and strength; and gradually, when habit has made his manner of life endurable, his sensations of displeasure are, as a matter of fact, rarer and weaker than those of cultivated people, and approach those of the domestic animal; moreover, he experiences everything with the charm of contrast, and--he can also scold to his heart's content; so that thereby he again rises high above the sensation-range of the animal.
The Epicurean has the same point of view as the cynic; there is usually only a difference of temperament between them. Then the Epicurean makes use of his higher culture to render himself independent of prevailing opinions, he raises himself above them, whilst the cynic only remains negative. He walks, as it were, in wind-protected, well-sheltered, half-dark paths, whilst over him, in the wind, the tops of the trees rustle and show him how violently agitated is the world out there. The cynic, on the contrary, goes, as it were, naked into the rushing of the wind and hardens himself to the point of insensibility.
276.
MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM OF CULTURE.--The best discoveries about culture man makes within himself when he finds two heterogeneous powers ruling therein. Supposing some one were living as much in love for the plastic arts or for music as he was carried away by the spirit of science, and that he were to regard it as impossible for him to end this contradiction by the destruction of one and complete liberation of the other power, there would therefore remain nothing for him to do but to erect around himself such a large edifice of culture that those two powers might both dwell within it, although at different ends, whilst between them there dwelt reconciling, intermediary powers, with predominant strength to quell, in case of need, the rising conflict.
But such an edifice of culture in the single individual will bear a great resemblance to the culture of entire periods, and will afford consecutive analogical teaching concerning it. For wherever the great architecture of culture manifested itself it was its mission to compel opposing powers to agree, by means of an overwhelming accumulation of other less unbearable powers, without thereby oppressing and fettering them.
277.
HAPPINESS AND CULTURE.--We are moved at the sight of our childhood's surroundings,--the arbour, the church with its graves, the pond and the wood,--all this we see again with pain. We are seized with pity for ourselves; for what have we not passed through since then! And everything here is so silent, so eternal, only we are so changed, so moved; we even find a few human beings, on whom Time has sharpened his teeth no more than on an oak tree,--peasants, fishermen, woodmen--they are unchanged. Emotion and self-pity at the sight of lower culture is the sign of higher culture; from which the conclusion may be drawn that happiness has certainly not been increased by it. Whoever wishes to reap happiness and comfort in life should always avoid higher culture.
278.
THE SIMILE OF THE DANCE.--It must now be regarded as a decisive sign of great culture if some one possesses sufficient strength and flexibility to be as pure and strict in discernment as, in other moments, to be capable of giving poetry, religion, and metaphysics a hundred paces' start and then feeling their force and beauty. Such a position amid two such different demands is very difficult, for science urges the absolute supremacy of its methods, and if this insistence is not yielded to, there arises the other danger of a weak wavering between different impulses. Meanwhile, to cast a glance, in simile at least, on a solution of this difficulty, it may be remembered that _dancing_ is not the same as a dull reeling to and fro between different impulses.
High culture will resemble a bold dance,--wherefore, as has been said, there is need of much strength and suppleness.
279.
OF THE RELIEVING OF LIFE.--A primary way of lightening life is the idealisation of all its occurrences; and with the help of painting we should make it quite clear to ourselves what idealising means. The painter requires that the spectator should not observe too closely or too sharply, he forces him back to a certain distance from whence to make his observations; he is obliged to take for granted a fixed distance of the spectator from the picture,--he must even suppose an equally certain amount of sharpness of eye in his spectator; in such things he must on no account waver. Every one, therefore, who desires to idealise his life must not look at it too closely, and must always keep his gaze at a certain distance. This was a trick that Goethe, for instance, understood.
280.
AGGRAVATION AS RELIEF, AND _VICE VERSA._--Much that makes life more difficult in certain grades of mankind serves to lighten it in a higher grade, because such people have become familiar with greater aggravations of life. The contrary also happens; for instance, religion has a double face, according to whether a man looks up to it to relieve him of his burden and need, or looks down upon it as-upon fetters laid on him to prevent him from soaring too high into the air.
281.
THE HIGHER CULTURE IS NECESSARILY MISUNDERSTOOD.--He who has strung his instrument with only two strings, like the scholars who, besides the _instinct of knowledge_ possess only an acquired _religious_ instinct, does not understand people who can play upon more strings. It lies in the nature of the higher, _many-stringed_ culture that it should always be falsely interpreted by the lower; an example of this is when art appears as a disguised form of the religious. People who are only religious understand even science as a searching after the religious sentiment, just as deaf mutes do not know what music is, unless it be visible movement.
282.
LAMENTATION.--It is, perhaps, the advantages of our epoch that bring with them a backward movement and an occasional undervaluing of the _vita contemplativa._ But it must be acknowledged that our time is poor in the matter of great moralists, that Pascal, Epictetus, Seneca, and Plutarch are now but little read, that work and industry--formerly in the following of the great goddess Health--sometimes appear to rage like a disease. Because time to think and tranquillity in thought are lacking, we no longer ponder over different views, but content ourselves with hating them. With the enormous acceleration of life, mind and eye grow accustomed to a partial and false sight and judgment, and all people are like travellers whose only acquaintance with countries and nations is derived from the railway. An independent and cautious attitude of knowledge is looked upon almost as a kind of madness; the free spirit is brought into disrepute, chiefly through scholars, who miss their thoroughness and ant-like industry in his art of regarding things and would gladly banish him into one single corner of science, while it has the different and higher mission of commanding the battalion rear-guard of scientific and learned men from an isolated position, and showing them the ways and aims of culture. A song of lamentation such as that which has just been sung will probably have its own period, and will cease of its own accord on a forcible return of the genius of meditation.
283.
THE CHIEF DEFICIENCY OF ACTIVE PEOPLE.--Active people are usually deficient in the higher activity, I mean individual activity. They are active as officials, merchants, scholars, that is as a species, but not as quite distinct separate and _single_ individuals; in this respect they are idle. It is the misfortune of the active that their activity is almost always a little senseless. For instance, we must not ask the money-making banker the reason of his restless activity, it is foolish.
The active roll as the stone rolls, according to the stupidity of mechanics. All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave, be he otherwise whatever he likes, statesman, merchant, official, or scholar.
284.
IN FAVOUR OF THE IDLE.--As a sign that the value of a contemplative life has decreased, scholars now vie with active people in a sort of hurried enjoyment, so that they appear to value this mode of enjoying more than that which really pertains to them, and which, as a matter of fact, is a far greater enjoyment. Scholars are ashamed of _otium._ But there is one noble thing about idleness and idlers. If idleness is really the _beginning_ of all vice, it finds itself, therefore, at least in near neighbourhood of all the virtues; the idle man is still a better man than the active. You do not suppose that in speaking of idleness and idlers I am alluding to you, you sluggards?
285.
MODERN UNREST.--Modern restlessness increases towards the west, so that Americans look upon the inhabitants of Europe as altogether peace-loving and enjoying beings, whilst in reality they swarm about like wasps and bees. This restlessness is so great that the higher culture cannot mature its fruits, it is as if the seasons followed each other too quickly. For lack of rest our civilisation is turning into a new barbarism. At no period have the active, that is, the restless, been of _more_ importance. One of the necessary corrections, therefore, which must be undertaken in the character of humanity is to strengthen the contemplative element on a large scale. But every individual who is quiet and steady in heart and head already has the right to believe that he possesses not only a good temperament, but also a generally useful virtue, and even fulfils a higher mission by the preservation of this virtue.
286.
To WHAT EXTENT THE ACTIVE MAN IS LAZY.--I believe that every one must have his own opinion about everything concerning which opinions are possible, because he himself is a peculiar, unique thing, which assumes towards all other things a new and never hitherto existing attitude.
But idleness, which lies at the bottom of the active man's soul, prevents him from drawing water out of his own well. Freedom of opinion is like health; both are individual, and no good general conception can be set up of either of them. That which is necessary for the health of one individual is the cause of disease in another, and many means and ways to the freedom of the spirit are for more highly developed natures the ways and means to confinement.
287.
