516.
NOT TO IMBUE OUR NEIGHBOURS WITH OUR OWN DEMON.—Let us in our age continue to hold the belief that benevolence and beneficence are the characteristics of a good man; but let us not fail to add “provided that in the first place he exhibits his benevolence and beneficence towards himself.” For if he acts otherwise—that is to say, if he shuns, hates, or injures himself—he is certainly not a good man. He then merely saves himself through others: and let these others take care that they do not come to grief through him, however well disposed he may appear to be to them!—but to shun and hate one’s own ego, and to live in and for others, this has up to the present, with as much thoughtlessness as conviction, been looked upon as “unselfish,” and consequently as “good.”
517.
TEMPTING INTO LOVE.—We ought to fear a man who hates himself; for we are liable to become the victims of his anger and revenge. Let us therefore try to tempt him into self–love.
518.
RESIGNATION.—What is resignation? It is the most comfortable position of a patient, who, after having suffered a long time from tormenting pains in order to find it, at last became tired—and then found it.
519.
DECEPTION.—When you wish to act you must close the door upon doubt, said a man of action.—And are you not afraid of being deceived in doing so? replied the man of a contemplative mind.
520.
ETERNAL OBSEQUIES.—Both within and beyond the confines of history we might imagine that we were listening to a continual funeral oration: we have buried, and are still burying, all that we have loved best, our thoughts, and our hopes, receiving in exchange pride, gloria mundi—that is, the pomp of the graveside speech. It is thus that everything is made good! Even at the present time the funeral orator remains the greatest public benefactor.
521.
EXCEPTIONAL VANITY.—Yonder man possesses one great quality which serves as a consolation for him: his look passes with contempt over the remainder of his being, and almost his entire character is included in this. But he recovers from himself when, as it were, he approaches his sanctuary; already the road leading to it appears to him to be an ascent on broad soft steps—and yet, ye cruel ones, ye call him vain on this account!
522.
WISDOM WITHOUT EARS.—To hear every day what is said about us, or even to endeavour to discover what people think of us, will in the end kill even the strongest man. Our neighbours permit us to live only that they may exercise a daily claim upon us! They certainly would not tolerate us if we wished to claim rights over them, and still less if we wished to be right! In short, let us offer up a sacrifice to the general peace, let us not listen when they speak of us, when they praise us, blame us, wish for us, or hope for us—nay, let us not even think of it.
523.
A QUESTION OF PENETRATION.—When we are confronted with any manifestation which some one has permitted us to see, we may ask: what is it meant to conceal? What is it meant to draw our attention from? What prejudices does it seek to raise? and again, how far does the subtlety of the dissimulation go? and in what respect is the man mistaken?
524.
THE JEALOUSY OF THE LONELY ONES.—This is the difference between sociable and solitary natures, provided that both possess an intellect: the former are satisfied, or nearly satisfied, with almost anything whatever; from the moment that their minds have discovered a communicable and happy version of it they will be reconciled even with the devil himself! But the lonely souls have their silent rapture, and their speechless agony about a thing: they hate the ingenious and brilliant display of their inmost problems as much as they dislike to see the women they love too loudly dressed—they watch her mournfully in such a case, as if they were just beginning to suspect that she was desirous of pleasing others. This is the jealousy which all lonely thinkers and passionate dreamers exhibit with regard to the esprit.
525.
THE EFFECT OF PRAISE.—Some people become modest when highly praised, others insolent.
526.
UNWILLING TO BE A SYMBOL.—I sympathise with princes: they are not at liberty to discard their high rank even for a short time, and thus they come to know people only from the very uncomfortable position of constant dissimulation—their continual compulsion to represent something actually ends by making solemn ciphers of them.—Such is the fate of all those who deem it their duty to be symbols.
527.
THE HIDDEN MEN.—Have you never come across those people who check and restrain even their enraptured hearts, and who would rather become mute than lose the modesty of moderation? and have you never met those embarrassing, and yet so often good–natured people who do not wish to be recognised, and who time and again efface the tracks they have made in the sand? and who even deceive others as well as themselves in order to remain obscure and hidden?
528.
UNUSUAL FORBEARANCE.—It is often no small indication of kindness to be unwilling to criticise some one, and even to refuse to think of him.
529.
HOW MEN AND NATIONS GAIN LUSTRE.—How many really individual actions are left undone merely because before performing them we perceive or suspect that they will be misunderstood!—those actions, for example, which have some intrinsic value, both in good and evil. The more highly an age or a nation values its individuals, therefore, and the more right and ascendancy we accord them, the more will actions of this kind venture to make themselves known,—and thus in the long run a lustre of honesty, of genuineness in good and evil, will spread over entire ages and nations, so that they—the Greeks, for example—like certain stars, will continue to shed light for thousands of years after their sinking.
530.
DIGRESSIONS OF THE THINKER.—The course of thought in certain men is strict and inflexibly bold. At times it is even cruel towards such men, although considered individually they may be gentle and pliable. With well–meaning hesitation they will turn the matter ten times over in their heads, but will at length continue their strict course. They are like streams that wind their way past solitary hermitages: there are places in their course where the stream plays hide and seek with itself, and indulges in short idylls with islets, trees, grottos, and cascades—and then it rushes ahead once more, passes by the rocks, and forces its way through the hardest stones.
531.
DIFFERENT FEELINGS TOWARDS ART.—From the time when we begin to live as a hermit, consuming and consumed, our only company being deep and prolific thoughts, we expect from art either nothing more, or else something quite different from what we formerly expected—in a word, we change our taste. For in former times we wished to penetrate for a moment by means of art into the element in which we are now living permanently: at that time we dreamt ourselves into the rapture of a possession which we now actually possess. Indeed, flinging away from us for the time being what we now have, and imagining ourselves to be poor, or to be a child, a beggar, or a fool, may now at times fill us with delight.
532.
“LOVE EQUALISES.”—Love wishes to spare the other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of strangeness: as a consequence it is permeated with disguise and simulation; it keeps on deceiving continuously, and feigns an equality which in reality does not exist. And all this is done so instinctively that women who love deny this simulation and constant tender trickery, and have even the audacity to assert that love equalises (in other words that it performs a miracle)!
This phenomenon is a simple matter if one of the two permits himself or herself to be loved, and does not deem it necessary to feign, but leaves this to the other. No drama, however, could offer a more intricate and confused instance than when both persons are passionately in love with one another; for in this case both are anxious to surrender and to endeavour to conform to the other, and finally they are both at a loss to know what to imitate and what to feign. The beautiful madness of this spectacle is too good for this world, and too subtle for human eyes.