to “disinterested knowledge” The objective man, who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the ideal man of learning in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a mirror—­he is no “purpose in himself” The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such desires only as knowing or “reflecting” implies—­he waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film Whatever “personality” he still possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms and events He calls up the recollection of “himself” with an effort, and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and society—­indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain!  His thoughts already rove away to the more general case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote time to himself he is serene, not from lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble The habitual complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea and Nay:  alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his!—­and as man generally, he becomes far too easily the Caput MORTUUM of such virtues.  Should one wish love or hatred from him—­I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them—­he will do what he can, and furnish what he can.  But one must not be surprised if it should not be much—­if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and deteriorated.  His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather un tour de force, a slight ostentation and exaggeration.  He is only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality is he still “nature” and “natural.”  His mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy.  “JE ne MEPRISE PRESQUE rien”—­ he says, with Leibniz:  let us not overlook nor undervalue the PRESQUE!