_Hic niger est_.--Usually he has no thoughts,--but in exceptional cases bad thoughts come to him. 204. _Beggars and Courtesy._--"One is not discourteous when one knocks at a door with a stone when the bell-pull is awanting"--so think all beggars and necessitous persons, but no one thinks they are in the right. 205. _Need._--Need is supposed to be the cause of things; but in truth it is often only the result of things. 206. _During the Rain._--It rains, and I think of the poor people who now crowd together with their many cares, which they are unaccustomed to conceal; all of them, therefore, ready and anxious to give pain to one another, and thus provide themselves with a pitiable kind of comfort, even in bad weather. This, this only, is the poverty of the poor! 207. _The Envious Man._--That is an envious man--it is not desirable that he should have children; he would be envious of them, because he can no longer be a child. 208. _A Great Man!_--Because a person is "a great man," we are not authorised to infer that he is a man. Perhaps he is only a boy, or a chameleon of all ages, or a bewitched girl. 209. _A Mode of Asking for Reasons._--There is a mode of asking for our reasons which not only makes us forget our best reasons, but also arouses in us a spite and repugnance against reason generally:-a very stupefying mode of questioning, and really an artifice of tyrannical men! 210. _Moderation in Diligence._--One must not be anxious to surpass the diligence of one's father--that would make one ill. 211. _Secret Enemies._--To be able to keep a secret enemy--that is a luxury which the morality even of the highest-minded persons can rarely afford. 212. _Not Letting oneself be Deluded._--His spirit has bad manners, it is hasty and always stutters with impatience; so that one would hardly suspect the deep breathing and the large chest of the soul in which it resides. 213. _The Way to Happiness._--A sage asked of a fool the way to happiness. The fool answered without delay, like one who had been asked the way to the next town: "Admire yourself, and live on the street!" "Hold," cried the sage, "you require too much; it suffices to admire oneself!" The fool replied: "But how can one constantly admire without constantly despising?" 214. _Faith Saves._--Virtue gives happiness and a state of blessedness only to those who have a strong faith in their virtue:--not, however, to the more refined souls whose virtue consists of a profound distrust of themselves and of all virtue. After all, therefore, it is "faith that saves" here also!--and be it well observed, _not_ virtue! 215. _The Ideal and the Material._--You have a noble ideal before your eyes: but are you also such a noble stone that such a divine image could be formed out of you? And without that--is not all your labour barbaric sculpturing? A blasphemy of your ideal? 216.