URED knowledge.--From which it follows that it
is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask,"
and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

271. That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense
and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and
reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual
good-will: the fact still remains--they "cannot smell each other!" The
highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the
most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just
holiness--the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any
kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath,
any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out
of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into
clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:--just as much as such a
tendency DISTINGUISHES--it is a noble tendency--it also SEPARATES.--The
pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human.
And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as
impurity, as filth.

272. Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the
rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share
our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of
them, among our DUTIES.

273. A man who strives after great things, looks upon every one whom
he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and
hindrance--or as a temporary resting-place. His peculiar lofty BOUNTY
to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his elevation and
dominates. Impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemned
to comedy up to that time--for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the
end, as every means does--spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of
man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous in it.

274. THE PROBLEM OF THOSE WHO WAIT.--Happy chances are necessary, and
many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the
solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or "break forth,"
as one might say--at the right moment. On an average it DOES NOT happen;
and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who
hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they
wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the waking call comes t