happy as far as possible from our age, at the frontiers and beginnings of life. For many a man the sight of children, through the veil of this myth, is the greatest happiness that he can feel. He enters himself into the forecourt of heaven when he says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of them is the kingdom of heaven.” The myth of the child’s kingdom of heaven holds good, in some way or other, wherever in the modern world some sentimentality exists.

THE IMPATIENT.—It is just the growing man who does not want things in the growing stage. He is too impatient for that. The youth will not wait until, after long study, suffering, and privation, his picture of men and things is complete. Accordingly, he confidently accepts another picture that lies ready to his hand and is recommended to him, and pins his faith to that, as if it must give him at once the lines and colours of his own painting. He presses a philosopher or a poet to his bosom, and must from that time forth perform long stretches of forced labour and renounce his own self. He learns much in the process, but he often forgets what is most worth learning and knowing—his self. He remains all his life a partisan. Ah, a vast amount of tedious work has to be done before you find your own colours, your own brush, your own canvas!—Even then you are very far from being a master in the art of life, but at least you are the boss in your own workshop.

THERE ARE NO TEACHERS.—As thinkers we ought only to speak of self-teaching. The instruction of the young by others is either an experiment performed upon something as yet unknown and unknowable, or else a thorough levelling process, in order to make the new member of society conform to the customs and manners that prevail for the time being. In both cases the result is accordingly unworthy of a thinker—the handiwork of parents and teachers, whom some valiantly honest person(25) has called “nos ennemis naturels.” One day, when, as the world thinks, we have long since finished our education, we discover ourselves. Then begins the task of the thinker, and then is the time to summon him to our aid—not as a teacher, but as a self-taught man who has experience.

SYMPATHY WITH YOUTH.—We are sorry when we hear that some one who is still young is losing his teeth or growing blind. If we knew all the irrevocable and hopeless feelings hidden in his whole being, how great our sorrow would be! Why do we really suffer on this account? Because youth has to continue the work we have undertaken, and every flaw and failing in its strength is likely to injure our work, that will fall into its hands. It is the sorrow at the imperfect guarantee of our immortality: or, if we only feel ourselves as executors of the human mission, it is the sorrow that this mission must pass to weaker hands than ours.

THE AGES OF LIFE.—The comparison of the four ages of life with the four seasons of the year is a venerable piece of folly. Neither the first twenty nor the last twenty years of a life correspond to a season of the year, assuming that we are not satisfied with drawing a parallel between white hair and snow and similar colour-analogies. The first twenty years are a preparation for life in general, for the whole year of life, a sort of long New Year’s Day. The last twenty review, assimilate, bring into union and harmony all that has been experienced till then: as, in a small degree, we do on every New Year’s Eve with the whole past year. But in between there really lies an interval which suggests a comparison with the seasons—the time from the twentieth to the fiftieth year (to speak here of decades in the lump, while it is an understood thing that every one must refine for himself these rough outlines). Those three decades correspond to three seasons—summer, spring, and autumn. Winter human life has none, unless we like to call the (unfortunately) often intervening hard, cold, lonely, hopeless, unfruitful periods of disease the winters of man. The twenties, hot, oppressive, stormy, impetuous, exhausting years, when we praise the day in the evening, when it is over, as we wipe the sweat from our foreheads—years in which work seems to us cruel but necessary—these twenties are the summer of life. The thirties, on the other hand, are its spring-time, with the air now too warm, now too cold, ever restless and stimulating, bubbling sap, bloom of leaves, fragrance of buds everywhere, many delightful mornings and evenings, work to which the song of birds awakens us, a true work of the heart, a kind of joy in our own robustness, strengthened by the savour of hopeful anticipation. Lastly the forties, mysterious like all that is stationary, like a high, broad plateau, traversed by a fresh breeze, with a clear, cloudless sky above it, which always has the same gentle look all day and half the night—the time of harvest and cordial gaiety—that is the autumn of life.

WOMEN’S INTELLECT IN MODERN SOCIETY.—What women nowadays think of men’s intellect may be divined from the fact that in their art of adornment they think of anything but of emphasising the intellectual side of their faces or their single intellectual features. On the contrary, they conceal such traits, and understand, for example by an arrangement of their hair over their forehead, how to give themselves an appearance of vivid, eager sensuality and materialism, just when they but slightly possess those qualities. Their conviction that intellect in women frightens men goes so far that they even gladly deny the keenness of the most intellectual sense and purposely invite the reputation of short-sightedness. They think they will thereby make men more confiding. It is as if a soft, attractive twilight were spreading itself around them.

