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knew yesterday how to help himself. He does not now take himself seriously and devote time to himself: he is serene, not from lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble. The habitual complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his!⁠—and as man generally, he becomes far too easily the caput mortuum of such virtues. Should one wish love or hatred from him⁠—I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them⁠—he will do what he can, and furnish what he can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be much⁠—if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather un tour de force , a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality is he still “nature” and “natural.” His mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. “ je ne méprise presque rien ”⁠—he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the presque ! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of anyone, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. If he has been so long confounded with the philosopher , with the Caesarian trainer and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what is more essential in him has been overlooked⁠—he is an instrument, something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but nothing in himself⁠— presque rien ! The objective man is an instrument, a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the rest of existence justifies itself, no termination⁠—and still less a