The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders

LIFE AND CHARACTER

I

There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.

How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth.

But what is your duty? The claims of the day.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the veiy purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity, — to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.

Be genuine and strenuous; earn for yourself, and look for, grace from those in high places; from the powerful, favour; from the active and the good, advancement; from the many, affection; from the individual, love.

Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are. If I know what your business is, I know what can be made of you.

Every man must think after his own fashion; for on his own path he finds a truth, or a kind of truth, which helps him through life. But he must not give himself the rein; he must control himself; mere naked instinct does not become him.

Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy.

In the works of mankind, as in those of nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly worth attention.

Men get out of countenance with themselves and others because they treat the means as the end, and so, from sheer doing, do nothing, or, perhaps, just what they would have avoided.

Our plans and designs should be so perfect in truth and beauty, that in touching them the world could only mar. We should thus have the advantage of setting right what is wrong, and restoring what is destroyed.

It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half-, and quarter-mistakes; to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.

It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

General ideas and great conceit are always in a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune.

You cannot play the flute by blowing alone: you must use your fingers.

In Botany there is a species of plants called Incomplete; and just in the same way it can be said that there are men who are incomplete and imperfect. They are those whose desires and struggles are out of proportion to their actions and achievements.

The most insignificant man can be complete if he works within the limits of his capacities, innate or acquired; but even fine talents can be obscured, neutralised, and destroyed by lack of this indispensable requirement of symmetry. This is a mischief which will often occur in modern times; for who will be able to come up to the claims of an age so full and intense as this, and one too that moves so rapidly?

It is only men of practical ability, knowing their powers and using them with moderation and prudence, who will be successful in worldly affairs.

It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth.

From time to time I meet with a youth in whom I can wish for no alteration or improvement, only I am sorry to see how often his nature makes him quite ready to swim with the stream of the time; and it is on this that I would always insist, that man in his fragile boat has the rudder placed in his hand, just that he may not be at the mercy of the waves, but follow the direction of his own insight.

But how is a young man to come of himself to see blame in things which every one is busy with, which every one approves and promotes? Why should he not follow his natural bent and go in the same direction as they?

I must hold it for the greatest calamity of our time, which lets nothing come to maturity, that one moment is consumed by the next, and the day spent in the day; so that a man is always living from hand to mouth, without having anything to show for it. Have we not already newspapers for every hour of the day! A good head could assuredly intercalate one or other of them. They publish abroad everything that every one does, or is busy with or meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby dragged into publicity. No one can rejoice or be sorry, but as a pastime for others; and so it goes on from house to house, from city to city, from kingdom to kingdom, and at last from one hemisphere to the other, — all in post haste.

As little as you can stifle a steam-engine, so little can you do this in the moral sphere either. The activity of commerce, the rush and rustle of paper-money, the swelling-up of debts to pay debts — all these are the monstrous elements to which in these days a young man is exposed. Well is it for him if he is gifted by nature with a sober, quiet temperament: neither to make claims on the world out of all proportion to his position, nor yet let the world determine it.

But on all sides he is threatened by the spirit of the day, and nothing is more needful than to make him see early enough the direction in which his will has to steer.

The significance of the most harmless words and actions grows with the years, and if I see any one about me for any length of time, I always try to show him the difference there is between sincerity, confidence, and indiscretion; nay, that in truth there is no difference at all, but a gentle transition from what is most innocent to what is most hurtful; a transition which must be perceived or rather felt.

Herein we must exercise our tact; otherwise in the very way in which we have won the favour of mankind, we run the risk of trifling it away again unawares. This is a lesson which a man learns quite well for himself in the course of life, but only after having paid a dear price for it; nor can he, unhappily, spare his posterity a like expenditure.

Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.

Character calls forth character.

If I am to listen to another man's opinion, it must be expressed positively. Of things problematical I have enough in myself.

Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.

I keep silence about many things, for I do not want to put people out of countenance; and I am well content if they are pleased with things that annoy me.

Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

A man is really alive only when he delights in the goodwill of others.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul.

Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

When a man is old he must do more than when he was young.

To fulfil a duty is still always to feel it as a debt, for it is never quite satisfying to oneself.

Defects are perceived only by one who has no love; therefore, to see them, a man must become uncharitable, but not more so than is necessary for the purpose.

The greatest piece of good fortune is that which corrects our deficiencies and redeems our mistakes.

Reading ought to mean understanding; writing ought to mean knowing something; believing ought to mean comprehending; when you desire a thing, you will have to take it; when you demand it, you will not get it; and when you are experienced, you ought to be useful to others.

The stream is friendly to the miller whom it serves; it likes to pour over the mill wheels; what is the good of it stealing through the valley in apathy?

Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth. The growing child is wise in this sense.

Theory is in itself of no use, except in so far as it makes us believe in the connection of phenomena.

When a man asks too much and delights in complication, he is exposed to perplexity.

Thinking by means of analogies is not to be condemned. Analogy has this advantage, that it comes to no conclusion, and does not, in truth, aim at finality at all. Induction, on the contrary, is fatal, for it sets up an object and keeps it in view, and, working on towards it, drags false and true with it in its train.

The absent works upon us by tradition. The usual form of it may be called historical; a higher form, akin to the imaginative faculty, is the mythical. If some third form of it is to be sought behind this last, and it has any meaning, it is transformed into the mystical. It also easily becomes sentimental, so that we appropriate to our use only what suits us.

In contemplation as in action, we must distinguish between what may be attained and what is unattainable. Without this, little can be achieved, either in life or in knowledge.

'Le sense commun est le gSnie de VhumanitS?

Common-sense, which is here put forward as the genius of humanity, must be examined first of all in the way it shows itself. If we inquire the purpose to which humanity puts it, we find as follows: Humanity is conditioned by needs. If they are not satisfied, men become impatient; and if they are, it seems not to affect them. The normal man moves between these two states, and he applies his understanding — his so-called common-sense — to the satisfaction of his needs. When his needs are satisfied, his task is to fill up the waste spaces of indifference. Here, too, he is successful, if his needs are confined to what is nearest and most necessary. But if they rise and pass beyond the sphere of ordinary wants, common-sense is no longer sufficient; it is a genius no more, and humanity enters on the region of error.

There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelligence or by accident.

Every great idea is a tyrant when, it first appears; hence the advantages which it produces change all too quickly into disadvantages. It is possible, then, to defend and praise any institution that exists, if its beginnings are brought to remembrance, and it is shown that everything which was true of it at the beginning is true of it still.

Lessing, who chafed under the sense of various limitations, makes one of his characters say: No one must do anything. A clever pious man said: If a man wills something, he must do it. A third, who was, it is true, an educated man, added: Will follows upon insight. The whole circle of knowledge, will, and necessity was thus believed to have been completed. But, as a rule, a man's knowledge, of whatever kind it may be, determines what he shall do and what he shall leave undone, and so it is that there is no more terrible sight than ignorance in action.

There are two powers that make for peace: what is right, and what is fitting.

Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual, law to society.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

II

If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd length, we willingly put up with it.

Work makes companionship.

People whip curds to see if they cannot make cream of them.

It is much easier to put yourself in the position of a mind taken up with the most absolute error, than of one which mirrors to itself half-truths.

Wisdom lies only in truth.

When I err, every one can see it; but not when I lie.

Is not the world full enough of riddles already, without our making riddles too out of the simplest phenomena?

'The finest hair throws a shadow.' Erasmus.

What I have tried to do in my life through false tendencies, I have at last learned to understand.

Generosity wins favour for every one, especially when it is accompanied by modesty.

Before the storm breaks, the dust rises violently for the last time — the dust that is soon to be laid forever.

Men do not come to know one another easily, even with the best will and the best purpose. And then ill-will comes in and distorts everything.

We should know one another better if one man were not so anxious to put himself on an equality with another.

Eminent men are therefore in a worse plight than others; for, as we cannot compare ourselves with them, we are on the watch for them.

In the world the point is, not to know men, but at any given moment to be cleverer than the man who stands before you. You can prove this at every fair and from every charlatan.

Not everywhere where there is water, are there frogs; but where you have frogs, there you will find water. .

Error is quite right as long as we are young, but we must not carry it on with us into our old age.

Whims and eccentricities that grow stale are all useless, rank nonsense.

In the formation of species Nature gets, as it were, into a cul-de-sac; she cannot make her way through, and is disinclined to turn back. Hence the stubbornness of national character.

Every one has something in his nature which, if he were to express it openly, would of necessity give offence.

If a man thinks about his physical or moral condition, he generally finds that he is ill.

Nature asks that a man should sometimes be stupefied without going to sleep; hence the pleasure in the smoking of tobacco, the drinking of brandy, the use of opiates.

The man who is up and doing should see to it that what he does is right. Whether or not right is done, is a matter which should not trouble him.

Many a man knocks about on the wall with his hammer, and believes that he hits the right nail on the head every time.

Painting and tattooing of the body is a return to animalism.

