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Happiness and culture. We are devastated by the sight of the scenes of our childhood: the garden house, the church with its graves, the pond and the woods-we always see them again as sufferers. We are gripped by self-pity, for what have we not suffered since that time! And here, everything is still standing so quiet, so eternal: we alone are so different, so in turmoil; we even rediscover some people on whom Time has sharpened its tooth no more than on an oak tree: peasants, fishermen, woodsmen-they are the same.
Devastation and self-pity in the face of the lower culture is the sign of higher culture-this shows that happiness, at least, has not been increased by the latter. Whoever wishes to harvest happiness and comfort from life, let him always keep out of the way of higher culture.