Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 30

355.

DANGER IN ADMIRATION.-From excessive admiration for the virtues of others one can lose the sense of one's own, and finally, through lack of practice, lose these virtues themselves, without retaining the alien virtues as compensation.

356.

USES OF SICKLINESS.-He who is often ill not only has a far greater pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires a very keen sense of what is healthy or sickly in actions and achievements, both his own and others'. Thus, for example, it is just the writers of uncertain health-among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great writers must be cla.s.sed-who are wont to have a far more even and a.s.sured tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and convalescence and in their teachers-morning, sunshine, forest, and fountain.

357.

DISLOYALTY A CONDITION OF MASTERY.-It cannot be helped-every master has but one pupil, and _he_ becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined for mastery.

358.

NEVER IN VAIN.-In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either you already reach a higher point to-day, or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher to-morrow.

359.

THROUGH GREY WINDOW-PANES.-Is what you see through this window of the world so beautiful that you do not wish to look through any other window-ay, and even try to prevent others from so doing?

360.

A SIGN OF RADICAL CHANGES.-When we dream of persons long forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have suffered radical changes, and that the soil on which we live has been completely undermined. The dead rise again, and our antiquity becomes modernity.

361.

MEDICINE OF THE SOUL.-To lie still and think little is the cheapest medicine for all diseases of the soul, and, with the aid of good-will, becomes pleasanter every hour that it is used.

362.

INTELLECTUAL ORDER OF PRECEDENCE.-You rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule.

363.

THE FATALIST.-You must believe in fate-science can compel you thereto. All that develops in you out of that belief-cowardice, devotion or loftiness, and uprightness-bears witness to the soil in which the grain was sown, but not to the grain itself, for from that seed anything and everything can grow.

364.

THE REASON FOR MUCH FRETFULNESS.-He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world.

365.

EXCESS AS A REMEDY.-We can make our own talent once more acceptable to ourselves by honouring and enjoying the opposite talent for some time to excess.-Using excess as a remedy is one of the more refined devices in the art of life.

366.

"WILL A SELF."-Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "Know thyself," but as if always confronted with the command, "Will a self, so you will become a self."-Fate seems always to have left them a choice. Inactive, contemplative natures, on the other hand, reflect on how they have chosen their self "once for all" at their entry into life.

367.