AFTER DEATH.—It is only long after the death of a man that we find it inconceivable that he should be missed—in the case of really great men, only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when any one dies that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh. 374. LEAVING IN HADES.—We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with cruel lust after our blood. 375. NEAR TO BEGGARY.—Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to the room in which his hoarded treasures repose. He is then like the poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living. 376. CHAIN-THINKERS.—To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought that he hears or reads at once assumes the form of a chain. 377. PITY.—In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy. 378. WHAT IS GENIUS?—To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim. 379. VANITY OF COMBATANTS.—He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting should be admired. 380. THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE MISINTERPRETED.—At the moment when one is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing the reverse. 381. IMITATION.—By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit—especially in art. 382. FINAL TEACHING OF HISTORY.—“Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past, we shall rather cry out at the end, “Anything but a return to that! The spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pass the same verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under such conditions was intolerable. “And yet every one can endure his own times?” Yes, because the spirit of his age not only lies _upon_ him but is _in_ him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear itself. 383.