ce.
Here, too, he is successful, if his needs are confined to what is
nearest and most necessary. But if they rise and pass beyond the sphere
of ordinary wants, common-sense is no longer sufficient; it is a genius
no more, and humanity enters on the region of error.

50

There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence
or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of
intelligence or by accident.

51

Every great idea is a tyrant when it first appears; hence the advantages
which it produces change all too quickly into disadvantages. It is
possible, then, to defend and praise any institution that exists, if its
beginnings are brought to remembrance, and it is shown that everything
which was true of it at the beginning is true of it still.

52

Lessing, who chafed under the sense of various limitations, makes one of
his characters say: No one _must_ do anything. A clever pious man said:
If a man _wills_ something, he must do it. A third, who was, it is true,
an educated man, added: _Will_ follows upon _insight_. The whole circle
of _knowledge, will_, and _necessity_ was thus believed to have been
completed. But, as a rule, a man's knowledge, of whatever kind it may
be, determines what he shall do and what he shall leave undone, and so
it is that there is no more terrible sight than ignorance in action.

53

There are two powers that make for peace: what is right, and what is
fitting.

54

Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and
decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual,
law to society.

55

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the
nations one after the other emerge.

II

56

If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself
for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd
length, we willingly put up with it.

57

Work makes companionship.

58

People whip curds to see if they cannot make cream of them.

59

It is much easier to put yourself in the position of a mind taken up
with the most absolute error, than of one which mirrors to itself
half-truths.

60

Wisdom lies only in truth.

61

When I err, every one can see it; but not when I lie.

62

Is not the world full enough of riddles already, without our making
riddles too out of the simplest phenomena?

63

'The finest hair throws a shadow.' _Erasmus_.

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