_CENSOR VITÆ_--Alternations of love and hatred for a long period distinguish the inward condition of a man who desires to be free in his judgment of life; he does not forget, and bears everything a grudge, for good and evil. At last, when the whole tablet of his soul is written full of experiences, he will not hate and despise existence, neither will he love it, but will regard it sometimes with a joyful, sometimes with a sorrowful eye, and, like nature, will be now in a summer and now in an autumn mood.
288.
THE SECONDARY RESULT.--Whoever earnestly desires to be free will therewith and without any compulsion lose all inclination for faults and vices; he will also be more rarely overcome by anger and vexation.
His will desires nothing more urgently than to discern, and the means to do this,--that is, the permanent condition in which he is best able to discern.
289.
THE VALUE OF DISEASE.--The man who is bed-ridden often perceives that he is usually ill of his position, business, or society, and through them has lost all self-possession. He gains this piece of knowledge from the idleness to which his illness condemns him.
290.
SENSITIVENESS IN THE COUNTRY.--If there are no firm, quiet lines on the horizon of his life, a species of mountain and forest line, man's inmost will itself becomes restless, inattentive, and covetous, as is the nature of a dweller in towns; he has no happiness and confers no happiness.
291.
PRUDENCE OF THE FREE SPIRITS.--Free-thinkers, those who live by knowledge alone, will soon attain the supreme aim of their life and their ultimate position towards society and State, and will gladly content themselves, for instance, with a small post or an income that is just sufficient to enable them to live; for they will arrange to live in such a manner that a great change of outward prosperity, even an overthrow of the political order, would not cause an overthrow of their life. To all these things they devote as little energy as possible in order that with their whole accumulated strength, and with a long breath, they may dive into the element of knowledge. Thus they can hope to dive deep and be able to see the bottom. Such a spirit seizes only the point of an event, he does not care for things in the whole breadth and prolixity of their folds, for he does not wish to entangle himself in them. He, too, knows the weekdays of restraint, of dependence and servitude. But from time to time there must dawn for him a Sunday of liberty, otherwise he could not endure life. It is probable that even his love for humanity will be prudent and somewhat short-winded, for he desires to meddle with the world of inclinations and of blindness only as far as is necessary for the purpose of knowledge. He must trust that the genius of justice will say something for its disciple and protege if accusing voices were to call him poor in love. In his mode of life and thought there is a _refined heroism,_ which scorns to offer itself to the great mob-reverence, as its coarser brother does, and passes quietly through and out of the world.
Whatever labyrinths it traverses, beneath whatever rocks its stream has occasionally worked its way--when it reaches the light it goes clearly, easily, and almost noiselessly on its way, and lets the sunshine strike down to its very bottom.
292.
FORWARD.--And thus forward upon the path of wisdom, with a firm step and good confidence! However you may be situated, serve yourself as a source of experience! Throw off the displeasure at your nature, forgive yourself your own individuality, for in any case you have in yourself a ladder with a hundred steps upon which you can mount to knowledge.
The age into which with grief you feel yourself thrown thinks you happy because of this good fortune; it calls out to you that you shall still have experiences which men of later ages will perhaps be obliged to forego. Do not despise the fact of having been religious; consider fully how you have had a genuine access to art. Can you not, with the help of these experiences, follow immense stretches of former humanity with a clearer understanding? Is not that ground which sometimes displeases you so greatly, that ground of clouded thought, precisely the one upon which have grown many of the most glorious fruits of older civilisations? You must have loved religion and art as you loved mother and nurse,--otherwise you cannot be wise. But you must be able to see beyond them, to outgrow them; if you, remain under their ban you do not understand them. You must also be familiar with history and that cautious play with the balances: "On the one hand--on the other hand."
Go back, treading in the footsteps made by mankind in its great and painful journey through the desert of the past, and you will learn most surely whither it is that all later humanity never can or may go again.
And inasmuch as you wish with all your strength to see in advance how the knots of the future are tied, your own life acquires the value of an instrument and means of knowledge. It is within your power to see that all you have experienced, trials, errors, faults, deceptions, passions, your love and your hope, shall be merged wholly in your aim.
This aim is to become a necessary chain of culture-links yourself, and from this necessity to draw a conclusion as to the necessity in the progress of general culture. When your sight has become strong enough to see to the bottom of the dark well of your nature and your knowledge, it is possible that in its mirror you may also behold the far-away visions of future civilisations. Do you think that such a life with such an aim is too wearisome, too empty of all that is agreeable?
