Almost all marriages are only concubinages, morganatic wedlock, or, rather, provisional attempts and remote approximations to a real marriage, the peculiar essence of which consists in the fact that more than one person are to become but one, not in accordance with the paradoxes of this system or that, but in harmony with all spiritual and temporal laws. A fine concept, although its realization seems to have many grave difficulties. For this very reason there should here be the least possible restriction of the caprice which may well have a word to say when it becomes a question of whether one is to be an individual in himself or is to be merely an integral part of a corporate personality; nor is it easy to see what objections, on principle, could be made to a marriage a quatre. If the State, however, is determined to hold together, even by force, the unsuccessful attempts at marriage, it thereby impedes the very possibility of marriage, which might be furthered by new--and perhaps happier--attempts. A regiment of soldiers on parade is, according to some philosophers, a system. A man can only become a philosopher, he cannot be one; so soon as he believes that he is one, he ceases to become one. The printed page is to thought what a nursery is to the first kiss. The historian is a prophet looking backward. There are people whose entire activity consists in saying "No." It would be no small thing always to be able rightly to say "No," but he who can do nothing more, surely cannot do it rightly. The taste of these negationists is an admirable shears to cleanse the extremities of genius; their enlightenment a great snuffer for the flame of enthusiasm; and their reason a mild laxative for immoderate passion and love. Every great philosopher has always so explained his predecessors--often unintentionally--that it seemed as though they had not in the least been understood before him. As a transitory condition skepticism is logical insurrection; as a system it is anarchy; skeptical method would thus be approximately like insurgent government. At the phrases "his philosophy," "my philosophy," we always recall the words in Nathan the Wise: "Who owns God? What sort of a God is that who is owned by a man?" What happens in poetry happens never or always; otherwise, it is no true poetry. We ought not to believe that it is now actually happening. Women have absolutely no sense of art, though they may have of poetry. They have no natural disposition for the sciences, though they may have for philosophy. They are by no means wanting in power of speculation and intuitive perception of the infinite; they lack only power of abstraction, which is far more easy to be learned. That is beautiful which is charming and sublime at the same time.