THE ORATOR’S SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.—How difficult it was in Athens to speak in such a way as to win over the hearers to one’s cause without repelling them at the same time by the form in which one’s speech was cast, or withdrawing their attention from the cause itself by this form! How difficult it still is to write thus in France! 269. SICK PEOPLE AND ART.—For all kinds of sadness and misery of soul we should first of all try a change of diet and severe manual labour; but in such cases men are in the habit of having recourse to mental intoxicants, to art for example—which is both to their own detriment and that of art! Can you not see that when you call for art as sick people you make the artists themselves sick? 270. APPARENT TOLERATION.—Those are good, benevolent, and rational words on and in favour of science, but, alas! I see behind these words your toleration of science. In a corner of your inmost mind you think, in spite of all you say, that _it is not necessary for you_, that it shows magnanimity on your part to admit and even to advocate it, more especially as science on its part does not exhibit this magnanimity in regard to your opinion! Do you know that you have no right whatever to exercise this toleration? that this condescension of yours is an even coarser disparagement of science than any of that open scorn which a presumptuous priest or artist might allow himself to indulge in towards science? What is lacking in you is a strong sense for everything that is true and actual, you do not feel grieved and worried to find that science is in contradiction to your own sentiments, you are unacquainted with that intense desire for knowledge ruling over you like a law, you do not feel a duty in the need of being present with your own eyes wherever knowledge exists, and to let nothing that is “known” escape you. You do not know that which you are treating with such toleration! and it is only because you do not know it that you can succeed in adopting such a gracious attitude towards it. You, forsooth, would look upon science with hatred and fanaticism if it for once cast its shining and illuminating glance upon you! What does it matter to us, then, if you do exhibit toleration—and towards a phantom! and not even towards us!—and what do we matter! 271.