Then you have still to learn that no honey is sweeter than that of knowledge, and that the overhanging clouds of trouble must be to you as an udder from which you shall draw milk for your refreshment. And only when old age approaches will you rightly perceive how you listened to the voice of nature, that nature which rules the whole world through pleasure; the same life which has its zenith in age has also its zenith in wisdom, in that mild sunshine of a constant mental joyfulness; you meet them both, old age and wisdom, upon one ridge of life,--it was thus intended by Nature. Then it is time, and no cause for anger, that the mists of death approach. Towards the light is your last movement; a joyful cry of knowledge is your last sound.
[Footnote 1: This may remind one of Gobineau's more jocular saying: "_Nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y allons._"--J.M.K.]
[Footnote 2: This refers to his essay, "Schopenhauer as Educator," in _Thoughts Out of Season,_ vol. ii. of the English edition.--J.M.K.]
[Footnote 3: For it is when loving that mortal man gives of his best.--J.M.K.]
SIXTH DIVISION.
MAN IN SOCIETY.
293.
dissimulation is often necessary, as if we did not see through the motives of their actions.
294.
COPIES.--We not unfrequently meet with copies of prominent persons; and as in the case of pictures, so also here, the copies please more than the originals.
295.
THE PUBLIC SPEAKER.--One may speak with the greatest appropriateness, and yet so that everybody cries out to the contrary,--that is to say, when one does not speak to everybody.
296.
WANT OF CONFIDENCE.--Want of confidence among friends is a fault that cannot be censured without becoming incurable.
297.
THE ART OF GIVING.--To have to refuse a gift, merely because it has not been offered in the right way, provokes animosity against the giver.
298.
THE MOST DANGEROUS PARTISAN.--In every party there is one who, by his far too dogmatic expression of the party-principles, excites defection among the others.
299.
ADVISERS OF THE SICK.--Whoever gives advice to a sick person acquires a feeling of superiority over him, whether the advice be accepted or rejected. Hence proud and sensitive sick persons hate advisers more than their sickness.
300.
DOUBLE NATURE OF EQUALITY.--The rage for equality may so manifest itself that we seek either to draw all others down to ourselves (by belittling, disregarding, and tripping up), or ourselves and all others upwards (by recognition, assistance, and congratulation).
301.
AGAINST EMBARRASSMENT.--The best way to relieve and calm very embarrassed people is to give them decided praise.
302.
PREFERENCE FOR CERTAIN VIRTUES.--We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we perceive that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.
303.
WHY WE CONTRADICT.--We often contradict an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it is expressed that is unsympathetic to us.
304.
CONFIDENCE AND INTIMACY.--Whoever proposes to command the intimacy of a person is usually uncertain of possessing his confidence. Whoever is sure of a person's confidence attaches little value to intimacy with him.
305.
THE EQUILIBRIUM OF FRIENDSHIP.--The right equilibrium of friendship in our relation to other men is sometimes restored when we put a few grains of wrong on our own side of the scales.
306.
THE MOST DANGEROUS PHYSICIANS.--The most dangerous physicians are those who, like born actors, imitate the born physician with the perfect art of imposture.
307.
WHEN PARADOXES ARE PERMISSIBLE.--In order to interest clever persons in a theory, it is sometimes only necessary to put it before them in the form of a prodigious paradox.
308.
HOW COURAGEOUS PEOPLE ARE WON OVER.--Courageous people are persuaded to a course of action by representing it as more dangerous than it really is.
309.
COURTESIES.--We regard the courtesies show us by unpopular persons as offences.
310.
KEEPING PEOPLE WAITING.--A sure way of exasperating people and of putting bad thoughts into their heads is to keep them waiting long.
That makes them immoral.
311.
AGAINST THE CONFIDENTIAL.--Persons who give us their full confidence think they hay thereby a right to ours. That is a mistake people acquire no rights through gifts.
312.
A MODE OF SETTLEMENT.--It often suffices to give a person whom we have injured an opportunity to make a joke about us to give him personal satisfaction, and even to make him favourably disposed to us.
