THE ADVOCATE OF THE DEVIL.--"Only by our own suffering do we become wise, only by others' suffering do we become good"--so runs that strange philosophy which derives all morality from pity and all intellectuality from the isolation of the individual. Herein this philosophy is the unconscious pleader for all human deterioration. For pity needs suffering, and isolation contempt of others.
THE MORAL CHARACTER-MASKS.--In ages when the character-masks of different classes are definitely fixed, like the classes themselves, moralists will be seduced into holding the moral character-masks, too, as absolute, and in delineating them accordingly. Thus Molière is intelligible as the contemporary of the society of Louis XIV.: in our society of transitions and intermediate stages he would seem an inspired pedant.
THE MOST NOBLE VIRTUE.--In the first era of the higher humanity courage is accounted the most noble virtue, in the next justice, in the third temperance, in the fourth wisdom. In which era do _we_ live? In which do _you_ live?
A NECESSARY PRELIMINARY.--A man who will not become master of his irritability, his venomous and vengeful feelings, and his lust, and attempts to become master in anything else, is as stupid as the farmer who lays out his field beside a torrent without guarding against that torrent.
WHAT IS TRUTH?--_Schwarzert_ (Melanchthon): We often preach our faith when we have lost it, and leave not a stone unturned to find it--and then we often do not preach worst!
_Luther_: Brother, you are really speaking like an angel to-day.
_Schwarzert_: But that is the idea of your enemies, and they apply it to you.
_Luther_: Then it would be a lie from the devil's hind-quarters.
THE HABIT OF CONTRASTS.--Superficial, inexact observation sees contrasts everywhere in nature (for instance, "hot and cold"), where there are no contrasts, only differences of degree. This bad habit has induced us to try to understand and interpret even the inner nature, the intellectual and moral world, in accordance with such contrasts. An infinite amount of cruelty, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, and coldness has entered into human emotion, because men imagined they saw contrasts where there were only transitions.