discriminative scent refuse to become more intimately acquainted with their rivals in order to feel superior to them.
265
There is time for the theatre.—The decline of a nation's fancy evokes in it a longing to have its legends represented on the stage; then it tolerates the coarse substitutes of fancy. But in that age which is the age of the epic rhapsodist, the theatre and the actor of heroic parts are an obstacle to instead of a wing of fancy : too near, too definite, too heavy, with too little of dream-land and eagle-flight.
266
Void of charm.—He is void of charm and knows it: ah, how skilled he is in veiling it! By stern virtue, gloomy looks, affected suspicion against mankind and existence, by coarse jests, by contempt of a more refined mode of life, by pathos and pretensions, by cynical philosophy—nay, in the constant consciousness of his deficiency he las developed into a character.
267
Why so proud!—A noble character differs from a vulgar one in as much as, unlike the latter, he has not at his disposal a certain number of habits and views : chance would have it that they were not transmitted and imparted to him by education.
