* * * * *

In my head there is a permanent opposition-party; and whenever I take any step or come to any decision—­though I may have given the matter mature consideration—­it afterwards attacks what I have done, without, however, being each time necessarily in the right.  This is, I suppose, only a form of rectification on the part of the spirit of scrutiny; but it often reproaches me when I do not deserve it.  The same thing, no doubt, happens to many others as well; for where is the man who can help thinking that, after all, it were better not to have done something that he did with great deliberation: 

  Quid tam dextro pede concipis ut te
  Conatus non poeniteat votique peracti?

* * * * *

Why is it that common is an expression of contempt? and that uncommon, extraordinary, distinguished, denote approbation?  Why is everything that is common contemptible?

Common in its original meaning denotes that which is peculiar to all men, i.e., shared equally by the whole species, and therefore an inherent part of its nature.  Accordingly, if an individual possesses no qualities beyond those which attach to mankind in general, he is a common man.  Ordinary is a much milder word, and refers rather to intellectual character; whereas common has more of a moral application.

What value can a creature have that is not a whit different from millions of its kind?  Millions, do I say? nay, an infiniture of creatures which, century after century, in never-ending flow, Nature sends bubbling up from her inexhaustible springs; as generous with them as the smith with the useless sparks that fly around his anvil.

It is obviously quite right that a creature which has no qualities except those of the species, should have to confine its claim to an existence entirely within the limits of the species, and live a life conditioned by those limits.

In various passages of my works,[1] I have argued that whilst a lower animal possesses nothing more than the generic character of its species, man is the only being which can lay claim to possess an individual character.  But in most men this individual character comes to very little in reality; and they may be almost all ranged under certain classes:  ce sont des especes.  Their thoughts and desires, like their faces, are those of the species, or, at any rate, those of the class to which they belong; and accordingly, they are of a trivial, every-day, common character, and exist by the thousand.  You can usually tell beforehand what they are likely to do and say.  They have no special stamp or mark to distinguish them; they are like manufactured goods, all of a piece.

[Footnote 1:  Grundprobleme der Ethik, p. 48; Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. i. p. 338.]