I am delighted with the aphorism on the hazard of marriage. But why do you not _dig_ deeper here? You speak somewhere with a certain reverence of marriage, which by implying an emotional ideal has idealized emotion--here, however, you are more blunt and forcible. Why not for once say the _full_ truth about it? I am of opinion that the institution of marriage, which may have been very useful in taming brutes, causes more misery to mankind than even the church has done. Church, monarchy, marriage, property, these are to my mind four old venerable institutions which mankind will have to reform _from the foundations_ in order to be able to breathe freely. And of these marriage alone kills the individuality, paralyzes liberty and is the embodiment of a paradox. But the shocking thing about it is that humanity is still too coarse to be able to shake it off. The most emancipated writers, so called, still speak of marriage with a devout and virtuous air which maddens me. And they gain their point, since it is impossible to say what one could put in its place for the mob. There is nothing else to be done but slowly to transform opinion. What do you think about it? And this is what Nietzsche thinks about it: I feel for you in the North, now so wintry and gloomy; how does one manage to keep one's soul erect there? I admire almost every man who does not lose faith in himself under a cloudy sky, to say nothing of his faith in "humanity," in "marriage," in "property," in the "State".... In Petersburg I should be a nihilist: here I believe, as a plant believes, in the sun. The sun of Nice--you cannot call that a prejudice. We have had it at the expense of all the rest of Europe. God, with the cynicism peculiar to Him, lets it shine upon us idlers, "philosophers," and sharpers more brightly than upon the far worthier military heroes of the "Fatherland." Think of the _Lebensfreude_ that sparkles from these lines written by a man who a few months later had to be shut out from the world, who had suffered extremely painful and persistent headaches,--"hundred days of torment in the year"! It was his keen sense that "a sick man had no right to pessimism," it was his extravagant love of life that led him to set for chorus and orchestra the _Hymn to Life_ written by Lou von Salomé, from which we read an extract in the book of Brandes: So truly loves a friend his friend As I love thee, O Life in mystery hidden! If joy or grief to me thou send; If loud I laugh or else to weep am bidden, Yet love I thee with all thy changeful faces; And shouldst thou doom me to depart, So would I tear myself from thy embraces, As comrade from a comrade's heart. And in conclusion: And if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me, Lead on! thou hast thy sorrow still!