[Footnote 2: TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.--In _The New Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences,_ the following description of Mitchell's treatment is to be found: "A method of treating cases of neurasthenia and hysteria ... by removal from home, rest in bed, massage twice a day, electrical excitation of the muscles, and excessive feeding, at first with milk."] 234. A _pang of conscience_ in a man is a sign that his character is not yet equal to his _deed._ There is such a thing as a pang of conscience after _good deeds_: in this case it is their unfamiliarity, their incompatibility with an old environment. 235. _Against remorse._--I do not like this form of cowardice in regard to one's own actions, one must not leave one's self in the lurch under the pressure of sudden shame or distress. Extreme pride is much more fitting here. What is the good of it all in the end! No deed gets undone because it is regretted, no more than because it is "forgiven" or "expiated." A man must be a theologian in order to believe in a power that erases faults: we immoralists prefer to disbelieve in "faults." We believe that all deeds, of what kind soever, are identically the same at root; just as deeds which turn _against_ us may be useful from an economical point of view, and even _generally desirable._ In certain individual cases, we admit that we might well have been _spared_ a given action; the circumstances alone predisposed us in its favour. Which of us, if _favoured_ by circumstances, would not already have committed every possible crime?... That is why one should never say: "Thou shouldst never have done such and such a thing," but only: "How strange it is that I have not done such and such a thing hundreds of times already!"--As a matter of fact, only a very small number of acts are _typical_ acts and real epitomes of a personality, and seeing what a small number of people really are personalities, a single act very rarely _characterises_ a man. Acts are mostly dictated by circumstances; they are superficial or merely reflex movements performed in response to a stimulus, long before the depths of our beings are affected or consulted in the matter. A fit of temper, a gesture, a blow with a knife: how little of the individual resides in these acts!--A deed very often brings a sort of stupor or feeling of constraint in its wake: so that the agent feels almost spellbound at its recollection, or as though he _belonged to it,_ and were not an independent creature. This mental disorder, which is a form of hypnotism, must be resisted at all costs: surely a single deed, whatever it be, when it is compared with all one has done, is _nothing,_ and may be deducted from the sum without making the account wrong. The unfair interest which society manifests in controlling the whole of our lives in one direction, as though the very purpose of its existence were to cultivate a certain individual act, should not infect