reconvalescent, step out into freedom and bright stillness—some one will yet say: ‘his person looks upon his illness us upon an argument, on his impotence as on a proof for the impotence of all; he is vain enough to fall ill in order to feel the superiority of the sufferer. And supposing somebody burst his own chains and, in so doing, wounded himself: another will mockingly point at him. ‘How awkward he is!”’ he will say; “thus fares a man who is used to his chains and is fool enough to burst them asunder!”
481
Two Germans.— When we compare Kant and Schopenhauer to Plato, Spinoza, Pascal, Rousseau, Goethe, regarding their souls, not their intellects, the two first-named thinkers are at a disadvantage: their thoughts do not constitute a passionate history of the soul; we anticipate no novels, crises, catastrophes, or death-struggles; their thinking is not an involuntary biography of a soul, but, in the case of Kant, that of a head; in the case of Schopenhauer, the description and reflection of a character (‘‘the invariable”) and the delight in the very reflector, that is, in an excellent intellect. Kant, when shining through his thoughts, appears an honest and an honourable man in the best sense of the word, but also an insignificant one: he lacks breadth and power; his experiences were not great, and his method of working robbed him of the leisure required
