The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.
A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.
Christianity has a hunter's instinct for finding out all those who by one means or another may be driven to despair -although only a part of mankind is capable of such despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those and pursues them
Men subsequently put whatever is newly learned or experienced to use as a plowshare, perhaps even as a weapon: but women immediately include it among their ornaments.
One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration for whatever it abuses not to speak of the "wisdom of this world," which an impudent wind bag tries to dispose of "by the foolishness of preaching."
In Russia there is an emigration of intelligence: émigrés cross the frontier in order to read and to write good books. But in doing so they contribute to making their fatherland, abandoned by spirit, into the gaping jaws of Asia that would like to swallow our little Europe.
People who feel insecure in social situations never miss a chance to exhibit their dominance over close, submissive friends, whomthey put down publicly, in front of everyone--by teasing, for example.