The reason is that every sentiment and every passion is a mad thing, demanding, or building, a complete world of its own. We are capable of being vexed because it's past twelve o'clock, or because it's _not_ past, but only _just_ twelve o'clock. What nonsense! The passion wants besides a personality of its own (sein eignes Ich), and a world of its own,--a time of its own as well. I beg every one, just for once, to let his passions speak plainly out, and to listen to them, and ascertain what it is that they really each of them want; he will be dismayed when he sees what monstrous things are these desires of theirs which they have previously only half muttered. Anger would have but one neck for all mankind, love would have but one heart, sorrow but one pair of lachrymal ducts, and pride two bent knees! When I was reading in Widman's 'Höfer Chronik' the account of the fearful, bloody times of the thirty years' war, and, as it were, lived them over again; when I heard once more the cries for help of those poor suffering people, all struggling in the Danube-whirlpools of their days--and saw the beating of their hands, and their delirious wanderings on the crumbling pillars of broken bridges, foaming billows and drifting ice-floes dashing against them; and then, when I thought "All these waves have gone down, the ice is melted, the howling turmoil is all sunk to silence, so are the human beings and all their sighs"--I was filled with a melancholy comfort, a thought of consolation for _all_ times, and I asked, "Was, and is, then, this passing, cursory, transient burst of sorrow at the CHURCHYARD-GATE OF LIFE, which three steps into the nearest cavern could end, a fit cause for this cowardly lamentation?" Truly if, as I believe, there be such a thing as true patience under an eternal woe, then, verily, patience under a transitory sorrow is hardly worth the name. A great but unmerited national calamity should not humble us, as the theologians would have it--it should make us proud. When the long, heavy sword of war falls upon mankind, and thousands of blanched hearts are torn and bleeding--or when in the blue, pure evening sky the hot cloud of a burning city, smoking on its funereal pyre, hangs dark and lurid, like a cloud of ashes, the ashes of thousands of hearts and joys all burnt to cinders and dust--then let thy spirit be lifted up in pride, let it loathe, contemn, and despise tears, and that for which they fall, and let it say--