The moods of a noble soul are not based on pessimistic lines. The pessimists are those who have somehow fallen short and are incapable of struggling with courage for the highest things of life and of gaining them by the power and endurance necessary. Therefore they give out that they disclaim them, or represent the renunciation of them as the highest attainable goal. When their pessimism is not merely a passing phase in development, pessimists are always egotistical men of a narrow range of ideas, to whom one must not pay the honor of admiration. Thorough faultfinders, constant critics of everything, tormentors of women, overexacting, capable of falling into painful agitation over a misplaced article or over a train they have missed,--such are the least noble among them. The noblest thing of all is the love of one’s enemies. To be kind to one’s friends, or to be friendly and fair toward everybody, is socially excellent, but a long way still from being noble. But they who take injuries quietly, and can always be just even to enemies, are the genuine aristocrats of the spirit. The perfect pattern of nobility is Christ; many of his biographers give quite a false impression in depicting him too much from the humble and outwardly meek point of view, and thus carry many conceptions of our own bit of sky over into the oriental world, with its different ways of thought. It is just that unattainably perfect combination of the tenderest affection for the little ones, the poor, the oppressed, and the guilty, with that large and calm self-consciousness before all the high, the rich, and the mighty of that day (which nevertheless is never defiance or pride),--it is just that combination that lends to this personality a stamp it would be hard to declare purely human. To follow this type has since been the task of all who strive after perfection, and whoever turns away from it will always run the risk of chasing after a false ideal and not attaining the goal. As one of these false ideals has himself truly said, “In the breast of every man two souls inhabit: the one, in the strong joy of love, holds to the world with clinging organs; the other lifts itself forcefully away from the mist to the fields of high surmise.” A force exerted to subdue oneself, and a faith in these fields, will always in truth belong to the truly noble; and if the great poet, who never completely subdued the lesser of these souls in himself, says, in the second part of his most famous work, “Fool, whoever lifts yonder his blinking eyes, and fancies himself above the masses of his equals, let him stand fast and look about him here, for to him that can hear, this world is not mute,”--if he says this, then it is to be answered that to nobility there also belongs something of a foolishness that is yet wiser than all the wisdom of men. The chief obstacles in the way of genuine nobility are the nobility that is not genuine and the fear of men.