GREAT AND TRANSITORY.—What moves the observer to tears is the rapturous look of happiness with which a fair young bride gazes upon her husband. We feel all the melancholy of autumn in thinking of the greatness and of the transitoriness of human happiness.

SENSE AND SACRIFICE.—Many a woman has the intelletto del sacrifizio,(26) and no longer enjoys life when her husband refuses to sacrifice her. With all her wit, she then no longer knows—whither? and without perceiving it, is changed from sacrificial victim to sacrificial priest.

THE UNFEMININE.—“Stupid as a man,” say the women; “Cowardly as a woman,” say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.

MASCULINE AND FEMININE TEMPERAMENT AND MORTALITY.—That the male sex has a worse temperament than the female follows from the fact that male children have a greater mortality than female, clearly because they “leap out of their skins” more easily. Their wildness and unbearableness soon make all the bad stuff in them deadly.

THE AGE OF CYCLOPEAN BUILDING.—The democratisation of Europe is a resistless force. Even he who would stem the tide uses those very means that democratic thought first put into men’s hands, and he makes these means more handy and workable. The most inveterate enemies of democracy (I mean the spirits of upheaval) seem only to exist in order, by the fear that they inspire, to drive forward the different parties faster and faster on the democratic course. Now we may well feel sorry for those who are working consciously and honourably for this future. There is something dreary and monotonous in their faces, and the grey dust seems to have been wafted into their very brains. Nevertheless, posterity may possibly some day laugh at our anxiety, and see in the democratic work of several generations what we see in the building of stone dams and walls—an activity that necessarily covers clothes and face with a great deal of dust, and perhaps unavoidably makes the workmen, too, a little dull-witted; but who would on that account desire such work undone? It seems that the democratisation of Europe is a link in the chain of those mighty prophylactic principles which are the thought of the modern era, and whereby we rise up in revolt against the Middle Ages. Now, and now only, is the age of Cyclopean building! A final security in the foundations, that the future may build on them without danger!

Henceforth, an impossibility of the orchards of culture being once more destroyed overnight by wild, senseless mountain torrents! Dams and walls against barbarians, against plagues, against physical and spiritual serfdom! And all this understood at first roughly and literally, but gradually in an ever higher and more spiritual sense, so that all the principles here indicated may appear as the intellectual preparation of the highest artist in horticulture, who can only apply himself to his own task when the other is fully accomplished!—True, if we consider the long intervals of time that here lie between means and end, the great, supreme labour, straining the powers and brains of centuries, that is necessary in order to create or to provide each individual means, we must not bear too hardly upon the workers of the present when they loudly proclaim that the wall and the fence are already the end and the final goal. After all, no one yet sees the gardener and the fruit, for whose sake the fence exists.

THE RIGHT OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.—The people has not granted itself universal suffrage but, wherever this is now in force, it has received and accepted it as a temporary measure. But in any case the people has the right to restore the gift, if it does not satisfy its anticipations. This dissatisfaction seems universal nowadays, for when, at any occasion where the vote is exercised, scarce two-thirds, nay perhaps not even the majority of all voters, go to the polls, that very fact is a vote against the whole suffrage system.—On this point, in fact, we must pronounce a much sterner verdict. A law that enacts that the majority shall decide as to the welfare of all cannot be built up on the foundation that it alone has provided, for it is bound to require a far broader foundation, namely the unanimity of all. Universal suffrage must not only be the expression of the will of a majority, but of the whole country. Thus the dissent of a very small minority is already enough to set aside the system as impracticable; and the abstention from voting is in fact a dissent of this kind, which ruins the whole institution. The “absolute veto” of the individual, or—not to be too minute—the veto of a few thousands, hangs over the system as the consequence of justice. On every occasion when it is employed, the system must, according to the variety of the division, first prove that it has still a right to exist.

FALSE CONCLUSIONS.—What false conclusions are drawn in spheres where we are not at home, even by those of us who are accustomed as men of science to draw right conclusions! It is humiliating! Now it is clear that in the great turmoil of worldly doings, in political affairs, in all sudden and urgent matters such as almost every day brings up, these false conclusions must decide. For no one feels at home with novelties that have sprung up in the night. All political work, even with great statesmen, is an improvisation that trusts to luck.

PREMISSES OF THE AGE OF MACHINERY.—The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premisses of which no one has yet dared to draw the conclusions that will follow in a thousand years.

