‘But you are acquainted with my liking for paradox, which I justify by saying that paradoxicality is a mark of truth, and that the communis opinio is nowhere in the truth, but is like an elemental precipitate of a halfway understanding which makes generalizations; in its relationship to truth it is like the sulphurous fumes which the lightning leaves behind. Truth is never an element. To dissolve elemental public opinion, and, as far as possible, to make possible the moulding of individuality in seeing and looking, would be a pedagogical task for the state. Then, instead of a so-called public
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