deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and
rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is
only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality
is he still "nature" and "natural." His mirroring and eternally
self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to
deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE
PRESQUE RIEN"--he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue
the PRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any
one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have
any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. If he has
been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesarian trainer
and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what
is more essential in him has been overlooked--he is an instrument,
something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but
nothing in himself--PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man is an instrument,
a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and
mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he
is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the
REST of existence justifies itself, no termination--and still less a
commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful,
self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated,
delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of content
and frame to "shape" itself thereto--for the most part a man without
frame and content, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, nothing for
women, IN PARENTHESI.