"At the beginning of our acquaintance (he confessed it himself later on), he had determined to win me by affability, and to preserve my affection by doing everything, or nearly everything, that I wished. He also abstained from contradicting me. During a whole year I never heard him express a view of his own; he only repeated my thoughts. I believed he had no will, no views, not even feelings. He seemed to me to be a mirror in which I was reflected; I never found him, only myself. Then I became tired of him, did not know how to hold myself in, and asked him to do something wrong. Then at last I discovered the man himself. With an unparalleled strength of character, he left wife, child, and home! In order 'to save his soul,' as he said. 'Have you then got a soul?' I asked. 'Judge for yourself,' he answered, and departed.
"It is dangerous to be affable, and it is dangerous to consider men simple."
Cringing before the Beast.—The teacher said: "When a man once yields to desire, the ceasing of a certain restraint carries with it a feeling of freedom and deliverance. This pleasurable feeling we almost regard as a reward, and conclude that we have acted rightly when we have thrown a bone to the barking dog. But had we forborne to do so, the dog would not have formed the habit of barking, and we might have gone our way in the proud consciousness of not having cringed before the beast, by bribing it to silence. The feeling of pleasure would have been changed into a consciousness of victory and power, which is far superior to sensuality.
"Never cringe before the beast; then it will not get the better of you. The suppression of an unlawful desire is like winding up a watch; the mainspring contracts till it creaks, but it does not do its work properly till then. Preserve your strength for yourself; then you will conquer your foes in the battles of life. Waste not your virile energy, or the woman will get the better of you.
"You know very well what I mean by 'desire': I do not mean moderate eating and drinking; and you know very well what 'waste' means. You must also not believe that desire decreases with age. It is not so; but the intelligence and will-power increase, and therefore the victory is proportionably easier. I make you a present of this explanation: keep it, and show that you are intelligent enough to be able to receive a real one."
Ecclesia Triumphans.—The teacher said: "The world is full of lies, but there are also errors and misunderstandings. No two men give words the same meaning. But there are persistent lies which circulate like coins. There are lies of the lower classes, and lies of the upper classes; lies of the Catholics and of the Protestants. But those of the pagans are the worst of all. They believe they have the right to lie, because it profits them or their friends. One of the greatest lies of the pagans which misled me for a long time is the false assertion that Japan has accepted the material culture of Europe, but rejected Christianity. Two Japanese professors, who lately visited our land, declared on the contrary that there was a Christian church in each of the larger towns of Japan. There are Christians in the army, parliament, and universities. Their number is great—five-and-forty thousand Protestants, eight-and-fifty thousand Catholics, and five-and-twenty thousand adherents of the Greek Church. In the Second Chamber of the Japanese parliament two of the presidents have become Christians. And all that has taken place in thirty-five years. A thousand years pass by like nothing, and the future seems to belong to Christianity, since we have already seen that the chief powers of the world, Europe and America, are Christian.
"There is certainly no obligation to be a Christian, but some day it may be a disgrace not to be one, when one is born in a Christian country. It may come to be thought retrograde and conservative, and a failure to keep pace with development. The pagans celebrated the end of the eighteenth century as marking the overthrow of Christianity, but in 1802 appeared the finest book which has been written on Christianity, Le Génie du Christianisme, by Chateaubriand, and by its means the Church triumphed again."
Logic in Neurasthenia.—As the Teacher wandered in Qualheim, he came into a mountainous region, and saw a castle which was of dreamlike beauty. "Who is the enviable man who lives in such a palace?" he asked. His guide answered: "He is an unhappy, helpless hermit, without peace, and without a home. He was born with great artistic gifts, but employed them on rubbish. He drew nonsensical and trifling caricatures, distorted all that was beautiful into ugliness, and all that was great into pettiness."
"How does he occupy himself now?"