SIXTH JUBILEE.
The Ten Persecutions of the Reader.—Liana's Eastern Room.—Disputation upon Patience.—The Picturesque Cure.
34. CYCLE.
Postulates—apothegms—philosophems—Erasmian adages—observations of Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Lavater, do I in one week invent in countless numbers, more than I can in six months get rid of by bringing them into my biographical petits soupés as episode-dishes. Thus does the lottery-mintage of my unprinted manuscripts swell higher and higher every day, the more extracts and winnings I deal out to my reader therefrom in print. In this way I creep out of the world without having, while in it, said anything. Lavater takes a more rational course; he lets the whole lottery-wheel, filled with treasures, under the title of manuscripts (just as we, inversely, despatch manuscripts to the publishers by mail under the title of printed matter) circulate even among the literati.
But why shall I not do the same, and let at least one or two lymphatic veins of my water-treasure leap up and run out? I limit myself to ten persecutions of the reader,—calling my ten aphorisms thus, merely because I imagine the readers to be martyrs of their opinions, and myself the Regent who converts them by force. The following aphorism, if one reckons the foregoing as the first persecution, is, I hope, the
Second.
Nothing sifts and winnows our preferences and partialities better than an imitation of the same by others. For a genius there are no sharper polishing-machines and grinding-disks at hand than his apes. If, further, every one of us could see running along beside him a duplicate of himself, a complete Archimimus[63] and repeater in complimenting, taking off the hat, dancing, speaking, scolding, bragging, &c.; by Heaven! such an exact repeating-work of our discords would make quite other people out of me and other people than we are at present. The first and least step which we should take toward reflection and virtue would be this, that we should find our bodily methodology, e. g. our walk, dress, dialect, our oaths, looks, favorite dishes, &c., no better than those of all others, but just the same. Princes have the good fortune that all courtiers around them station themselves as faithful supernumerary copyists and pier-mirrors of their selves, and propose to improve them by this Helot-mimicry. But they seldom attain their good end, because the Prince,—and that were also to be feared of me and the reader,—like the principle of non-distinguendum, does not believe in any real twins, but imagines that in morals, as in catoptrics, every mirror and mock rainbow shows everything inverted.