313.
THE VANITY OF THE TONGUE.--Whether man conceals his bad qualities and vices, or frankly acknowledges them, his vanity in either case seeks its advantage thereby,--only let it be observed how nicely he distinguishes those from whom he conceals such qualities from those with whom he is frank and honest.
314.
CONSIDERATE.--To have no wish to offend or injure any one may as well be the sign of a just as of a timid nature.
315.
REQUISITE FOR DISPUTATION.--He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.
316.
INTERCOURSE AND PRETENSION.--We forget our pretensions when we are always conscious of being amongst meritorious people; being alone implants presumption in us. The young are pretentious, for they associate with their equals, who are all ciphers but would fain have a great significance.
317.
MOTIVES OF AN ATTACK.--One does not attack a person merely to hurt and conquer him, but perhaps merely to become conscious of one's own strength.
318.
FLATTERY.--Persons who try by means of flattery to put us off our guard in intercourse with them, employ a dangerous expedient, like a sleeping-draught, which, when it does not send the patient to sleep, keeps him all the wider awake.
319.
A GOOD LETTER-WRITER.--A person who does not write books, thinks much, and lives in unsatisfying society, will usually be a good letter-writer.
320.
THE UGLIEST OF ALL.--It may be doubted whether a person who has travelled much has found anywhere in the world uglier places than those to be met with in the human face.
321.
THE SYMPATHETIC ONES.--Sympathetic natures, ever ready to help in misfortune, are seldom those that participate in joy; in the happiness of others they have nothing to occupy them, they are superfluous, they do not feel themselves in possession of their superiority, and hence readily show their displeasure.
322.
THE RELATIVES OF A SUICIDE.--The relatives of a suicide take it in ill part that he did not remain alive out of consideration for their reputation.
323.
INGRATITUDE FORESEEN.--He who makes a large gift gets no gratitude; for the recipient is already overburdened by the acceptance of the gift.
324.
IN DULL SOCIETY.--Nobody thanks a witty man for politeness when he puts himself on a par with a society in which it would not be polite to show one's wit.
325.
THE PRESENCE OF WITNESSES.--We are doubly willing to jump into the water after some one who has fallen in, if there are people present who have not the courage to do so.
326.
BEING SILENT.--For both parties in a controversy, the most disagreeable way of retaliating is to be vexed and silent; for the aggressor usually regards the silence as a sign of contempt.
327.
FRIENDS' SECRETS.--Few people will not expose the private affairs of their friends when at a loss for a subject of conversation.
328.
HUMANITY.--The humanity of intellectual celebrities consists in courteously submitting to unfairness in intercourse with those who are I not celebrated.
329.
THE EMBARRASSED.--People who do not feel sure of themselves in society seize every opportunity of publicly showing their superiority to close friends, for instance by teasing them.
330.
THANKS.--A refined nature is vexed by knowing that some one owes it thanks, a coarse nature by knowing that it owes thanks to some one.
331.
A SIGN OF ESTRANGEMENT.--The surest sign of the estrangement of the opinions of two persons is when they both say something ironical to each other and neither of them feels the irony.
332.
PRESUMPTION IN CONNECTION WITH MERIT.--Presumption in connection with merit offends us even more than presumption in persons devoid of merit, for merit in itself offends us.
333.
DANGER IN THE VOICE.--In conversation we are sometimes confused by the tone of our own voice, and misled to make assertions that do not at all correspond to our opinions.
334.
IN CONVERSATION.--Whether in conversation with others we mostly agree or mostly disagree with them is a matter of habit; there is sense in both cases.
335.
FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR.--We are afraid of the animosity of our neighbour, because we are apprehensive that he may thereby discover our secrets.
336.
DISTINGUISHING BY BLAMING.--Highly respected persons distribute even their blame in such fashion that they try to distinguish us therewith.
It is intended to remind us of their serious interest in us. We misunderstand them entirely when we take their blame literally and protest against it; we thereby offend them and estrange ourselves from them.
337.
