The Joyful Wisdom - Complete Works, Volume Ten

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Title: The Joyful Wisdom - Complete Works, Volume Ten
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Language: English
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THE JOYFUL WISDOM

("LA GAYA SCIENZA")

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

TRANSLATED BY

THOMAS COMMON

WITH POETRY RENDERED BY

PAUL V. COHN

AND

MAUDE D. PETRE

_I stay to mine own house confined,_
_Nor graft my wits on alien stock_
_And mock at every master mind_
_That never at itself could mock._

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche

The First Complete and Authorised English Translation

Edited by Dr Oscar Levy

Volume Ten

T.N. FOULIS

13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET

EDINBURGH: AND LONDON

1910

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL NOTE
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
JEST, RUSE, AND REVENGE: A PRELUDE IN RHYME
BOOK FIRST
BOOK SECOND
BOOK THIRD
BOOK FOURTH: SANCTUS JANUARIUS
BOOK FIFTH: WE FEARLESS ONES
APPENDIX: SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-BIRD

EDITORIAL NOTE

"The Joyful Wisdom," written in 1882, just before "Zarathustra,"
is rightly judged to be one of Nietzsche's best books. Here the
essentially grave and masculine face of the poet-philosopher is seen
to light up and suddenly break into a delightful smile. The warmth
and kindness that beam from his features will astonish those hasty
psychologists who have never divined that behind the destroyer is
the creator, and behind the blasphemer the lover of life. In the
retrospective valuation of his work which appears in "Ecce Homo" the
author himself observes with truth that the fourth book, "Sanctus
Januarius," deserves especial attention: "The whole book is a gift from
the Saint, and the introductory verses express my gratitude for the
most wonderful month of January that I have ever spent." Book fifth "We
Fearless Ones," the Appendix "Songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird," and the
Preface, were added to the second edition in 1887.

The translation of Nietzsche's poetry has proved to be a more
embarrassing problem than that of his prose. Not only has there been
a difficulty in finding adequate translators--a difficulty overcome,
it is hoped, by the choice of Miss Petre and Mr Cohn,--but it cannot
be denied that even in the original the poems are of unequal merit. By
the side of such masterpieces as "To the Mistral" are several verses of
comparatively little value. The Editor, however, did not feel justified
in making a selection, as it was intended that the edition should be
complete. The heading, "Jest, Ruse and Revenge," of the "Prelude in
Rhyme" is borrowed from Goethe.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Perhaps more than one preface would be necessary for this book; and
after all it might still be doubtful whether any one could be brought
nearer to the _experiences_ in it by means of prefaces, without having
himself experienced something similar. It seems to be written in the
language of the thawing-wind: there is wantonness, restlessness,
contradiction and April-weather in it; so that one is as constantly
reminded of the proximity of winter as of the _victory_ over it:
the victory which is coming, which must come, which has perhaps
already come.... Gratitude continually flows forth, as if the most
unexpected thing had happened, the gratitude of a convalescent--for
_convalescence_ was this most unexpected thing. "Joyful Wisdom": that
implies the Saturnalia of a spirit which has patiently withstood a
long, frightful pressure--patiently, strenuously, impassionately,
without submitting, but without hope--and which is now suddenly
o'erpowered with hope, the hope of health, the _intoxication_ of
convalescence. What wonder that much that is unreasonable and foolish
thereby comes to light: much wanton tenderness expended even on
problems which have a prickly hide, and are not therefore fit to be
fondled and allured. The whole book is really nothing but a revel
after long privation and impotence: the frolicking of returning
energy, of newly awakened belief in a to-morrow and after-to-morrow;
of sudden sentience and prescience of a future, of near adventures,
of seas open once more, and aims once more permitted and believed in.
And what was now all behind me! This track of desert, exhaustion,
unbelief, and frigidity in the midst of youth, this advent of grey
hairs at the wrong time, this tyranny of pain, surpassed, however, by
the tyranny of pride which repudiated the _consequences_ of pain--and
consequences are comforts,--this radical isolation, as defence against
the contempt of mankind become morbidly clairvoyant, this restriction
upon principle to all that is bitter, sharp, and painful in knowledge,
as prescribed by the _disgust_ which had gradually resulted from
imprudent spiritual diet and pampering--it is called Romanticism,--oh,
who could realise all those feelings of mine! He, however, who could do
so would certainly forgive me everything, and more than a little folly,
boisterousness and "Joyful Wisdom"--for example, the handful of songs
which are given along with the book on this occasion,--songs in which a
poet makes merry over all poets in a way not easily pardoned.--Alas, it
is not only on the poets and their fine "lyrical sentiments" that this
reconvalescent must vent his malignity: who knows what kind of victim
he seeks, what kind of monster of material for parody will allure him
ere long? _Incipit tragœdia,_ it is said at the conclusion of this
seriously frivolous book; let people be on their guard! Something
or other extraordinarily bad and wicked announces itself: _incipit
parodia,_ there is no doubt....

--But let us leave Herr Nietzsche; what does it matter to people
that Herr Nietzsche has got well again?... A psychologist knows few
questions so attractive as those concerning the relations of health
to philosophy, and in the case when he himself falls sick, he carries
with him all his scientific curiosity into his sickness. For, granting
that one is a person, one has necessarily also the philosophy of
one's personality; there is, however, an important distinction here.
With the one it is his defects which philosophise, with the other
it is his riches and powers. The former _requires_ his philosophy,
whether it be as support, sedative, or medicine, as salvation,
elevation, or self-alienation; with the latter it is merely a fine
luxury, at best the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude, which
must inscribe itself ultimately in cosmic capitals on the heaven of
ideas. In the other more usual case, however, when states of distress
occupy themselves with philosophy (as is the case with all sickly
thinkers--and perhaps the sickly thinkers preponderate in the history
of philosophy), what will happen to the thought itself which is brought
under the _pressure_ of sickness? This is the important question for
psychologists: and here experiment is possible. We philosophers do
just like a traveller who resolves to awake at a given hour, and then
quietly yields himself to sleep: we surrender ourselves temporarily,
body and soul, to the sickness, supposing we become ill--we shut, as it
were, our eyes on ourselves. And as the traveller knows that something
_does not_ sleep, that something counts the hours and will awake him,
we also know that the critical moment will find us awake--that then
something will spring forward and surprise the spirit _in the very
act,_ I mean in weakness, or reversion, or submission, or obduracy, or
obscurity, or whatever the morbid conditions are called, which in times
of good health have the _pride_ of the spirit opposed to them (for it
is as in the old rhyme: "The spirit proud, peacock and horse are the
three proudest things of earthly source"). After such self-questioning
and self-testing, one learns to look with a sharper eye at all that
has hitherto been philosophised; one divines better than before the
arbitrary by-ways, side-streets, resting-places, and _sunny_ places of
thought, to which suffering thinkers, precisely as sufferers, are led
and misled: one knows now in what direction the sickly _body_ and its
requirements unconsciously press, push, and allure the spirit--towards
the sun, stillness, gentleness, patience, medicine, refreshment in any
sense whatever. Every philosophy which puts peace higher than war,
every ethic with a negative grasp of the idea of happiness, every
metaphysic and physic that knows a _finale,_ an ultimate condition of
any kind whatever, every predominating, æsthetic or religious longing
for an aside, a beyond, an outside, an above--all these permit one
to ask whether sickness has not been the motive which inspired the
philosopher. The unconscious disguising of physiological requirements
under the cloak of the objective, the ideal, the purely spiritual,
is carried on to an alarming extent,--and I have often enough asked
myself, whether on the whole philosophy hitherto has not generally
been merely, an interpretation of the body, and a _misunderstanding
of the body._ Behind the loftiest estimates of value by which the
history of thought has hitherto been governed, misunderstandings of
the bodily constitution, either of individuals, classes, or entire
races are concealed. One may always primarily consider these audacious
freaks of metaphysic, and especially its answers to the question of the
_worth_ of existence, as symptoms of certain bodily constitutions; and
if, on the whole, when scientifically determined, not a particle of
significance attaches to such affirmations and denials of the world,
they nevertheless furnish the historian and psychologist with hints
so much the more valuable (as we have said) as symptoms of the bodily
constitution, its good or bad condition, its fullness, powerfulness,
and sovereignty in history; or else of its obstructions, exhaustions,
and impoverishments, its premonition of the end, its will to the end. I
still expect that a philosophical _physician,_ in the exceptional sense
of the word--one who applies himself to the problem of the collective
health of peoples, periods, races, and mankind generally--will some
day have the courage to follow out my suspicion to its ultimate
conclusions, and to venture on the judgment that in all philosophising
it has not hitherto been a question of "truth" at all, but of
something else,--namely, of health, futurity, growth, power, life....

It will be surmised that I should not like to take leave ungratefully
of that period of severe sickness, the advantage of which is not
even yet exhausted in me: for I am sufficiently conscious of what I
have in advance of the spiritually robust generally, in my changeful
state of health. A philosopher who has made the tour of many states
of health, and always makes it anew, has also gone through just as
many philosophies: he really _cannot_ do otherwise than transform
his condition on every occasion into the most ingenious posture and
position,--this art of transfiguration _is_ just philosophy. We
philosophers are not at liberty to separate soul and body, as the
people separate them; and we are still less at liberty to separate
soul and spirit. We are not thinking frogs, we are not objectifying
and registering apparatuses with cold entrails,--our thoughts must
be continually born to us out of our pain, and we must, motherlike,
share with them all that we have in us of blood, heart, ardour, joy,
passion, pang, conscience, fate and fatality. Life--that means for
us to transform constantly into light and flame all that we are, and
also all that we meet with; we _cannot_ possibly do otherwise. And
as regards sickness, should we not be almost tempted to ask whether
we could in general dispense with it? It is great pain only which is
the ultimate emancipator of the spirit; for it is the teacher of the
_strong suspicion_ which makes an X out of every U[1], a true, correct
X, _i.e.,_ the ante-penultimate letter.... It is great pain only, the
long slow pain which takes time, by which we are burned as it were with
green wood, that compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate
depths, and divest ourselves of all trust, all good-nature, veiling,
gentleness, and averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly installed
our humanity. I doubt whether such pain "improves" us; but I know that
it _deepens_ us. Be it that we learn to confront it with our pride, our
scorn, our strength of will, doing like the Indian who, however sorely
tortured, revenges himself on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be
it that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental nothingness--it
is called Nirvana,--into mute, benumbed, deaf self-surrender,
self-forgetfulness, and self-effacement: one emerges from such long,
dangerous exercises in self-mastery as another being, with several
additional notes of interrogation, and above all, with the _will_ to
question more than ever, more profoundly, more strictly, more sternly,
more wickedly, more quietly than has ever been questioned hitherto.
Confidence in life is gone: life itself has become a _problem._--Let
it not be imagined that one has necessarily become a hypochondriac
thereby! Even love of life is still possible--only one loves
differently. It is the love of a woman of whom one is doubtful.... The
charm, however, of all that is problematic, the delight in the X, is
too great in those more spiritual and more spiritualised men, not to
spread itself again and again like a clear glow over all the trouble of
the problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty, and even over the
jealousy of the lover. We know a new happiness....

