It may be that mankind may perish eventually from this passion for knowledge!—but even that does not daunt us. Did Christianity ever shrink from a similar thought? Are not love and death brother and sister? Yes, we detest barbarism,—we all prefer that humanity should perish rather than that knowledge should enter into a stage of retrogression. And, finally, if mankind does not perish through some passion it will perish through some weakness: which would we prefer? This is the main question. Do we wish its end to be in fire and light, or in the sands?
430.
LIKEWISE HEROIC.—To do things of the worst possible odour, things of which we scarcely dare to speak, but which are nevertheless useful and necessary, is also heroic. The Greeks were not ashamed of numbering even the cleansing of a stable among the great tasks of Hercules.
431.
THE OPINIONS OF OPPONENTS.—In order to measure the natural subtlety or weakness of even the cleverest heads, we must consider the manner in which they take up and reproduce the opinions of their adversaries, for the natural measure of any intellect is thereby revealed. The perfect sage involuntarily idealises his opponent and frees his inconsistencies from all defects and accidentalities: he only takes up arms against him when he has thus turned his opponent into a god with shining weapons.
432.
INVESTIGATOR AND ATTEMPTER.—There is no exclusive method of knowing in science. We must deal with things tentatively, treating them by turns harshly or justly, passionately or coldly. One investigator deals with things like a policeman, another like a confessor, and yet a third like an inquisitive traveller. We force something from them now by sympathy and now by violence: the one is urged onward and led to see clearly by the veneration which the secrets of the things inspire in him, and the other again by the indiscretion and malice met with in the explanation of these secrets. We investigators, like all conquerors, explorers, navigators, and adventurers, are men of a daring morality, and we must put up with our liability to be in the main looked upon as evil.
433.
SEEING WITH NEW EYES.—Presuming that by the term “beauty in art” is always implied the imitation of something that is happy—and this I consider to be true—according as an age or a people or a great autocratic individuality represents happiness: what then is disclosed by the so–called realism of our modern artists in regard to the happiness of our epoch? It is undoubtedly its type of beauty which we now understand most easily and enjoy best of any. As a consequence, we are induced to believe that this happiness which is now peculiar to us is based on realism, on the sharpest possible senses, and on the true conception of the actual—that is to say, not upon reality, but upon what we know of reality. The results of science have already gained so much in depth and extent that the artists of our century have involuntarily become the glorifiers of scientific “blessings” per se.
434.
INTERCESSION.—Unpretentious regions are subjects for great landscape painters; remarkable and rare regions for inferior painters: for the great things of nature and humanity must intercede in favour of their little, mediocre, and vain admirers—whereas the great man intercedes in favour of unassuming things.
435.
NOT TO PERISH UNNOTICED.—It is not only once but continuously that our excellence and greatness are constantly crumbling away; the weeds that grow among everything and cling to everything ruin all that is great in us—the wretchedness of our surroundings, which we always try to overlook and which is before our eyes at every hour of the day, the innumerable little roots of mean and petty feelings which we allow to grow up all about us, in our office, among our companions, or our daily labours. If we permit these small weeds to escape our notice we shall perish through them unnoticed!—And, if you must perish, then do so immediately and suddenly; for in that case you will perhaps leave proud ruins behind you! and not, as is now to be feared, merely molehills, covered with grass and weeds—these petty and miserable conquerors, as humble as ever, and too wretched even to triumph.
436.
CASUISTIC.—We are confronted with a very bitter and painful dilemma, for the solution of which not every one’s bravery and character are equaclass="underline" when, as passengers on board a steamer, we discover that the captain and the helmsman are making dangerous mistakes, and that we are their superiors in nautical science—and then we ask ourselves: “What would happen if we organised a mutiny against them, and made them both prisoners? Is it not our duty to do so in view of our superiority? and would not they in their turn be justified in putting us in irons for encouraging disobedience?”
This is a simile for higher and worse situations; and the final question to be decided is, What guarantees our superiority and our faith in ourselves in such a case? Success? but in order to do that we must do the very thing in which all the danger lies—not only dangerous for ourselves, but also for the ship.
437.
PRIVILEGES.—The man who really owns himself, that is to say, he who has finally conquered himself, regards it as his own right to punish, to pardon, or to pity himself: he need not concede this privilege to any one, though he may freely bestow it upon some one else—a friend, for example—but he knows that in doing this he is conferring a right, and that rights can only be conferred by one who is in full possession of power.
438.
MAN AND THINGS.—Why does the man not see the things? He himself is in the way: he conceals the things.
439.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HAPPINESS.—There are two things common to all sensations of happiness: a profusion of feelings, accompanied by animal spirits, so that, like the fishes, we feel ourselves to be in our element and play about in it. Good Christians will understand what Christian exuberance means.
440.
NEVER RENOUNCE.—Renouncing the world without knowing it, like a nun, results in a fruitless and perhaps melancholy solitude. This has nothing in common with the solitude of the vita contemplativa of the thinker: when he chooses this form of solitude he wishes to renounce nothing; but he would on the contrary regard it as a renunciation, a melancholy destruction of his own self, if he were obliged to continue in the vita practica. He forgoes this latter because he knows it, because he knows himself. So he jumps into his water, and thus gains his cheerfulness.
441.
WHY THE NEAREST THINGS BECOME EVER MORE DISTANT FOR US.—The more we give up our minds to all that has been and will be, the paler will become that which actually is. When we live with the dead and participate in their death, what are our “neighbours” to us? We grow lonelier simply because the entire flood of humanity is surging round about us. The fire that burns within us, and glows for all that is human, is continually increasing—and hence we look upon everything that surrounds us as if it had become more indifferent, more shadowy,—but our cold glance is offensive.
442.
THE RULE.—“The rule always appears to me to be more interesting than the exception”—whoever thinks thus has made considerable progress in knowledge, and is one of the initiated.