und knowledge of this
fact that we give up trying to persuade people, or to alter them
and bring them round to our way of thinking. We try to accommodate
ourselves to theirs instead, so far as they are indispensable to us,
and to keep away from them so far as we cannot possibly agree.

Ultimately we come to perceive that even in matters of mere
intellect--although its laws are the same for all, and the subject
as opposed to the object of thought does not really enter into
individuality--there is, nevertheless, no certainty that the whole
truth of any matter can be communicated to any one, or that any one
can be persuaded or compelled to assent to it; because, as Bacon says,
_intellectus humanus luminis sicci non est_: the light of the human
intellect is coloured by interest and passion.

* * * * *

It is just because _all happiness is of a negative character_ that,
when we succeed in being perfectly at our ease, we are not properly
conscious of it. Everything seems to pass us softly and gently, and
hardly to touch us until the moment is over; and then it is the
positive feeling of something lacking that tells us of the happiness
which has vanished; it is then that we observe that we have failed to
hold it fast, and we suffer the pangs of self-reproach as well as of
privation.

* * * * *

Every happiness that a man enjoys, and almost every friendship that
he cherishes, rest upon illusion; for, as a rule, with increase of
knowledge they are bound to vanish. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, a
man should courageously pursue truth, and never weary of striving to
settle accounts with himself and the world. No matter what happens to
the right or to the left of him,--be it a chimaera or fancy that makes
him happy, let him take heart and go on, with no fear of the desert
which widens to his view. Of one thing only must he be quite certain:
that under no circumstances will he discover any lack of worth in
himself when the veil is raised; the sight of it would be the Gorgon
that would kill him. Therefore, if he wants to remain undeceived, let
him in his inmost being feel his own worth. For to feel the lack of
it is not merely the greatest, but also the only true affliction;
all other sufferings of the mind may not only be healed, but may be
immediately relieved, by the secure consciousness of worth. The man
who is assured of it can sit down quietly under suffering