— Goethe to Rath Schlosser.

267. The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: “SIAO-SIN” (“MAKE THY HEART SMALL”). This is the essentially fundamental tendency in latter-day civilizations. I have no doubt that an ancient Greek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of today — in this respect alone we should immediately be “distasteful” to him.

268. What, after all, is ignobleness? — Words are vocal symbols for ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of sensations.

It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another: we must also