t! We are all special pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It
is conceivable that it is just from woman--who is clairvoyant in the world
of suffering, and, alas! also unfortunately eager to help and save to an
extent far beyond her powers--that _they_ have learnt so readily those
outbreaks of boundless _sympathy_ which the multitude, above all the
reverent multitude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying
interpretations. This sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its
power; woman would like to believe that love can do _everything_--it is the
_superstition_ peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how
poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love
is--how much more readily it _destroys_ than saves.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

3.

The intellectual loathing and haughtiness of every man who has suffered
deeply--the extent to which a man can suffer, almost determines the order
of rank--the chilling uncertainty with which he is thoroughly imbued and
coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he _knows more_ than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and
"at home" in many distant terrible worlds of which "_you_ know
nothing!"--this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of the elect of
knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms
of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with gushing and
sympathising hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in
suffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.--One of the most
refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious
boldness of taste which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the
defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. There are "cheerful
men" who make use of good spirits, because they are misunderstood on
account of them--they _wish_ to be misunderstood. There are "scientific
minds" who make use of science, because it gives a cheerful appearance,
and because love of science leads people to conclude that a person is
shallow--they _wish_ to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free
insolent spirits which would fain conceal and deny that they are at bottom
broken, incurable hearts--this is Hamlet's case: and then folly itself can
be the mask of an unfortunate and alas! all too dead-certain knowledge.

Epilogue.

1.

I have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply in