Maxims and Reflections Part 25

570

In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further.

571

If a man devotes himself to the promotion of science, he is firstly opposed, and then he is informed that his ground is already occupied. At first men will allow no value to what we tell them, and then they behave as if they knew it all themselves.

572

Nature fills all s.p.a.ce with her limitless productivity. If we observe merely our own earth, everything that we call evil and unfortunate is so because Nature cannot provide room for everything that comes into existence, and still less endow it with permanence.

573

Everything that comes into being seeks room for itself and desires duration: hence it drives something else from its place and shortens its duration.

574

There is so much of cryptogamy in phanerogamy that centuries will not decipher it.

575

What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.

576

The further knowledge advances, the nearer we come to the unfathomable: the more we know how to use our knowledge, the better we see that the unfathomable is of no practical use.

577

The finest achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and quietly to revere the unfathomable.

578

The discerning man who acknowledges his limitations is not far off perfection.

579

There are two things of which a man cannot be careful enough: of obstinacy if he confines himself to his own line of thought; of incompetency, if he goes beyond it.

580

Incompetency is a greater obstacle to perfection than one would think.

581

The century advances; but every individual begins anew.

582

What friends do with us and for us is a real part of our life; for it strengthens and advances our personality. The a.s.sault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.

583

A man cannot live with every one, and therefore he cannot live for every one. To see this truth aright is to place a high value upon one's friends, and not to hate or persecute one's enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater advantage for a man to gain than to find out, if he can, the merits of his opponents: it gives him a decided ascendency over them.

584

Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.

585

The best metempsychosis is for us to appear again in others.

586

It is very seldom that we satisfy ourselves; all the more consoling is it to have satisfied others.

587

We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done, and attained.

588

The sympathetic youth sees nothing of this; he reads, enjoys, and uses the youth of one who has gone before him, and rejoices in it with all his heart, as though he had once been what he now is.

589

Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.

590

It is always our eyes alone, our way of looking at things. Nature alone knows what she means now, and what she had meant in the past.

NATURE: APHORISMS

Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

She creates new forms without end: what exists now, never was before; what was, comes not again; all is new and yet always the old.

We live in the midst of her and are strangers. She speaks to us unceasingly and betrays not her secret. We are always influencing her and yet can do her no violence.

Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she cares nought for individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her workshop is not to be approached.

Nature lives in her children only, and the mother, where is she? She is the sole artist,--out of the simplest materials the greatest diversity; attaining, with no trace of effort, the finest perfection, the closest precision, always softly veiled. Each of her works has an essence of its own; every shape that she takes is in idea utterly isolated; and yet all forms one.