although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on
account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little
distance from us. We Europeans of the day after tomorrow, we firstlings
of the twentieth century--with all our dangerous curiosity, our
multifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly
sweetened cruelty in sense and spirit--we shall presumably, IF we must
have virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with our most
secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements:
well, then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!--where, as we know,
so many things lose themselves, so many things get quite lost! And is
there anything finer than to SEARCH for one's own virtues? Is it not
almost to BELIEVE in one's own virtues? But this "believing in one's
own virtues"--is it not practically the same as what was formerly called
one's "good conscience," that long, respectable pigtail of an idea,
which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads, and often enough
also behind their understandings? It seems, therefore, that however
little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly
respectable in other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the
worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans with good
consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.--Ah! if you only knew how
soon, so very soon--it will be different!