Part 68

--External punctiliousness; because this punctiliousness hedges a man about, keeps him at a distance, saves him from being confounded with somebody else.

A frivolous appearance in word, clothing, and bearing, with which stoical hardness and self-control protect themselves from all prying inquisitiveness or curiosity.

--A slow step and a slow glance. There are not too many valuable things on earth: and these come and wish to come of themselves to him who has value. We are not quick to admire.

--We know how to bear poverty, want, and even illness.

--We avoid small honours owing to our mistrust of all who are over-ready to praise: for the man who praises believes he understands what he praises: but to understand--Balzac, that typical man of ambition, betrayed the fact comprendre c'est égaler.

--Our doubt concerning the communicativeness of our hearts goes very deep; to us, loneliness is not a matter of choice, it is imposed upon us.

--We are convinced that we only have duties to our equals, to others we do as we think best: we know that justice is only to be expected among equals (alas! this will not be realised for some time to come),

--We are ironical towards the "gifted"; we hold the belief that no morality is possible without good birth.

--We always feel as if we were those who had to dispense honours: while he is not found too frequently who would be worthy of honouring us.

--We are always disguised: the higher a man's nature the more is he in need of remaining incognito. If there be a God, then out of sheer decency He ought only to show Himself on earth in the form of a man.

--We are capable of otium, of the unconditional conviction that although a handicraft does not shame one in any sense, it certainly reduces one's rank. However much we may respect "industry," and know how to give it its due, we do not appreciate it in a bourgeois sense, or after the manner of those insatiable and cackling artists who, like hens, cackle and lay eggs, and cackle again.

--We protect artists and poets and any one who happens to be a master in something; but as creatures of a higher order than those, who only know how to do something, who are only "productive men," we do not confound ourselves with them.

--We find joy in all forms and ceremonies; we would fain foster everything formal, and we are convinced that courtesy is one of the greatest virtues; we feel suspicious of every kind of laisser aller, including the freedom of the press and of thought; because, under such conditions, the intellect grows easy-going and coarse, and stretches its limbs.

--We take pleasure in women as in a perhaps daintier, more delicate, and more ethereal kind of creature. What a treat it is to meet creatures who have only dancing and nonsense and finery in their minds! They have always been the delight of every tense and profound male soul, whose life is burdened with heavy responsibilities.

--We take pleasure in princes and in priests, because in big things, as in small, they actually uphold the belief in the difference of human values, even in the estimation of the past, and at least symbolically.

--We are able to keep silence i but we do not breathe a word of this in the presence of listeners.

--We are able to endure long enmities: we lack the power of easy reconciliations.

--We have a loathing of demagogism, of enlightenment, of amiability, and plebeian familiarity.

--We collect precious things, the needs of higher and fastidious souls; we wish to possess nothing in common. We want to have our own books, our own landscapes.

--We protest against evil and fine experiences, and take care not to generalise too quickly. The individual case: how ironically we regard it when it has the bad taste to put on the airs of a rule!

--We love that which is naïf, and naïf people, but as spectators and higher creatures; we think Faust is just as simple as his Margaret.

--We have a low estimation of good people, because they are gregarious animals: we know how often an invaluable golden drop of goodness lies concealed beneath the most evil, the most malicious, and the hardest exterior, and that this single grain outweighs all the mere goody-goodiness of milk-and-watery souls.

--We don't regard a man of our kind as refuted by his vices, nor by his tomfooleries. We are well aware that we are not recognised with ease, and that we have every reason to make our foreground very prominent.

944.

What is noble?--The fact that one is constantly forced to be playing a part. That one is constantly searching for situations in which one is forced to put on airs. That one leaves happiness to the greatest number: the happiness which consists of inner peacefulness, of virtue, of comfort, and of Anglo-angelic-back-parlour-smugness, à la Spencer. That one instinctively seeks for heavy responsibilities. That one knows how to create enemies everywhere, at a pinch even in one's self. That one contradicts the greatest number, not in words at all, but by continually behaving differently from them.

945.

Virtue (for instance, truthfulness) is our most noble and most dangerous luxury. We must not decline the disadvantages which it brings in its train.

946.