A DRAG UPON CULTURE.—When we are told that here men have no time for productive occupations, because military manœuvres and processions take up their days, and the rest of the population must feed and clothe them, their dress, however, being striking, often gay and full of absurdities; that there only a few distinguished qualities are recognised, individuals resemble each other more than elsewhere, or at any rate are treated as equals, yet obedience is exacted and yielded without reasoning, for men command and make no attempt to convince; that here punishments are few, but these few cruel and likely to become the final and most terrible; that there treason ranks as the capital offence, and even the criticism of evils is only ventured on by the most audacious; that there, again, human life is cheap, and ambition often takes the form of setting life in danger—when we hear all this, we at once say, “This is a picture of a barbarous society that rests on a hazardous footing.” One man perhaps will add, “It is a portrait of Sparta.” But another will become meditative and declare that this is a description of our modern military system, as it exists in the midst of our altogether different culture and society, a living anachronism, the picture, as above said, of a community resting on a hazardous footing; a posthumous work of the past, which can only act as a drag upon the wheels of the present.—Yet at times even a drag upon culture is vitally necessary—that is to say, when culture is advancing too rapidly downhill or (as perhaps in this case) uphill.

MORE REVERENCE FOR THEM THAT KNOW.—In the competition of production and sale the public is made judge of the product. But the public has no special knowledge, and judges by the appearance of the wares. In consequence, the art of appearance (and perhaps the taste for it) must increase under the dominance of competition, while on the other hand the quality of every product must deteriorate. The result will be—so far as reason does not fall in value—that one day an end will be put to that competition, and a new principle will win the day. Only the master of the craft should pronounce a verdict on the work, and the public should be dependent on the belief in the personality of the judge and his honesty. Accordingly, no anonymous work! At least an expert should be there as guarantor and pledge his name if the name of the creator is lacking or is unknown. The cheapness of an article is for the layman another kind of illusion and deceit, since only durability can decide that a thing is cheap and to what an extent. But it is difficult, and for a layman impossible, to judge of its durability.—Hence that which produces an effect on the eye and costs little at present gains the advantage—this being naturally machine-made work. Again, machinery—that is to say, the cause of the greatest rapidity and facility in production—favours the most saleable kind of article. Otherwise it involves no tangible profit; it would be too little used and too often stand idle. But as to what is most saleable, the public, as above said, decides: it must be the most exchangeable—in other words, the thing that appears good and also appears cheap. Thus in the domain of labour our motto must also hold good: “More respect for them that know!”

THE DANGER OF KINGS.—Democracy has it in its power, without any violent means, and only by a lawful pressure steadily exerted, to make kingship and emperorship hollow, until only a zero remains, perhaps with the significance of every zero in that, while nothing in itself, it multiplies a number tenfold if placed on the right side. Kingship and emperorship would remain a gorgeous ornament upon the simple and appropriate dress of democracy, a beautiful superfluity that democracy allows itself, a relic of all the historically venerable, primitive ornaments, nay the symbol of history itself, and in this unique position a highly effective thing if, as above said, it does not stand alone, but is put on the right side.—In order to avoid the danger of this nullification, kings hold by their teeth to their dignity as war-lords. To this end they need wars, or in other words exceptional circumstances, in which that slow, lawful pressure of the democratic forces is relaxed.

THE TEACHER A NECESSARY EVIL.—Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. For their work as middlemen they want too high a fee for themselves, and this is drawn from the original, productive spirits—namely, interest, admiration, leisure, money, and other advantages.—Accordingly, we should always look upon the teacher as a necessary evil, just like the merchant; as an evil that we should make as small as possible.—Perhaps the prevailing distress in Germany has its main cause in the fact that too many wish to live and live well by trade (in other words, desiring as far as possible to diminish prices for the producer and raise prices for the consumer, and thus to profit by the greatest possible loss to both). In the same way, we may certainly trace a main cause of the prevailing intellectual poverty in the superabundance of teachers. It is because of teachers that so little is learnt, and that so badly.

THE TAX OF HOMAGE.—Him whom we know and honour,—be he physician, artist, or artisan,—who does and produces something for us, we gladly pay as highly as we can, often a fee beyond our means. On the other hand, we pay the unknown as low a price as possible; here is a contest in which every one struggles and makes others struggle for a foot’s breadth of land. In the work of the known there is something that cannot be bought, the sentiment and ingenuity put into his work for our own sake. We think we cannot better express our sense of obligation than by a sort of sacrifice on our part.—The heaviest tax is the tax of homage. The more competition prevails, the more we buy for the unknown and work for the unknown, the lower does this tax become, whereas it is really the standard for the loftiness of man’s spiritual intercourse.

