46.
The Human “Thing in Itself.”—The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity: nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.
47.
The Farce of Many Industrious Persons.—By an excess of effort they win leisure for themselves, and then they can do nothing with it but count the hours until the tale is ended.
48.
The Possession of Joy Abounding.—He that has joy abounding must be a good man, but perhaps [pg 035] he is not the cleverest of men, although he has reached the very goal towards which the cleverest man is striving with all his cleverness.
49.
In the Mirror of Nature.—Is not a man fairly well described, when we are told that he likes to walk between tall fields of golden corn: that he prefers the forest and flower colours of sere and chilly autumn to all others, because they point to something more beautiful than Nature has ever attained: that he feels as much at home under big broad-leaved walnut trees as among his nearest kinsfolk: that in the mountains his greatest joy is to come across those tiny distant lakes from which the very eyes of solitude seem to peer at him: that he loves that grey calm of the misty twilight that steals along the windows on autumn and early winter evenings and shuts out all soulless sounds as with velvet curtains: that in unhewn stones he recognises the last remaining traces of the primeval age, eager for speech, and honours them from childhood upwards: that, lastly, the sea with its shifting serpent skin and wild-beast beauty is, and remains to him, unfamiliar?—Yes, something of the man is described herewith, but the mirror of Nature does not say that the same man, with (and not even “in spite of”) all his idyllic sensibilities, might be disagreeable, stingy, and conceited. Horace, who was a good judge of such matters, in his famous beatus ille qui procul negotiis puts the tenderest feeling for country life into the mouth of a Roman money-lender.
50.
Power without Victory.—The strongest cognition (that of the complete non-freedom of the human will) is yet the poorest in results, for it has always had the mightiest of opponents—human vanity.