Finally (that the most essential may not remain unsaid), one comes
back out of such abysses, out of such severe sickness, and out of
the sickness of strong suspicion--_new-born,_ with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for joy, with a more
delicate tongue for all good things, with a merrier disposition, with
a second and more dangerous innocence in joy; more childish at the
same time, and a hundred times more refined than ever before. Oh, how
repugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab pleasure, as the
pleasure-seekers, our "cultured" classes, our rich and ruling classes,
usually understand it! How malignantly we now listen to the great
holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people" and city-men at present
allow themselves to be forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books,
and music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How the theatrical
cry of passion now pains our ear, how strange to our taste has all
the romantic riot and sensuous bustle which the cultured populace
love become (together with their aspirations after the exalted, the
elevated, and the intricate)! No, if we convalescents need an art
at all, it is _another_ art--a mocking, light, volatile, divinely
serene, divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear flame,
into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art for artists, only for
artists! We at last know better what is first of all necessary _for
it--_namely, cheerfulness, _every_ kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists:--I should like to prove it. We now know something
too well, we men of knowledge: oh, how well we are now learning to
forget and _not_ know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those Egyptian youths who at
night make the temples unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which for good reasons
is kept concealed[2]. No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste,
this will to truth, to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness
in the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too serious, too
joyful, too singed, too profound for that.... We no longer believe that
truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived
long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of
propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be
present at everything, or to understand and "know" everything. "Is it
true that the good God is everywhere present?" asked a little girl of
her mother: "I think that is indecent":--a hint to philosophers! One
should have more reverence for the _shame-facedness_ with which nature
has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps
truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps
her name is Baubo, to speak in Greek?... Oh, those Greeks! They knew
how _to live:_ for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to
the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe
in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those
Greeks were superficial--_from profundity!_ And are we not coming
back precisely to this point, we dare-devils of the spirit, who have
scaled the highest and most dangerous peak of contemporary thought, and
have looked around us from it, have _looked down_ from it? Are we not
precisely in this respect--Greeks? Worshippers of forms, of tones, and
of words? And precisely on that account--artists?

RUTA, near GENOA
_Autumn,_ 1886.

[1] This means literally to put the numeral X instead of the numeral
V (formerly U); hence it means to double a number unfairly, to
exaggerate, humbug, cheat.--TR.

[2] An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of Sais."--TR.

JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE.

A PRELUDE IN RHYME.

_Invitation._

Venture, comrades, I implore you,
On the fare I set before you,
You will like it more to-morrow,
Better still the following day:
If yet more you're then requiring,
Old success I'll find inspiring,
And fresh courage thence will borrow
Novel dainties to display.

_My Good Luck._

Weary of Seeking had I grown,
So taught myself the way to Find:
Back by the storm I once was blown,
But follow now, where drives the wind.

_Undismayed._

Where you're standing, dig, dig out:
Down below's the Well:
Let them that walk in darkness shout:
"Down below--there's Hell!"

_Dialogue._

_A._ Was I ill? and is it ended?
Pray, by what physician tended?
I recall no pain endured!

_B._ Now I know your trouble's ended:
He that can forget, is cured.

_To the Virtuous._

Let our virtues be easy and nimble-footed in
motion,
Like unto Homer's verse ought they to come _and
to go_.

_Worldly Wisdom._

Stay not on level plain,
Climb not the mount too high.
But half-way up remain--
The world you'll best descry!

_Vademecum--Vadetecum._

Attracted by my style and talk
You'd follow, in my footsteps walk?
Follow yourself unswervingly,
So--careful!--shall you follow me.

_The Third Sloughing_

My skin bursts, breaks for fresh rebirth,
And new desires come thronging:
Much I've devoured, yet for more earth
The serpent in me's longing.
'Twixt stone and grass I crawl once more,
Hungry, by crooked ways,
To eat the food I ate before,
Earth-fare all serpents praise!

_My Roses._

My luck's good--I'd make yours fairer,
(Good luck ever needs a sharer),
Will you stop and pluck my roses?

Oft mid rocks and thorns you'll linger,
Hide and stoop, suck bleeding finger--
Will you stop and pluck my roses?

For my good luck's a trifle vicious,
Fond of teasing, tricks malicious--
Will you stop and pluck my roses?

10.

_The Scorner._

Many drops I waste and spill,
So my scornful mood you curse:
Who to brim his cup doth fill,
Many drops _must_ waste and spill--
Yet he thinks the wine no worse.

11.

_The Proverb Speaks._

Harsh and gentle, fine and mean,
Quite rare and common, dirty and clean,
The fools' and the sages' go-between:
All this I will be, this have been,
Dove and serpent and swine, I ween!

12.

_To a Lover of Light._

That eye and sense be not fordone
E'en in the shade pursue the sun!

13.

_For Dancers._

Smoothest ice,
A paradise
To him who is a dancer nice.

14.

_The Brave Man._

A feud that knows not flaw nor break,
Rather then patched-up friendship, take.

15.

_Rust._

Rust's needed: keenness will not satisfy!
"He is too young!" the rabble loves to cry.

16.

_Excelsior._

"How shall I reach the top?" No time
For thus reflecting! Start to climb!

17.

_The Man of Power Speaks._
Ask never! Cease that whining, pray!
Take without asking, take alway!

18.

_Narrow Souls._

Narrow souls hate I like the devil,
Souls wherein grows nor good nor evil.

19.

_Accidentally a Seducer_[1]

He shot an empty word
Into the empty blue;
But on the way it met
A woman whom it slew.

20.

_For Consideration._

A twofold pain is easier far to bear
Than one: so now to suffer wilt thou dare?

21.

_Against Pride._

Brother, to puff thyself up ne'er be quick:
For burst thou shalt be by a tiny prick!

22.

_Man and Woman._

"The woman seize, who to thy heart appeals!"
Man's motto: woman seizes not, but steals.

23.

_Interpretation._

If I explain my wisdom, surely
'Tis but entangled more securely,
I can't expound myself aright:
But he that's boldly up and doing,
His own unaided course pursuing,
Upon my image casts more light!

24.

_A Cure for Pessimism._

Those old capricious fancies, friend!
You say your palate naught can please,
I hear you bluster, spit and wheeze,
My love, my patience soon will end!
Pluck up your courage, follow me--
Here's a fat toad! Now then, don't blink,
Swallow it whole, nor pause to think!
From your dyspepsia you'll be free!

25.

_A Request._

Many men's minds I know full well,
Yet what mine own is, cannot tell.
I cannot see--my eye's too near--
And falsely to myself appear.
'Twould be to me a benefit
Far from myself if I could sit,
Less distant than my enemy,
And yet my nearest friend's too nigh--
'Twixt him and me, just in the middle!
What do I ask for? Guess my riddle.

26.

_My Cruelty._

I must ascend an hundred stairs,
I must ascend: the herd declares
I'm cruel: "Are we made of stone?"
I must ascend an hundred stairs:
All men the part of stair disown.

27.

_The Wanderer._

"No longer path! Abyss and silence chilling!"
Thy fault! To leave the path thou wast too willing!
Now comes the test! Keep cool--eyes bright and clear!
Thou'rt lost for sure, if thou permittest--fear.

28.

_Encouragement for Beginners._

See the infant, helpless creeping--
Swine around it grunt swine-talk--
Weeping always, naught but weeping,
Will it ever learn to walk?
Never fear! Just wait, I swear it
Soon to dance will be inclined,
And this babe, when two legs bear it,
Standing on its head you'll find.

29.

_Planet Egoism._

Did I not turn, a rolling cask,
Ever about myself, I ask,
How could I without burning run
Close on the track of the hot sun?

30.

_The Neighbour._

Too nigh, my friend my joy doth mar,
I'd have him high above and far,
Or how can he become my star?

31.

_The Disguised Saint._

Lest we for thy bliss should slay thee,
In devil's wiles thou dost array thee,
Devil's wit and devil's dress.
But in vain! Thy looks betray thee
And proclaim thy holiness.

32.

_The Slave._

_A._ He stands and listens: whence his pain?
What smote his ears? Some far refrain?
Why is his heart with anguish torn?

_B._ Like all that fetters once have worn,
He always hears the clinking--chain!

33.

_The Lone One._

I hate to follow and I hate to lead.
Obedience? no! and ruling? no, indeed!
Wouldst fearful be in others' sight?
Then e'en _thyself_ thou must affright:
The people but the Terror's guidance heed.
I hate to guide myself, I hate the fray.
Like the wild beasts I'll wander far afield.
In Error's pleasing toils I'll roam
Awhile, then lure myself back home,
Back home, and--to my self-seduction yield.

34.

_Seneca et hoc Genus omne._

They write and write (quite maddening me)
Their "sapient" twaddle airy,
As if 'twere _primum scribere,_
_Deinde philosophari._

35.

_Ice._

Yes! I manufacture ice:
Ice may help you to digest:
If you _had_ much to digest,
How you would enjoy my ice!

36.

_Youthful Writings._

My wisdom's A and final O
Was then the sound that smote mine ear.
Yet now it rings no longer so,
My youth's eternal Ah! and Oh!
Is now the only sound I hear.[2]

37.

_Foresight._

In yonder region travelling, take good care!
An hast thou wit, then be thou doubly ware!
They'll smile and lure thee; then thy limbs they'll tear:
Fanatics' country this where wits are rare!

38.

_The Pious One Speaks._

God loves us, _for_ he made us, sent us here!--
"Man hath made God!" ye subtle ones reply.
His handiwork he must hold dear,
And _what he made_ shall he deny?
There sounds the devil's halting hoof, I fear.

39.

_In Summer._

In sweat of face, so runs the screed,
We e'er must eat our bread,
Yet wise physicians if we heed
"Eat naught in sweat," 'tis said.
The dog-star's blinking: what's his need?
What tells his blazing sign?
In sweat of face (so runs _his_ screed)
We're meant to drink our wine!

40.

_Without Envy._

His look betrays no envy: and ye laud him?
He cares not, asks not if your throng applaud him!
He has the eagle's eye for distance far,
He sees you not, he sees but star on star!

41.

_Heraclitism._

Brethren, war's the origin
Of happiness on earth:
Powder-smoke and battle-din
Witness friendship's birth!
Friendship means three things, you know,--
Kinship in luckless plight,
Equality before the foe
Freedom--in death's sight!

42.

_Maxim of the Over-refined._

"Rather on your toes stand high
Than crawl upon all fours,
Rather through the keyhole spy
Than through the open doors!"

43.

_Exhortation._

Renown you're quite resolved to earn?
My thought about it
Is this: you need not fame, must learn
To do without it!

44.

_Thorough._

I an inquirer? No, that's not my calling
Only _I weigh a lot_--I'm such a lump!--
And through the waters I keep falling, falling,
Till on the ocean's deepest bed I bump.

45.

_The Immortals._
"To-day is meet for me, I come to-day,"
Such is the speech of men foredoomed to stay.
"Thou art too soon," they cry, "thou art too late,"
What care the Immortals what the rabble say?

46.

_Verdicts of the Weary._

The weary shun the glaring sun, afraid,
And only care for trees to gain the shade.

47.

_Descent._

"He sinks, he falls," your scornful looks portend:
The truth is, to your level he'll descend.
His Too Much Joy is turned to weariness,
His Too Much Light will in your darkness end.

48.

