Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 25

293.

UNINTELLIGIBLE, UNENDURABLE.-A youth cannot understand that an old man has also had his delights, his dawns of feeling, his changings and soarings of thought. It offends him to think that such things have existed before. But it makes him very bitter to hear that, to become fruitful, he must lose those buds and dispense with their fragrance.

294.

THE PARTY WITH THE AIR OF MARTYRDOM.-Every party that can a.s.sume an air of martyrdom wins good-natured souls over to its side and thereby itself acquires an air of good nature-greatly to its advantage.

295.

a.s.sERTIONS SURER THAN ARGUMENTS.-An a.s.sertion has, with the majority of men at any rate, more effect than an argument, for arguments provoke mistrust. Hence demagogues seek to strengthen the arguments of their party by a.s.sertions.

296.

THE BEST CONCEALERS.-All regularly successful men are profoundly cunning in making their faults and weaknesses look like manifestations of strength. This proves that they must know their defects uncommonly well.

297.

FROM TIME TO TIME.-He sat in the city gateway and said to one who pa.s.sed through that this was the city gate. The latter replied that this was true, but that one must not be too much in the right if one expected to be thanked for it. "Oh," answered the other, "I don't want thanks, but from time to time it is very pleasant not merely to be in the right but to remain in the right."

298.

VIRTUE WAS NOT INVENTED BY THE GERMANS.-Goethe's n.o.bleness and freedom from envy, Beethoven's fine hermitical resignation, Mozart's cheerfulness and grace of heart, Handel's unbending manliness and freedom under the law, Bach's confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need to renounce glamour and success-are these qualities peculiarly German?-If they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and to what they can attain.

299.

_PIA FRAUS_ OR SOMETHING ELSE.-I hope I am mistaken, but I think that in Germany of to-day a twofold sort of hypocrisy is set up as the duty of the moment for every one. From imperial-political misgivings Germanism is demanded, and from social apprehensions Christianity-but both only in words and gestures, and particularly in ability to keep silent. It is the veneer that nowadays costs so much and is paid for so highly; and for the benefit of the spectators the face of the nation a.s.sumes German and Christian wrinkles.

300.

HOW FAR EVEN IN THE GOOD THE HALF MAY BE MORE THAN THE WHOLE.-In all things that are constructed to last and demand the service of many hands, much that is less good must be made a rule, although the organiser knows what is better and harder very well. He will calculate that there will never be a lack of persons who _can_ correspond to the rule, and he knows that the middling good is the rule.-The youth seldom sees this point, and as an innovator thinks how marvellously he is in the right and how strange is the blindness of others.

301.

THE PARTISAN.-The true partisan learns nothing more, he only experiences and judges. It is significant that Solon, who was never a partisan but pursued his aims above and apart from parties or even against them, was the father of that simple phrase wherein lies the secret of the health and vitality of Athens: "I grow old, but I am always learning."

302.

WHAT IS GERMAN ACCORDING TO GOETHE.-They are really intolerable people of whom one cannot even accept the good, who have freedom of disposition but do not remark that they are lacking in freedom of taste and spirit. Yet just this, according to Goethe's well-weighed judgment, is German.-His voice and his example indicate that the German should be more than a German if he wishes to be useful or even endurable to other nations-and which direction his striving should take, in order that he may rise above and beyond himself.

303.

WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO REMAIN STATIONARY.-When the ma.s.ses begin to rage, and reason is under a cloud, it is a good thing, if the health of one's soul is not quite a.s.sured, to go under a doorway and look out to see what the weather is like.

304.

THE REVOLUTION-SPIRIT AND THE POSSESSION-SPIRIT.-The only remedy against Socialism that still lies in your power is to avoid provoking Socialism-in other words, to live in moderation and contentment, to prevent as far as possible all lavish display, and to aid the State as far as possible in its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries. You do not like this remedy?

Then, you rich bourgeois who call yourselves "Liberals," confess that it is your own inclination that you find so terrible and menacing in Socialists, but allow to prevail in yourselves as unavoidable, as if with you it were something different. As you are const.i.tuted, if you had not your fortune and the cares of maintaining it, this bent of yours would make Socialists of you. Possession alone differentiates you from them. If you wish to conquer the a.s.sailants of your prosperity, you must first conquer yourselves.-And if that prosperity only meant well-being, it would not be so external and provocative of envy; it would be more generous, more benevolent, more compensatory, more helpful. But the spurious, histrionic element in your pleasures, which lie more in the feeling of contrast (because others have them not, and feel envious) than in feelings of realised and heightened power-your houses, dresses, carriages, shops, the demands of your palates and your tables, your noisy operatic and musical enthusiasm; lastly your women, formed and fashioned but of base metal, gilded but without the ring of gold, chosen by you for show and considering themselves meant for show-these are the things that spread the poison of that national disease, which seizes the ma.s.ses ever more and more as a Socialistic heart-itch, but has its origin and breeding-place in you. Who shall now arrest this epidemic?

305.