Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/94

 people than that of the constitution of the soul ; the professed and public ones I do not want, I know them. Besides, they do not so much come under the head of psychology as under that of the public regulations. What will become of this race of ours before it passes away? The world may easily roll on as before another million years, and in that case five thousand years would be just what three months is in the life of a man of fifty. What, for instance, have I done in the last three months? I have eaten and drunk, toyed with electricity, done a little literary work, had some fun with a kittenthus runs the tale of five thousand years of this little world that I constitute. “A hundred have wit for one who has understanding”is a truth with which many a brainless fool consoles himself. Such a man would, however, do well to considerif this is not asking too much of a blockheadthat for every individual with wit there are a hundred who have neither wit nor understanding. What does it matter to you what the motive of this man’s kindly act may have been? Even if envy was not the source of it, then the satisfaction of being envied may have beenthat is, not envy itself, but the envy of envy. Reasons are for the most part only an augmented form of the pretensions by which we seek to defend a course of conduct that we should in any case have