History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

Not every one who has a pregnant thought delivered to him becomes productive; it probably makes him think of something with which he is quite familiar.

Favour, as a symbol of sovereignty, is exercised by weak men.

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

Memory may vanish so long as at the moment judgment does not fail you.

No nation gains the power of judgment except it can pass judgment on itself. But to attain this great privilege takes a very long time.

Instead of contradicting my words people ought to act in my spirit.

Those who oppose intellectual truths do but stir up the fire, and the cinders fly about and burn what they had else not touched.

Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.

What a long time people were vainly disputing about the Antipodes!

Certain minds must be allowed their peculiarities.

Snow is false purity.

Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.

Those from whom we are always learning are rightly called our masters; but not every one who teaches us deserves this title.

It is with you as with the sea: the most varied names are given to what is in the end only salt water.

It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all.

There are problematical natures which are equal to no position in which they find themselves, and which no position satisfies. This it is that causes that hideous conflict which wastes life and deprives it of all pleasure.

If we do any real good, it is mostly clam, vi, et precario. f

Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines.

100

It is difficult to be just to the passing moment. We are bored by it if it is neither good iior bad; but the good moment lays a task upon us, and the bad moment a burden.

101

He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.

IO2

So obstinately contradictory is man that you cannot compel him to his advantage, yet he yields before everything that forces him to his hurt.

103

Forethought is simple, afterthought manifold.

104

A state of things in which every day brings some new trouble is not the right one.

105

When people suffer by failing to look before them, nothing is commoner than trying to look out for some possible remedy.

106

The Hindoos of the Desert make a solemn vow to eat no fish.

107

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

108

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

109

Truth belongs to the man, error to his age. This is why it has been said that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his soul made him emerge from the error with glory.

110

Every one has his peculiarities and cannot get rid of them; and yet many a one is destroyed by his peculiarities, and those too of the most innocent kind.

If a man does think too much of himself, he is more than he believes himself to be.

112

In art and knowledge, as also in deed and action, everything depends on a pure apprehension of the object and a treatment of it according to its nature.

113

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

114

I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity: are we not' here to make the transitory permanent? This we can do only if we know how to value both.

115

A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more.

116

It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries, — to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.

117

Faith is private capital, kept in one's own house. There are public savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

118

Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread of what is true, clear, and useful, but to bring into vogue what is false.

119

During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both great and small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the world the one may well be regarded as the warp, the other as the woof. It is the little men, after all, who give breadth to the web, and the great men firmness and solidity; perhaps, also, the addition of some sort of pattern. But the scissors of the Fates determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submitting itself.

120

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes that we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

121

'The wise have much in common with one another.' JEschylus.

122

The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that they fail to understand what another person says, when he does not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.

123

Because a man speaks, he thinks he is able to speak about language.

124

One need only grow old to become gentler in one's judgments. I see no fault committed which I could not have committed myself.

I2S

The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks.

126

Why should those who are happy expect one who is miserable to die before them in a graceful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman mob?

127

Some one asked Timon about the education of his children. ' Let them,' he said, ' be instructed in that which they will never understand.'

128

There are people whom I wish well, and would that I could wish better.

129

By force of habit we look at a clock that has run down as if it were still going, and we gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still loved.

130

Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns so soon to hatred.

131

There is something magical in rhythm; it even makes us believe that we possess the sublime.

132

Dilettantism treated seriously, and knowledge pursued mechanically, end by becoming pedantry.

i33

No one but the master can promote the cause of Art. Patrons help the master, — that is right and proper; but that does not always mean that Art is helped.

i34

The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognising a truth which has already been recognised by others.

i35

Scholars are generally malignant when they are refuting others; and if they think a man is making a mistake, they straightway look upon him as their mortal enemy.

i36

Beauty can never really understand itself.

III

137

It is much easier to recognise error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to every one.

138

We all live on the past, and through the past are destroyed.

i39

We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not been quite in vain.

140

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill-will and envy.

141

Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.

142

Confidences are strange things. If you listen only to one man, it is possible that he is deceived or mistaken; if you listen to many, they are in a like case; and, generally, you cannot get at the truth at all.

143

No one should desire to live in irregular circumstances; but if by chance a man falls into them, they test his character and show of how much determination he is capable.

144

An honourable man with limited ideas often sees through the rascality of the most cunning jobber.

145

If a man feels no love, he must learn how to flatter; otherwise he will not succeed.

146

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him.

147

The masses cannot dispense with men of ability, and such men are always a burden to them.

148

If a man spreads my failings abroad, he is my master, even though he were my servant.

149

Whether memoirs are written by masters of servants, or by servants of masters, the processes always meet.

150

If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.

151

I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial.

152

Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.

153

We are all so limited that we always think we are right; and so we may conceive of an extraordinary mind which not only errs but has a positive delight in error.

154

It is very rare to find pure and steady activity in the accomplishment of what is good and right. We usually see pedantry trying to keep back, and audacity trying to go on too fast.

155

Word and picture are correlatives which are continually in quest of each other, as is sufficiently evident in the case of metaphors and similes. So from all time what was said or sung inwardly to the ear had to be presented equally to the eye. And so in childish days we see word and picture in continual balance; in the book of the law and in the way of salvation, in the Bible and in the spelling-book. When something was spoken which could not be pictured, and something pictured which could not be spoken, all went well; but mistakes were often made, and a word was used instead of a picture; and thence arose those monsters of symbolical mysticism, which are doubly an evil.

156

For the man of the world a collection of anecdotes and maxims is of the greatest value, if he knows how to intersperse the one in his conversation at fitting moments, and remember the other when a case arises for their application.

iS7

When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.

158

The world is a bell with a crack in it; it rattles, but does not ring.

159

The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with good-will; for as they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master.

160

People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.

161

Clever people are the best encyclopaedia.

162

There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.

163

If I know my relation to myself and the outer world, I call it truth. Every man can have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is always the same.

164

No one is the master of any truly productive energy; and all men must let it work on by itself.

165

A man never understands how anthropomorphic he is.

166

A difference which offers nothing to the understanding is no difference at all.

167

A man cannot live for every one; least of all for those with whom he would not care to live.

168

If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.

169

Things that are mysterious are not yet miracles.

170

'Converts are not in my good books.'

171

A frivolous impulsive encouragement of problematical talents was a mistake of my early years; and I have never been able to abandon it altogether.

172

I should like to be honest with you, without our falling out; but it will not do. You act wrongly, and fall between two stools; you win no adherents and lose your friends. What is to be the end of it?

173

It is all one whether you are of high or of humble origin. You will always have to pay for your humanity.

174

When I hear people speak of liberal ideas, it is always a wonder to me that men are so readily put off with empty verbiage. An idea cannot be liberal; but it may be potent, vigorous, exclusive, in order to fulfil its mission of being productive. Still less can a concept be liberal; for a concept has quite another mission. Where, however, we must look for liberality, is in the sentiments; and the sentiments are the inner man as he lives and moves. A man's sentiments, however, are rarely liberal, because they proceed directly from him personally, and from his immediate relations and requirements. Further we will not write, and let us apply this test to what we hear every day.

175

If a clever man commits a folly, it is not a small one.

176

There is a poetry without figures of speech, which is a single figure of speech.

177

I went on troubling myself about general ideas until I learnt to understand the particular achievements of the best men.

178

It is only when a man knows little, that he knows anything at all. With knowledge grows doubt.

179

The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.

180

There are men who love their like and seek it; others love their opposite and follow after it.

181

If a man has always let himself think the world as bad as the adversary represents it to be, he must have become a miserable person.

182

Ill-favour and hatred limit the spectator to the surface, even when keen perception is added unto them; but when keen perception unites with good-will and love, it gets at the heart of man and the world; nay, it may hope to reach the highest goal of all.

183

Raw matter is seen by every one; the contents are found only by him who has his eyes about him; and the form is a secret to the majority.

184

We may learn to know the world as we please: it will always retain a bright and a dark side.

i8S

Error is continually repeating itself in action, and we must unweariedly repeat the truth in word.

186

As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.

187

Mankind is like the Red Sea: the staff has scarcely parted the waves asunder, before they flow together again.

188

Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.

189

Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.

190

We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son.

191

There is no virtue in subordinating oneself; but there is virtue in descending, and in recognising anything as above us, which is beneath us.

192

The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

193

All our pursuits and actions are a wearying process. Well is it for him who wearies not.

194

Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.

195

Love is a true renovator.

196

Mankind is not without a wish to serve; hence the chivalry of the French is a servitude.

197

In the theatre the pleasure of what we see and hear restrains our reflections.

198

There is no limit to the increase of experience, but theories cannot become clearer and more complete in just the same sense. The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of the human faculties. Hence there is no way of looking at the world, but it recurs, and the curious thing happens, that with increased experience a limited theory may again come into favour.

It is always the same world which stands open to observation, which is continually being contemplated or guessed at; and it is always the same men who live in the true or in the false; more at their ease in the latter than in< the former.

