The English have a peculiar contempt for gesticulation, and regard it as something undignified and common; this seems to me to be only one of those silly prejudices of English fastidiousness.  For it is a language which nature has given to every one and which every one understands; therefore to abolish and forbid it for no other reason than to gratify that so much extolled, gentlemanly feeling, is a very dubious thing to do.

* * * * *

The state of human happiness, for the most part, is like certain groups of trees, which seen from a distance look wonderfully fine; but if we go up to them and among them, their beauty disappears; we do not know wherein it lay, for it is only trees that surround us.  And so it happens that we often envy the position of others.

FOOTNOTES: 

[14] Grundpr. der Ethik, p. 48; Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. i. p. 338.

[15] Vierfache Wurzel, Sec. 21.

[16] Pererga, vol. ii.  Sec. 311.

METAPHYSICS OF LOVE.

We are accustomed to see poets principally occupied with describing the love of the sexes.  This, as a rule, is the leading idea of every dramatic work, be it tragic or comic, romantic or classic, Indian or European.  It in no less degree constitutes the greater part of both lyric and epic poetry, especially if in these we include the host of romances which have been produced every year for centuries in every civilised country in Europe as regularly as the fruits of the earth.  All these works are nothing more than many-sided, short, or long descriptions of the passion in question.  Moreover, the most successful delineations of love, such, for example, as Romeo and Juliet, La Nouvelle Heloise, and Werther, have attained immortal fame.

Rochefoucauld says that love may be compared to a ghost since it is something we talk about but have never seen, and Lichtenberg, in his essay Ueber die Macht der Liebe, disputes and denies its reality and naturalness—­but both are in the wrong.  For if it were foreign to and contradicted human nature—­in other words, if it were merely an imaginary caricature, it would not have been depicted with such zeal by the poets of all ages, or accepted by mankind with an unaltered interest; for anything artistically beautiful cannot exist without truth.

  “Rien n’est beau que le vrai; le vrai seul est aimable.”—­BOIL.

Experience, although not that of everyday, verifies that that which as a rule begins only as a strong and yet controllable inclination, may develop, under certain conditions, into a passion, the ardour of which surpasses that of every other.  It will ignore all considerations, overcome all kinds of obstacles with incredible strength and persistence.  A man, in order to have his love gratified, will unhesitatingly