UTILISING OUR HOURS OF DANGER.—Those men and conditions whose every movement may mean danger to our possessions, honour, and life or death, and to those most dear to us, we shall naturally learn to know thoroughly. Tiberius, for instance, must have meditated much more deeply on the character and methods of government of the Emperor Augustus, and must have known far more about them than even the wisest historian. At the present day we all live, relatively speaking, in a security which is much too great to make us true psychologists: some survey their fellow-men as a hobby, others out of ennui, and others again merely from habit; but never to the extent they would do if they were told “Discern or perish!” As long as truths do not cut us to the quick we assume an attitude of contempt towards them: they still appear to us too much like the “winged dreams,” as if we could or could not have them at our discretion, as if we could likewise be aroused from these truths as from a dream! 461. _HIC RHODUS, HIC SALTA._—Our music, which can and must change into everything, because like the demon of the sea, it has no character of its own: this music in former times devoted its attention to the Christian savant, and transposed his ideals into sounds: why cannot it likewise find those brighter, more cheerful, and universal sounds which correspond to the ideal thinker?—a music which could rock itself at ease in the vast floating vaults of the soul? So far our music has been so great and so good; nothing seemed impossible to its powers. May it therefore prove possible to create these three sensations at one time: sublimity, deep and warm light, and rapture of the greatest possible consistency! 462. SLOW CURES.—Chronic illnesses of the soul, like those of the body, are very rarely due to one gross offence against physical and mental reason, but as a general rule they arise from innumerable and petty negligences of a minor order.—A man, for example, whose breathing becomes a trifle weaker every day, and whose lungs, by inhaling too little air, are deprived of their proper amount of exercise, will end by being struck down by some chronic disease of the lungs. The only remedy for cases like these is a countless number of minor exercises of a contrary tendency—making it a rule, for example, to take a long and deep breath every quarter of an hour, lying flat on the ground if possible. For this purpose a clock which strikes the quarters should be chosen as a lifelong companion. All these remedies are slow and trifling; but yet the man who wishes to cure his soul will carefully consider a change, even in his least important habits. Many a man will utter a cold and angry word to his surroundings ten times a day without thinking about it, and he will forget that after a few years it will have become a regular habit with him to put his surroundings out of temper ten times a day. But he can also acquire the habit of doing good to them ten times. 463.