_Nature Silenced_[3]
Around my neck, on chain of hair,
The timepiece hangs--a sign of care.
For me the starry course is o'er,
No sun and shadow as before,
No cockcrow summons at the door,
For nature tells the time no more!
Too many clocks her voice have drowned,
And droning law has dulled her sound.

49.

_The Sage Speaks._

Strange to the crowd, yet useful to the crowd,
I still pursue my path, now sun, now cloud,
But always pass above the crowd!

50.

_He lost his Head...._

She now has wit--how did it come her way?
A man through her his reason lost, they say.
His head, though wise ere to this pastime lent,
Straight to the devil--no, to woman went!

51.

_A Pious Wish._

"Oh, might all keys be lost! 'Twere better so
And in all keyholes might the pick-lock go!"
Who thus reflects ye may as--picklock know.

52.

_Foot Writing._

I write not with the hand alone,
My foot would write, my foot that capers,
Firm, free and bold, it's marching on
Now through the fields, now through the papers.

53.

"_Human, All-too-Human._" ...

Shy, gloomy, when your looks are backward thrust,
Trusting the future where yourself you trust,
Are you an eagle, mid the nobler fowl,
Or are you like Minerva's darling owl?

54.

_To my Reader._

Good teeth and a digestion good
I wish you--these you need, be sure!
And, certes, if my book you've stood,
Me with good humour you'll endure.

55.

_The Realistic Painter._

"To nature true, complete!" so he begins.
Who complete Nature to his canvas _wins?_
Her tiniest fragment's endless, no constraint
Can know: he paints just what his _fancy_ pins:
What does his fancy pin? What he _can_ paint!

56.

_Poets' Vanity._

Glue, only glue to me dispense,
The wood I'll find myself, don't fear!
To give four senseless verses sense--
That's an achievement I revere!

57.

_Taste in Choosing._

If to choose my niche precise
Freedom I could win from fate,
I'd be in midst of Paradise--
Or, sooner still--before the gate!

58.

_The Crooked Nose._

Wide blow your nostrils, and across
The land your nose holds haughty sway:
So you, unhorned rhinoceros,
Proud mannikin, fall forward aye!
The one trait with the other goes:
A straight pride and a crooked nose.

59.

_The Pen is Scratching...._

The pen is scratching: hang the pen!
To scratching I'm condemned to sink!
I grasp the inkstand fiercely then
And write in floods of flowing ink.
How broad, how full the stream's career!
What luck my labours doth requite!
'Tis true, the writing's none too clear--
What then? Who reads the stuff I write?

60.

_Loftier Spirits._

This man's climbing up--let us praise him--
But that other we love
From aloft doth eternally move,
So above even praise let us raise him,
He _comes_ from above!

61.

_The Sceptic Speaks._

Your life is half-way o'er;
The clock-hand moves; your soul is thrilled with fear,
It roamed to distant shore
And sought and found not, yet you--linger here!

Your life is half-way o'er;
That hour by hour was pain and error sheer:
_Why stay?_ What seek you more?
"That's what I'm seeking--reasons why I'm here!"

62.

_Ecce Homo._

Yes, I know where I'm related,
Like the flame, unquenched, unsated,
I consume myself and glow:
All's turned to light I lay my hand on,
All to coal that I abandon,
Yes, I am a flame, I know!

63.

_Star Morality_[4]

Foredoomed to spaces vast and far,
What matters darkness to the star?

Roll calmly on, let time go by,
Let sorrows pass thee--nations die!

Compassion would but dim the light
That distant worlds will gladly sight.

To thee one law--be pure and bright!

[1] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.

[2] A and O, suggestive of Ah! and Oh! refer of course to Alpha and
Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.--TR.

[3] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.

[4] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.

BOOK FIRST

_The Teachers of the Object of Existence.--_Whether I look with a
good or an evil eye upon men, I find them always at one problem, each
and all of them: to do that which conduces to the conservation of the
human species. And certainly not out of any sentiment of love for
this species, but simply because nothing in them is older, stronger,
more inexorable and more unconquerable than that instinct,--because
it is precisely _the essence_ of our race and herd. Although we are
accustomed readily enough, with our usual short-sightedness, to
separate our neighbours precisely into useful and hurtful, into good
and evil men, yet when we make a general calculation, and reflect
longer on the whole question, we become distrustful of this defining
and separating, and finally leave it alone. Even the most hurtful man
is still perhaps, in respect to the conservation of the race, the
most useful of all; for he conserves in himself, or by his effect on
others, impulses without which mankind might long ago have languished
or decayed. Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition, and
whatever else is called evil--belong to the marvellous economy of the
conservation of the race; to be sure a costly, lavish, and on the
whole very foolish economy:--which has, however, hitherto preserved our
race, _as is demonstrated to us._ I no longer know, my dear fellow-man
and neighbour, if thou _canst_ at all live to the disadvantage of the
race, and therefore, "unreasonably" and "badly"; that which could
have injured the race has perhaps died out many millenniums ago, and
now belongs to the things which are no longer possible even to God.
Indulge thy best or thy worst desires, and above all, go to wreck!--in
either case thou art still probably the furtherer and benefactor of
mankind in some way or other, and in that respect thou mayest have thy
panegyrists--and similarly thy mockers! But thou wilt never find him
who would be quite qualified to mock at thee, the individual, at thy
best, who could bring home to thy conscience its limitless, buzzing
and croaking wretchedness so as to be in accord with truth! To laugh
at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh _out of the
veriest truth,_--to do this, the best have not hitherto had enough
of the sense of truth, and the most endowed have had far too little
genius! There is perhaps still a future even for laughter! When the
maxim, "The race is all, the individual is nothing,"--has incorporated
itself in humanity, and when access stands open to every one at all
times to this ultimate emancipation and irresponsibility.--Perhaps
then laughter will have united with wisdom, perhaps then there will
be only "joyful wisdom." Meanwhile, however, it is quite otherwise,
meanwhile the comedy of existence has not yet "become conscious" of
itself, meanwhile it is still the period of tragedy, the period of
morals and religions. What does the ever new appearing of founders of
morals and religions, of instigators of struggles for moral valuations,
of teachers of remorse of conscience and religious war, imply? What
do these heroes on this stage imply? For they have hitherto been the
heroes of it, and all else, though solely visible for the time being,
and too close to one, has served only as preparation for these heroes,
whether as machinery and coulisse, or in the rôle of confidants and
valets. (The poets, for example, have always been the valets of some
morality or other.)--It is obvious of itself that these tragedians
also work in the interest of the _race,_ though they may believe that
they work in the interest of God, and as emissaries of God. They also
further the life of the species, _in that they further the belief in
life._ "It is worthwhile to live"--each of them calls out,--"there is
something of importance in this life; life has something behind it and
under it; take care!" That impulse, which rules equally in the noblest
and the ignoblest, the impulse to the conservation of the species,
breaks forth from time to time as reason and passion of spirit; it
has then a brilliant train of motives about it, and tries with all
its power to make us forget that fundamentally it is just impulse,
instinct, folly and baselessness. Life _should_ beloved, _for_...!
Man _should_ benefit himself and his neighbour, _for_...! And whatever
all these _shoulds_ and _fors_ imply, and may imply in future! In
order that that which necessarily and always happens of itself and
without design, may henceforth appear to be done by design, and may
appeal to men as reason and ultimate command,--for that purpose the
ethiculturist comes forward as the teacher of design in existence; for
that purpose he devises a second and different existence, and by means
of this new mechanism he lifts the old common existence off its old
common hinges. No! he does not at all want us to _laugh_ at existence,
nor even at ourselves--nor at himself; to him an individual is always
an individual, something first and last and immense, to him there are
no species, no sums, no noughts. However foolish and fanatical his
inventions and valuations may be, however much he may misunderstand the
course of nature and deny its conditions--and all systems of ethics
hitherto have been foolish and anti-natural to such a degree that
mankind would have been ruined by any one of them had it got the upper
hand,--at any rate, every time that "the hero" came upon the stage
something new was attained: the frightful counterpart of laughter,
the profound convulsion of many individuals at the thought, "Yes, it
is worth while to live! yes, I am worthy to live!"--life, and thou,
and I, and all of us together became for a while _interesting_ to
ourselves once more.--It is not to be denied that hitherto laughter and
reason and nature have _in the long run_ got the upper hand of all the
great teachers of design: in the end the short tragedy always passed
over once more into the eternal comedy of existence; and the "waves
of innumerable laughters"--to use the expression of Æschylus--must
also in the end beat over the greatest of these tragedies. But with
all this corrective laughter, human nature has on the whole been
changed by the ever new appearance of those teachers of the design of
existence,--human nature has now an additional requirement, the very
requirement of the ever new appearance of such teachers and doctrines
of "design." Man has gradually become a visionary animal, who has to
fulfil one more condition of existence than the other animals: man
_must_ from time to time believe that he knows _why_ he exists; his
species cannot flourish without periodically confiding in life! Without
the belief in _reason in life!_ And always from time to time will
the human race decree anew that "there is something which really may
not be laughed at." And the most clairvoyant philanthropist will add
that "not only laughing and joyful wisdom, but also the tragic with
all its sublime irrationality, counts among the means and necessities
for the conservation of the race!"--And consequently! Consequently!
Consequently! Do you understand me, oh my brothers? Do you understand
this new law of ebb and flow? We also shall have our time!

_The Intellectual Conscience._--I have always the same experience over
again, and always make a new effort against it; for although it is
evident to me I do not want to believe it: _in the greater number of
men the intellectual conscience is lacking;_ indeed, it would often
seem to me that in demanding such a thing, one is as solitary in the
largest cities as in the desert. Everyone looks at you with strange
eyes and continues to make use of his scales, calling this good and
that bad; and no one blushes for shame when you remark that these
weights are not the full amount,--there is also no indignation against
you; perhaps they laugh at your doubt. I mean to say that _the greater
number of people_ do not find it contemptible to believe this or that,
and live according to it, _without_ having been previously aware of
the ultimate and surest reasons for and against it, and without even
giving themselves any trouble about such reasons afterwards,--the most
Sifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "greater number."
But what is kind-heartedness, refinement and genius to me, if he who
has these virtues harbours indolent sentiments in belief and judgment,
if _the longing for certainty_ does not rule in him, as his innermost
desire and profoundest need--as that which separates higher from lower
men! In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and
have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad intellectual
conscience at least still betrayed itself in this manner! But to stand
in the midst of this _rerum concordia discors_ and all the marvellous
uncertainty and ambiguity of existence, _and not to question,_ not
to tremble with desire and delight in questioning, not even to hate
the questioner--perhaps even to make merry over him to the extent of
weariness--that is what I regard as _contemptible,_ and it is this
sentiment which I first of all search for in every one--some folly or
other always persuades me anew that every man has this sentiment, as
man. This is my special kind of unrighteousness.

