When the traveller, who had seen many countries and nations and continents, was asked what common attribute he had found everywhere existing among men, he answered, They have a tendency to sloth. Many may think that the fuller truth would have been, They are all timid. They hide themselves behind manners and opinions. At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth ; and by no extra- ordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. He knows this, but hides it like an evil conscience; — and why? From fear of his neighbour, who looks for the latest conventionalities in him, and is wrapped up in them himself. But what is it that forces the man to fear his neighbour, to think and act with his herd, and not seek his own joy? Shyness perhaps, in a few rare cases, but in the majority it is idleness, the taking things easily, in a word the tendency to sloth, of which the traveller spoke. He was right ; men are more slothful than timid, and their greatest fear is of the burdens that an uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them. It is only the artists who hate this lazy wandering in borrowed manners and ill-fitting opinions, and discover the secret of the evil conscience, the truth that each human being is a unique marvel. They show us, how in every little movement of his muscles the man is an individual self, and further — as an analytical deduction from his individuality — a beautiful and interesting object, a new and incredible phenomenon (as is every work of nature), that can never become tedious. If the great thinker despise mankind, it is for their laziness; they seem mere indifferent bits of pottery, not worth any commerce or improvement. The, man who will not belong to the general mass, has only to stop taking himself easily ; to follow his conscience, which cries out to him, Be thyself! all that thou doest and thinkest and desirest, is not — thyself!
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 06:04:26 +0000
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