With the greatest indignation I then thought of the bad men who would abolish sleep.  They have probably never slept, and likewise never lived.  Why are gods gods, except because they deliberately do nothing; because they understand that art and are masters of it?  And how the poets, the sages and the saints strive to be like the gods, in that respect as in others!  How they vie with one another in praise of solitude, of leisure, of liberal freedom from care and of inactivity!  And they are right in doing so; for everything that is good and beautiful in life is already there and maintains itself by its own strength.  Why then this vague striving and pushing forward without rest or goal?  Can this storm and stress give form and nourishing juice to the everliving plant of humankind, that grows and fashions itself in quiet?  This empty, restless activity is only a bad habit of the north and brings nothing but ennui for oneself and for others.  And with what does it begin and end except with antipathy to the world in general, which is now such a common feeling?  Inexperienced vanity does not suspect that it indicates only lack of reason and sense, but regards it as a high-minded discontent with the universal ugliness of the world and of life, of which it really has not yet the slightest presentiment.  It could not be otherwise; for industry and utility are the death-angels which, with fiery swords, prevent the return of man into Paradise.  Only when composed and at ease in the holy calm of true passivity can one think over his entire being and get a view of life and the world.

How is it that we think and compose at all, except by surrendering ourselves completely to the influence of some genius?  Speaking and fashioning are after all only incidentals in all arts and sciences; thinking and imagining are the essentials, and they are only possible in a passive state.  To be sure it is intentional, arbitrary, one-sided, but still a passive state.  The more beautiful the climate we live in, the more passive we are.  Only the Italians know what it is to walk, and only the Orientals to recline.  And where do we find the human spirit more delicately and sweetly developed than in India?  Everywhere it is the privilege of being idle that distinguishes the noble from the common; it is the true principle of nobility.  Finally, where is the greater and more lasting enjoyment, the greater power and will to enjoy?  Among women, whose nature we call passive, or among men, in whom the transition from sudden wrath to ennui is quicker than that from good to evil?

Satisfied with the enjoyment of my existence, I proposed to raise myself above all its finite, and therefore contemptible, aims and objects.  Nature itself seemed to confirm me in this undertaking, and, as it were, to exhort me in many-voiced choral songs to further idleness.  And now suddenly a new vision presented itself.  I imagined myself invisible in a theatre.  On one side I saw all the well-known