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FOURTH BOOK
267

had stolen their members? The revenge of the humble, Christian-like souls, who just manage to slink through the world? The revenge of those who always judge rashly, and are always rashly declared to be in the wrong? The revenge of the drunkards of all classes, to whom the morning is the most dismal part of the day? Of all kinds of invalids, of the sickly and depressed, who no longer have the courage to recover ? The number of these petty revengeful people and of their mean little acts of revenge is immense; the very air is constantly whizzing with the discharged arrows of their malignity, so that the sun and the sky of their lives are often obscured thereby,—alas! not only theirs, but more often ours, other men's; ah, this is worse than the frequent pricks and wounds inflicted on our skins and hearts! Do we not sometimes deny the existence of the sun and the sky for the sole reason that we have not seen them for such a long time? Therefore, solitude! Even in this case, solitude !

324

The philosophy of actors.—It is the blissful illusion of all great actors that the historical persons represented by them really have felt as they do during their performance;—but in this they are greatly mistaken. Their power of imitation and divination which they are desirous of representing as a clear-sighted faculty, only penetrates far enough to explain gestures, accents, and