Chapter D (4)

--Upon my word, if Jean Paul does not write industriously, then no one does; it has already struck one, and he took it for a quarter to twelve; my sister will already be folding her hands before the tucked-up smoking pike, which, like the serpent of eternity, has his tail in his mouth, and saying, incessantly, "It is all growing cold!"--"It must be so, after such glowing chapters," say I, "if thou meanest the reader and the author."--Already, while I still sit over the twentieth chapter, the post-dog is frisking round in the chamber with the twenty-first; and yet I will starve myself, unless I can still utter before dinner, like the seven wise men, seven golden sayings:--

1. When one who is stung by a bee or by fate does not keep still, the sting tears out, and is left behind.

2. Miserable earth, which three or four great or bold men can reform and agitate! Thou art a true stage: in the foreground are some fighting players and a few canvas-tents; the background swims with painted tents and soldiers!

3. States and diamonds are in these days, when they have stains, cut up into little ones; and as

4. Men in great states and bees in great hives suffer a loss of courage and warmth; accordingly now-a-days they join to small countries other small countries, as they do to beehives colony-hives.

5. Man takes _his_ suffering for that of _humanity_, as the bees take the dropping of their bee-stand, when the sun already shines out again, for rain, and stay in-doors.

6. But he commits daily a _lesser_ error: he regards as an _eternity_ (that Aristotelian Unity of Time to the drama--of Existence) at first his present _hour_,--then his _youth_,--then his _life_,--then his _century_,--then the duration of the _globe_,--then that of the _sun_,--then that of the _heavens_,--then (this is the least error) _time_ itself....

7. There are in man, in the beginning and at the end, as in books, two blank bookbinder's leaves,--childhood and old age; and so, too, in the Dog-Post-Days: see the end of this day and the beginning of the next.

FIFTH INTERCALARY DAY.

_Continuation of the Register of Extra-Sheets_.

K.

Cold.[227]--In our age decrease of _stoicism_ and increase of _egotism_ are found side by side. The former covers its treasures and germs with ice; the latter is itself ice. So, in physics, _mountains_ wear away, and _glaciers_ increase.