ONE WORD FOR THREE DIFFERENT CONDITIONS.—When in a state of passion one man will be forced to let loose the savage, dreadful, unbearable animal. Another when under the influence of passion will raise himself to a high, noble, and lofty demeanour, in comparison with which his usual self appears petty. A third, whose whole person is permeated with nobility of feeling, has also the most noble storm and stress: and in this state he represents Nature in her state of savageness and beauty, and stands only one degree lower than Nature in her periods of greatness and serenity, which he usually represents. It is while in this state of passion, however, that men understand him better, and venerate him more highly at these moments—for then he is one step nearer and more akin to them. They feel at once delighted and horrified at such a sight and call it—divine. 503. FRIENDSHIP.—The objection to a philosophic life that it renders us useless to our friends would never have arisen in a modern mind: it belongs rather to classical antiquity. Antiquity knew the stronger bonds of friendship, meditated upon it, and almost took it to the grave with it. This is the advantage it has over us: we, on the other hand, can point to our idealisation of sexual love. All the great excellencies of ancient humanity owed their stability to the fact that man was standing side by side with man, and that no woman was allowed to put forward the claim of being the nearest and highest, nay even sole object of his love, as the feeling of passion would teach. Perhaps our trees do not grow so high now owing to the ivy and the vines that cling round them. 504. RECONCILIATION.—Should it then be the task of philosophy to reconcile what the child has learnt with what the man has come to recognise? Should philosophy be the task of young men because they stand midway between child and man and possess intermediate necessities? It would almost appear to be so if you consider at what ages of their life philosophers are now in the habit of setting forth their conceptions: at a time when it is too late for faith and too early for knowledge. 505. PRACTICAL PEOPLE.—We thinkers have the right of deciding good taste in all things, and if necessary of decreeing it. The practical people finally receive it from us: their dependence upon us is incredibly great, and is one of the most ridiculous spectacles in the world, little though they themselves know it and however proudly they like to carp at us unpractical people. Nay, they would even go so far as to belittle their practical life if we should show a tendency to despise it—whereto at times we might be urged on by a slightly vindictive feeling. 506.