THE MEANS TOWARDS GENUINE PEACE.—No government will nowadays admit that it maintains an army in order to satisfy occasionally its passion for conquest. The army is said to serve only defensive purposes. This morality, which justifies self-defence, is called in as the government’s advocate. This means, however, reserving morality for ourselves and immorality for our neighbour, because he must be thought eager for attack and conquest if our state is forced to consider means of self-defence.—At the same time, by our explanation of our need of an army (because he denies the lust of attack just as our state does, and ostensibly also maintains his army for defensive reasons), we proclaim him a hypocrite and cunning criminal, who would fain seize by surprise, without any fighting, a harmless and unwary victim. In this attitude all states face each other to-day. They presuppose evil intentions on their neighbour’s part and good intentions on their own. This hypothesis, however, is an inhuman notion, as bad as and worse than war. Nay, at bottom it is a challenge and motive to war, foisting as it does upon the neighbouring state the charge of immorality, and thus provoking hostile intentions and acts. The doctrine of the army as a means of self-defence must be abjured as completely as the lust of conquest. Perhaps a memorable day will come when a nation renowned in wars and victories, distinguished by the highest development of military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifice to these objects, will voluntarily exclaim, “We will break our swords,” and will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and barrel.

Making ourselves defenceless (after having been the most strongly defended) from a loftiness of sentiment—that is the means towards genuine peace, which must always rest upon a pacific disposition. The so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a bellicose disposition, of a disposition that trusts neither itself nor its neighbour, and, partly from hate, partly from fear, refuses to lay down its weapons. Better to perish than to hate and fear, and twice as far better to perish than to make oneself hated and feared—this must some day become the supreme maxim of every political community!—Our liberal representatives of the people, as is well known, have not the time for reflection on the nature of humanity, or else they would know that they are working in vain when they work for “a gradual diminution of the military burdens.” On the contrary, when the distress of these burdens is greatest, the sort of God who alone can help here will be nearest. The tree of military glory can only be destroyed at one swoop, with one stroke of lightning. But, as you know, lightning comes from the cloud and from above.

WHETHER PROPERTY CAN BE SQUARED WITH JUSTICE.—When the injustice of property is strongly felt (and the hand of the great clock is once more at this place), we formulate two methods of relieving this injustice: either an equal distribution, or an abolition of private possession and a return to State ownership. The latter method is especially dear to the hearts of our Socialists, who are angry with that primitive Jew for saying, “Thou shalt not steal.” In their view the eighth(27) commandment should rather run, “Thou shalt not possess.”—The former method was frequently tried in antiquity, always indeed on a small scale, and yet with poor success. From this failure we too may learn. “Equal plots of land” is easily enough said, but how much bitterness is aroused by the necessary division and separation, by the loss of time-honoured possessions, how much piety is wounded and sacrificed! We uproot the foundation of morality when we uproot boundary-stones. Again, how much fresh bitterness among the new owners, how much envy and looking askance! For there have never been two really equal plots of land, and if there were, man’s envy of his neighbour would prevent him from believing in their equality. And how long would this equality, unhealthy and poisoned at the very roots, endure? In a few generations, by inheritance, here one plot would come to five owners, there five plots to one. Even supposing that men acquiesced in such abuses through the enactment of stern laws of inheritance, the same equal plots would indeed exist, but there would also be needy malcontents, owning nothing but dislike of their kinsmen and neighbours, and longing for a general upheaval.—If, however, by the second method we try to restore ownership to the community and make the individual but a temporary tenant, we interfere with agriculture.

For man is opposed to all that is only a transitory possession, unblessed with his own care and sacrifice. With such property he behaves in freebooter fashion, as robber or as worthless spendthrift. When Plato declares that self-seeking would be removed with the abolition of property, we may answer him that, if self-seeking be taken away, man will no longer possess the four cardinal virtues either; as we must say that the most deadly plague could not injure mankind so terribly as if vanity were one day to disappear. Without vanity and self-seeking what are human virtues? By this I am far from meaning that these virtues are but varied names and masks for these two qualities. Plato’s Utopian refrain, which is still sung by Socialists, rests upon a deficient knowledge of men. He lacked the historical science of moral emotions, the insight into the origin of the good and useful characteristics of the human soul. He believed, like all antiquity, in good and evil as in black and white—that is to say, in a radical difference between good and bad men and good and bad qualities.—In order that property may henceforth inspire more confidence and become more moral, we should keep open all the paths of work for small fortunes, but should prevent the effortless and sudden acquisition of wealth. Accordingly, we should take all the branches of transport and trade which favour the accumulation of large fortunes—especially, therefore, the money market—out of the hands of private persons or private companies, and look upon those who own too much, just as upon those who own nothing, as types fraught with danger to the community.

THE VALUE OF LABOUR.—If we try to determine the value of labour by the amount of time, industry, good or bad will, constraint, inventiveness or laziness, honesty or make-believe bestowed upon it, the valuation can never be a just one. For the whole personality would have to be thrown into the scale, and this is impossible. Here the motto is, “Judge not!” But after all the cry for justice is the cry we now hear from those who are dissatisfied with the present valuation of labour. If we reflect further we find every person non-responsible for his product, the labour; hence merit can never be derived therefrom, and every labour is as good or as bad as it must be through this or that necessary concatenation of forces and weaknesses, abilities and desires. The worker is not at liberty to say whether he shall work or not, or to decide how he shall work. Only the standpoints of usefulness, wider and narrower, have created the valuation of labour. What we at present call justice does very well in this sphere as a highly refined utility, which does not only consider the moment and exploit the immediate opportunity, but looks to the permanence of all conditions, and thus also keeps in view the well-being of the worker, his physical and spiritual contentment: in order that he and his posterity may work well for our posterity and become trustworthy for longer periods than the individual span of human life. The exploitation of the worker was, as we now understand, a piece of folly, a robbery at the expense of the future, a jeopardisation of society. We almost have the war now, and in any case the expense of maintaining peace, of concluding treaties and winning confidence, will henceforth be very great, because the folly of the exploiters was very great and long-lasting.

OF THE STUDY OF THE SOCIAL BODY.—The worst drawback for the modern student of economics and political science in Europe, and especially in Germany, is that the actual conditions, instead of exemplifying rules, illustrate exceptions or stages of transition and extinction. We must therefore learn to look beyond actually existing conditions and, for example, turn our eyes to distant North America, where we can still contemplate and investigate, if we will, the initial and normal movement of the social body. In Germany such a study requires arduous and historical research, or, as I have suggested, a telescope.

HOW FAR MACHINERY HUMILIATES.—Machinery is impersonal; it robs the piece of work of its pride, of the individual merits and defects that cling to all work that is not machine-made—in other words, of its bit of humanity. Formerly, all buying from handicraftsmen meant a mark of distinction for their personalities, with whose productions people surrounded themselves. Furniture and dress accordingly became the symbols of mutual valuation and personal connection. Nowadays, on the other hand, we seem to live in the midst of anonymous and impersonal serfdom.—We must not buy the facilitation of labour too dear.

CENTURY-OLD QUARANTINE.—Democratic institutions are centres of quarantine against the old plague of tyrannical desires. As such they are extremely useful and extremely tedious.

THE MOST DANGEROUS PARTISAN.—The most dangerous partisan is he whose defection would involve the ruin of the whole party—in other words, the best partisan.

DESTINY AND THE STOMACH.—A piece more or less of bread and butter in the jockey’s body is occasionally the decisive factor in races and bets, and thus in the good and bad luck of thousands.—So long as the destiny of nations depends upon diplomats, the stomachs of diplomats will always be the object of patriotic misgivings. Quousque tandem....

THE VICTORY OF DEMOCRACY.—All political powers nowadays attempt to exploit the fear of Socialism for their own strengthening. Yet in the long run democracy alone gains the advantage, for all parties are now compelled to flatter “the masses” and grant them facilities and liberties of all kinds, with the result that the masses finally become omnipotent. The masses are as far as possible removed from Socialism as a doctrine of altering the acquisition of property. If once they get the steering-wheel into their hands, through great majorities in their Parliaments, they will attack with progressive taxation the whole dominant system of capitalists, merchants, and financiers, and will in fact slowly create a middle class which may forget Socialism like a disease that has been overcome.—The practical result of this increasing democratisation will next be a European league of nations, in which each individual nation, delimited by the proper geographical frontiers, has the position of a canton with its separate rights. Small account will be taken of the historic memories of previously existing nations, because the pious affection for these memories will be gradually uprooted under the democratic régime, with all its craze for novelty and experiment. The corrections of frontiers that will prove necessary will be so carried out as to serve the interests of the great cantons and at the same time that of the whole federation, but not that of any venerable memories. To find the standpoints for these corrections will be the task of future diplomats, who will have to be at the same time students of civilisation, agriculturists, and commercial experts, with no armies but motives and utilities at their back. Then only will foreign and home politics be inseparably connected, whereas to-day the latter follows its haughty dictator, and gleans in sorry baskets the stubble that is left over from the harvest of the former.

