The Good Seduces to Life.—All good things, even all good books that are written against life, are strong means of attraction to life.
17.
The Happiness of the Historian.—“When we hear the hair-splitting metaphysicians and prophets of the after-world speak, we others feel indeed that we are the ‘poor in spirit,’ but that ours is the heavenly kingdom of change, with spring and autumn, summer and winter, and theirs the after-world, with its grey, everlasting frosts and shadows.” Thus soliloquised a man as he walked in the morning sunshine, a man who in his pursuit of history has constantly changed not only his mind but his heart. In contrast to the metaphysicians, he is happy to harbour in himself not an “immortal soul” but many mortal souls.
18.
Three Varieties of Thinkers.—There are streaming, flowing, trickling mineral springs, and three corresponding varieties of thinkers. The layman values them by the volume of the water, the expert by the contents of the water—in other words, by the elements in them that are not water.
19.
The Picture of Life.—The task of painting the picture of life, often as it has been attempted [pg 020] by poets and philosophers, is nevertheless irrational. Even in the hands of the greatest artist-thinkers, pictures and miniatures of one life only—their own—have come into being, and indeed no other result is possible. While in the process of developing, a thing that develops, cannot mirror itself as fixed and permanent, as a definite object.
20.
Truth will have no Gods before it.—The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.