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!