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.
What, after all, is ignobleness?—Words are vocal sym-
bols 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 employ the same words for the same kind of
internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences
IN COMMON. On this account the people of one nation
understand one another better than those belonging to dif-
ferent nations, even when they use the same language; or
rather, when people have lived long together under simi-
lar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil)
there ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that ‘understands
itself ’—namely, a nation. In all souls a like number of fre-
quently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand
over those occurring more rarely: about these matters
people understand one another rapidly and always more
rapidly—the history of language is the history of a process
of abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension
people always unite closer and closer. The greater the dan-
ger, the greater is the need of agreeing quickly and readily