199

Truth is at variance with our natures, but not so error; and for a very simple reason. Truth requires us to recognise ourselves as limited, but error natters us with the belief that in one way or another we are subject to no bounds at all.

200

That some men think they can still do what they have been able to do, is natural enough; that others think they can do what they have never been able to do, is singular, but not rare.

201

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

202

That is true Symbolism, where the more particular represents the more general, not as a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous revelation of the Inscrutable.

203

Everything of an abstract or symbolic nature, as soon as it is challenged by realities, ends by consuming them and itself. So credit consumes both money and itself.

204

Mastery often passes for egoism.

205

With Protestants, as soon as good works cease and their merit is denied, sentimentality takes their place.

206

If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply it himself.

207

The use of mottoes is to indicate something we have not attained, but strive to attain. It is right to keep them always before our eyes.

208

'If a man cannot lift a stone himself, let him leave it, even though he has some one to help him.'

209

Despotism promotes general self-government, because from top to bottom it makes the individual responsible, and so produces the highest degree of activity.

210

A man must pay dear for his errors if he wishes to get rid of them, and even then he is lucky.

211

Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.

212

School itself is the only true preparation for it.

213

Error is related to truth as sleep to waking. I have observed that on awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigour.

214

Every one suffers who does not work for himself. A man works for others to have them share in his joy.

215

Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common-sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.

216

Characters often make a law of their failings. Men who know the world have said that when prudence is only fear in disguise, its scruples cannot be conquered. The weak often have revolutionary sentiments; they think they would be well off if they were not ruled, and fail to perceive that they can rule neither themselves nor others.

217

Common-sense is born pure in the healthy man, is self-developed, and is revealed by a resolute perception and recognition of what is necessary and useful. Practical men and women avail themselves of it with confidence. Where it is absent, both sexes find anything necessary when they desire it, and useful when it gives them pleasure.

218

All men, as they attain freedom, give play to their errors. The strong do too much, and the weak too little.

219

The conflict of the old, the existing, the continuing, with development, improvement, and reform, is always the same. Order of every kind turns at last to pedantry, and to get rid of the one, people destroy the other; and so it goes on for a while, until people perceive that order must be established anew. Classicism and Romanticis'm; close corporations and freedom of trade; the maintenance of large estates and the division of the land, — it is always the same conflict which ends by producing a new one. The best policy of those in power would be so to moderate this conflict as to let it right itself without the destruction of either element. But this has not been granted to men, and it seems not to be the will of God.

220

A great work limits us for the moment, because we feel it above our powers; and only in so far as we afterwards incorporate it with our culture, and make it part of our mind and heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.

221

It is no wonder that we all more or less delight in the mediocre, because it leaves us in peace: it gives us the comfortable feeling of intercourse with what is like ourselves.

222

There is no use in reproving vulgarity, for it never changes.

223

We cannot escape a contradiction in ourselves; we must try to resolve it. If the contradiction comes from others, it does not affect us: it is their affair.

224

There are many things in the world that are at once good and excellent, but they do not come into contact.

225

Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

226

When men have to do with women, they get spun off like a distaff.

227

It may well be that a man is at times horribly threshed by misfortunes, public and private: but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the rich sheaves, crushes only the straw; and the corn feels nothing of it and dances merrily on the floor, careless whether its way is to the mill or the furrow.

228

However probable it is that a desire may be fulfilled, there is always a doubt; and so when the desire is realised, it is always surprising.

229

Absurdities presented with good taste rouse disgust and admiration.

230

Of the best society it used to be said: their speech instructs the mind, and their silence the feelings.

231

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.

232

Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.

233

We treat the aged with consideration, as we treat children.

234

An old man loses one of the greatest of human privileges: he is no more judged by his peers.

235

In the matter of knowledge, it has happened to me as to one who rises early, and in the dark impatiently awaits the dawn, and then the sun; but is blinded when it appears.

236

Great primeval powers, evolved in time or in eternity, work on unceasingly: whether to weal or to woe, is a matter of chance.

IV

237

People often say to themselves in life that they should avoid a variety of occupation, and, more particularly, be the less willing to enter upon new work the older they grow. But it is easy to talk, easy to give advice to oneself and others. To grow old is itself to enter upon a new business; all the circumstances change, and a man must either cease acting altogether, or willingly and consciously take over the new rfile.

238

Of the Absolute in the theoretical sense, I do not venture to speak; but this I maintain: that if a man recognises it in its manifestation, and always keeps his gaze fixed upon it, he will experience very great reward.

239

To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.

240

Napoleon lived wholly in a great idea, but he was unable to take conscious hold of it. After utterly disavowing all ideals and denying them any reality, he zealously strove to realise them. His clear, incorruptible intellect could not, however, tolerate such a perpetual conflict within; and there is much value in the thoughts which he was compelled, as it were, to utter, and which are expressed very peculiarly and with much charm.

241

He considered the idea as a thing of the mind, that had, it is true, no reality, but still, on passing away, left a residuum — a caput mortuum — to which some reality could not be altogether refused. We may think this a very perverse and material notion; but when he entertained his friends with the neverending consequences of his life and actions, in full belief and confidence in them, he expressed himself quite differently. Then, indeed, he was ready to admit that life produces life; that a fruitful act has effects to all time. He took pleasure in confessing that he had given a great impulse, a new direction, to the course of the world's affairs.

242

It always remains a very remarkable fact that men whose whole personality is almost all idea, are so extremely shy of all phantasy. In this case was Hamann, who could not bear the mention of “things of another world.” He took occasion to express himself on this point in a certain paragraph, which he wrote in fourteen different ways; and still, apparently, he was never quite satisfied with it.

Two of these attempts have been- preserved to us; a third we have ourselves attempted, which we are induced to print here by the preceding observations.

243

Man is placed as a real being in the midst of a real world, and endowed with such organs that he can perceive and produce the real and also the possible.

All healthy men have the conviction of their own existence and of an existence around them. However, even the brain contains a hollow spot, that is to say, a place in which no object is mirrored; just as in the eye itself there is a little spot that does not see. If a man pays particular attention to this spot and is absorbed in it, he falls into a state of mental sickness, has presentiments of “ things of another world,” which are, in reality, no things at all; possessing neither form nor limit, but alarming him like dark, empty tracts of night, and pursuing him as something more than phantoms, if he does not tear himself free from them.

244

To the several perversities of the day a man should always oppose only the great masses of universal history.

245

No one can live much with children without finding that they always react to any outward influence upon them.

246

With any specially childish nature the reaction is even passionate, while its action is energetic.

247

That is why children's lives are a series of refined judgments, not to say prejudices; and to efface a rapid but partial perception in order to make way for a more general one, time is necessary. To bear this in mind is one of the teacher's greatest duties.

248

Friendship can only be bred in practice and be maintained by practice. Affection, nay, love itself, is no help at all to friendship. True, active, productive friendship consists in keeping equal pace in life: in my friend approving my aims, while I approve his, and in thus moving forwards together steadfastly, however much our way of thought and life may vary.

249

In the world people take a man at his own estimate; but he must estimate himself at something. Disagreeableness is more easily tolerated than insignificance.

250

You can force anything on society so long as it has no sequel.

2S1

We do not learn to know men if they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are.

252

That we have many criticisms to make on those who visit us, and that, as soon as they depart, we pass no very amiable judgment upon them, seems to me almost natural; for we have, so to speak, a right to measure them by our own standard. Even intelligent and fair-minded men hardly refrain from sharp censure on such occasions.

253

But if, on the contrary, we have been in their homes, and have seen them in their surroundings and habits and the circumstances which are necessary and inevitable for them; if we have seen the kind of influence they exert on those around them, or how they behave, it is only ignorance and ill-will that can find food for ridicule in what must appear to us in more than one sense worthy of respect.

254

What we call conduct and good manners obtains for us that which otherwise is to be obtained only by force, or not even by force.

2SS

Women's society is the element of good manners.

256

How can the character, the peculiar nature of a man, be compatible with good manners?

257

It is through his good manners that a man's peculiar nature should be made all the more conspicuous. Every one likes distinction, but it should not be disagreeable.

258

The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.

2S9

No one is more troublesome than an awkward civilian. As his business is not with anything brutal or coarse, he might be expected to show delicacy of feeling.

260

When we live with people who have a delicate sense of what is fitting, we get quite anxious about them if anything happens to disturb this sense.

261

No one would come into a room with spectacles on his nose, if he knew that women at once lose any inclination to look at or talk to him.

262

A familiar in the place of a respectful demeanour is always ridiculous.

263

There is no outward sign of politeness that will be found to lack some deep moral foundation. The right kind of education would be that which conveyed the sign and the foundation at the same time.

264

A man's manners are the mirror in which he shows his portrait.

265

There is a politeness of the heart, and it is allied to love. It produces the most agreeable politeness of outward demeanour.

266

Voluntary dependence is- the best state, and how should that be possible without love?

