283.
Domestic and Mental Peace.—Our habitual mood depends upon the mood in which we maintain our habitual entourage.
284.
New Things as Old Ones.—Many people seem irritated when something new is told them: [pg 258] they feel the ascendancy which the news has given to the person who has learnt it first.
285.
What are the Limits of the Ego.—The majority of people take under their protection, as it were, something that they know, as if the fact of knowing it was sufficient in itself to make it their property. The acquisitiveness of the egoistic feeling has no limits: Great men speak as if they had behind them the whole of time, and had placed themselves at the head of this enormous host; and good women boast of the beauty of their children, their clothes, their dog, their physician, or their native town, but the only thing they dare not say is, “I am all that.” Chi non ha non è—as they say in Italy.
286.
Domestic Animals, Pets and the Like.—Could there be anything more repugnant than the sentimentality which is shown to plants and animals—and this on the part of a creature who from the very beginning has made such ravages among them as their most ferocious enemy,—and who ends by even claiming affectionate feelings from his weakened and mutilated victims! Before this kind of “nature” man must above all be serious, if he is any sort of a thinking being.
287.
Two Friends.—They were friends once, but now they have ceased to be so, and both of them [pg 259] broke off the friendship at the same time, the one because he believed himself to be too greatly misunderstood, and the other because he thought he was known too intimately—and both were wrong! For neither of them knew himself well enough.