ce of advice I would specially offer to those whose
superiority is of the highest kind--real superiority, I mean, of a
purely personal nature--which cannot, like orders and titles, appeal
to the eye or ear at every moment; as, otherwise, they will find that
familiarity breeds contempt, or, as the Romans used to say, _sus
Minervam. Joke with a slave, and he'll soon show his heels_, is an
excellent Arabian proverb; nor ought we to despise what Horace says,

_Sume superbiam
Quaesitam meritis_.

--usurp the fame you have deserved. No doubt, when modesty was made a
virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools; for everybody
is expected to speak of himself as if he were one. This is leveling
down indeed; for it comes to look as if there were nothing but fools
in the world.

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of
his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which
he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which
he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is
endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to
see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their
failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool
who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last
resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and
glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus
reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. For example, if you speak
of the stupid and degrading bigotry of the English nation with the
contempt it deserves, you will hardly find one Englishman in fifty to
agree with you; but if there should be one, he will generally happen
to be an intelligent man.

The Germans have no national pride, which shows how honest they are,
as everybody knows! and how dishonest are those who, by a piece
of ridiculous affectation, pretend that they are proud of their
country--the _Deutsche Bruder_ and the demagogues who flatter the
mob in order to mislead it. I have heard it said that gunpowder was
invented by a German. I doubt it. Lichtenberg asks, _Why is it that a
man who is not a German does not care about pretending that he is one;
and that if he makes any pretence at all, it is to be a Frenchman or
an Englishman_?[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--It should be remembered that these
remarks were written in the earlier part of the