267

We are never further from our wishes than when we fancy we possess the object of them.

268

No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.

269

A man has only to declare himself free to feel at the same moment that he is limited. Should he venture to declare himself limited, he feels himself free.

270

Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.

271

It is a terrible thing for an eminent man to be gloried in by fools.

272

It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. That is only because a hero can be recognised only by a hero. The valet will probably know how to appreciate his like, — his fellow-valet.

273

There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.

274

The greatest men are linked to their age by some weak point.

275.

We generally take men to be more dangerous than they are.

276

Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.

277

To see a difficult thing lightly handled gives us the impression of the impossible.

278

Difficulties increase the nearer we come to

our aim.

279

Sowing is not so painful as reaping.

280

We are fond of looking to the future, because our secret wishes make us apt to turn in our favour the uncertainties which move about in it hither and thither.

281

It is not easy to be in any great assembly without thinking that the chance which brings so many people together will also make us meet our friends.

282

A man may live never so retired a life but he becomes a debtor or a creditor before he is aware of it.

283

If anyone meets us who owes us a debt of gratitude, it immediately crosses our mind. How often can we meet some one to whom we owe gratitude, without thinking of it!

284

To communicate oneself is Nature; to receive a communication as it is given is Culture.

285

No one would speak much in society if he were aware how often we misunderstand others.

286

It is only because we have not understood a thing that we cannot repeat it without alteration.

287

To make a long speech in the presence of others without flattering your audience, is to rouse dislike.

288

Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.

289

Contradiction and flattery make, both of them, bad conversation.

290

The pleasantest society is that in which there exists a genial deference amongst the members one towards another.

291

By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they laugh at.

292

The ridiculous springs from a moral contrast innocently presented to the senses.

293

The sensual man often laughs when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it is that moves him, he shows that he is pleased with himself.

294

An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

295

A man well on in years was reproved for still troubling himself about young women. ' It is the only means,' he replied,' ' of regaining one's youth; and that is something every one wishes to do.'

296

A man does 'not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for the sake of them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

297

Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist. We should not like old friends to give up certain peculiarities.

298

It is said of a man that he will soon die, when he acts in any way unlike himself.

299

What kind of faults in ourselves should we retain, nay, even cultivate? Those which rather flatter other people than offend them.

300

The passions are good or bad qualities, only intensified.

301

Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.

302

Great passions are hopeless diseases. That which could cure them is the first thing to make them really dangerous.

303

Passion is enhanced and tempered by avowal. In nothing, perhaps, is the middle course more desirable than in confidence and reticence towards those we love.

304

To sit in judgment on the departed is never likely to be equitable. We all suffer from life; who except God can call us to account? Let not their faults and sufferings, but what they have accomplished and done, occupy the survivors.

305

It is failings that show human nature, and merits that distinguish the individual; faults and misfortunes we all have in common; virtues belong to each one separately.

VI

306

The secret places in the way of life may not and cannot be revealed: there are rocks of offence on which every traveller must stumble. But the poet points to where they are.

307

It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of this world were foolishness with God.

308

The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it through its manifestations.

309

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

310

In the smithy the iron is softened by blowing up the fire, and taking the dross from the bar. As soon as it is purified, it is beaten and pressed, and becomes firm again by the addition of fresh water. The same thing happens to a man at the hands of his teacher.

311/p>

What belongs to a man, he cannot get rid of, even though he throws it away.

312

Of true religions there are only two: one of them recognises and worships the Holy that without form or shape dwells in and around us; and the other recognises and worships it in its fairest form. Everything that lies between these two is idolatry.

313

It is undeniable that in the Reformation the human mind tried to free itself; and the renaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity brought about the wish and longing for a freer, more seemly, and elegant life. The movement was favoured in no small degree by the fact that men's hearts aimed at returning to a certain simple state of nature, while the imagination sought to concentrate itself.

314

The Saints were all at once driven from heaven; and senses, thought, and heart were turned from a divine mother with a tender child, to the grown man doing good and suffering evil, who was later transfigured into a being half-divine in its nature, and then recognised and honoured as God himself. He stood against a background where the Creator had opened out the universe; a spiritual influence went out from him; his sufferings were adopted as an example, and his transfiguration was • the pledge of everlastingness.

315

As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the heart.

316

From a strict point of view we must have a reformation of ourselves every day, and protest against others, even though it be in no religious sense.

317

It should be our earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and reason. It is an endeavour which we cannot evade, and which is daily to be renewed.

Let every man examine himself, and he will find this a much harder task than he might suppose; for, unhappily, a man usually takes words as mere make-shifts; his knowledge and his thought are in most cases better than his method of expression.

False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise in ourselves and others, or find their way into us from without. Let us persist in the effort to remove them as far as we can, by plain and honest purpose.

318

As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.

319

Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

320

A man is not deceived by others, he deceives himself.

321

Laws are all made by old people and by men. Youths and women want the exceptions, old people the rules.

322

It is not the intelligent man who rules, but intelligence; not the wise man, but wisdom.

323

To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.

324

It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will, we must also do.

325

Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian antiquities are never more than curiosities; it is well to make acquaintance with them; but in point of moral and aesthetic culture they can help us little.

326

The German runs no greater danger than to advance with and by the example of his neighbours. There is perhaps no nation that is fitter for the process of self-development; so that it has proved of the greatest advantage to Germany to have obtained the notice of the world so late.

327

Even men of insight do not see that they try to explain things which lie at the foundation of our experience, and in which we must simply acquiesce.

Yet still the attempt may have its advantage, as otherwise we should break off our researches too soon.

328

From this time forward, if a man does not apply himself to some art or handiwork, he will be in a bad way. In the rapid changes of the world, knowledge is no longer a furtherance; by the time a man has taken note of everything, he has lost himself.

329

Besides, in these days the world forces universal culture upon us, and so we need not trouble ourselves further about it; we must appropriate some particular culture.

330

The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.

33i

Our interest in public events is mostly the merest philistinism.

332

Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.

333

Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! This is so strange an utterance, that it could only have come from one who fancied himself autochthonous. The man who looks upon it as an honour to be descended from wise ancestors, will allow them at least as much common-sense as he allows himself.

334

Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a man's intentions; where these exist, thoughts appear; and as the intentions are, so are the thoughts.

335

If a man lives long in a high position, he does not, it is true, experience all that a man can experience; but he experiences things like them, and perhaps some things that have • no parallel elsewhere.

VII

336

The first and last thing that is required of genius is love of truth.

337

To be and remain true to oneself and others, is to possess the noblest attribute of the greatest talents.

338

Great talents are the best means of conciliation.

339

The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous: towards general truths before experience, and towards particular truths after it.

340

An active scepticism is one which constantly aims at overcoming itself, and arriving by means of regulated experience at a kind of conditioned certainty.

341

The general nature of the sceptical mind is its tendency to inquire whether any particular predicate really attaches to any particular object; and the purpose of the inquiry is safely to apply in practice what has thus been discovered and proved.

342

The mind endowed with active powers and keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth.

343

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

344

Not only what is born with him, but also what he acquires, makes the man.

345

A man is well equipped for all the real necessities of life if he trusts his senses, and so cultivates them that they remain worthy of being trusted.

346

The senses do not deceive; it is the judgment that deceives.

347

The lower animal is taught by its organs; man teaches his organs, and dominates them.

348

All direct invitation to live up to ideals is of doubtful value, particularly if addressed to women. Whatever the reason of it may be, a man of any importance collects round him a seraglio of a more or less religious, moral, and sesthetic character.

349

When a great idea enters the world as a Gospel, it becomes an offence to the multitude, which stagnates in pedantry; and to those who have much learning but little depth, it is folly.

350

Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realised, it is hardly distinguishable from phantasy and phantastery.

351

This it is that has been called, in a good and in a bad sense, ideology; and this is why the ideologist is so repugnant to the hard-working, practical man of every day.

352

You may recognise the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand how to make a perfect use of it.

353

Credo Deum! That is a fine, a worthy thing to say; but to recognise God where and as he reveals himself, is the only true bliss on earth.

354

Kepler said: 'My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside me.' The good man was not aware that in that very moment the divine in him stood in the closest connection with the divine in the Universe.

355

What is predestination? It is this: God is mightier and wiser than we are, and so he does with us as he pleases.

356

Toleration should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him.

357

Faith, Love, and Hope once felt, in a quiet sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature; they worked together and created a lovely image, a Pandora in the higher sense, Patience.

358

' I stumbled over the roots of the tree which I planted.' It must have been an old forester who said that.

359

A leaf blown by the wind often looks like a bird.

360

Does the sparrow know how the stork feels?

361

Lamps make oil-spots, and candles want snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain.

362

If you miss the first button-hole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

363

A burnt child dreads the fire; an old man who has often been singed is afraid of warming himself.

364

It is not worth while to do anything for the world that we have with us, as the existing order may in a moment pass away. It is for the past and the future that we must work: for the past, to acknowledge its merits; for the future, to try to increase its value.

