Volume Ii Part 6 (2/2)
67.
A WORLD OF DIMINUTIVES.-The fact that all that is weak and in need of help appeals to the heart induces in us the habit of designating by diminutive and softening terms all that appeals to our hearts-and accordingly _making_ such things weak and clinging to our imaginations.
68.
THE BAD CHARACTERISTIC OF SYMPATHY.-Sympathy has a peculiar impudence for its companion. For, wis.h.i.+ng to help at all costs, sympathy is in no perplexity either as to the means of a.s.sistance or as to the nature and cause of the disease, and goes on courageously administering all its quack medicines to restore the health and reputation of the patient.
69.
IMPORTUNACY.-There is even an importunacy in relation to works, and the act of a.s.sociating oneself from early youth on an intimate footing with the ill.u.s.trious works of all times evinces an entire absence of shame.-Others are only importunate from ignorance, not knowing with whom they have to do-for instance cla.s.sical scholars young and old in relation to the works of the Greeks.
70.
THE WILL IS ASHAMED OF THE INTELLECT.-In all coolness we make reasonable plans against our pa.s.sions. But we make the most serious mistake in this connection in being often ashamed, when the design has to be carried out, of the coolness and calculation with which we conceived it. So we do just the unreasonable thing, from that sort of defiant magnanimity that every pa.s.sion involves.
71.
WHY THE SCEPTICS OFFEND MORALITY.-He who takes his morality solemnly and seriously is enraged against the sceptics in the domain of morals. For where he lavishes all his force, he wishes others to marvel but not to investigate and doubt. Then there are natures whose last shred of morality is just the belief in morals. They behave in the same way towards sceptics, if possible still more pa.s.sionately.
72.
SHYNESS.-All moralists are shy, because they know they are confounded with spies and traitors, so soon as their penchant is noticed. Besides, they are generally conscious of being impotent in action, for in the midst of work the motives of their activity almost withdraw their attention from the work.
<script>