326
Knowledge of our circumstances.—We may estimate our forces but not our force. Circumstances do not only conceal it from and show it to us—nay, they even exaggerate and diminish it. We ought to consider ourselves variable quantities whose active power may, under specially favourable circumstances, become equivalent to that of the highest order. We ought, therefore, to weigh the circumstances, and spare no effort in studying them.
327
A fable.—No philosopher or poet has, as yet, succeeded in discovering the Don Juan of knowledge. The latter lacks love for the things which he apprehends, but he possesses wit, longing for and pleasure in the pursuit and intrigues of knowledge—up to the highest and most distant stars of knowledge!—until in the end nothing but the absolutely injurious part of knowledge is left to his pursuit, like unto the drunkard who finishes by partaking of absinthum and nitric acid; and ultimately he feels a longing for hell—it is the last knowledge which misleads him. Perhaps this even will disappoint him, as all things apprehended do. And then he will have to halt for ever and ever, nailed to disappointment and turned into a stony knight, with a longing for an evening repast of knowledge which never more will fall to his share. For the whole world of
