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654 operates by law, and nothing operates by law. A law is a simple relationship which is easily left out of account. We hunt laws for convenience' sake." For scientific convenience; and also for the sake of an heroic-apodictic lovelessness. And also for the sake of that self-complacency which—yearning after treason—declares overwhelmingly for nature against man and the spirit, being quite relentless against the latter in favour of the former, but deeming itself just as remarkable as before, and distinguished to boot. But the problem of distinction—bound up principally with the opposition between nature and spirit—is not to be solved by such renegade tactics. And in order to venture a defence of nature against the spirit, as Spengler does, one should belong to the true nobility of nature, like Goethe, who represented it in contrast to Schiller's nobility of the spirit. Otherwise one becomes what I have already termed the talented author of the Untergang—namely, a snob—and belongs to that vast number of modern figures who teach, disagreeably enough, what does not apply to their own case.

It speaks for the powers of a book in which I do not believe that I should be betrayed by it into overstepping on this one subject alone the space which has been so kindly allotted me. It must be enough for this time. I hope that my next letter will compensate my readers for the monotony of this one.