365

Let every man ask himself with which of his faculties he can and will somehow influence his age.

366

Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Saviour.

367

Character in matters great and small consists in a man steadily pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.

368

The man who wants to be active and has to be so, need only think of what is fitting at the moment, and he will make his way without difficulty. This is where women have the advantage, if they understand it.

369

The moment is a kind of public; a man must deceive it into believing that he is doing something; then it leaves us alone to go our way in secret; whereat its grandchildren cannot fail to be astonished.

370

There are men who put their knowledge in the place of insight.

37i

In some states, as a consequence of the violent movements experienced in almost all directions, there has come about a certain overpressure in the system of education, the harm of which will be more generally felt hereafter; though even now it is perfectly well recognised by capable and honest authorities. Capable men live in a sort of despair over the fact that they are bound by the rules of their office to teach and communicate things which they look upon as useless and hurtful.

372

There is no sadder sight than the direct striving after the unconditioned in this thoroughly conditioned world.

373

Before the Revolution it was all effort; afterwards it all changed to demand.

374

Can a nation become ripe? That is a strange question. I would answer, Yes! if all the men could be born thirty years of age. But as youth will always be too forward and old age too backward, the really mature man is always hemmed in between them, and has to resort to strange devices to make his way through.

375

It does not look well for monarchs to speak through the press, for power should act and not talk. The projects of the liberal party always bear being read: the man who is overpowered may at least express his views in speech, because he cannot act. When Mazarin was shown some satirical songs on a new tax, ' Let them sing,' said he, ' as long as they pay.'

376

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one's personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one's individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whom it befits.

377

The most important matters of feeling as of reason, of experience as of reflection, should be treated of only by word of mouth. The spoken word at once dies if it is not kept alive by some other word following on it and suited to the hearer. Observe what happens in social converse. If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation. With the written word the case is still worse. No one cares to read anything to which he is not already to some extent accustomed: he demands the known and the familiar under an altered form. Still the written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.

378

Both what is reasonable and what is unreasonable have to undergo the like contradiction.

379

Dialectic is the culture of the spirit of contradiction, which is given to man that he may learn to perceive the differences between things.

380

With those who are really of like disposition with himself a man cannot long be at variance; he will always come to an agreement again. With those who are really of adverse disposition, he may in vain try to preserve harmony; he will always come to a separation again.

381

Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

382

People who contradict and dispute should now and then remember that not every mode of speech is intelligible to every one.

383

Every man hears only what he understands.

384

I am quite prepared to find that many a reader will disagree with me; but when he has a thing before him in black and white, he must let it stand. Another reader may perhaps take up the very same copy and agree with me.

385

The truest liberality is appreciation.

386

For the strenuous man the difficulty is to recognise the merits of elder contemporaries and not let himself be hindered by their defects.

387

Some men think about the defects of their friends, and there is nothing to be gained by it. I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

388

There are many men who fancy they understand whatever they experience.

389

The public must be treated like women: they must be told absolutely nothing but what they like to hear.

390

Every age of man has a certain philosophy answering to it. The child comes out as a realist: he finds himself as convinced that pears and apples exist as that he himself exists. The youth in a storm of inner passion is forced to turn his gaze within, and feel in advance what he is going to be: he is changed into an idealist. But the man has every reason to become a sceptic: he does well to doubt whether the means he has chosen to his end are the right ones. Before and during action he has every reason for keeping his understanding mobile, that he may not afterwards have to grieve over a false choice. Yet when he grows old he will always confess himself a mystic: he sees that so much seems to depend on chance; that folly succeeds and wisdom fails; that good and evil fortune are brought unexpectedly to the same level; so it is and so it has been, and old age acquiesces in that which is and was and will be.

391

When a man grows old he must consciously remain at a certain stage.

392

It does not become an old man to run after the fashion, either in thought or in dress. But he must know where he is, and what the others are aiming at.

What is called fashion is the tradition of the moment. All tradition carries with it a certain necessity for people to put themselves on a level with it.

393

We have long been busy with the critique of reason. I should like to see a critique of common-sense. It would be a real benefit to mankind if we could convincingly prove to the ordinary intelligence how far it can go; and that is just as much as it fully requires for life on this earth.

394

The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect: they both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.

395

All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads. How far each succeeds, they may both see for themselves.

396

Shall we say that a man thinks only when he cannot think out that of which he is thinking?

397

What is invention or discovery? It is the conclusion of what we were looking for.

398

It is with history as with nature and with everything of any depth, it may be past, present, or future: the further we seriously pursue it, the more difficult are the problems that appear. The man who is not afraid of them, but attacks them bravely, has a feeling of higher culture and greater ease the further he progresses.

399

Every phenomenon is within our reach if we treat it as an inclined plane, which is of easy ascent, though the thick end of the wedge may be steep and inaccessible.

400

If a man would enter upon some course of knowledge, he must either be deceived or deceive himself, unless external necessity irresistibly determines him. Who would become a physician if, at one and the same time, he saw before him all the horrible sights that await him?

401

How many years must a man do nothing before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

402

Duty: where a man loves what he commands himself to do.

LITERATURE AND ART

403

When Madame Roland was on the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, to note the peculiar thoughts that hovered about her on the last journey. It is a pity they were refused, for in a tranquil mind thoughts rise up at the close of life hitherto unthinkable; like blessed inward voices, alighting in glory on the summits of the past.

404

Literature is a fragment of fragments: the least of what happened and was spoken, has been written; and of the things that have been written, very few have been preserved.

405

And yet, with all the fragmentary nature of literature, we find thousand-fold repetition; which shows how limited is man's mind and destiny.

406

Excellent work is unfathomable, approach it as you will.

407

It is not language in itself which is correct or forcible or elegant, but the mind that is embodied in it; and so it is not for a man to determine whether he will give his calculations or speeches or poems the desired qualities: the question is whether Nature has given him the intellectual and moral qualities which fit him for the work, — the intellectual power of observation and insight, the moral power of repelling the evil spirits that might hinder him from paying respect to truth.

408

The appeal to posterity springs from the pure, strong feeling of the existence of something imperishable; something that, even though it be not at once recognised, will in the end be gratified by finding the minority turn into a majority.

409

When a new literature succeeds, it obscures the effect of an earlier one, and its own effect predominates; so that it is well, from time to time, to look back. What is original in us is best preserved and quickened if we do not lose sight of those who have gone before us.

410

The most original authors of modern times are so, not because they produce what is new, but only because they are able to say things the like of which seem never to have been said before.

411/p>

Thus the best sign of originality lies in taking up a subject and then developing it so fully as to make every one confess that he would hardly have found so much in it.

412

There are many thoughts that come only from general culture, like buds from green branches. When roses bloom, you see them blooming everywhere.

413

'Lucidity is a due distribution of light and shade.' Hamann. »

414

A man who has no acquaintance with foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

415

We must remember that there are many men who, without being productive, are anxious to say something important, and the results are most curious.

416

Deep and earnest thinkers are in a difficult position with regard to the public.

417

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

418

An author can show no greater respect for his public than by never bringing it what it expects, but what he himself thinks right and proper in that stage of his own and others' culture in which for the time he finds himself.

419

The so-called Nature-poets are men of active talent, with a fresh stimulus and reaction from an over-cultured, stagnant, mannered epoch of art. They cannot avoid commonplace.

420

Productions are now possible which, without being bad, have no value. They have no value, because they contain nothing; and they are not bad, because a general form of good-workmanship is present to the author's mind.

421

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be per- ~7 fectly intelligible, but in some particulars a ' little unintelligible. '

422

A romance is a subjective epic in which the author begs leave to treat the world after his own ideas. The only question is, whether he has any ideas; the rest will follow of itself.

423

Subjective or so-called sentimental poetry has now been admitted to an equality with objective and descriptive. This was inevitable; because otherwise the whole of modern poetry would have to be discarded. It is now obvious that when men of truly poetical genius appear, they will describe more of the particular feelings of the inner life than of the general facts of the great life of the world. This has already taken place to such a degree that we have a poetry without figures of speech, which can by no means be refused all praise.

424

Superstition is the poetry of life, and so it does not hurt the poet to be superstitious.

425

That glorious hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, is really an appeal to genius. That is why it speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and power.

426

Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

427

A Spinoza in poetry becomes a Machiavelli in philosophy.

428

Against the three unities there is nothing to be said, if the subject is very simple; but there are times when thrice three unities, skilfully interwoven, produce a very pleasant effect.

429

The sentimentality of the English is humorous and tender; of the French, popular and pathetic; of the Germans, naive and realistic.

430

Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings.

431

If a man sets out to reproach an author with obscurity, he should first of all examine his own mind, to see if he is himself all clearness within. Twilight makes even plain writing illegible.

