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Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays⁠—and, if I gather rightly, no other religion is any longer preached⁠—let the psychologist have his ears open through all the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of self-contempt . It belongs to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe, which has been on the increase for a century (the first symptoms of which are already specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to Madame d’Epinay)⁠— if it is not really the cause thereof! The man of “modern ideas,” the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with himself⁠—this is perfectly certain. He suffers, and his vanity wants him only “to suffer with his fellows.”