aphorism209 ascolo 209. Damnosa hereditas. All philosophers suffer from the same defect, in that they conceive in the inhuman fixtures of 'truth,' or 'justice,' or even more questionable- 'beauty,' what is good, and think that they can arrive at their goal of an honest and genuine life by analyzing these. Instinctively they let their ideals hover before them as a laureum baculum gesto, a proof against all dangers, and a precaution against all spiritual corruptions. Yet, where the intense power of the nose can no longer discern the good impetus as such because it has become too noxious, overbearing, and aggrandized- for instance, in the figure of the saint, and his inhuman purity and solitude; in the same way that a handful of cinnamon merely infuriates the sense of smell rather than imparts its usual and magnificent hints and hues in something that has been baked with it, man posits the realm of evil and ill-will; and the feeling that we have now entered upon the realm of malice excites through this ambiguity, this ultimately fantastical irritation, all those impetuses which had been previously made indiscernible by the good impetus, eventually transforming those indiscernibles into temptations. Hence the last snare of morality: the more powerful the nose, the more obscure the good. 090609 what's it to you? who go blather from