_Noble and Ignoble._--To ignoble natures all noble, magnanimous
sentiments appear inexpedient, and on that account first and foremost,
as incredible: they blink with their eyes when they hear of such
matters, and seem inclined to say," there will, no doubt, be some
advantage therefrom, one cannot see through all walls;"--they are
jealous of the noble person, as if he sought advantage by back-stair
methods. When they are all too plainly convinced of the absence of
selfish intentions and emoluments, the noble person is regarded by
them as a kind of fool: they despise him in his gladness, and laugh
at the lustre of his eye. "How can a person rejoice at being at a
disadvantage, how can a person with open eyes want to meet with
disadvantage! It must be a disease of the reason with which the noble
affection is associated";--so they think, and they look depreciatingly
thereon; just as they depreciate the joy which the lunatic derives
from his fixed idea. The ignoble nature is distinguished by the fact
that it keeps its advantage steadily in view, and that this thought
of the end and advantage is even stronger than its strongest impulse:
not to be tempted to inexpedient activities by its impulses--that is
its wisdom and inspiration. In comparison with the ignoble nature the
higher nature is _more irrational:_--for the noble, magnanimous, and
self-sacrificing person succumbs in fact to his impulses, and in his
best moments his reason _lapses_ altogether. An animal, which at the
risk of life protects its young, or in the pairing season follows the
female where it meets with death, does not think of the risk and the
death; its reason pauses likewise, because its delight in its young, or
in the female, and the fear of being deprived of this delight, dominate
it exclusively; it becomes stupider than at other times, like the noble
and magnanimous person. He possesses feelings of pleasure and pain of
such intensity that the intellect must either be silent before them, or
yield itself to their service: his heart then goes into his head, and
one henceforth speaks of "passions." (Here and there to be sure, the
antithesis to this, and as it were the "reverse of passion," presents
itself; for example in Fontenelle, to whom some one once laid the hand
on the heart with the words, "What you have there, my dearest friend,
is brain also.") It is the unreason, or perverse reason of passion,
which the ignoble man despises in the noble individual, especially
when it concentrates upon objects whose value appears to him to be
altogether fantastic and arbitrary. He is offended at him who succumbs
to the passion of the belly, but he understands the allurement which
here plays the tyrant; but he does not understand, for example, how
a person out of love of knowledge can stake his health and honour on
the game. The taste of the higher nature devotes itself to exceptional
matters, to things which usually do not affect people, and seem to have
no sweetness; the higher nature has a singular standard of value. Yet
it is mostly of the belief that it has _not_ a singular standard of
value in its idiosyncrasies of taste; it rather sets up its values
and non-values as the generally valid values and non-values, and thus
becomes incomprehensible and impracticable. It is very rarely that a
higher nature has so much reason over and above as to understand and
deal with everyday men as such; for the most part it believes in its
passion as if it were the concealed passion of every one, and precisely
in this belief it is full of ardour and eloquence. If then such
exceptional men do not perceive themselves as exceptions, how can they
ever understand the ignoble natures and estimate average men fairly!
Thus it is that they also speak of the folly, inexpediency and fantasy
of mankind, full of astonishment at the madness of the world, and that
it will not recognise the "one thing needful for it."--This is the
eternal unrighteousness of noble natures.

_That which Preserves the Species.--_The strongest and most evil
spirits have hitherto advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled
the sleeping passions--all orderly arranged society lulls the
passions to sleep; they always reawakened the sense of comparison, of
contradiction, of delight in the new, the adventurous, the untried;
they compelled men to set opinion against opinion, ideal plan against
ideal plan. By means of arms, by upsetting boundary-stones, by
violations of piety most of all: but also by new religions and morals!
The same kind of "wickedness" is in every teacher and preacher of the
_new--_which makes a conqueror infamous, although it expresses itself
more refinedly, and does not immediately set the muscles in motion (and
just on that account does not make so infamous!) The new, however, is
under all circumstances the _evil,_ as that which wants to conquer,
which tries to upset the old boundary-stones and the old piety; only
the old is the good! The good men of every age are those who go to the
roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them, the agriculturists
of the spirit. But every soil becomes finally exhausted, and the
ploughshare of evil must always come once more.--There is at present
a fundamentally erroneous theory of morals which is much celebrated,
especially in England: according to it the judgments "good" and "evil"
are the accumulation of the experiences of that which is "expedient"
and "inexpedient"; according to this theory, that which is called
good is conservative of the species, what is called evil, however, is
detrimental to it. But in reality the evil impulses are just in as high
a degree expedient, indispensable, and conservative of the species as
the good:--only, their function is different.

_Unconditional Duties._--All men who feel that they need the strongest
words and intonations, the most eloquent gestures and attitudes, in
order to operate _at all_--revolutionary politicians, socialists,
preachers of repentance with or without Christianity, with all
of whom there must be no mere half-success,--all these speak of
"duties," and indeed, always of duties, which have the character
of being unconditional--without such they would have no right to
their excessive pathos: they know that right well! They grasp,
therefore, at philosophies of morality which preach some kind of
categorical imperative, or they assimilate a good lump of religion,
as, for example, Mazzini did. Because they want to be trusted
unconditionally, it is first of all necessary for them to trust
themselves unconditionally, on the basis of some ultimate, undebatable
command, sublime in itself, as the ministers and instruments of which,
they would fain feel and announce themselves. Here we have the most
natural, and for the most part, very influential opponents of moral
enlightenment and scepticism: but they are rare. On the other hand,
there is always a very numerous class of those opponents wherever
interest teaches subjection, while repute and honour seem to forbid
it. He who feels himself dishonoured at the thought of being the
_instrument_ of a prince, or of a party and sect, or even of wealthy
power (for example, as the descendant of a proud, ancient family),
but wishes just to be this instrument, or must be so before himself
and before the public--such a person has need of pathetic principles
which can at all times be appealed to:--principles of an unconditional
_ought,_ to which a person can subject himself without shame, and can
show himself subjected. All more refined servility holds fast to the
categorical imperative, and is the mortal enemy of those who want to
take away the unconditional character of duty: propriety demands this
from them, and not only propriety.

_Loss of Dignity.--_Meditation has lost all its dignity of form; the
ceremonial and solemn bearing of the meditative person have been made a
mockery, and one would no longer endure a wise man of the old style. We
think too hastily and on the way and while walking and in the midst of
business of all kinds, even when we think on the most serious matters;
we require little preparation, even little quiet:--it is as if each
of us carried about an unceasingly revolving machine in his head,
which still works, even under the most unfavourable circumstances.
Formerly it was perceived in a person that on some occasion he wanted
to think--it was perhaps the exception!--that he now wanted to become
wiser and collected his mind on a thought: he put on a long face for
it, as for a prayer, and arrested his step-nay, stood still for hours
on the street when the thought "came"--on one or on two legs. It was
thus "worthy of the affair"!

_Something for the Laborious.--_He who at present wants to make moral
questions a subject of study has an immense field of labour before him.
All kinds of passions must be thought about singly, and followed singly
throughout periods, peoples, great and insignificant individuals;
all their rationality, all their valuations and elucidations of
things, ought to come to light! Hitherto all that has given colour
to existence has lacked a history: where would one find a history of
love, of avance, of envy, of conscience, of piety, of cruelty? Even
a comparative history of law, as also of punishment, has hitherto
been completely lacking. Have the different divisions of the day, the
consequences of a regular appointment of the times for labour, feast,
and repose, ever been made the object of investigation? Do we know the
moral effects of the alimentary substances? Is there a philosophy of
nutrition? (The ever-recurring outcry for and against vegetarianism
proves that as yet there is no such philosophy!) Have the experiences
with regard to communal living, for example, in monasteries, been
collected? Has the dialectic of marriage and friendship been set
forth? The customs of the learned, of trades-people, of artists, and
of mechanics--have they already found their thinkers? There is so much
to think of thereon! All that up till now has been considered as the
"conditions of existence," of human beings, and all reason, passion
and superstition in this consideration--have they been investigated to
the end? The observation alone of the different degrees of development
which the human impulses have attained, and could yet attain, according
to the different moral climates, would furnish too much work for the
most laborious; whole generations, and regular co-operating generations
of the learned, would be needed in order to exhaust the points of view
and the material here furnished. The same is true of the determining
of the reasons for the differences of the moral climates ("_on what
account_ does this sun of a fundamental moral judgment and standard of
highest value shine here--and that sun there?"). And there is again
a new labour which points out the erroneousness of all these reasons,
and determines the entire essence of the moral judgments hitherto made.
Supposing all these labours to be accomplished, the most critical of
all questions would then come into the foreground: whether science is
in a position to _furnish_ goals for human action, after it has proved
that it can take them away and annihilate them--and then would be the
time for a process of experimenting, in which every kind of heroism
could satisfy itself, an experimenting for centuries, which would
put into the shade all the great labours and sacrifices of previous
history. Science has not hitherto built its Cyclopic structures; for
that also the time will come.

_Unconscious Virtues.--_All qualities in a man of which he is
conscious--and especially when he presumes that they are visible and
evident to his environment also--are subject to quite other laws
of development than those qualities which are unknown to him, or
imperfectly known, which by their subtlety can also conceal themselves
from the subtlest observer, and hide as it were behind nothing--as in
the case of the delicate sculptures on the scales of reptiles (it would
be an error to suppose them an adornment or a defence--for one sees
them only with the microscope; consequently, with an eye artificially
strengthened to an extent of vision which similar animals, to which
they might perhaps have meant adornment or defence, do not possess!).
Our visible moral qualities, and especially our moral qualities
_believed to be_ visible, follow their own course,--and our invisible
qualities of similar name, which in relation to others neither serve
for adornment nor defence, _also follow their own course:_ quite
a different course probably, and with lines and refinements, and
sculptures, which might perhaps give pleasure to a God with a divine
microscope. We have, for example, our diligence, our ambition, our
acuteness: all the world knows about them,--and besides, we have
probably once more _our_ diligence, _our_ ambition, _our_ acuteness;
but for these--our reptile scales--the microscope has not yet been
invented!--And here the adherents of instinctive morality will say,
"Bravo! He at least regards unconscious virtues as possible--that
suffices us!"--Oh, ye unexacting creatures!

_Our Eruptions._--Numberless things which humanity acquired in its
earlier stages, but so weakly and embryonically that it could not be
noticed that they were acquired, are thrust suddenly into light long
afterwards, perhaps after the lapse of centuries: they have in the
interval become strong and mature. In some ages this or that talent,
this or that virtue seems to be entirely lacking, as it--is in some
men; but let us wait only for the grandchildren and grandchildren's
children, if we have time to wait,--they bring the interior of their
grandfathers into the sun, that interior of which the grandfathers
themselves were unconscious. The son, indeed, is often the betrayer of
his father; the latter understands himself better since he has got his
son. We have all hidden gardens and plantations in us; and by another
simile, we are all growing volcanoes, which will have their hours of
eruption:--how near or how distant this is, nobody of course knows, not
even the good God.

10.

_A Species of Atavism._--I like best to think of the rare men of an
age as suddenly emerging after-shoots of past cultures, and of their
persistent strength: like the atavism of a people and its civilisation
--there is thus still something in them to _think of!_ They now seem
strange, rare, and extraordinary: and he who feels these forces in
himself has to foster them in face of a different, opposing world; he
has to defend them, honour them, and rear them to maturity: and he
either becomes a great man thereby, or a deranged and eccentric person,
if he does not altogether break down betimes. Formerly these rare
qualities were usual, and were consequently regarded as common: they
did not distinguish people. Perhaps they were demanded and presupposed;
it was impossible to become great with them, for indeed there was also
no danger of becoming insane and solitary with them.--It is principally
in the _old-established_ families and castes of a people that such
after-effects of old impulses present themselves, while there is no
probability of such atavism where races, habits, and valuations change
too rapidly. For the _tempo_ of the evolutional forces in peoples
implies just as much as in music; for our case an _andante_ of
evolution is absolutely necessary, as the _tempo_ of a passionate and
slow spirit:--and the spirit of conserving families is certainly of
_that_ sort.

