CASUISTIC.—We are confronted with a very bitter and painful dilemma, for the solution of which not every one’s bravery and character are equal: when, as passengers on board a steamer, we discover that the captain and the helmsman are making dangerous mistakes, and that we are their superiors in nautical science—and then we ask ourselves: “What would happen if we organised a mutiny against them, and made them both prisoners? Is it not our duty to do so in view of our superiority? and would not they in their turn be justified in putting us in irons for encouraging disobedience?” This is a simile for higher and worse situations; and the final question to be decided is, What guarantees our superiority and our faith in ourselves in such a case? Success? but in order to do that we must do the very thing in which all the danger lies—not only dangerous for ourselves, but also for the ship. 437. PRIVILEGES.—The man who really owns himself, that is to say, he who has finally conquered himself, regards it as his own right to punish, to pardon, or to pity himself: he need not concede this privilege to any one, though he may freely bestow it upon some one else—a friend, for example—but he knows that in doing this he is conferring a right, and that rights can only be conferred by one who is in full possession of power. 438. MAN AND THINGS.—Why does the man not see the things? He himself is in the way: he conceals the things. 439. CHARACTERISTICS OF HAPPINESS.—There are two things common to all sensations of happiness: a profusion of feelings, accompanied by animal spirits, so that, like the fishes, we feel ourselves to be in our element and play about in it. Good Christians will understand what Christian exuberance means. 440. NEVER RENOUNCE.—Renouncing the world without knowing it, like a nun, results in a fruitless and perhaps melancholy solitude. This has nothing in common with the solitude of the _vita contemplativa_ of the thinker: when he chooses this form of solitude he wishes to renounce nothing; but he would on the contrary regard it as a renunciation, a melancholy destruction of his own self, if he were obliged to continue in the _vita practica_. He forgoes this latter because he knows it, because he knows himself. So he jumps into _his_ water, and thus gains _his_ cheerfulness. 441. WHY THE NEAREST THINGS BECOME EVER MORE DISTANT FOR US.—The more we give up our minds to all that has been and will be, the paler will become that which actually is. When we live with the dead and participate in their death, what are our “neighbours” to us? We grow lonelier simply because the entire flood of humanity is surging round about us. The fire that burns within us, and glows for all that is human, is continually increasing—and hence we look upon everything that surrounds us as if it had become more indifferent, more shadowy,—but our cold glance is offensive. 442.