Family scandals, the hardness of creditors, the rudeness of railway men, the discomforts of the passport system, the expensive and unwholesome food at the buffets, the general coarseness and roughness of people,--all this and a great deal more that would take too long to put down, concerns me as much as it concerns any bourgeois who is known only in his own little street. Where is the exclusiveness of my position then? We will admit that I am infinitely famous, that I am a hero of whom my country is proud. All the newspapers give bulletins of my illness, the post is already bringing in sympathetic addresses from my friends, my pupils, and the public. But all this will not save me from dying in anguish on a stranger’s bed in utter loneliness. Of course there is no one to blame for this. But I must confess I do not like my popularity. I feel that it has deceived me. At about ten I fall asleep, and, in spite of the tic sleep soundly, and would sleep for a long while were I not awakened. Just after one there is a sudden knock on my door. “Who’s there?” “A telegram.” “You could have brought it to-morrow,” I storm, as I take the telegram from the porter. “Now I shan’t sleep again.” “I’m sorry. There was a light in your room. I thought you were not asleep.” I open the telegram and look first at the signature--my wife’s. What does she want? “Gnekker married Liza secretly yesterday. Return.” I read the telegram. For a long while I am not startled. Not Gnekker’s or Liza’s action frightens me, but the indifference with which I receive the news of their marriage. Men say that philosophers and true _savants_ are indifferent. It is untrue. Indifference is the paralysis of the soul, premature death. I go to bed again and begin to ponder with what thoughts I can occupy myself. What on earth shall I think of? I seem to have thought over everything, and now there is nothing powerful enough to rouse my thought. When the day begins to dawn, I sit in bed clasping my knees and, for want of occupation I try to know myself. “Know yourself” is good, useful advice; but it is a pity that the ancients did not think of showing us the way to avail ourselves of it. Before, when I had the desire to understand somebody else, or myself, I used not to take into consideration actions, wherein everything is conditional, but desires. Tell me what you want, and I will tell you what you are. And now I examine myself. What do I want? I want our wives, children, friends, and pupils to love in us, not the name or the firm or the label, but the ordinary human beings. What besides? I should like to have assistants and successors. What more? I should like to wake in a hundred years’ time, and take a look, if only with one eye, at what has happened to science. I should like to live ten years more.... What further?