11.

_Consciousness._--Consciousness is the last and latest development
of the organic, and consequently also the most unfinished and least
powerful of these developments. Innumerable mistakes originate out
of consciousness, which, "in spite of fate," as Homer says, cause an
animal or a man to break down earlier than might be necessary. If the
conserving bond of the instincts were not very much more powerful,
it would not generally serve as a regulator: by perverse judging and
dreaming with open eyes, by superficiality and credulity, in short,
just by consciousness, mankind would necessarily have broken down:
or rather, without the former there would long ago have been nothing
more of the latter! Before a function is fully formed and matured, it
is a danger to the organism: all the better if it be then thoroughly
tyrannised over! Consciousness is thus thoroughly tyrannised over--and
not least by the pride in it! It is thought that here is _the
quintessence_ of man; that which is enduring, eternal, ultimate, and
most original in him! Consciousness is regarded as a fixed, given
magnitude! Its growth and intermittences are denied! It is accepted
as the "unity of the organism"!--This ludicrous overvaluation and
misconception of consciousness has as its result the great utility
that a too rapid maturing of it has thereby been _hindered._ Because
men believed that they already possessed consciousness, they gave
themselves very little trouble to acquire it--and even now it is not
otherwise! It is still an entirely new _problem_ just dawning on the
human eye, and hardly yet plainly recognisable: _to embody knowledge
in ourselves_ and make it instinctive,--a problem which is only seen
by those who have grasped the fact that hitherto our _errors_ alone
have been embodied in us, and that all our consciousness is relative to
errors!

12.

_The Goal of Science.--_What? The ultimate goal of science is to create
the most pleasure possible to man, and the least possible pain? But
what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected that he who
_wants_ the greatest possible amount of the one _must_ also have the
greatest possible amount of the other,--that he who wants to experience
the "heavenly high jubilation,"[1] must also be ready to be "sorrowful
unto death"?[2] And it is so, perhaps! The Stoics at least believed it
was so, and they were consistent when they wished to have the least
possible pleasure, in order to have the least possible pain from life.
(When one uses the expression: "The virtuous man is the happiest," it
is as much the sign-board of the school for the masses, as a casuistic
subtlety for the subtle.) At present also ye have still the choice:
either the _least possible pain,_ in short painlessness--and after
all, socialists and politicians of all parties could not honourably
promise more to their people,--or the _greatest possible amount of
pain,_ as the price of the growth of a fullness of refined delights and
enjoyments rarely tasted hitherto! If ye decide for the former, if ye
therefore want to depress and minimise man's capacity for pain, well,
ye must also depress and minimise his _capacity for enjoyment._ In
fact, one can further the one as well as the other goal _by science!_
Perhaps science is as yet best known by its capacity for depriving man
of enjoyment, and making him colder, more statuesque, and more Stoical.
But it might also turn out to be the _great pain-bringer!_--And then,
perhaps, its counteracting force would be discovered simultaneously,
its immense capacity for making new sidereal worlds of enjoyment beam
forth!

[1] Allusions to the song of Clara in Goethe's "Egmont."--TR.

13.

_The Theory of the Sense of Power._--We exercise our power over others
by doing them good or by doing them ill--that is all we care for!
_Doing ill_ to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain
is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure:--pain
always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep
within itself and not look backward. _Doing good_ and being kind
to those who are in any way already dependent on us (that is, who
are accustomed to think of us as their _raison d'être);_ we want to
increase their power, because we thus increase our own; or we want
to show them the advantage there is in being in our power,--they
thus become more contented with their position, and more hostile
to the enemies of _our_ power and readier to contend with to If we
make sacrifices in doing good or in doing ill, it does not alter the
ultimate value of our actions; even if we stake our life in the cause,
as martyrs for the sake of our church, it is a sacrifice to _our_
longing for power, or for the purpose of conserving our sense of power.
He who under these circumstances feels that he "is in possession of
truth" how many possessions does he not let go, in order to preserve
this feeling! What does he not throw overboard, in order to keep
himself "up,"--that is to say, _above_ the others who lack the truth.
Certainly the condition we are in when we do ill is seldom so pleasant,
so purely pleasant as that in which we practise kindness,--it is an
indication that we still lack power, or it betrays ill-humour at this
defect in us; it brings with it new dangers and uncertainties as to
the power we already possess, and clouds our horizon by the prospect
of revenge, scorn, punishment and failure. Perhaps only tee most
susceptible to the sense of power and eager for it, will prefer to
impress the seal of power on the resisting individual.--those to whom
the sight of the already subjugated person as the object of benevolence
is a burden and a tedium. It is a question how a person is accustomed
to _season_ his life; it is a matter of taste whether a person would
rather have the slow or the sudden to safe or the dangerous and daring
increase of power,--he seeks this or that seasoning always according
to his temperament. An easy booty is something contemptible to proud
natures; they have an agreeable sensation only at the sight of men of
unbroken spirit who could be enemies to them, and similarly, also, at
the sight of all not easily accessible possession; they are often hard
toward the sufferer, for he is not worthy of their effort or their
pride,--but they show themselves so much the more courteous towards
their _equals,_ with whom strife and struggle would in any case be full
of honour, _if_ at any time an occasion for it should present itself.
It is under the agreeable feelings of _this_ perspective that the
members of the knightly caste have habituated themselves to exquisite
courtesy toward one another.--Pity is the most pleasant feeling in
those who have not much pride, and have no prospect of great conquests:
the easy booty--and that is what every sufferer is--is for them an
enchanting thing. Pity is said to be the virtue of the gay lady.

14.

_What is called Love._--The lust of property, and love: what different
associations each of these ideas evoke!--and yet it might be the same
impulse twice named: on the one occasion disparaged from the standpoint
of those already possessing (in whom the impulse has attained
something of repose,--who are now apprehensive for the safety of their
"possession"); on the other occasion viewed from the standpoint of
the unsatisfied and thirsty, and therefore glorified as "good." Our
love of our neighbour,--is it not a striving after new _property?_
And similarly our love of knowledge, of truth; and in general all the
striving after novelties? We gradually become satiated with the old and
securely possessed, and again stretch out our hands; even the finest
landscape in which we live for three months is no longer certain of our
love, and any kind of more distant coast excites our covetousness: the
possession for the most part becomes smaller through possessing. Our
pleasure in ourselves seeks to maintain itself by always transforming
something new _into ourselves,_--that is just possessing. To become
satiated with a possession, that is to become satiated with ourselves.
(One can also suffer from excess,--even the desire to cast away, to
share out, may assume the honourable name of "love.") When we see any
one suffering, we willingly utilise the opportunity then afforded
to take possession of him; the beneficent and sympathetic man, for
example, does this; he also calls the desire for new possession
awakened in him, by the name of "love," and has enjoyment in it, as
in a new acquisition suggesting itself to him. The love of the sexes,
however, betrays itself most plainly as the striving after possession:
the lover wants the unconditioned, sole possession of the person longed
for by him; he wants just as absolute power over her soul as over her
body; he wants to be loved solely, and to dwell and rule in the other
soul as what is highest and most to be desired. When one considers
that this means precisely to _exclude_ all the world from a precious
possession, a happiness, and an enjoyment; when one considers that
the lover has in view the impoverishment and privation of all other
rivals, and would like to become the dragon of his golden hoard, as
the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors" and exploiters;
when one considers finally that to the lover himself, the whole world
besides appears indifferent, colourless, and worthless, and that he
is ready to make every sacrifice, disturb every arrangement, and put
every other interest behind his own,--one is verily surprised that
this ferocious lust of property and injustice of sexual love should
have been glorified and deified to such an extent at all times; yea,
that out of this love the conception of love as the antithesis of
egoism should have been derived, when it is perhaps precisely the most
unqualified expression of egoism. Here, evidently, the non-possessors
and desirers have determined the usage of language,--there were, of
course, always too many of them. Those who have been favoured with much
possession and satiety, have, to be sure, dropped a word now and then
about the "raging demon," as, for instance, the most lovable and most
beloved of all the Athenians--Sophocles; but Eros always laughed at
such revilers,--they were always his greatest favourites.--There is, of
course, here and there on this terrestrial sphere a kind of sequel to
love, in which that covetous longing of two persons for one another has
yielded to a new desire and covetousness, to a _common,_ higher thirst
for a superior ideal standing above them: but who knows this love? Who
has experienced it? Its right name is _friendship._

15.

_Out of the Distance._--This mountain makes the whole district which
it dominates charming in every way, and full of significance. After
we have said this to ourselves for the hundredth time, we are so
irrationally and so gratefully disposed towards it, as the giver
of this charm, that we fancy it must itself be the most charming
thing in the district--and so we climb it, and are undeceived. All
of a sudden, both it and the landscape around us and under us, are
as it were disenchanted; we had forgotten that many a greatness,
like many a goodness, wants only to be seen at a certain distance,
and entirely from below, not from above,--it is thus only that _it
operates._ Perhaps you know men in your neighbourhood who can only
look at themselves from a certain distance to find themselves at all
endurable, or attractive and enlivening; they are to be dissuaded from
self-knowledge.

16.

_Across the Plank.--_One must be able to dissimulate in intercourse
with persons who are ashamed of their feelings; they take a sudden
aversion to anyone who surprises them in a state of tenderness, or of
enthusiastic and high-running feeling, as if he had seen their secrets.
If one wants to be kind to them in such moments one should make them
laugh, or say some kind of cold, playful wickedness:--their feeling
thereby congeals, and they are again self-possessed. But I give the
moral before the story.--We were once on a time so near one another
in the course of our lives, that nothing more seemed to hinder our
friendship and fraternity, and there was merely a small plank between
us. While you were just about to step on it, I asked you: "Do you want
to come across the plank to me?" But then you did not want to come
any longer; and when I again entreated, you were silent. Since then
mountains and torrents, and whatever separates and alienates, have
interposed between us, and even if we wanted to come to one another,
we could no longer do so! When, however, you now remember that small
plank, you have no longer words,--but merely sobs and amazement.

17.

_Motivation of Poverty._--We cannot, to be sure, by any artifice make a
rich and richly-flowing virtue out of a poor one, but we can gracefully
enough reinterpret its poverty into necessity, so that its aspect no
longer gives pain to us, and we cease making reproachful faces at fate
on account of it. It is thus that the wise gardener does who puts the
tiny streamlet of his garden into the arms of a fountain-nymph, and
thus motivates the poverty:--and who would not like him need the nymphs!

18.

