In short, we come to the understanding of much within us solely by directing our glance without, and vice versa. Every object belongs to both sciences. You, ladies, are very interesting and difficult problems for the psychologist, but you are also extremely pretty phenomena of nature. Church and State are objects of the historian's research, but not less phenomena of nature, and in part, indeed, very curious phenomena. If the historical sciences have inaugurated wide extensions of view by presenting to us the thoughts of new and strange peoples, the physical sciences in a certain sense do this in a still greater degree. In making man disappear in the All, in annihilating him, so to speak, they force him to take an unprejudiced position without himself, and to form his judgments by a different standard from that of the petty human.
But if you should ask me now why man has two eyes, I should answer:
That he may look at nature justly and accurately; that he may come to understand that he himself, with all his views, correct and incorrect, with all his haute politique, is simply an evanescent shred of nature; that, to speak with Mephistopheles, he is a part of the part, and that it is absolutely unjustified,
"For man, the microcosmic fool, to see
Himself a whole so frequently."
[ON SYMMETRY.]
An ancient philosopher once remarked that people who cudgelled their brains about the nature of the moon reminded him of men who discussed the laws and institutions of a distant city of which they had heard no more than the name. The true philosopher, he said, should turn his glance within, should study himself and his notions of right and wrong; only thence could he derive real profit.
This ancient formula for happiness might be restated in the familiar words of the Psalm:
"Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed."
To-day, if he could rise from the dead and walk about among us, this philosopher would marvel much at the different turn which matters have taken.