340.
Appearances are against the Historian.—It is a sufficiently demonstrated fact that human beings come from the womb; nevertheless when children grow up and stand by the side of their mother this hypothesis appears very absurd—all appearances are against it.
341.
The Advantage of Ignorance.—Some one has said that in his childhood he experienced such a contempt for the caprices and whims of a melancholy temperament that, until he had grown up and had become a middle-aged man, he did not know what his own temperament was like: it was precisely a melancholy temperament. He declared that this was the best of all possible kinds of ignorance.
342.
Do not be deceived!—Yes, he examined the matter from every side and you think him to be a [pg 282] man of profound knowledge. But he only wishes to lower the price—he wants to buy it!
343.
A Moral Pretence.—You refuse to be dissatisfied with yourselves or to suffer from yourselves, and this you call your moral tendency! Very well; another may perhaps call it your cowardice! One thing, however, is certain, and that is that you will never take a trip round the world (and you yourselves are this world), and you will always remain in yourselves an accident and a clod on the face of the earth! Do you fancy that we who hold different views from you are merely exposing ourselves out of pure folly to the journey through our own deserts, swamps, and glaciers, and that we are voluntarily choosing grief and disgust with ourselves, like the Stylites?
344.
Subtlety in Mistakes.—If Homer, as they say, sometimes nodded, he was wiser than all the artists of sleepless ambition. We must allow admirers to stop for a time and take breath by letting them find fault now and then; for nobody can bear an uninterruptedly brilliant and untiring excellence—and instead of doing good such a master would merely become a taskmaster, whom we hate while he precedes us.