alternation of parties, as noble traitors to all things that can in any way be betrayed—and yet without a feeling of guilt."[1]
Naturally he has a fresh sense of the uncertainty of things. We would not die for our opinions, he remarks, we are not sure enough of them—though we might for the right to change them.[2] a He has even the feeling of being more a wanderer than a traveler—for a traveler has a destination, and he for the time has none.[3] b He tells a parable, to which he gives the title, "The worst fate of a prophet": "For twenty years he labored to convince his contemporaries of his claims—at last he succeeded; but in the meantime his opponents had also succeeded—he was no longer convinced about himself."[4] He says (and here, too, we may be sure, he is thinking of himself): "This thinker needs no one to refute him: he suffices to that end himself."[5] I confess that in reading him I have sometimes had the ironical reflection that he has an advantage for the student over most thinkers, in that you have only to read him far enough to find him criticising himself!—most philosophers leaving the most necessary task of criticising them to others. Somewhat in this line he suggests an unusual ethics of intellectual procedure. "We criticise a thinker more sharply when he advances a proposition that is displeasing to us; and yet it would be more reasonable to do this, when his proposition is pleasing"[6]—so easily, he means, do our likes and dislikes take us in. This is perhaps also what he means in the paradox: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than falsehoods"[7]—too much passion, interest, will to believe lurk in "convictions." From a like point of view, he finds practical occupation dangerous. "He who has much to do keeps his general views and standpoints almost unchanged." This is true even if a person "works in the service of an idea; he will no longer test the idea itself, he has no longer the time for doing so; yes, it is against his interest to regard it as in general still discussable."[8] And yet, he asks, "wherein does the greatness of a character consist, but in ability to take sides in favor