INDIGNATION AT THE GOODWILL OF OTHERS.--We are mistaken as to the extent to which we think we are hated or feared; because,' though we ourselves know very well the extent of our divergence from a person, tendency, or party, those others know us only superficially, and can, therefore, only hate us superficially. We often meet with goodwill which is inexplicable to us; but when we comprehend it, it shocks us, because it shows that we are not considered with sufficient Seriousness or importance.
338.
THWARTING VANITIES.--When two persons meet whose vanity is equally great, they have afterwards a bad impression of each other because each has been so occupied with the impression he wished to produce on the other that the other has made no impression upon him; at last it becomes clear to them both that their efforts have been in vain, and each puts the blame on the other.
339.
IMPROPER BEHAVIOUR AS A GOOD SIGN.--A superior mind takes pleasure in the tactlessness, pretentiousness, and even hostility of ambitious youths; it is the vicious habit of fiery horses which have not yet carried a rider, but, in a short time, will be so proud to carry one.
340.
WHEN IT IS ADVISABLE TO SUFFER WRONG.--It is well to put up with accusations without refutation, even when they injure us, when the accuser would see a still greater fault on our part if we contradicted and perhaps even refuted him. In this way, certainly, a person may always be wronged and always have right on his side, and may eventually, with the best conscience in the world, become the most intolerable tyrant and tormentor; and what happens in the individual may also take place in whole classes of society.
341.
Too LITTLE HONOURED.--Very conceited persons, who have received less consideration than they expected, attempt for a long time to deceive themselves and others with regard to it, and become subtle psychologists in order to make out that they have been amply honoured.
Should they not attain their aim, should the veil of deception be torn, they give way to all the greater fury.
342.
PRIMITIVE CONDITIONS RE--ECHOING IN SPEECH.--By the manner in which people make assertions in their intercourse we often recognise an echo of the times when they were more conversant with weapons than anything else; sometimes they handle their assertions like sharp-shooters using their arms, sometimes we think we hear the whizz and clash of swords, and with some men an assertion crashes down like a stout cudgel. Women, on the contrary, speak like beings who for thousands of years have sat at the loom, plied the needle, or played the child with children.
343.
THE NARRATOR.--He who gives an account of something readily betrays whether it is because the fact interests him, or because he wishes to excite interest by the narration. In the latter case he will exaggerate, employ superlatives, and such like. He then does not usually tell his story so well, because he does not think so much about his subject as about himself.
344.
THE RECITER.--He who recites dramatic works makes discoveries about his own character; he finds his voice more natural in certain moods and scenes than in others, say in the pathetic or in the scurrilous, while in ordinary life, perhaps, he has not had the opportunity to exhibit pathos or scurrility.
345.
A COMEDY SCENE IN REAL LIFE.--Some one conceives an ingenious idea on a theme in order to express it in society. Now in a comedy we should hear and see how he sets all sail for that point, and tries to land the company at the place where he can make his remark, how he continuously pushes the conversation towards the one goal, sometimes losing the way, finding it again, and finally arriving at the moment: he is almost breathless--and then one of the company takes the remark itself out of his mouth! What will he do? Oppose his own opinion?
346.
UNINTENTIONALLY DISCOURTEOUS.--When a person treats another with unintentional discourtesy,--for instance, not greeting him because not recognising him,--he is vexed by it, although he cannot reproach his own sentiments; he is hurt by the bad opinion which he has produced in the other person, or fears the consequences of his bad humour, or is pained by the thought of having injured him,--vanity, fear, or pity may therefore be aroused; perhaps all three together.
347.
A MASTERPIECE OF TREACHERY.--To express a tantalising distrust of a fellow-conspirator, lest he should betray one, and this at the very moment when one is practising treachery one's self, is a masterpiece of wickedness; because it absorbs the other's attention and compels him for a time to act very unsuspiciously and openly, so that the real traitor has thus acquired a free hand.
348.
To INJURE AND TO BE INJURED.--It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg for forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character. The person injured, however, if he does not wish to be considered inhuman, _must_ forgive; his enjoyment of the other's humiliation is insignificant on account of this constraint.
349.
IN A DISPUTE.--When we contradict another's opinion and at the same time develop our own, the constant consideration of the other opinion usually disturbs the natural attitude of our own which appears more intentional, more distinct, and perhaps somewhat exaggerated.
