508. FREE NATURE.--We are so fond of being out among Nature, because it has no opinions about us. 509. EACH SUPERIOR IN ONE THING.--In civilised intercourse every one feels himself superior to all others in at least one thing; kindly feelings generally are based thereon, inasmuch as every one can, in certain circumstances, render help, and is therefore entitled to accept help without shame. 510. CONSOLATORY ARGUMENTS.--In the case of a death we mostly use consolatory arguments not so much to alleviate the grief as to make excuses for feeling so easily consoled. 511. PERSONS LOYAL TO THEIR CONVICTIONS.--Whoever is very busy retains his general views and opinions almost unchanged. So also does every one who labours in the service of an idea; he will nevermore examine the idea itself, he no longer has any time to do so; indeed, it is against his interests to consider it as still admitting of discussion. 512. MORALITY AND QUANTITY.--The higher morality of one man as compared with that of another, often lies merely in the fact that his aims are quantitively greater. The other, living in a circumscribed sphere, is dragged down by petty occupations. 513. "THE LIFE" AS THE PROCEEDS OF LIFE.--A man may stretch himself out ever so far with his knowledge; he may seem to himself ever so objective, but eventually he realises nothing therefrom but his own biography. 514. IRON NECESSITY.--Iron necessity is a thing which has been found, in the course of history, to be neither iron nor necessary. 515. FROM EXPERIENCE.--The unreasonableness of a thing is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition thereof. 516. TRUTH.--Nobody dies nowadays of fatal truths, there are too many antidotes to them. 517. A FUNDAMENTAL INSIGHT.--There is no pre-established harmony between the promotion of truth and the welfare of mankind. 518. MAN'S LOT.--He who thinks most deeply knows that he is always in the wrong, however he may act and decide. 519. TRUTH AS CIRCE.--Error has made animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of making man into an animal again? 520. THE DANGER OF OUR CULTURE.--We belong to a period of which the culture is in danger of being destroyed by the appliances of culture. 521. GREATNESS MEANS LEADING THE WAY.--No stream is large and copious of itself, but becomes great by receiving and leading on so many tributary streams. It is so, also, with all intellectual greatnesses. It is only a question of some one indicating the direction to be followed by so many affluents; not whether he was richly or poorly gifted originally. 522. A FEEBLE CONSCIENCE.--People who talk about their importance to mankind have a feeble conscience for common bourgeois rectitude, keeping of contracts, promises, etc. 523. DESIRING TO BE LOVED.--The demand to be loved is the greatest of presumptions. 524.