20.

Dignity of Folly.—Several millenniums further on in the path of the last century!—and in everything that man does the highest prudence will be exhibited: but just thereby prudence will have lost all its dignity. It will then, sure enough, be necessary to be prudent, but it will also be so usual and common, that a more fastidious taste will feel this necessity as vulgarity. And just as a tyranny of truth and science would be in a position to raise the value of falsehood, a tyranny of prudence could force into prominence a new species of nobleness. To be noble—that might then mean, perhaps, to be capable of follies.