GOAL AND MEANS OF DEMOCRACY.—Democracy tries to create and guarantee independence for as many as possible in their opinions, way of life, and occupation. For this purpose democracy must withhold the political suffrage both from those who have nothing and from those who are really rich, as being the two intolerable classes of men. At the removal of these classes it must always work, because they are continually calling its task in question. In the same way democracy must prevent all measures that seem to aim at party organisation. For the three great foes of independence, in that threefold sense, are the have-nots, the rich, and the parties.—I speak of democracy as of a thing to come. What at present goes by that name is distinguished from older forms of government only by the fact that it drives with new horses; the roads and the wheels are the same as of yore.—Has the danger really become less with these conveyances of the commonwealth?

DISCRETION AND SUCCESS.—That great quality of discretion, which is fundamentally the virtue of virtues, their ancestress and queen, has in common life by no means always success on its side. The wooer would find himself deceived if he had wooed that virtue only for the sake of success. For it is rated by practical people as suspicious, and is confused with cunning and hypocrisy: he who obviously lacks discretion, the man who quickly grasps and sometimes misses his grasp, has prejudice on his side—he is an honest, trustworthy fellow. Practical people, accordingly, do not like the prudent man, thinking he is to them a danger. Moreover, we often assume the prudent man to be anxious, preoccupied, pedantic—unpractical, butterfly people find him uncomfortable, because he does not live in their happy-go-lucky way, without thinking of actions and duties; he appears among them as their embodied conscience, and the bright day is dimmed to their eyes before his gaze. Thus when success and popularity fail him, he may often say by way of private consolation, “So high are the taxes you have to pay for the possession of the most precious of human commodities—still it is worth the price!”

ET IN ARCADIA EGO.—I looked down, over waves of hills, to a milky-green lake, through firs and pines austere with age; rocky crags of all shapes about me, the soil gay with flowers and grasses. A herd of cattle moved, stretched, and expanded itself before me; single cows and groups in the distance, in the clearest evening light, hard by the forest of pines; others nearer and darker; all in calm and eventide contentment. My watch pointed to half-past six. The bull of the herd had stepped into the white foaming brook, and went forward slowly, now striving against, now giving way to his tempestuous course; thus, no doubt, he took his sort of fierce pleasure. Two dark brown beings, of Bergamasque origin, tended the herd, the girl dressed almost like a boy. On the left, overhanging cliffs and fields of snow above broad belts of woodland; to the right, two enormous ice-covered peaks, high above me, shimmering in the veil of the sunny haze—all large, silent, and bright. The beauty of the whole was awe-inspiring and induced to a mute worship of the moment and its revelation. Unconsciously, as if nothing could be more natural, you peopled this pure, clear world of light (which had no trace of yearning, of expectancy, of looking forward or backward) with Greek heroes. You felt it all as Poussin and his school felt—at once heroic and idyllic.—So individual men too have lived, constantly feeling themselves in the world and the world in themselves, and among them one of the greatest men, the inventor of a heroico-idyllic form of philosophy—Epicurus.

COUNTING AND MEASURING.—The art of seeing many things, of weighing one with another, of reckoning one thing with another and constructing from them a rapid conclusion, a fairly correct sum—that goes to make a great politician or general or merchant. This quality is, in fact, a power of speedy mental calculation. The art of seeing one thing alone, of finding therein the sole motive for action, the guiding principle of all other action, goes to make the hero and also the fanatic. This quality means a dexterity in measuring with one scale.

NOT TO SEE TOO SOON.—As long as we undergo some experience, we must give ourselves up to the experience and shut our eyes—in other words, not become observers of what we are undergoing. For to observe would disturb good digestion of the experience, and instead of wisdom we should gain nothing but dyspepsia.

FROM THE PRACTICE OF THE WISE.—To become wise we must will to undergo certain experiences, and accordingly leap into their jaws. This, it is true, is very dangerous. Many a “sage” has been eaten up in the process.

EXHAUSTION OF THE INTELLECT.—Our occasional coldness and indifference towards people, which is imputed to us as hardness and defect of character, is often only an exhaustion of the intellect. In this state other men are to us, as we are to ourselves, tedious or immaterial.

“THE ONE THING NEEDFUL.”—If we are clever, the one thing we need is to have joy in our hearts. “Ah,” adds some one, “if we are clever, the best thing we can do is to be wise.”

A SIGN OF LOVE.—Some one said, “There are two persons about whom I have never thought deeply. That is a sign of my love for them.”

