Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 7

73.

A DANGER TO UNIVERSAL MORALITY.-People who are at the same time n.o.ble and honest come to deify every devilry that brings out their honesty, and to suspend for a time the balance of their moral judgment.

74.

THE SADDEST ERROR.-It is an unpardonable offence when one discovers that where one was convinced of being loved, one is only regarded as a household utensil and decoration, whereby the master of the house can find an outlet for his vanity before his guests.

75.

 

LOVE AND DUALITY.-What else is love but understanding and rejoicing that another lives, works, and feels in a different and opposite way to ourselves? That love may be able to bridge over the contrasts by joys, we must not remove or deny those contrasts. Even self-love presupposes an irreconcileable duality (or plurality) in one person.

76.

SIGNS FROM DREAMS.-What one sometimes does not know and feel accurately in waking hours-whether one has a good or a bad conscience as regards some person-is revealed completely and unambiguously by dreams.

77.

DEBAUCHERY.-Not joy but joylessness is the mother of debauchery.

78.

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.-No one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. All complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise. Whether we do one or the other, we always make some one responsible.

79.

DOUBLY UNJUST.-We sometimes advance truth by a twofold injustice: when we see and represent consecutively the two sides of a case which we are not in a position to see together, but in such a way that every time we mistake or deny the other side, fancying that what we see is the whole truth.

80.

MISTRUST.-Self-mistrust does not always proceed uncertainly and shyly, but sometimes in a furious rage, having worked itself into a frenzy in order not to tremble.

81.

PHILOSOPHY OF PARVENUS.-If you want to be a personality you must even hold your shadow in honour.

82.

KNOWING HOW TO WASH ONESELF CLEAN.-We must know how to emerge cleaner from unclean conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves even with dirty water.

83.

LETTING YOURSELF GO.-The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go.

84.

THE INNOCENT ROGUE.-There is a slow, gradual path to vice and rascality of every description. In the end, the traveller is quite abandoned by the insect-swarms of a bad conscience, and although a thorough scoundrel he walks in innocence.

85.