Volume Ii Part 32 (1/2)
380.
THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE MISINTERPRETED.-At the moment when one is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing the reverse.
381.
IMITATION.-By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit-especially in art.
382.
FINAL TEACHING OF HISTORY.-”Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past, we shall rather cry out at the end, ”Anything but a return to that! The spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pa.s.s the same verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under such conditions was intolerable. ”And yet every one can endure his own times?” Yes, because the spirit of his age not only lies _upon_ him but is _in_ him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear itself.
383.
GREATNESS AS A MASK.-By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes; by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us. For envy levels and makes equal; it is an unconscious, plaintive variety of modesty.-It may be indeed that here and there, for the sake of the above-named advantage, envy has been a.s.sumed as a mask by those who are not envious. Certainly, however, greatness in comportment is often used as the mask of envy by ambitious men who would rather suffer drawbacks and embitter their foes than let it be seen that they place them on an equal footing with themselves.
384.
UNPARDONABLE.-You gave him an opportunity of displaying the greatness of his character, and he did not make use of the opportunity. He will never forgive you for that.
385.
CONTRASTS.-The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, ”The ego is always hateful,” the most childish in the still more famous saying, ”Love thy neighbour as thyself.”-With the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun.
386.