HOW WE SEEK TO IMPROVE BAD ARGUMENTS.—Many a man adds a bit of his personality to his bad arguments, as if they would thus go better and change into straight and good arguments. In the same way, players at skittles, even after a throw, try to give a direction to the ball by turns and gestures.

HONESTY.—It is but a small thing to be a pattern sort of man with regard to rights and property—for instance (to name trifling points, which of course give a better proof of this sort of pattern nature than great examples), if as a boy one never steals fruit from another’s orchard, and as a man never walks on unmown fields. It is but little; you are then still only a “law-abiding person,” with just that degree of morality of which a “society,” a group of human beings, is capable.

“MAN!”—What is the vanity of the vainest individual as compared with the vanity which the most modest person feels when he thinks of his position in nature and in the world as “Man!”

THE MOST NECESSARY GYMNASTIC.—Through deficiency in self-control in small matters a similar deficiency on great occasions slowly arises. Every day on which we have not at least once denied ourselves some trifle is turned to bad use and a danger to the next day. This gymnastic is indispensable if we wish to maintain the joy of being our own master.

LOSING OURSELVES.—When we have first found ourselves, we must understand how from time to time to lose ourselves and then to find ourselves again.—This is true on the assumption that we are thinkers. A thinker finds it a drawback always to be tied to one person.

WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO PART.—You must, for a time at least, part from that which you want to know and measure. Only when you have left a city do you see how high its towers rise above its houses.

AT NOONTIDE.—He to whom an active and stormy morning of life is allotted, at the noontide of life feels his soul overcome by a strange longing for a rest that may last for months and years. All grows silent around him, voices sound farther and farther in the distance, the sun shines straight down upon him. On a hidden woodland sward he sees the great God Pan sleeping, and with Pan Nature seems to him to have gone to sleep with an expression of eternity on their faces. He wants nothing, he troubles about nothing; his heart stands still, only his eye lives. It is a death with waking eyes. Then man sees much that he never saw before, and, so far as his eye can reach, all is woven into and as it were buried in a net of light. He feels happy, but it is a heavy, very heavy kind of happiness.—Then at last the wind stirs in the trees, noontide is over, life carries him away again, life with its blind eyes, and its tempestuous retinue behind it—desire, illusion, oblivion, enjoyment, destruction, decay. And so comes evening, more stormy and more active than was even the morning.—To the really active man these prolonged phases of cognition seem almost uncanny and morbid, but not unpleasant.

TO BEWARE OF ONE’S PORTRAIT-PAINTER.—A great painter, who in a portrait has revealed and put on canvas the fullest expression and look of which a man is capable, will almost always think, when he sees the man later in real life, that he is only looking at a caricature.

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW LIFE.—First Principle: to arrange one’s life on the most secure and tangible basis, not as hitherto upon the most distant, undetermined, and cloudy foundation. Second Principle: to establish the rank of the nearest and nearer things, and of the more and less secure, before one arranges one’s life and directs it to a final end.

DANGEROUS IRRITABILITY.—Talented men who are at the same time idle will always appear somewhat irritated when one of their friends has accomplished a thorough piece of work. Their jealousy is awakened, they are ashamed of their own laziness, or rather, they fear that their active friend will now despise them even more than before. In such a mood they criticise the new achievement, and, to the utter astonishment of the author, their criticism becomes a revenge.

DESTRUCTIONS OF ILLUSIONS.—Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.

THE MONOTONE OF THE “SAGE.”—Cows sometimes have a look of wondering which stops short on the path to questioning. In the eye of the higher intelligence, on the other hand, the nil admirari is spread out like the monotony of the cloudless sky.

NOT TO BE ILL TOO LONG.—We should beware of being ill too long. The lookers-on become impatient of their customary duty of showing sympathy, because they find it too much trouble to maintain the appearance of this emotion for any length of time. Then they immediately pass to suspicion of our character, with the conclusion: “You deserve to be ill, and we need no longer be at pains to show our sympathy.”

A HINT TO ENTHUSIASTS.—He who likes to be carried away, and would fain be carried on high, must beware lest he become too heavy. For instance, he must not learn much, and especially not let himself be crammed with science. Science makes men ponderous—take care, ye enthusiasts!

KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO SURPRISE ONESELF.—He who would see himself as he is, must know how to surprise himself, torch in hand. For with the mind it is as with the body: whoever is accustomed to look at himself in the glass forgets his ugliness, and only recognises it again by means of the portrait-painter. Yet he even grows used to the picture and forgets his ugliness all over again.—Herein we see the universal law that man cannot endure unalterable ugliness, unless for a moment. He forgets or denies it in all cases.—The moralists must reckon upon that “moment” for bringing forward their truths.

