Volume Ii Part 25 (1/2)

293.

UNINTELLIGIBLE, UNENDURABLE.-A youth cannot understand that an old man has also had his delights, his dawns of feeling, his changings and soarings of thought. It offends him to think that such things have existed before. But it makes him very bitter to hear that, to become fruitful, he must lose those buds and dispense with their fragrance.

294.

THE PARTY WITH THE AIR OF MARTYRDOM.-Every party that can a.s.sume an air of martyrdom wins good-natured souls over to its side and thereby itself acquires an air of good nature-greatly to its advantage.

295.

a.s.sERTIONS SURER THAN ARGUMENTS.-An a.s.sertion has, with the majority of men at any rate, more effect than an argument, for arguments provoke mistrust. Hence demagogues seek to strengthen the arguments of their party by a.s.sertions.

296.

THE BEST CONCEALERS.-All regularly successful men are profoundly cunning in making their faults and weaknesses look like manifestations of strength. This proves that they must know their defects uncommonly well.

297.

FROM TIME TO TIME.-He sat in the city gateway and said to one who pa.s.sed through that this was the city gate. The latter replied that this was true, but that one must not be too much in the right if one expected to be thanked for it. ”Oh,” answered the other, ”I don't want thanks, but from time to time it is very pleasant not merely to be in the right but to remain in the right.”

298.

VIRTUE WAS NOT INVENTED BY THE GERMANS.-Goethe's n.o.bleness and freedom from envy, Beethoven's fine hermitical resignation, Mozart's cheerfulness and grace of heart, Handel's unbending manliness and freedom under the law, Bach's confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need to renounce glamour and success-are these qualities peculiarly German?-If they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and to what they can attain.

299.

_PIA FRAUS_ OR SOMETHING ELSE.-I hope I am mistaken, but I think that in Germany of to-day a twofold sort of hypocrisy is set up as the duty of the moment for every one. From imperial-political misgivings Germanism is demanded, and from social apprehensions Christianity-but both only in words and gestures, and particularly in ability to keep silent. It is the veneer that nowadays costs so much and is paid for so highly; and for the benefit of the spectators the face of the nation a.s.sumes German and Christian wrinkles.