Volume Ii Part 59 (2/2)

294.

DISCRETION AND SUCCESS.-That great quality of discretion, which is fundamentally the virtue of virtues, their ancestress and queen, has in common life by no means always success on its side. The wooer would find himself deceived if he had wooed that virtue only for the sake of success.

For it is rated by practical people as suspicious, and is confused with cunning and hypocrisy: he who obviously lacks discretion, the man who quickly grasps and sometimes misses his grasp, has prejudice on his side-he is an honest, trustworthy fellow. Practical people, accordingly, do not like the prudent man, thinking he is to them a danger. Moreover, we often a.s.sume the prudent man to be anxious, preoccupied, pedantic-unpractical, b.u.t.terfly people find him uncomfortable, because he does not live in their happy-go-lucky way, without thinking of actions and duties; he appears among them as their embodied conscience, and the bright day is dimmed to their eyes before his gaze. Thus when success and popularity fail him, he may often say by way of private consolation, ”So high are the taxes you have to pay for the possession of the most precious of human commodities-still it is worth the price!”

295.

_ET IN ARCADIA EGO._-I looked down, over waves of hills, to a milky-green lake, through firs and pines austere with age; rocky crags of all shapes about me, the soil gay with flowers and gra.s.ses. A herd of cattle moved, stretched, and expanded itself before me; single cows and groups in the distance, in the clearest evening light, hard by the forest of pines; others nearer and darker; all in calm and eventide contentment. My watch pointed to half-past six. The bull of the herd had stepped into the white foaming brook, and went forward slowly, now striving against, now giving way to his tempestuous course; thus, no doubt, he took his sort of fierce pleasure. Two dark brown beings, of Bergamasque origin, tended the herd, the girl dressed almost like a boy. On the left, overhanging cliffs and fields of snow above broad belts of woodland; to the right, two enormous ice-covered peaks, high above me, s.h.i.+mmering in the veil of the sunny haze-all large, silent, and bright. The beauty of the whole was awe-inspiring and induced to a mute wors.h.i.+p of the moment and its revelation. Unconsciously, as if nothing could be more natural, you peopled this pure, clear world of light (which had no trace of yearning, of expectancy, of looking forward or backward) with Greek heroes. You felt it all as Poussin and his school felt-at once heroic and idyllic.-So individual men too have lived, constantly feeling themselves in the world and the world in themselves, and among them one of the greatest men, the inventor of a heroico-idyllic form of philosophy-Epicurus.

296.

COUNTING AND MEASURING.-The art of seeing many things, of weighing one with another, of reckoning one thing with another and constructing from them a rapid conclusion, a fairly correct sum-that goes to make a great politician or general or merchant. This quality is, in fact, a power of speedy mental calculation. The art of seeing _one_ thing alone, of finding therein the sole motive for action, the guiding principle of all other action, goes to make the hero and also the fanatic. This quality means a dexterity in measuring with one scale.

297.

NOT TO SEE TOO SOON.-As long as we undergo some experience, we must give ourselves up to the experience and shut our eyes-in other words, not become observers of what we are undergoing. For to observe would disturb good digestion of the experience, and instead of wisdom we should gain nothing but dyspepsia.

298.

FROM THE PRACTICE OF THE WISE.-To become wise we must _will_ to undergo certain experiences, and accordingly leap into their jaws. This, it is true, is very dangerous. Many a ”sage” has been eaten up in the process.

299.

EXHAUSTION OF THE INTELLECT.-Our occasional coldness and indifference towards people, which is imputed to us as hardness and defect of character, is often only an exhaustion of the intellect. In this state other men are to us, as we are to ourselves, tedious or immaterial.

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