350.
AN ARTIFICE.--He who wants to get another to do something difficult must on no account treat the matter as a problem, but must set forth his plan plainly as the only one possible; and when the adversary's eye betrays objection and opposition he must understand how to break off quickly, and allow him no time to put in a word.
351.
PRICKS OF CONSCIENCE AFTER SOCIAL GATHERINGS.--Why does our conscience prick us after ordinary social gatherings? Because we have treated serious things lightly, because in talking of persons we have not spoken quite justly or have been silent when we should have spoken, because, sometimes, we have not jumped up and run away,--in short, because we have behaved in society as if we belonged to it.
352.
WE ARE MISJUDGED.--He who always listens to hear how he is judged is always vexed. For we are misjudged even by those who are nearest to us ("who know us best"). Even good friends sometimes vent their ill-humour in a spiteful word; and would they be our friends if they knew us rightly? The judgments of the indifferent wound us deeply, because they sound so impartial, so objective almost. But when we see that some one hostile to us knows us in a concealed point as well as we know ourselves, how great is then our vexation!
353.
THE TYRANNY OF THE PORTRAIT.--Artists and statesmen, who out of particular features quickly construct the whole picture of a man or an event, are mostly unjust in demanding that the event or person should afterwards be actually as they have painted it; they demand straightway that a man should be just as gifted, cunning, and unjust as he is in their representation of him.
354.
RELATIVES AS THE BEST FRIENDS.--The Greeks, who knew so well what a friend was, they alone of all peoples have a profound and largely philosophical discussion of friendship; so that it is by them firstly (and as yet lastly) that the problem of the friend has been recognised as worthy of solution,--these same Greeks have designated _relatives_ by an expression which is the superlative of the word "friend." This is inexplicable to me.
355.
MISUNDERSTOOD HONESTY.--When any one quotes himself in conversation ("I then said," "I am accustomed to say"), it gives the impression of presumption; whereas it often proceeds from quite an opposite source; or at least from honesty, which does not wish to deck and adorn the present moment with wit which belongs to an earlier moment.
356.
THE PARASITE.--It denotes entire absence of a noble disposition when a person prefers to live in dependence at the expense of others, usually with a secret bitterness against them, in order only that he may not be obliged to work. Such a disposition is far more frequent in women than in men, also far more pardonable (for historical reasons).
357.
ON THE ALTAR OF RECONCILIATION.--There are circumstances under which one can only gain a point from a person by wounding him and becoming hostile; the feeling of having a foe torments him so much that he gladly seizes the first indication of a milder disposition to effect a reconciliation, and offers on the altar of this reconciliation what was formerly of such importance to him that he would not give it up at any price.
358.
PRESUMPTION IN DEMANDING PITY.--There are people who, when they have been in a rage and have insulted others, demand, firstly, that it shall all be taken in good part; and, secondly, that they shall be pitied because they are subject to such violent paroxysms. So far does human presumption extend.
359.
BAIT.--"Every man has his price"--that is not true. But perhaps every one can be found a bait of one kind or other at which he will snap. Thus, in order to gain some supporters for a cause, it is only necessary to give it the glamour of being philanthropic, noble, charitable, and self-denying--and to what cause could this glamour not be given! It is the sweetmeat and dainty of _their_ soul; others have different ones.
360.
THE ATTITUDE IN PRAISING.--When good friends praise a gifted person he often appears to be delighted with them out of politeness and goodwill, but in reality he feels indifferent. His real nature is quite unmoved towards them, and will not budge a step on that account out of the sun or shade in which it lies; but people wish to please by praise, and it would grieve them if one did not rejoice when they praise a person.
361.
THE EXPERIENCE OF SOCRATES.--If one has become a master in one thing, one has generally remained, precisely thereby, a complete dunce in most other things; but one forms the very reverse opinion, as was already experienced by Socrates. This is the annoyance which makes association with masters disagreeable.
362.
A MEANS OF DEFENCE.--In warring against stupidity, the most just and gentle of men at last become brutal. They are thereby, perhaps, taking the proper course for defence; for the most appropriate argument for a stupid brain is the clenched fist. But because, as has been said,