_Ancient Pride._--The ancient savour of nobility is lacking in us,
because the ancient slave is lacking in our sentiment. A Greek of noble
descent found such immense intermediate stages, and such a distance
betwixt his elevation and that ultimate baseness, that he could hardly
even see the slave plainly: even Plato no longer saw him entirely.
It is otherwise with us, accustomed as we are to the _doctrine_ of
the equality of men, although not to the equality itself. A being who
has not the free disposal of himself and has not got leisure,--that
is not regarded by us as anything contemptible; there is perhaps too
much of this kind of slavishness in each of us, in accordance with the
conditions of our social order and activity, which are fundamentally
different from those of the ancients.--The Greek philosopher went
through life with the secret feeling that there were many more slaves
than people supposed--that is to say, that every one was a slave who
was not a philosopher. His pride was puffed up when he considered that
even the mightiest of the earth were thus to be looked upon as slaves.
This pride is also unfamiliar to us, and impossible; the word "slave"
has not its full force for us even in simile.

19.

_Evil._--Test the life of the best and most productive men and nations,
and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly heavenward
can dispense with bad weather and tempests: whether disfavour and
opposition from without, whether every kind of hatred, jealousy,
stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong
to the _favouring_ circumstances without which a great growth even in
virtue is hardly possible? The poison by which the weaker nature is
destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual--and he does not
call it poison.

20.

_Dignity of Folly._--Several millenniums further on in the path of the
last century!--and in everything that man does the highest prudence
will be exhibited: but just thereby prudence will have lost all its
dignity. It will then, sure enough, be necessary to be prudent, but it
will also be so usual and common, that a more fastidious taste will
feel this necessity as _vulgarity._ And just as a tyranny of truth
and science would be in a position to raise the value of falsehood,
a tyranny of prudence could force into prominence a new species of
nobleness. To be noble--that might then mean, perhaps, to be capable of
follies.

21.

_To the Teachers of Unselfishness._--The virtues of a man are called
_good,_ not in respect to the results they have for himself, but in
respect to the results which we expect therefrom for ourselves and
for society:--we have all along had very little unselfishness, very
little "non-egoism" in our praise of the virtues! For otherwise it
could not but have been seen that the virtues (such as diligence,
obedience, chastity, piety, justice) are mostly _injurious_ to
their possessors, as impulses which rule in them too vehemently and
ardently, and do not want to be kept in co-ordination with the other
impulses by the reason. If you have a virtue, an actual, perfect
virtue (and not merely a kind of impulse towards virtue!)--you are
its _victim!_ But your neighbour praises your virtue precisely on that
account! One praises the diligent man though he injures his sight, or
the originality and freshness of his spirit, by his diligence; the
youth is honoured and regretted who has "worn himself out by work,"
because one passes the judgment that "for society as a whole the loss
of the best individual is only a small sacrifice! A pity that this
sacrifice should be necessary! A much greater pity it is true, if the
individual should think differently and regard his preservation and
development as more important than his work in the service of society!"
And so one regrets this youth, not on his own account, but because
a devoted _instrument,_ regardless of self--a so-called "good man,"
has been lost to society by his death. Perhaps one further considers
the question, whether it would not have been more advantageous for
the interests of society if he had laboured with less disregard of
himself, and had preserved himself longer-indeed one readily admits
an advantage therefrom but one esteems the other advantage, namely,
that a _sacrifice_ has been made, and that the disposition of the
sacrificial animal has once more been _obviously_ endorsed--as higher
and more enduring. It is accordingly, on the one part, the instrumental
character in the virtues which is praised when the virtues are praised,
and on the other part the blind, ruling impulse in every virtue which
refuse to let itself be kept within bounds by the general advantage
to the individual; in short, what is praised is the unreason in the
virtues, in consequence of which the individual allows himself to be
transformed into a function of the whole. The praise of the virtues is
the praise of something which is privately injurious to the individual;
it is praise of impulses which deprive man of his noblest self-love,
and the power to take the best care of himself. To be sure, for the
teaching and embodying of virtuous habits a series of effects of virtue
are displayed, which make it appear that virtue and private advantage
are closely related,--and there is in fact such a relationship!
Blindly furious diligence, for example, the typical virtue of an
instrument, is represented as the way to riches and honour, and as
the most beneficial antidote to tedium and passion: but people are
silent concerning its danger, its greatest dangerousness. Education
proceeds in this manner throughout: it endeavours, by a series of
enticements and advantages, to determine the individual to a certain
mode of thinking and acting, which, when it has become habit, impulse
and passion, rules in him and over him, _in opposition to his ultimate
advantage,_ but "for the general good." How often do I see that blindly
furious diligence does indeed create riches and honours, but at the
same time deprives the organs of the refinement by virtue of which
alone an enjoyment of riches and honours is possible; so that really
the main expedient for combating tedium and passion, simultaneously
blunts the senses and makes the spirit refractory towards new stimuli!
(The busiest of all ages--our age--does not know how to make anything
out of its great diligence and wealth, except always more and more
wealth, and more and more diligence; there is even more genius needed
for laying out wealth than for acquiring it!--Well, we shall have
our "grandchildren"!) If the education succeeds, every virtue of the
individual is a public utility, and a private disadvantage in respect
to the highest private end,--probably some psycho-æsthetic stunting, or
even premature dissolution. One should consider successively from the
same standpoint the virtues of obedience, chastity, piety, and justice.
The praise of the unselfish, self-sacrificing, virtuous person--he,
consequently, who does not expend his whole energy and reason for
_his own_ conservation, development, elevation, furtherance and
augmentation of power, but lives as regards himself unassumingly and
thoughtlessly, perhaps even indifferently or ironically--this praise
has in any case not originated out of the spirit of unselfishness! The
"neighbour" praises unselfishness because _he profits by it!_ If the
neighbour were "unselfishly" disposed himself, he would reject that
destruction of power, that injury for _his_ advantage, he would thwart
such inclinations in their origin, and above all he would manifest his
unselfishness just by _not giving it a good name!_ The fundamental
contradiction in that morality which at present stands in high honour
is here indicated: the _motives_ to such a morality are in antithesis
to its _principle!_ That with which this morality wishes to prove
itself, refutes it out of its criterion of what is moral! The maxim,
"Thou shalt renounce thyself and offer thyself as a sacrifice," in
order not to be inconsistent with its own morality, could only be
decreed by a being who himself renounced his own advantage thereby, and
who perhaps in the required self-sacrifice of individuals brought about
his own dissolution. As soon; however, as the neighbour (or society)
recommended altruism _on account of its utility,_ the precisely
antithetical proposition, "Thou shalt seek thy advantage even at the
expense of everybody else," was brought into use: accordingly, "thou
shalt," and "thou shalt not," are preached in one breath!

22.

_L'Ordre du jour pour le Roi.--_The day commences: let us begin to
arrange for this day the business and fêtes of our most gracious lord,
who at present is still pleased to repose. His Majesty has bad weather
to-day: we shall be careful not to call it bad; we shall not speak
of the weather,--but we shall go through to-day's business somewhat
more ceremoniously and make the fêtes somewhat more festive than would
otherwise be necessary. His Majesty may perhaps even be sick: we shall
give the last good news of the evening at breakfast, the arrival of M.
Montaigne, who knows how to joke so pleasantly about his sickness,--he
suffers from stone. We shall receive several persons (persons!--what
would that old inflated frog, who will be among them, say, if he heard
this word! "I am no person," he would say, "but always the thing
itself")--and the reception will last longer than is pleasant to
anybody; a sufficient reason for telling about the poet who wrote over
his door, "He who enters here will do me an honour; he who does not--a
favour."--That is, forsooth, saying a discourteous thing in a courteous
manner! And perhaps this poet is quite justified on his part in being
discourteous; they say that his rhymes are better than the rhymester.
Well, let him still make many of them, and withdraw himself as much
as possible from the world: and that is doubtless the significance of
his well-bred rudeness! A prince, on the other hand, is always of more
value than his "verse," even when--but what are we about? We gossip,'
and the whole court believes that we have already been at work and
racked our brains: there is no light to be seen earlier than that which
burns in our window.--Hark! Was that not the bell? The devil! The day
and the dance commence, and we do not know our rounds! We must then
improvise,--all the world improvises its day. To-day, let us for once
do like all the world!--And therewith vanished my wonderful morning
dream, probably owing to the violent strokes of the tower-clock, which
just then announced the fifth hour with all the importance which is
peculiar to it. It seems to me that on this occasion the God of dreams
wanted to make merry over my habits,--it is my habit to commence the
day by arranging it properly, to make it endurable _for myself_ and it
is possible that I may often have done this too formally, and too much
like a prince.

23.

_The Characteristics of Corruption._--Let us observe the following
characteristics in that condition of society from time to time
necessary, which is designated by the word "corruption." Immediately
upon the appearance of corruption anywhere, a motley _superstition_
gets the upper hand, and the hitherto universal belief of a people
becomes colourless and impotent in comparison with it; for superstition
is free-thinking of the second rank,--he who gives himself over
to it selects certain forms and formulæ which appeal, to him, and
permits himself a right of choice. The superstitious man is always
much more of a "person," in comparison with the religious man, and a
superstitious society will be one in which there are many individuals,
and a delight in individuality. Seen from this standpoint superstition
always appears as a _progress_ in comparison with belief, and as a
sign that the intellect becomes more independent and claims to have
its rights. Those who reverence the old religion and the religious
disposition then complain of corruption,--they have hitherto also
determined the usage of language, and have given a bad repute to
superstition, even among the freest spirits. Let us learn that it is a
symptom of _enlightenment._--Secondly, a society in which corruption
takes a hold is blamed for _effeminacy:_ for the appreciation of war,
and the delight in war, perceptibly diminish in such a society, and
the conveniences of life are now just as eagerly sought after as were
military and gymnastic honours formerly. But one is accustomed to
overlook the fact that the old national energy and national passion,
which acquired a magnificent splendour in war and in the tourney, has
now transferred itself into innumerable private passions, and has
merely become less visible; indeed in periods of "corruption" the
quantity and quality of the expended energy of a people is probably
greater than ever, and the individual spends it lavishly, to such an
extent as could not be done formerly--he was not then rich enough to do
so! And thus it is precisely in times of "effeminacy" that tragedy runs
at large in and out of doors, it is then that ardent love and ardent
hatred are born, and the flame of knowledge flashes heavenward in full
blaze.--Thirdly, as if in amends for the reproach of superstition
and effeminacy, it is customary to say of such periods of corruption
that they are milder, and that cruelty has then greatly diminished in
comparison with the older, more credulous, and stronger period. But to
this praise I am just as little able to assent as to that reproach: I
only grant so much--namely, that cruelty now becomes more refined, and
its older forms are henceforth counter to the taste; but the wounding
and torturing by word and look reaches its highest development in times
of corruption,--it is now only that _wickedness_ is created, and the
delight in wickedness. The men of the period of corruption are witty
and calumnious; they know that there are yet other ways of murdering
than by the dagger and the ambush--they know also that all that is
_well said_ is believed in.--Fourthly, it is when "morals decay" that
those beings whom one calls tyrants first make their appearance; they
are the forerunners of the _individual,_ and as it were early matured
_firstlings._ Yet a little while, and this fruit of fruits hangs ripe
and yellow on the tree of a people,--and only for the sake of such
fruit did this tree exist! When the decay has reached its worst, and
likewise the conflict of all sorts of tyrants, there always arises the
Cæsar, the final tyrant, who puts an end to the exhausted struggle for
sovereignty, by making the exhaustedness work for him. In his time
the individual is usually most mature, and consequently the "culture"
is highest and most fruitful, but not on his account nor through him:
although the men of highest culture love to flatter their Cæsar by
pretending that they are _his_ creation. The truth, however, is that
they need quietness externally, because they have disquietude and
labour internally. In these times bribery and treason are at their
height: for the love of the _ego,_ then first discovered, is much more
powerful than the love of the old, used-up, hackneyed "father-land";
and the need to be secure in one way or other against the frightful
fluctuations of fortune, opens even the nobler hands, as soon as a
richer and more powerful person shows himself ready to put gold into
them. There is then so little certainty with regard to the future;
people live only for the day: a psychical condition which enables every
deceiver to play an easy game,--people of course only let themselves
be misled and bribed "for the present," and reserve for themselves
futurity and virtue. The individuals, as is well known, the men who
only live for themselves, provide for the moment more than do their
opposites, the gregarious men, because they consider themselves just
as incalculable as the future; and similarly they attach themselves
willingly--to despots, because they believe themselves capable of
activities and expedients, which can neither reckon on being understood
by the multitude, nor on finding favour with them--but the tyrant
or the Cæsar understands the rights of the individual even in his
excesses, and has an interest in speaking on behalf of a bolder private
morality, and even in giving his hand to it For he thinks of himself,
and wishes people to think of him what Napoleon once uttered in his
classical style--"I have the right to answer by an eternal 'thus I am'
to everything about which complaint is brought against me. I am apart
from all the world, I accept conditions from nobody. I wish people
also to submit to my fancies, and to take it quite as a simple matter,
if I should indulge in this or that diversion." Thus spoke Napoleon
once to his wife, when she had reasons for calling in question the
fidelity of her husband. The times of corruption are the seasons when
the apples fall from the tree: I mean the individuals, the seed-bearers
of the future, the pioneers of spiritual colonisation, and of a new
construction of national and social unions. Corruption is only an
abusive term for the _harvest time_ of a people.