OPINIONS AND FISH.—We are possessors of our opinions as of fish—that is, in so far as we are possessors of a fish pond. We must go fishing and have luck—then we have our fish, our opinions. I speak here of live opinions, of live fish. Others are content to possess a cabinet of fossils—and, in their head, “convictions.”

SIGNS OF FREEDOM AND SERVITUDE.—To satisfy one’s needs so far as possible oneself, even if imperfectly, is the path towards freedom in mind and personality. To satisfy many even superfluous needs, and that as fully as possible, is a training for servitude. The Sophist Hippias, who himself earned and made all that he wore within and without, is the representative of the highest freedom of mind and personality. It does not matter whether all is done equally well and perfectly—pride can repair the damaged places.

BELIEF IN ONESELF.—In our times we mistrust every one who believes in himself. Formerly this was enough to make people believe in one. The recipe for finding faith now runs: “Spare not thyself! In order to set thy opinion in a credible light, thou must first set fire to thy own hut!”

AT ONCE RICHER AND POORER.—I know a man who accustomed himself even in childhood to think well of the intellectuality of mankind—in other words, of their real devotion as regards things of the intellect, their unselfish preference for that which is recognised as true—but who had at the same time a modest or even depreciatory view of his own brain (judgment, memory, presence of mind, imagination). He set no value on himself when he compared himself with others. Now in the course of years he was compelled, first once and then in a hundred ways, to revise this verdict. One would have thought he would be thoroughly satisfied and delighted. Such, in fact, was to some extent the case, but, as he once said, “Yet a bitterness of the deepest dye is mingled with my feeling, such as I did not know in earlier life; for since I learnt to value men and myself more correctly, my intellect seems to me of less use. I scarcely think I can now do any good at all with it, because the minds of others cannot understand the good. I now always see before me the frightful gulf between those who could give help and those who need help. So I am troubled by the misfortune of having my intellect to myself and of being forced to enjoy it alone so far as it can give any enjoyment. But to give is more blessed than to possess, and what is the richest man in the solitude of a desert?”(28)

HOW WE SHOULD ATTACK.—The reasons for which men believe or do not believe are in very few people as strong as they might be. As a rule, in order to shake a belief it is far from necessary to use the heaviest weapon of attack. Many attain their object by merely making the attack with some noise—in fact, pop-guns are often enough. In dealing with very vain persons, the semblance of a strong attack is enough. They think they are being taken quite seriously, and readily give way.

DEATH.—Through the certain prospect of death a precious, fragrant drop of frivolity might be mixed with every life—and now, you singular druggist-souls, you have made of death a drop of poison, unpleasant to taste, which makes the whole of life hideous.

REPENTANCE.—Never allow repentance free play, but say at once to yourself, “That would be adding a second piece of folly to the first.” If you have worked evil, you must bethink yourself of doing good. If you are punished for your actions, submit to the punishment with the feeling that by this very submission you are somehow doing good, in that you are deterring others from falling into the same error. Every malefactor who is punished has a right to consider himself a benefactor to mankind.

BECOMING A THINKER.—How can any one become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third part of the day without passions, men, and books?

THE BEST REMEDY.—A little health on and off is the best remedy for the invalid.

DON’T TOUCH.—There are dreadful people who, instead of solving a problem, complicate it for those who deal with it and make it harder to solve.(29) Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be entreated not to hit the nail at all.

FORGETTING NATURE.—We speak of Nature, and, in doing so, forget ourselves: we ourselves are Nature, quand même.—Consequently, Nature is something quite different from what we feel on hearing her name pronounced.

PROFUNDITY AND ENNUI.—In the case of profound men, as of deep wells, it takes a long time before anything that is thrown into them reaches the bottom. The spectators, who generally do not wait long enough, too readily look upon such a man as callous and hard—or even as boring.

WHEN IT IS TIME TO VOW FIDELITY TO ONESELF.—We sometimes go astray in an intellectual direction which does not correspond to our talents. For a time we struggle heroically against wind and tide, really against ourselves; but finally we become weary and we pant. What we accomplish gives us no real pleasure, since we think that we have paid too heavy a price for these successes. We even despair of our productivity, of our future, perhaps in the midst of victory.—Finally, finally we turn back—and then the wind swells our sails and bears us into our smooth water. What bliss! How certain of victory we feel! Only now do we know what we are and what we intend, and now we vow fidelity to ourselves, and have a right to do so—as men that know.