115. According to Smith, the universal measure of economical value is Labor. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and poetical value, we Germans had discovered before Smith; and to my knowledge, we have always preferred the learned poet to the poet of genius, and the heavy book full of labor to the light one full of sport. ------------------------ I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet was it to me, and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire of rage, and quickened in my breast as by a benignant stimulant. It belongs certainly to the class of Unrecognized Mercies (on which, in ancient times, special sermons were preached), that one is never more completely in his Heaven and _Monplaisir_ (a pleasure-palace), than while in the midst of right hearty storming and indignation. Heavens! what might not a man of weight accomplish in this new walk of charity! The gall bladder is for us the chief swimming-bladder and Montgolfier; and the filling of it costs us nothing but a contumelious word or two from some bystander. And does not the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise compare myself, confess, in his _Table-Talk_, that he never preached, sung, or prayed so well, as while in a rage? Truly, he was a man sufficient of himself to rouse many others into rage. The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing sights, and trafficking for wares; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the broad street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with me into the market throng; needed but to look, and see that she was decorated more according to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in her care for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and in the potter-market the toilette-table faded from her thoughts. ------------------------ 4. The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of cutting fruit by a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the poisoned side to the victim, the cutter eating the sound side himself; on the contrary, he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, that to others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or side, and retains for himself the poisoned one. Heavens! compared with such a man, how wicked does the Devil seem! ------------------------