When the traveler, who had seen many countries and many cultures, 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., but let me explain...
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously 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... but why? From fear, but what is it that forces a man to fear, to think and act with his herd, and not seek his own joy? Perhaps timidness 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 traveler spoke.
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 imagined manners and borrowed 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 furthermore, 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 despises mankind, it is for their laziness; they seem a mere indifferent waste of space, not worth any effort. The man who wants to improve himself, has only to stop taking it easy; to follow his conscience, which cries out to him, Be YOU! All these things that you think you desire, they aren't you! Every youthful soul hears this cry day and night, and trembles on hearing it: "Be your happiness. Be your deliverance! In no way can you be helped, so long as you are in the chains of opinion and of fear!" How comfortless and unmeaning life must be without this revelation.
There is no more desolate a creature in nature than the man who has broken away from his true genius, and does nothing but peer aimlessly about for others to form his opinions for him.
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously 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... but why? From fear, but what is it that forces a man to fear, to think and act with his herd, and not seek his own joy? Perhaps timidness 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 traveler spoke.
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 imagined manners and borrowed 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 furthermore, 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 despises mankind, it is for their laziness; they seem a mere indifferent waste of space, not worth any effort. The man who wants to improve himself, has only to stop taking it easy; to follow his conscience, which cries out to him, Be YOU! All these things that you think you desire, they aren't you! Every youthful soul hears this cry day and night, and trembles on hearing it: "Be your happiness. Be your deliverance! In no way can you be helped, so long as you are in the chains of opinion and of fear!" How comfortless and unmeaning life must be without this revelation.
There is no more desolate a creature in nature than the man who has broken away from his true genius, and does nothing but peer aimlessly about for others to form his opinions for him.
mousse:
:'(