Nietzsche was a revealer, in the new photographic sense. Contact with his work has brought to light truths that were slumbering in men's minds. Happiness, like wealth, has its parasites. One does not dwell in a house; one dwells in himself. Put a pig in a palace and he'll make a pen of it. Paul Bourget still believes in duchesses. What is there astonishing about that? There are many people who believe in ghosts. The crowd has no idea of how much sensibility, and intelligence it requires to enjoy the perfume of a rose or the smile of a woman. Sainte-Beuve is too scholarly. He cannot stand nude before a nude statue; he has to have pockets from which to take out note-books and papers. A woman sometimes feels pity for the sorrows that she causes remorselessly. The little girl expects no declaration of tenderness from her doll. She loves it, and that's all. It is thus that we should love. The craze for decorations has reached such a height that actors, they say, are proud to play the rôle of an Officer of the Legion of Honor. I'm very fond of going to the butcher shop and looking at a sheep's brains. We have in our heads a reddish sponge of the same kind, which thinks. Love disposes one to religiosity. I knew an atheist who wished to go to church one evening to exchange vows with his mistress; through scruples, she refused. Intelligence is perhaps but a malady,--a beautiful malady; the oyster's pearl. There are anti-clericals who are in reality somewhat excessive Christians. Is not the poet who recites his verses before an audience really the nightingale singing his song? Not quite. The instinct has gone astray: sexual mimicry, without actual application. The useful has become a game: and this is the whole history of civilization. "How many contradictions!" "Eh! If I loaded my wagon all on the same side, I'd tumble it over." Persons full of morality preach. Everything that they judge criminal I either practise or think. And nevertheless.... Love ye one another. How do that, without knowing one another? No, no; a little modesty, a little dignity. It is shameful to be ashamed of one's pleasures. To be above everything. To scorn everything and love everything. To know that there is nothing, and that this nothing, none the less, contains everything. In order to be true, a novel must be false. To be impersonal is to be personal in a particular manner: for instance, Flaubert. In the literary jargon one would say: the objective is one of the forms of the subjective. Proudhon said: "After the persecutors, I know nothing more hateful than the martyrs." Not having thought of this myself, I feel pleasure in copying it.