Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/109

 to deserve pardon for his faults on account of his virtues. People write against suicide, advancing arguments intended to sway our judgment at the critical moment. This, however, is all in vain so long as we have not ourselves arrived at such conclusions, that is, so long as they are not the fruit, the result, of our whole outlook and acquired nature. Everything, then, cries out to us :Daily strive after truth, learn to know the world, seek the society of the righteous, and you will always act in your best interests. Should you thereafter upon occasion find suicide advisable, that is, should all your arguments prove insufficient to deter you, then. . ..

There are a number of minor moral deceptions which we practice without thinking them of much harm; just as, for instance, we smoke tobacco in similar indifference to our health. Pride, a magnanimous passion, is not blind to personal failings, but arrogance is so.

If only the tenth part of the religion and the morals that are in books existed in the heart! But what almost universally happens is that the greater part of human wisdom, soon after its production, is laid to rest in repositories. Hence it was once suggested that this word must be derived, not from the Latin reponere, but direct from the French repos.