One solitary remark, so as not to make this letter too long. I am delighted with the aphorism on the hazard of marriage (Aphorism 150). But why do you not _dig_ deeper here? You speak somewhere with a certain reverence of marriage, which by implying an emotional ideal has idealised emotion--here, however, you are more blunt and forcible. Why not for once say the _full_ truth about it? I am of opinion that the institution of marriage, which may have been very useful in taming brutes, causes more misery to mankind than even the Church has done. Church, monarchy, marriage, property, these are to my mind four old venerable institutions which mankind will have to reform _from the foundations_ in order to be able to breathe freely. And of these marriage alone kills the individuality, paralyses liberty and is the embodiment of a paradox. But the shocking thing about it is that humanity is still too coarse to be able to shake it off. The most emancipated writers, so called, still speak of marriage with a devout and virtuous air which maddens me. And they gain their point, since it is impossible to say what one could put in its place for the mob. There is nothing else to be done but slowly to transform opinion. What do you think about it? I should like very much to hear how it is with your eyes. I was glad to see how plain and clear your writing is. Externally, I suppose, you lead a calm and peaceful life down there? Mine is a life of conflict which wears one out. In these realms I am even more hated now than I was seventeen years ago; this is not pleasant in itself, though it is gratifying in so far as it proves to me that I have not yet lost my vigour nor come to terms on any point with sovereign mediocrity. Your attentive and grateful reader, GEORGE BRANDES. 8. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES. _Nice_, March 27, 1888. MY DEAR SIR, I should much have liked to thank you before this for so rich and thoughtful a letter: but my health has been troubling me, so that I have fallen badly into arrears with all good things. In my eyes, I may say in passing, I have a dynamometer for my general state; since my health in the main has once more improved, they have become stronger than I had ever believed possible--they have put to shame the prophecies of the very best German oculists. If Messieurs Gräfe _et hoc genus omne_ had turned out right, I should long ago have been blind. As it is, I have come to No. 3 spectacles--bad enough!--_but I still see_. I speak of this worry because you were sympathetic enough to inquire about it, and because during the last few weeks my eyes have been particularly weak and irritable.