432

It is with books as with new acquaintances. At first we are highly delighted, if we find a general agreement,—if we are pleasantly moved on any of the chief sides of our existence. With a closer acquaintance differences come to light; and then reasonable conduct mainly consists in not shrinking back at once, as may happen in youth, but in keeping firm hold of the things in which we agree, and being quite clear about the things in which we differ, without on that account desiring any union.

433

In psychological reflection the greatest difficulty is this: that inner and outer must always be viewed in parallel lines, or, rather, interwoven. It is a continual systole and diastole, an inspiration and an expiration of the living soul. If this cannot be put into words, it should be carefully marked and noted.

434

My relations with Schiller rested on the decided tendency of both of us towards a single aim, and our common activity rested on the diversity of the means by which we endeavoured to attain that aim.

435

Once when a slight difference was mentioned between us, of which I was reminded by a passage in a letter of his, I made the following reflections: There is a great difference between a poet seeking the particular for the universal, and seeing the universal in the particular. The one gives rise to Allegory, where the particular serves only as instance or example of the general; but the other is the true nature of Poetry, namely, the expression of the particular without [/ any thought of, or reference to, the general. If a man grasps the particular vividly, he also grasps the general, without being aware of it at the time; or he may make the discovery long afterwards.

436

There may be eclectic philosophers, but not an eclectic philosophy.

437

But every one is an eclectic who, out of the things that surround and take place about him, appropriates what is suited to his nature; and this is what is meant by culture and progress, in matters of theory or practice.

438

Various maxims of the ancients, which we are wont to repeat again and again, had a meaning quite different from that which is apt to attach to them in later times.

439

The saying that no one who is unacquainted with or a stranger to geometry should enter the philosopher's school, does not mean that a man must become a mathematician to attain the wisdom of the world.

440

Geometry is here taken in its primary elements, such as are contained in Euclid and laid before every beginner; and then it is the most perfect propaedeutic and introduction to philosophy.

441

When a boy begins to understand that an invisible point must always come before a visible one, and that the shortest way between two points is a straight line, before he can draw it on his paper with a pencil, he experiences a certain pride and pleasure. And he is not wrong; for he has the source of all thought opened to him; idea and reality, potentia et actu, are become clear; the philosopher has no new discovery to bring him; as a mathematician, he has found the basis of all thought for himself.

442

And if we turn to that significant utterance, Know thyself, we must not explain it in an ascetic sense. It is in nowise the self-knowledge of our modern hypochondrists, humorists, and self-tormentors. It simply means: pay some attention to yourself; take note of yourself; so that you may know how you come to stand towards those like you and towards the world. This involves no psychological torture; every capable man knows and feels what it means. It is a piece of good advice which every one will find of the greatest advantage in practice.

443

Let us remember how great the ancients were; and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty speculation, but live and do.

444

So long as our scholastic education takes us back to antiquity and furthers the study of the Greek and Latin languages, we may congratulate ourselves that these studies, so necessary for the higher culture, will never disappear.

445

If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon, we get the feeling as if it were only then that we really became men.

446

The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak Latin, has a higher and grander idea of himself than would be permissible in ordinary life.

447

In the presence of antiquity, the mind that is susceptible to poetry and art feels itself placed in the most pleasing ideal state of nature; and even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the frightful burden which the tradition of several thousand years has rolled upon us.

448

There is no such, thing1 as patriotic art and patriotic science.^ Both art and science belong, "Tike all things great and good, to the whole world, and can be furthered only by a free and general interchange of ideas among contemporaries, with continual reference to the heritage of the past as it is known to us.

449

Poetical talent is given to peasant as well as to knight; all that is required is that each shall grasp his position and treat it worthily.

450

An historic sense means a sense so cultured that, in valuing the deserts and merits of its own time, it takes account also of the past.

451

The best that history gives us is the enthusiasm it arouses.

452

The historian's duty is twofold: first towards himself, then towards his readers. As regards himself, he must carefully examine into the things that could have happened; and, for the reader's sake, he must determine what actually did happen. His action towards himself is a matter between himself and his colleagues; but the public must not see into the secret that there is little in history which can be said to be positively determined.

453

The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.

454

It is seldom that any one of great age becomes historical to himself, and finds his contemporaries become historical to him, so that he neither cares nor is able to argue with any one.

455

On a closer examination of the matter, it will be found that the historian does not easily grasp history as something historical. In whatever age he may live, the historian always writes as though he himself had been present at the time of which he treats, instead of simply narrating the facts and movements of that time. Even the mere chronicler only points more or less to his own limitations, or the peculiarities of his town or monastery or age.

456

We really learn only from those books which we cannot criticise. The author of a book which we could criticise would have to learn from us.

457

That is the reason why the Bible will never lose its power; because*, as long as the world lasts, no one can stand up and say: I grasp it as a whole and understand all the parts of it. But we say humbly: as a whole it is worthy of respect, and in all its parts it is applicable.

45 8

There is and will be much discussion as to the use and harm of circulating the Bible. One thing is clear to me: mischief will result, as heretofore, by using it phantastically as a system of dogma; benefit, as heretofore, by a loving acceptance of its teachings.

459

I am convinced that the Bible will always be more beautiful the more it is understood; the more, that is, we see and observe that every word which we take in a general sense and apply specially to ourselves, had, under certain circumstances of time and place, a peculiar, special, and directly individual reference.

460

The incurable evil of religious controversy is that while one party wants to connect the highest interest of humanity with fables and phrases, the other tries to rest it on things that satisfy no one.

461

If one has not read the newspapers for some \\, months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

462

The classical is health; and the romantic, disease.

463

Ovid remained classical even in exile: it is not in himself that he sees misfortune, but in his banishment from the metropolis of the world.

464

The romantic is already fallen into its own abysm. It is hard to imagine anything more degraded than the worst of the new productions.

465

Bodies which rot while they are still alive, and are edified by the detailed contemplation of their own decay; dead men who remain in the world for the ruin of others, and feed their death on the living, — to this have come our makers of literature.

When the same thing happened in antiquity, it was only as a strange token of some rare disease; but with the moderns the disease has become endemic and epidemic.

466

Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

467

What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves!

468

The things that are true, good, excellent, are simple and always alike, whatever their appearance may be. But the error that we blame is extremely manifold and varying; it is in con. flict not only with the good and the true, but also with itself; it is self-contradictory. Thus it is that the words of blame in our literature must necessarily outnumber the words of praise.

469

The Greeks, whose poetry and rhetoric was of a simple and positive character, express approval more often than disapproval. With the Latin writers it is the contrary; and the more poetry and the arts of speech decay, the more will blame swell and praise shrink.

470

' What are tragedies but the versified passions of people who make Heaven knows what out of the external world?'

471

There are certain empirical enthusiasts who are quite right in showing their enthusiasm over new productions that are good; but they are as ecstatic as if there were no other good work in the world at all.

472

In Sakontala the poet appears in his highest function. As the representative of the most natural condition of things, the finest mode of life, the purest moral endeavour, the worthiest majesty, and the most solemn worship, he ventures on common and ridiculous contrasts.

473

Shakespeare's Henry IV. If everything were lost that has ever been preserved to us of this kind of writing, the arts of poetry and rhetoric could be completely restored out of this one play.

474

Shakespeare's finest dramas are wanting here and there in facility: they are something more than they should be, and for that very reason indicate the great poet.

475

Shakespeare is dangerous reading for budding talents: he compels them to reproduce him, and they fancy they are producing themselves.

476

Yorick Sterne was the finest spirit that ever worked. To read him is to attain a fine feeling of freedom; his humour is inimitable, and it is not every kind of humour that frees the soul.

477

The peculiar value of so-called popular ballads is that their motives are drawn direct from nature. This, however, is an advantage of which the poet of culture could also avail himself, if he knew how to do it.

478

But in popular ballads there is always this advantage, that in the art of saying things shortly uneducated men are always better skilled than those who are in the strict sense of the word educated.

479

Gemilth = Heart. The translator must proceed until he reaches the untranslatable; and then only will he have an idea of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.

480

When we say of a landscape that it has a romantic character, it is the secret feeling of the sublime taking the form of the past, or, what is the same thing, of solitude, absence, or seclusion.

481

The Beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, without its presence, would never have been revealed.

482

It is said: Artist, study nature! But it is no / trifle to develop the noble out of the commonplace, or beauty out of uniformity.

483

When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.

484

For all other Arts we must make some allowance; but to Greek Art alone we are always debtors.

485

There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.

486

Even in the moments of highest happiness and deepest misery we need the Artist.

487

False tendencies of the senses are a kind of desire after realism, always better than that false tendency which expresses itself as idealistic longing.

488

The dignity of Art appears perhaps most conspicuously in Music; for in Music there is no material to be deducted. It is wholly form and intrinsic value, and it raises and ennobles all that it expresses.

489

It is only by Art, and especially by Poetry, that the imagination is regulated. Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.

490

If we were to despise Art on the ground that it is an imitation of Nature, it might be answered that Nature also imitates much else; further, that Art does not exactly imitate that which can be seen by the eyes, but goes back to that element of reason of which Nature consists and according to which Nature acts.

