For whom a Court Jester is needful.—Those who are very beautiful, very good, and very powerful scarcely ever learn the full and naked truth about anything,—for in their presence we involuntarily lie a little, because we feel their influence, and in view of this influence convey a truth in the form of an adaptation (by falsifying the shades and [pg 324] degrees of facts, by omitting or adding details, and withholding that which is insusceptible of adaptation). If, however, in spite of all this, people of this description insist upon hearing the truth, they must keep a court jester—a being with the madman's privilege of being unable to adapt himself.