_From Paradise._--"Good and Evil are God's prejudices"--said the serpent. 260. _One times One._--One only is always in the wrong, but with two truth begins.--One only cannot prove himself right; but two are already beyond refutation. 261. _Originality._--What is originality? To _see_ something that does not yet bear a name, that cannot yet be named, although it is before everybody's eyes. As people are usually constituted, it is the name that first makes a thing generally visible to them.--Original persons have also for the most part been the namers of things. 262. _Sub specie æterni._--A: "You withdraw faster and faster from the living; they will soon strike you out of their lists!"--B: "It is the only way to participate in the privilege of the dead." A: "In what privilege?"--B: "No longer having to die." 263. _Without Vanity._--When we love we want our defects to remain concealed,--not out of vanity, but lest the person loved should suffer therefrom. Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,--and not out of vanity either. 264. _What we Do._--What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed. 265. _Ultimate Scepticism._--But what after all are man's truths?--They are his _irrefutable_ errors. 266. _Where Cruelty is Necessary._--He who is great is cruel to his second-rate virtues and judgments. 267. _With a high Aim._--With a high aim a person is superior even to justice, and not only to his deeds and his judges. 268. _What makes Heroic?_--To face simultaneously one's greatest suffering and one's highest hope. 269. _What dost thou Believe in?_--In this: That the weights of all things must be determined anew. 270. _What Saith thy Conscience?_--"Thou shalt become what thou art." 271. _Where are thy Greatest Dangers?_--In pity. 272. _What dost thou Love in others?_--My hopes. 273. _Whom dost thou call Bad?_--Him who always wants to put others to shame. 274. _What dost thou think most humane?_--To spare a person shame. 275. _What is the Seal of Attained Liberty?_--To be no longer ashamed of oneself. BOOK FOURTH SANCTUS JANUARIUS Thou who with cleaving fiery lances The stream of my soul from its ice dost free, Till with a rush and a roar it advances To enter with glorious hoping the sea: Brighter to see and purer ever, Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,-- So it praises thy wondrous endeavour, January, thou beauteous saint! _Genoa,_ January 1882. 276.