From a distance. – This mountain makes the entire region it dominates attractive and significant in every way; having said this to ourselves for the hundredth time, we are so unreasonably and thankfully disposed toward it that we suppose that it, the bestower of such delight, must itself be the most delightful thing in the region – and so we climb it and are disappointed. Suddenly the mountain itself and the entire landscape around us, beneath us, seem to have lost their magic; we had forgotten that certain types of greatness, like certain types of goodness, want to be beheld only from a distance and always from below, not from above – only thus do they have an effect. Perhaps you know people near you who ought to view themselves only from a distance in order to find themselves at all tolerable or attractive and invigorating; self-knowledge is something they should be advised against.