THE BATTLE-FIELD DISPENSARY OF THE SOUL.—What is the most efficacious remedy?—Victory. 572. LIFE SHALL COMFORT US.—If, like the thinker, we live habitually amid the great current of ideas and feelings, and even our dreams follow this current, we expect comfort and peacefulness from life, while others wish to rest from life when they give themselves up to meditation. 573. CASTING ONE’S SKIN.—The snake that cannot cast its skin perishes. So too with those minds which are prevented from changing their views: they cease to be minds. 574. NEVER FORGET!—The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. 575. WE AERONAUTS OF THE INTELLECT.—All those daring birds that soar far and ever farther into space, will somewhere or other be certain to find themselves unable to continue their flight, and they will perch on a mast or some narrow ledge—and will be grateful even for this miserable accommodation! But who could conclude from this that there was not an endless free space stretching far in front of them, and that they had flown as far as they possibly could? In the end, however, all our great teachers and predecessors have come to a standstill, and it is by no means in the noblest or most graceful attitude that their weariness has brought them to a pause: the same thing will happen to you and me! but what does this matter to either of us? _Other birds will fly farther!_ Our minds and hopes vie with them far out and on high; they rise far above our heads and our failures, and from this height they look far into the distant horizon and see hundreds of birds much more powerful than we are, striving whither we ourselves have also striven, and where all is sea, sea, and nothing but sea! And where, then, are we aiming at? Do we wish to cross the sea? whither does this over-powering passion urge us, this passion which we value more highly than any other delight? Why do we fly precisely in this direction, where all the suns of humanity have hitherto set? Is it possible that people may one day say of us that we also steered westward, hoping to reach India—but that it was our fate to be wrecked on the infinite? Or, my brethren? or—? FOOTNOTES 1 The book was first published in 1881, the preface being added to the second edition, 1886.—TR. 2 This refers, of course, to the different genders of the nouns in other languages. In German, for example, the sun is feminine, and in French masculine.—TR. 3 M. Henri Albert points out that this refers to a line of Paul Gerhardt’s well-known song: “Befiel du deine Wege.” TR. 4 “Formal education” is the name given in Germany to those branches of learning which tend to develop the logical faculties, as opposed to “material” education which deals with the acquisition of facts and all kinds of “useful” knowledge.—TR.