Diderot was right. In fact, every evil craving has in the fall swing of society and social life to put itself under such great restraint, to put on so many masks, so often to rest on the Procrustean-bed of virtue, that we have every reason to speak of a martyrdom of evil. All this disappears in solitude. The evil man is more so in solitude:—hence he is also most beautiful in the eye of him who sees everywhere nothing but a play.
500
Against the grain.—A thinker may for years compel himself to think against the grain: that is, not follow up the thoughts which spring up in his heart, but those to which his office, the established division of time, an arbitrary kind of industry seem to bind him over. At last, however, he will fall ill; for this apparently moral self-command destroys his nervous system as thoroughly as regular debauchery does.
501
Mortal souls.—The most useful acquisition to knowledge is perhaps the abandonment of the belief in the immortality of the soul. Henceforth humanity is at liberty to wait and need no longer precipitate itself and toss off half-tested ideas as it had to do of old. For in those times the eternal welfare of the poor ‘immortal soul”? depended on the extent of knowledge acquired throughout their short life; they had to make up their