491

Further, the Arts also produce much out of themselves, and, on the other hand, add much where Nature fails in perfection, in that they possess beauty in themselves. So it was that Pheidias could sculpture a god although he had nothing that could be seen by the eye to imitate, but grasped the appearance which Zeus himself would have if he were to come before our eyes.

492

Art rests upon a kind of religious sense: it is deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with Religion.

493

A noble philosopher spoke of architecture as frozen music; and it was inevitable that many people should shake their heads over his remark. We believe that no better repetition of this fine thought can be given than by calling architecture a speechless music.

494

Art is essentially noble; therefore the artist has nothing to fear from a low or common subject. Nay, by taking it up, he ennobles it; and so it is that we see the greatest artists boldly exercising their sovereign rights.

495

In every artist there is a germ of daring, without which no talent is conceivable.

496

All the artists who are already known to me from so many sides, I propose to consider exclusively from the ethical side; to explain from the subject-matter and method of their work the part played therein by time and place, nation and master, and their own indestructible personality; to mould them to what they became and to preserve them in what they were.

497

Art is a medium of what no tongue can utter; and thus it seems a piece of folly to try to convey its meaning afresh by means of words. But, by trying to do so, the understanding gains; and this, again, benefits the faculty in practice.

498

An artist who produces valuable work is not always able to give an account of his own or others' performances.

499

We know of no world except in relation to mankind; and we wish for no Art that does not bear the mark of this relation.

500

Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.

50i

Blunt naivety, stubborn vigour, scrupulous observance of rule, and any other epithets which may apply to older German Art, are a part of every earlier and simpler artistic method. The older Venetians, Florentines, and others had it all too.

502

Because Albrecht Diirer, with his incomparable talent, could never rise to the idea of the symmetry of beauty, or even to the thought of a fitting conformity to the object in view, are we never to spurn the ground!

503

Albrecht Diirer had the advantage of a very profound realistic perception, an affectionate human sympathy with all present conditions. He was kept back by a gloomy phantasy, devoid both of form and foundation.

S04

It would be interesting to show how Martin Schb'n stands near him, and how the merits of German Art were restricted to these two; and useful also to show that it was not evening every day.

505

In every Italian school the butterfly breaks loose from the chrysalis.

506

After Klopstock released us from rhyme, and Voss gave us models of prose, are we to make doggerel again like Hans Sachs?

S07

Let us be many-sided! Turnips are good, but they are best mixed with chestnuts. And these two noble products of the earth grow far apart.

508

In every kind of Art there is a degree of excellence which may be reached, so to speak, by the mere use of one's own natural talents. But at the same time it is impossible to go beyond that point, unless Art comes to one's aid.

S09

In the presence of Nature even moderate talent is always possessed of insight; hence drawings from Nature that are at all carefully done always give pleasure.

510

To make many sketches issue at last in a complete work is something that not even the best artists always achieve.

511/p>

In the sphere of true Art there is no preparatory school, but there is a way of preparation; and the best preparation is the interest of the most insignificant pupil in the work of the master. Colour-grinders have often made excellent painters.

512/p>

If an artist grasps Nature aright and contrives to give its form a nobler, freer grace, no one will understand the source of his inspiration, and every one will swear that he has taken it from the antique.

5i3

In studying the human form, let the painter reject what is exaggerated, false, and mechanical; but let him learn to grasp of what infinite grace the human body is capable.

Kant taught us the critique of the reason. We must have a critique of the senses if Art in general, and especially German Art, is ever to regain its tone and move forward on the path of life and happiness.

SCIENCE

515

In the sphere of natural science let us remember that we have always to deal with an insoluble problem. Let us prove keen and honest in attending to anything which is in any way brought to our notice, most of all when it does not fit in with our previous ideas. For it is only thereby that we perceive the problem, which does indeed lie in nature, but still more in man.

Si6

A man cannot well stand by himself, and so he is glad to join a party; because if he does not find rest there, he at any rate finds quiet and safety.

517

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

518

In the history of science and throughout the whole course of its progress we see certain epochs following one another more or less rapidly. Some important view is expressed, it may be original or only revived; sooner or later it receives recognition; fellow-workers spring up; the outcome of it finds its way into the schools; it is taught and handed down; and we observe, unhappily, that -it does not in the least matter whether the view be true or false. In either case its course is the same; in either case it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a lifeless word stamped on the memory.

519

First let a man teach himself, and then he will be taught by others.

520

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words. We may surmise, or even see quite well, that such theories are make-shifts; but do not passion and party-spirit love a make-shift at all times? And rightly, too, because they stand in so much need of it.

S21

It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him neither joy nor credit.

522

There are some hundred Christian sects, every one of them acknowledging God and the Lord in its own way, without troubling themselves further about one another. In the study of nature, nay, in every study, things must of necessity come to the same pass. For what is the meaning of everyone speaking of toleration, and trying to prevent others from thinking and expressing themselves after their own fashion?

523

To communicate knowledge by means of analogy appears to me a process equally useful and pleasant. The analogous case is not there to force itself on the attention or prove anything; it offers a comparison with some other case, but is not in union with it. Several analogous cases do not join to form a seried row: they are like good society, which always suggests more than it grants.

524

To err is to be as though truth did not exist. To lay bare the error to oneself and others is retrospective discovery.

525

With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organised afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.

526

When we find facts within our knowledge exhibited by some new method, or even, it may be, described in a foreign language, they receive a peculiar charm of novelty and wear a fresh air.

S2?

If two masters of the same art differ in their statement of it, in all likelihood the insoluble problem lies midway between them.

528

The orbits of certainties touch one another; but in the interstices there is room enough for error to go forth and prevail.

529

We more readily confess to errors, mistakes, and shortcomings in our conduct than in our thought.

530

And the reason of it is that the conscience is humble and even takes a pleasure in being ashamed. But the intellect is proud, and if forced to recant is driven to despair.

531

This also explains how it is that truths which have been recognised are at first tacitly admitted, and then gradually spread, so that the very thing which was obstinately denied appears at last as something quite natural.

532

Ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago.

533

When a man sees a phenomenon before him, his thoughts often range beyond it; when he hears it only talked about, he has no thoughts at all.

534

Authority. Man cannot exist without it, and yet it brings in its train just as much of error as of truth. It perpetuates one by one things which should pass away one by one; it rejects that which should be preserved and allows it to pass away; and it is chiefly to blame for mankind's want of progress.

535

Authority — the fact, namely, that something has already happened or been said or decided, is of great value; but it is only a pedant who demands authority for everything.

536

An old foundation is worthy of all respect, but it must not take from us the right to build afresh wherever we will.

537

Our advice is that every man should remain in the path he has struck out for himself, and refuse to be overawed by authority, hampered by prevalent opinion, or carried away by fashion.

538

The various branches of knowledge always tend as a whole to stray away from life, and return thither only by a roundabout way.

539

For they are, in truth, text-books of life: they gather outer and inner experiences into a general and connected whole.

540

An important fact, an ingenious aperpu, occupies a very great number of men, at first only to make acquaintance with it; then to understand it; and afterwards to work it out and carry it further.

541

On the appearance of anything new the mass of people ask: What is the use of it? And they are not wrong. For it is only through the use of anything that they can perceive its value.

542

The truly wise ask what the thing is in itself and in relation to other things, and do not trouble themselves about the use of it, — in other words, about the way in which it may be applied to the necessities of existence and what is already known. This will soon be discovered by minds of a very different order — minds that feel the joy of living, and are keen, adroit, and practical.

543

Every investigator must before all things look upon himself as one who is summoned to serve on a jury. He has only to consider how far the statement of the case is complete and clearly set forth by the evidence. Then he draws his conclusion and gives his vote, whether it be that his opinion coincides with that of the foreman or not.

544

And in acting thus he remains equally at ease whether the majority agree with him or he finds himself in a minority. For he has done what he could: he has expressed his convictions; and he is not master of the minds or hearts of others.

545

In the world of science, however, these sentiments have never been of much account. There everything depends on making opinion prevail and dominate; few men are really independent; the majority draws the individual after it.

546

The history of philosophy, of science, of religion, all shows that opinions spread in masses, but that that always comes to the front which is more easily grasped, that is to say, is most suited and agreeable to the human mind in its ordinary condition. Nay, he who has practised self-culture in the higher sense may always reckon upon meeting an adverse majority.

547

There is much that is true which does not admit of being calculated; just as there are a great many things that cannot be brought to the test of a decisive experiment.

548

It is just for this that man stands so high, that what could not otherwise be brought to light should be brought to light in him.

What is a musical string, and all its mechanical division, in comparison with the musician's ear? May we not also say, what are the elementary phenomena of nature itself compared with man, who must control and modify them all before he can in any way assimilate them to himself?

549

To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.

550

The ultimate origin of things is completely beyond our faculties; hence when we see anything come into being, we look upon it as having been already there. This is why we find the theory of emboitement intelligible.

S51

There are many problems in natural science on which we cannot fittingly speak unless we call metaphysics to our aid; but not the wisdom of the schools, which consists in mere verbiage. It is that which was before physics, exists with it, and will be after it.

S52

Since men are really interested in nothing but their own opinions, every one who puts forward an opinion looks about him right and left for means of strengthening himself and others in it. A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it; whether it be to dazzle others with it as a kind of half-truth, or to employ it as a stopgap for effecting an apparent union between things that have been disjointed. This experience at first caused me annoyance, and then sorrow; and now it is a source of mischievous satisfaction. I have pledged myself never again to expose a proceeding of this kind.

553

Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge. It is a revelation working from within on the outer world, and lets a man feel that he is made in the image of God. It is a synthesis of World and Mind, giving the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of things.

554

A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it.

555

There are pedants who are also rascals, and they are the worst of all.

556

A man does not need to have seen or experienced everything himself. But if he is to commit himself to another's experiences and his way of putting them, let him consider that he has to do with three things — the object in question and two subjects.

557

The supreme achievement would be to see that stating a fact is starting a theory.

558

If I acquiesce at last in some ultimate fact of nature, it is, no doubt, only resignation; but it makes a great difference whether the resignation takes place at the limits of human faculty, or within the hypothetical boundaries of my own narrow individuality.

559

If we look at the problems raised by Aristotle, we are astonished at his gift of observation. What wonderful eyes the Greeks had for many things! Only they committed the mistake of being overhasty, of passing straightway from the phenomenon to the explanation of it, and thereby produced certain theories that are quite inadequate. But this is the mistake of all times, and still made in our own day.

560

Hypotheses are cradle-songs by which the teacher lulls his scholars to sleep. The thoughtful and honest observer is always learning more and more of his limitations; he sees that the further knowledge spreads, the more numerous are the problems that make their appearance.

56l

Our mistake is that we doubt what is certain and want to establish what is uncertain. My maxim in the study of Nature is this: hold fast what is certain and keep a watch on what is uncertain.

562

What a master a man would be in his own subject if he taught nothing useless I

563

The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

564

If many a man did not feel obliged to repeat what is untrue, because he has said it once, the world would have been quite different.

565

Every man looks at the world lying ready before him, ordered and fashioned into a complete whole, as after all but an element out of which his endeavour is to create a special world suited to himself. Capable men lay hold of the world without hesitation and try to shape their course as best they can; others dally over it, and some doubt even of their own existence.

The man who felt the full force of this fundamental truth would dispute with no one, but look upon another's mode of thought equally with his own, as merely a phenomenon. For we find almost daily that one man can think with ease what another cannot possibly think at all; and that, too, not in matters which might have some sort of effect upon their common weal or woe, but in things which cannot touch them at all.

566

There is nothing more odious than the majority; it consists of a few powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating rascals and submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot after them, without in the least knowing their own mind.

567

When I observe the luminous progress and expansion of natural science in modern times, I seem to myself like a traveller going eastwards at dawn, and gazing at the growing light with joy, but also with impatience; looking forward with longing to the advent of the full and final light, but, nevertheless, having to turn away his eyes when the sun appeared, unable to bear the splendour he had awaited with so much desire.

568

We praise the eighteenth century for concerning itself chiefly with analysis. The task remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the false syntheses which prevail, and to analyse their contents anew.

569

A school may be regarded as a single individual who talks to himself for a hundred years, and takes an extraordinary pleasure in his own being, however foolish and silly it may be.

S7o

In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further.

571

If a man devotes himself to the promotion of science, he is firstly opposed, and then he is informed that his ground is already occupied. At first men will allow no value to what we tell them, and then they behave as if they knew it all themselves.

572

Nature fills all space with her limitless productivity. If we observe merely our own earth, everything that we call evil and unfortunate is so because Nature cannot provide room for everything that comes into existence, and still less endow it with permanence.

573

Everything that comes into being seeks room for itself and desires duration: hence it drives something else from its place and shortens its duration.

574

There is so much of cryptogamy in phanerogamy that centuries will not decipher it.

575

What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.

576

The further knowledge advances, the nearer we come to the unfathomable: the more we know how to use our knowledge, the better we see that the unfathomable is of no practical use.

577

The finest achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and quietly to revere the unfathomable.

578

The discerning man who acknowledges his limitations is not far off perfection.

579

There are two things of which a man cannot be careful enough: of obstinacy if he confines himself to his own line of thought; of in competency, if he goes beyond it.

S80

Ineompetency is a greater obstacle to perfection than one would think.

S81

The century advances; but every individual begins anew.

582

What friends do with us and for us is a real part of our life; for it strengthens and advances our personality. The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.

583

A man cannot live with every one, and therefore he cannot live for every one. To see this truth aright is to place a high value upon one's friends, and not to hate or persecute one's enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater advantage for a man to gain than to find out, if he can, the merits of his opponents: it give? him a decided ascendency over them.

584

Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.

585

The best metempsychosis is for us to appear again in others.

586

It is very seldom that we satisfy ourselves; all the more consoling is it to have satisfied others.

587

We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done and attained.

588

The sympathetic youth sees nothing of this; he reads, enjoys, and uses the youth of one who has gone before him, and rejoices in it with all his heart, as though he had once been what he now is.

589

Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.

590

It is always, our eyes alone, our way of looking at things. Nature alone knows what she means now, and what she had meant in the past.

NATURE: APHORISMS

Nature ! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

She creates new forms without end: what exists now, never was before; what was, comes not again; all is new and yet always the old.

We live in the midst of her and are strangers. She speaks to us unceasingly and betrays not her secret. We are always influencing her and yet can do her no violence.

Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she cares nought for individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her workshop is not to be approached.

Nature lives in her children only, and the mother, where is she? She is the sole artist, — out of the simplest materials the greatest diversity; attaining, with no trace of effort, the finest perfection, the closest precision, always softly veiled. Each of her works has an essence of its own; every shape that she takes is in idea utterly isolated; and yet all forms one.

She plays a drama; whether she sees it herself, we know not; and yet she plays it for us, who stand but a little way off.

There is constant life in her, motion and development; and yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing, and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast; her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.

She has thought, and she ponders unceasingly; not as a man, but as Nature. The meaning of the whole she keeps to herself, and no one can learn it of her.

Men are all in her, and she in all men. With all she plays a friendly game, and rejoices the more a man wins from her. With many her game is so secret, that she brings it to an end before they are aware of it.

Even what is most unnatural is Nature; even the coarsest Philistinism has something of her genius. Who does not see her everywhere, sees her nowhere aright.

She loves herself, and clings eternally to herself with eyes and hearts innumerable. She has divided herself that she may be her own delight. She is ever making new creatures spring up to delight in her, and imparts herself insatiably.

She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys this in himself and others, she punishes him like the hardest tyrant. If he follows her in confidence, she presses him to her heart as it were her child.

Her children are numberless. To no one of them is she altogether niggardly; but she has her favourites, on whom she lavishes much, and for whom she makes many a sacrifice. Over the great she has spread the shield of her protection.

She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to go their way: she knows the path.

Her springs of action are few, but they never wear out: they are always working, always manifold.

The drama she plays is always new, because she is always bringing new spectators. Life is her fairest invention, and Death is her device for having life in abundance.

She envelops man in darkness, and urges him constantly to the light. She makes him dependent on the earth, heavy and sluggish, and always rouses him up afresh.

She creates wants, because she loves movement. How marvellous that she gains it all so easily! Every want is a benefit, soon satisfied, soon growing again. If she gives more, it is a new source of desire; but the balance quickly rights itself.

Every moment she starts on the longest journeys, and every moment reaches her goal.

She amuses herself with a vain show; but to us her play is all-important.

She lets every child work at her, every fool judge of her, and thousands pass her by and see nothing; and she has her joy in them all, and in them all finds her account.

Man obeys her laws even in opposing them: he works with her even when he wants to work against her.

Everything she gives is found to be good, for first of all she makes it indispensable. She lingers, that we may long for presence; she hurries by, that we may not grow weary of her.

Speech or language she has none; but she creates tongues and hearts through which she feels and speaks.

Her crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.

She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself; and in herself rejoices and is distressed. She is rough and gentle, loving and terrible, powerless and almighty. In her everything is always present. Past or Future she knows not. The Present is her Eternity. She is kind. I praise her with all her works. She is wise and still. No one can force her to explain herself, or frighten her into a gift that she does not give willingly. She is crafty, but for a good end; and it is best not to notice her cunning.

She is whole and yet never finished. As she works now, so can she work for ever.

To every one she appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same.

She has placed me in this world; she will also lead me out of it. I trust myself to her. She may do with me as she pleases. She will not hate her work. I did not speak of her. No! what is true and what is false, she has spoken it all. Everything is her fault, everything is her merit.