24.

_Different Dissatisfactions.--_The feeble and as it were feminine
dissatisfied people, have ingenuity for beautifying and deepening life;
the strong dissatisfied people--the masculine persons among them to
continue the metaphor--have ingenuity for improving and safeguarding
life. The former show their weakness and feminine character by
willingly letting themselves be temporarily deceived, and perhaps
even by putting up with a little ecstasy and enthusiasm on a time,
but on the whole they are never to be satisfied, and suffer from the
incurability of their dissatisfaction; moreover they are the patrons
of all those who manage to concoct opiate and narcotic comforts,
and on that account are averse to those who value the physician
higher than the priest,--they thereby encourage the _continuance_
of actual distress! If there had not been a surplus of dissatisfied
persons of this kind in Europe since the time of the Middle Ages,
the remarkable capacity of Europeans for constant _transformation_
would perhaps not have originated at all; for the claims of the
strong dissatisfied persons are too gross, and really too modest to
resist being finally quieted down. China is an instance of a country
in which dissatisfaction on a grand scale and the capacity for
transformation have died out for many centuries; and the Socialists
and state-idolaters of Europe could easily bring things to Chinese
conditions and to a Chinese "happiness," with their measures for the
amelioration and security of life, provided that they could first of
all root out the sicklier, tenderer, more feminine dissatisfaction
and Romanticism which are still very abundant among us. Europe is an
invalid who owes her best thanks to her incurability and the eternal
transformations of her sufferings; these constant new situations,
these equally constant new dangers, pains, and make-shifts, have at
last generated an intellectual sensitiveness which is almost equal to
genius, and is in any case the mother of all genius.

25.

_Not Pre-ordained to Knowledge._--There is a pur-blind humility not
at all rare, and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once for
all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge. It is this in
fact: the moment a man of this kind perceives anything striking, he
turns as it were on his heel and says to himself: "You have deceived
yourself! Where have your wits been! This cannot be the truth!"--and
then, instead of looking at it and listening to it with more attention,
he runs out of the way of the striking object as if intimidated,
and seeks to get it out of his head as quickly as possible. For his
fundamental rule runs thus: "I want to see nothing that contradicts
the usual opinion concerning things! Am _I_ created for the purpose of
discovering new truths? There are already too many of the old ones."

26.

_What is Living?_--Living--that is to continually eliminate from
ourselves what is about to die; Living--that is to be cruel and
inexorable towards all that becomes weak and old in ourselves and
not only in ourselves. Living--that means, there fore to be without
piety toward the dying, the wrenched and the old? To be continually a
murderer?--And yet old Moses said: "Thou shalt not kill!"

27.

_The Self-Renouncer._--What does the self-renouncer do? He strives
after a higher world, he wants to fly longer and further and higher
than all men of affirmation--he _throws away many things_ that
would impede his flight, and several things among them that are not
valueless, that are not unpleasant to him: he sacrifices them to his
desire for elevation. Now this sacrificing, this casting away, is the
very thing which becomes visible in him: on that account one calls him
a self-renouncer, and as such he stands before us, enveloped in his
cowl, and as the soul of a hair-shirt. With this effect, however, which
he makes upon us he is well content: he wants to keep concealed from us
his desire, his pride, his intention of flying _above_ us.--Yes! He is
wiser than we thought, and so courteous towards us--this affirmer! For
that is what he is, like us, even in his self-renunciation.

28.

_Injuring with ones best Qualities._--Out strong points sometimes drive
us so far forward that we cannot any longer endure our weaknesses,
and we perish by them: we also perhaps see this result beforehand,
but nevertheless do not want it to be otherwise. We then become hard
towards that which would fain be spared in us, and our pitilessness is
also our greatness. Such an experience, which must in the end cost us
our Hie, is a symbol of the collective effect of great men upon others
and upon their epoch:--it is just with their best abilities, with
that which only _they_ can do, that they destroy much that is weak,
uncertain, evolving, and _willing,_ and are thereby injurious. Indeed,
the case may happen in which, taken on the whole, they only do injury,
because their best is accepted and drunk up as it were solely by those
who lose their understanding and their egoism by it, as by too strong a
beverage; they become so intoxicated that they go breaking their limbs
on all the wrong roads where their drunkenness drives them.

29.

_Adventitious Liars._--When people began to combat the unity of
Aristotle in France, and consequently also to defend it, there was
once more to be seen that which has been seen so often, but seen
so unwillingly:--_people imposed false reasons on themselves_ on
account of which those laws ought to exist, merely for the sake of
not acknowledging to themselves that they had _accustomed_ themselves
to the authority of those laws, and did not want any longer to have
things otherwise. And people do so in every prevailing morality and
religion, and have always done so: the reasons and intentions behind
the habit, are only added surreptitiously when people begin to combat
the habit, and _ask_ for reasons and intentions. It is here that the
great dishonesty of the conservatives of all times hides:--they are
adventitious liars.

30.

_The Comedy of Celebrated Men.--_Celebrated men who _need_ their fame,
as, for instance, all politicians, no longer select their associates
and friends without fore-thought: from the one they want a portion
of the splendour and reflection of his virtues; from the other they
want the fear-inspiring power of certain dubious qualities in him, of
which everybody is aware; from another they steal his reputation for
idleness and basking in the sun, because it is advantageous for their
own ends to be regarded temporarily as heedless and lazy:--it conceals
the fact that they lie in ambush; they now use the visionaries, now
the experts, now the brooders, now the pedants in their neighbourhood,
as their actual selves for the time; but very soon they do not need
them any longer! And thus while their environment and outside die off
continually, everything seems to crowd into this environment, and
wants to become a "character" of it; they are like great cities in
this respect. Their repute is continually in process of mutation, like
their character, for their changing methods require this change, and
they show and _exhibit_ sometimes this and sometimes that actual or
fictitious quality on the stage; their friends and associates, as we
have said, belong to these stage properties. On the other hand, that
which they aim at must remain so much the more steadfast, and burnished
and resplendent in the distance,--and this also sometimes needs its
comedy and its stage-play.

31.

_Commerce and Nobility._--Buying and selling is now regarded as
something ordinary, like the art of reading and writing; everyone is
now trained to it even when he is not a tradesman exercising himself
daily in the art; precisely as formerly in the period of uncivilised
humanity, everyone was a hunter and exercised himself day by day in the
art of hunting. Hunting was then something common: but just as this
finally became a privilege of the powerful and noble, and thereby lost
the character of the commonplace and the ordinary--by ceasing to be
necessary and by becoming an affair of fancy and luxury,--so it might
become the same some day with buying and selling. Conditions of society
are imaginable in which there will be no selling and buying, and in
which the necessity for this art will become quite lost; perhaps it
may then happen that individuals who are less subjected to the law of
the prevailing condition of things will indulge in buying and selling
as a _luxury of sentiment. _ It is then only that commerce would
acquire nobility, and the noble would then perhaps occupy themselves
just as readily with commerce as they have done hitherto with war and
politics: while on the other hand the valuation of politics might then
have entirely altered. Already even politics ceases to be the business
of a gentleman; and it is possible that one day it may be found to
be so vulgar as to be brought, like all party literature and daily
literature, under the rubric: "Prostitution of the intellect."

32.

_Undesirable Disciples._--What shall I do with these two youths! called
out a philosopher dejectedly, who "corrupted" youths, as Socrates had
once corrupted them,--they are unwelcome disciples to me. One of them
cannot say "Nay," and the other says "Half and half" to everything.
Provided they grasped my doctrine, the former would _suffer_ too much,
for my mode of thinking requires a martial soul, willingness to cause
pain, delight in denying, and a hard skin,--he would succumb by open
wounds and internal injuries. And the other will choose the mediocre in
everything he represents, and thus make a mediocrity of the whole,--I
should like my enemy to have such a disciple.

33.

_Outside the Lecture-room._--"In order to prove that man after all
belongs to the good-natured animals, I would remind you how credulous
he has been for so long a time. It is now only, quite late, and
after an immense self-conquest, that he has become a _distrustful_
animal,--yes! man is now more wicked than ever."--I do not understand
this; why should man now be more distrustful and more wicked?--"Because
now he has science,--because he needs to have it!"--

34.

_Historia abscondita._--Every great man has a power which operates
backward; all history is again placed on the scales on his
account, and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their
lurking-places--into _his_ sunlight. There is absolutely no knowing
what history may be some day. The past is still perhaps undiscovered in
its essence! There is yet so much reinterpreting ability needed!

35.

_Heresy and Witchcraft._--To think otherwise than is customary--that is
by no means so much the activity of a better intellect, as the activity
of strong, wicked inclinations,--severing, isolating, refractory,
mischief-loving, malicious inclinations. Heresy is the counterpart of
witchcraft, and is certainly just as little a merely harmless affair,
or a thing worthy of honour in itself. Heretics and sorcerers are two
kinds of bad men; they have it in common that they also feel themselves
wicked; their unconquerable delight is to attack and injure whatever
rules,--whether it be men or opinions. The Reformation, a kind of
duplication of the spirit of the Middle Ages at a time when it had no
longer a good conscience, produced both of these kinds of people in the
greatest profusion.

36.

