The choice of nutrition; the choice of climate and locality; the third thing in which one must not on any account make a blunder, concerns the method of recuperation or recreation. Here, again, according to the extent to which a spirit is sui generis, the limits of what is perrriitted-that is, beneficial to him-become more and more narrow. In my case, reading in general is one of my methods of recuperation; consequently it is a part of that which enables me to escape from myself, to wander in strange sciences and strange souls@f that, about which I am no longer in earnest. Indeed, reading allows me to recover from my earnestness. When I am deep in work, no books are to be seen near me; I carefully guard against allowing any one to speak or even to think in my presence. For that is what reading amounts to. . . . Has any one ever actually noticed, that, during that profound tension to which the state of pregnancy condemns the mind, and fundamentally, the whole organism, accident and every kind of external stimulus acts too vigorouslv and penetrates too deeply? One must avoid accident and external stimuli as far as possible: a sort of self-circumvallation is one of the first instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy. Shall I permit a strange thought to climb secretly over the wall? For that is just what reading would mean.The periods of work and productivity are followed by periods of recuperation: to me, ye pleasant, intellectual, intelligent books! Shall it be a German book? I must go back six months to catch myself with a book in my hand. What was it? An excellent study by Victor Brochard, Les Seeptiques Grecques, in reading which my Laertiana I was of great help to me. The skeptics! the only honorable types among that double-faced, aye, quintuple-faced race, the philosophers! . . . Otherwise I almost always take refuge in the same books, few in number, books exactly fitting my needs. Perhaps it is not in my nature to read much, or variously: a library makes me ill. Neither is it my nature to love much or many kinds of things. Suspicion, even hostility towards new books is nearer to my instinct than "toleration," largeur de cteur, and other forms of "neighborly love." . . . Ultimately it is to a few old French authors that I return again and again; I believe only in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which calls itself "culture" as pure misunderstanding. It is hardly necessary to speak of the German variety. . . . The few instances of higher culture I have encountered in Germany were all French in their origin, above all, Madame Cosima Wagner, who had by far the most superior judgment in matters of taste that I have ever heard. Even if I do not read, but literally love Pascal, as the most instructive sacrifice to Christianity, killing himself slowly, first in body, then in mind in accord with the logic of this most horrible form of inhuman cruelty; even if I have something of Montaigne's malice in my soul, and-who knows?-perhaps in my body, too; even if my artist's taste endeavors to protect the names of Moli6re, Comeille, and Racine, not without bitterness, against a wild genius like Shakespear -all this does not prevent me from regarding everr e the modem Frenchmen as charming companions also. I can imagine no century in history in which a netful of more inquisitive and at the same time more subtle psychologists could be drawn up to, gether than in present-day Paris. I will name a few at random-for their number is by no means small -Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules LemoCitre; or, singling out one of strong race, a genuine Latin, of whom I am particularly fond, Guy de Maupassant. Between ourselves, I prefer this generation even to its great masters, all of whom were corrupted by German philosophy (Taine, for instance, by Hegel, whom he has to thank for his misunderstanding of great men and great ages). Wherever Germany penetrates, she corrupts culture. It was the war which first "redeemed" the spirit of France. . . . Stendhal is one of the happiest accidents of my life-for everything epochal in that life came to me by accident, never by recommendation-Stendhal is quite priceless, with his anticipatory psychologist's eye; with his grasp of facts, reminiscent of the greatest of all masters of facts (ex ungue Napoleoneum); and, last, but not least, as an honest atheist-a specimen both rare and difficult to discover in France- honor to Prosper M6rim6e! . . . Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of the best atheistic joke I of all people could have made: "God's only excuse is that He does not exist." . . . I myself have said somewhere-What hitherto has been the greatest objection to Life?-God. . . .
