Nelka | Page 7

prejudice and habitual notions of which they are possessed. The other: they are fragments, cranks and nonentities. One more thing, I do not think that a nation can be judged by its great men. Great men belong to humanity, to the century, to anything but not to their country. I think intelligence and capacity is never local, and it is the average and the habit of life that determines the country."
Paris 1900.
"I do not think that anything is likely to happen to me except perhaps softening of the brain and that would happen anywhere. I have seen no one to whom it is likely that I will lose my heart, so I am quite safe."
Paris 1900.
"I do find everything so funny, and people so funny, not individuals, but as a whole, by funny I mean queer. The senseless mode of existence, the superfluous education: these artificial restrictions. It is especially the artificiality of so many things. Who is going to do away with it all? I don't understand anything and I know there is no use trying to build up an understanding on rules."
That summer Nelka went for a month's visit to Denmark to her friends Count and Countess Moltke.
Glorupvej, Denmark 1900.
"We were still two days on the steamer getting to Bremen and then we changed trains and boats about fifteen times in 24 hours getting here. But once here it is beyond all words in delight. The place is perfectly beautiful. I cannot describe it to you. It is so quiet, so far away from everything. Beautiful forests that we drive through, deer all over, swans, fountains and all so old. I lead a most regular of lives. Everyone is exact to the minute, for meals and everything. I feel that it is a very great opportunity I am having to be here in Denmark and see all this new country. It is so interesting and I enjoy it so much. It was very sweet of Louisette to ask me."
Glorupvej, Denmark 1900.
"What you write in answer to my saying that I like 'whole soulness': it is precisely the whole soulness which is not a conscious conquest that I like. I appreciate the merit of the last but it is not that which attracts me, which also reminds me that I want to tell you that I have come to the firm, clear and definite conclusion that a person that loves is not necessarily loving, nor a person that gives necessarily generous. A loving person may never love and a generous person may never give, and the practice of either quality does not indicate an impulse. One can conceive, accept and appropriate the idea of generosity, lovingness, etc., etc., and act it, but that is not the thing. I hate all effort which has for its aim the creation of self, the conscious creation. I like the self to become through slavery to the best natural impulses and through sacrifice brought in one's affections. Seeing that we do depend on each other, it seems to me admissible that the surrender of self, which continues to be with me the highest of everything, should allow of a direct object as its means. I used to have a holy respect of the majority. Now, when I see how many imbeciles go to make up that majority I am no longer afraid to throw over any precept that has filtered into my head, and if ever there was a revolutionist in thought, it is I. Foolish beliefs and hobbies have become adorned with so much that appeals to the sense of the beautiful that one clings even to that, but then that is another element which can envelop rational things as well. Of course all cannot help but be well, but then I am sure that the present condition is quite off the track and I have no respect for anything but pain, joy and sacrifice which are the only realities. Life makes standards and standards don't make life."
Glorupvej 1900.
"I can tolerate wrong and weakness and everything else but that search for self and above all that pompous blowing of a horn before such empty things, such big sounding ambitions, that mock glory, that swelling in noble pride upon such fictitious hallucinations, that poor mesquin grandness. It is exasperating. I hate ambition to achieve. However, I suppose I am very foolish. I am a mass of vanity and self-seeking in my own way, but it is a great pleasure to cry down. I get roused sometimes on things that are not my business and I have felt very much inclined to express my opinion about some thing, but I suppose I had better not."
"My life I think is molded on circumstance and on the best of my instinct and judgment which may be