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182 show no mercy, save when these keen pains of wounded vanity are so given as to inflame and increase this vanity itself. All healthy, truthful criticism of individual limitations is a duty, even if it is a present torture to the individual criticised. For this individual is blind to other life because he is wrapped up in himself. If by showing him his insignificance you can open his eyes, you are bound to do so, even though you make him writhe to see his worthlessness. For what we here defends is not that ill-natured criticism whose only aim is to gratify the miserable self of the critic, but the criticism whose edge is turned in earnest against every form of self-satisfaction that hinders insight. Let a man be self-satisfied when he is at rest, after dinner, or in merry company. It is a harmless and even a useful amusement. But when he is at work doing good he ought to hate self-satisfaction, which hinders the moral insight, which exalts his will above the universal will, which takes the half-done task for the whole task, and altogether glorifies the vanity of vanities. If now my critic rids me of such self-satisfaction, he may hurt me keenly, but he is my best friend. My life may often be miserable in consequence, but then I am an instrument, whose purpose it is to attain, to foster, to extend, and to employ the moral insight. My misery is a drop, evil no doubt in itself (since my poor little will must writhe and struggle when it sees its own vanity and the hopelessness of its separate satisfactions), but a relative good, since through it I may attain to the moral insight. All such pains must be dealt with in the same way. Hence the