[22] The question of the first appearance of syphilis in Europe appears to have been settled by an article in the St. Louis Urological and Cutaneous Review for 1924.
[23] Probably, like so many leaders of thought, Nietzsche was of the manic-depressive temperament, with all the apparently insane egotism of that temperament.
[24] It reminds one of Beethoven and the rice pudding, and of Henry VIII and his loving subjects. But, whereas Henry, being a law-abiding, even though impetuous, sovereign, was able to satisfy his obsessions by due process of law, Schopenhauer and Beethoven had to take the matter into their own forthright hands. And yet they say that the world did not improve in those 300 years.
[25] Probably he was thinking of gonorrhœal ophthalmia, and dreading lest he catch it by the unconventional way of a bath. No doubt somebody had warned him against the dangers of the towel. He was full of quaint ideas about infection. He must have walked in a maze of ghosts due to his syphilophobia.
[26] I hate to remind the world of the ancient slander—
A woman, a dog, and a crab-apple tree,
The more you thrash ’em the better they be.
[27] Similarly Freud’s use of the term “sex” has been much misunderstood. It does not mean sensuality. In man it has been so sublimated as to come nearer to pity and love than to mere brute instinct.
[28] So far as we know we invariably become unconscious before we die; it seems to be exactly like falling asleep.
[29] Or rather perhaps the infinite forces of the universe as grasped by the mind of man.