_Last Words._-It will be recollected that the Emperor Augustus, that
terrible man, who had himself as much in his own power and could be
silent as well as any wise Socrates, became indiscreet about himself in
his last words; for the first time he let his mask fall, when he gave
to understand that he had carried a mask and played a comedy,--he had
played the father of his country and wisdom on the throne well, even to
the point of illusion! _Plaudite amid, comœdia finita est!--_The
thought of the dying Nero: _qualis artifex pereo!_ was also the thought
of the dying Augustus: histrionic conceit! histrionic loquacity!
And the very counterpart to the dying Socrates!--But Tiberius died
silently, that most tortured of all self-torturers,--_he_ was _genuine_
and not a stage-player! What may have passed through his head in the
end! Perhaps this: "Life--that is a long death. I am a fool, who
shortened the lives of so many! Was _I_ created for the purpose of
being a benefactor? I should have given them eternal life: and then I
could have _seen them dying_ eternally. I had such good eyes _for that:
qualis spectator pereo!_" When he seemed once more to regain his powers
after a long death-struggle, it was considered advisable to smother him
with pillows,--he died a double death.

37.

_Owing to three Errors._--Science has been furthered during recent
centuries, partly because it was hoped that God's goodness and wisdom
would be best understood therewith and thereby--the principal motive in
the soul of great Englishmen (like Newton); partly because the absolute
utility of knowledge was believed in, and especially the most intimate
connection of morality, knowledge, and happiness--the principal motive
in the soul of great Frenchmen (like Voltaire); and partly because it
was thought that in science there was something unselfish, harmless,
self-sufficing, lovable, and truly innocent to be had, in which the
evil human impulses did not at all participate--the principal motive in
the soul of Spinoza, who felt himself divine, as a knowing being:--it
is consequently owing to three errors that science has been furthered.

38.

_Explosive People._--When one considers how ready are the forces of
young men for discharge, one does not wonder at seeing them decide
so uncritically and with so little selection for this or that cause:
_that_ which attracts them is the sight of eagerness for a cause, as
it were the sight of the burning match--not the cause itself. The more
ingenious seducers on that account operate by holding out the prospect
of an explosion to such persons, and do not urge their cause by means
of reasons; these powder-barrels are not won over by means of reasons!

39.

_Altered Taste._--The alteration of the general taste is more important
than the alteration of opinions; opinions, with all their proving,
refuting, and intellectual masquerade, are merely symptoms of altered
taste, and are certainly _not_ what they are still so often claimed to
be, the causes of the altered taste. How does the general taste alter?
By the fact of individuals, the powerful and influential persons,
expressing and tyrannically enforcing without any feeling of shame,
_their hoc est ridiculum, hoc est absurdum;_ the decisions, therefore,
of their taste and their disrelish:--they thereby lay a constraint upon
many people, out of which there gradually grows a habituation for still
more, and finally a _necessity for all._ The fact, however, that these
individuals feel and "taste" differently, has usually its origin in a
peculiarity of their mode of life, nourishment, or digestion, perhaps
in a surplus or deficiency of the inorganic salts in their blood and
brain, in short in their _physis;_ they have, however, the courage to
avow their physical constitution, and to lend an ear even to the most
delicate tones of its requirements: their æsthetic and moral judgments
are those "most delicate tones" of their _physis._

40.

_The Lack of a noble Presence._--Soldiers and their leaders have always
a much higher mode of comportment toward one another than workmen
and their employers. At present at least, all militarily established
civilisation still stands high above all so-called industrial
civilisation; the latter, in its present form, is in general the
meanest mode of existence that has ever been. It is simply the law
of necessity that operates here: people want to live, and have to
sell themselves; but they despise him who exploits their necessity
and _purchases_ the workman. It is curious that the subjection to
powerful, fear-inspiring, and even dreadful individuals, to tyrants and
leaders of armies, is not at all felt so painfully as the subjection
to such undistinguished and uninteresting persons as the captains of
industry; in the employer the workman usually sees merely a crafty,
blood-sucking dog of a man, speculating on every necessity, whose name,
form, character, and reputation are altogether indifferent to him.
It is probable that the manufacturers and great magnates of commerce
have hitherto lacked too much all those forms and attributes of a
_superior race,_ which alone make persons interesting; if they had
had the nobility of the nobly-born in their looks and bearing, there
would perhaps have been no socialism in the masses of the people. For
these are really ready for _slavery_ of every kind, provided that
the superior class above them constantly shows itself legitimately
superior, and _born_ to command--by its noble presence! The commonest
man feels that nobility is not to be improvised, and that it is his
part to honour it as the fruit of protracted race-culture,--but
the absence of superior presence, and the notorious vulgarity of
manufacturers with red, fat hands, brings up the thought to him that
it is only chance and fortune that has here elevated the one above the
other; well then--so he reasons with himself--let _us_ in our turn
tempt chance and fortune! Let us in our turn throw the dice!--and
socialism commences.

41.

_Against Remorse.--_The thinker sees in his own actions attempts and
questionings to obtain information about something or other; success
and failure are _answers_ to him first and foremost. To vex himself,
however, because something does not succeed, or to feel remorse at
all--he leaves that to those who act because they are commanded to
do so, and expect to get a beating when their gracious master is not
satisfied with the result.

42.

_Work and Ennui_--In respect to seeking work for the sake of the pay,
almost all men are alike at present in civilised countries; to all of
them work is a means, and not itself the end; on which account they
are not very select in the choice of the work, provided it yields
an abundant profit. But still there are rarer men who would rather
perish than work without _delight_ in their labour: the fastidious
people, difficult to satisfy, whose object is not served by an abundant
profit, unless the work itself be the reward of all rewards. Artists
and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare species of
human beings; and also the idlers who spend their life in hunting and
travelling, or in love-affairs and adventures. They all seek toil and
trouble in so far as these are associated with pleasure, and they want
the severest and hardest labour, if it be necessary. In other respects,
however, they have a resolute indolence, even should impoverishment,
dishonour, and danger to health and life be associated therewith.
They are not so much afraid of ennui as of labour without pleasure;
indeed they require much ennui, if _their_ work is to succeed with
them. For the thinker and for all inventive spirits ennui is the
unpleasant "calm" of the soul which precedes the happy voyage and
the dancing breezes; he must endure it, he must _await_ the effect it
has on him:--it is precisely _this_ which lesser natures cannot at
all experience! It is common to scare away ennui in every way, just
as it is common to labour without pleasure. It perhaps distinguishes
the Asiatics above the Europeans, that they are capable of a longer
and profounder repose; even their narcotics operate slowly and require
patience, in contrast to the obnoxious suddenness of the European
poison, alcohol.

43.

_What the Laws Betray._--One makes a great mistake when one studies
the penal laws of a people, as if they were an expression of its
character; the laws do not betray what a people is, but what appears
to them foreign, strange, monstrous, and outlandish. The laws concern
themselves with the exceptions to the morality of custom; and the
severest punishments fall on acts which conform to the customs of the
neighbouring peoples. Thus among the Wahabites, there are only two
mortal sins: having another God than the Wahabite God, and--smoking
(it is designated by them as "the disgraceful kind of drinking"). "And
how is it with regard to murder and adultery?"-asked the Englishman
with astonishment on learning these things. "Well, God is gracious
and pitiful!" answered the old chief.--Thus among the ancient Romans
there was the idea that a woman could only sin mortally in two ways: by
adultery on the one hand, and--by wine-drinking on the other. Old Cato
pretended that kissing among relatives had only been made a custom in
order to keep women in control on this point; a kiss meant: did her
breath smell of wine? Wives had actually been punished by death who
were surprised taking wine: and certainly not merely because women
under the influence of wine sometimes unlearn altogether the art of
saying No; the Romans were afraid above all things of the orgiastic and
Dionysian spirit with which the women of Southern Europe at that time
(when wine was still new in Europe) were sometimes visited, as by a
monstrous foreignness which subverted the basis of Roman sentiments; it
seemed to them treason against Rome, as the embodiment of foreignness.

44.

_The Believed Motive._--However important it may be to know the motives
according to which mankind has really acted hitherto, perhaps the
_belief_ in this or that motive, and therefore that which mankind
has assumed and imagined to be the actual mainspring of its activity
hitherto, is something still more essential for the thinker to know.
For the internal happiness and misery of men have always come to them
through their belief in this or that motive,--_not_ however, through
that which was actually the motive! All about the latter has an
interest of secondary rank.

45.

_Epicurus._--Yes, I am proud of perceiving the character of Epicurus
differently from anyone else perhaps, and of enjoying the happiness
of the afternoon of antiquity in all that I hear and read of him:--I
see his eye gazing out on a broad whitish sea, over the shore-rocks
on which the sunshine rests, while great and small creatures play
in its light, secure and calm like this light and that eye itself.
Such happiness could only have been devised by a chronic sufferer,
the happiness of an eye before which the sea of existence has become
calm, and which can no longer tire of gazing at the surface and at the
variegated, tender, tremulous skin of this sea. Never previously was
there such a moderation of voluptuousness.

46.

_Our Astonishment--_There is a profound and fundamental satisfaction
in the fact that science ascertains things that _hold their ground,_
and again furnish the basis for new researches:--it could certainly be
otherwise. Indeed, we are so much convinced of all the uncertainty and
caprice of our judgments, and of the everlasting change of all human
laws and conceptions, that we are really astonished _how persistently_
the results of science hold their ground! In earlier times people
knew nothing of this changeability of all human things; the custom of
morality maintained the belief that the whole inner life of man was
bound to iron necessity by eternal fetters:--perhaps people then felt a
similar voluptuousness of astonishment when they listened to tales and
fairy stories. The wonderful did so much good to those men, who might
well get tired sometimes of the regular and the eternal. To leave the
ground for once! To soar! To stray! To be mad!--that belonged to the
paradise and the revelry of earlier times; while our felicity is like
that of the shipwrecked man who has gone ashore, and places himself
with both feet on the old, firm ground--in astonishment that it does
not rock.

47.

_The Suppression of the Passions._--When one continually prohibits
the expression of the passions as something to be left to the
"vulgar," to coarser, bourgeois, and peasant natures--that is, when
one does not want to suppress the passions themselves, but only their
language and demeanour, one nevertheless realises _therewith_ just
what one does not want: the suppression of the passions themselves,
or at least their weakening and alteration,--as the court of Louis
XIV. (to cite the most instructive instance), and all that was
dependent on it, experienced. The generation _that followed,_ trained
in suppressing their expression, no longer possessed the passions
themselves, but had a pleasant, superficial, playful disposition in
their place,--a generation which was so permeated with the incapacity
to be ill-mannered, that even an injury was not taken and retaliated,
except with courteous words. Perhaps our own time furnishes the most
remarkable counterpart to this period: I see everywhere (in life, in
the theatre, and not least in all that is written) satisfaction at all
the _coarser_ outbursts and gestures of passion; a certain convention
of passionateness is now desired,--only not the passion itself!
Nevertheless _it_ will thereby be at last reached, and our posterity
will have a _genuine savagery,_ and not merely a formal savagery and
unmannerliness.

48.

_Knowledge of Distress.--_Perhaps there is nothing by which men and
periods are so much separated from one another, as by the different
degrees of knowledge of distress which they possess; distress of the
soul as well as of the body. With respect to the latter, owing to lack
of sufficient self-experience, we men of the present day (in spite of
our deficiencies and infirmities), are perhaps all of us blunderers and
visionaries in comparison with the men of the age of fear--the longest
of all ages,--when the individual had to protect himself against
violence, and for that purpose had to be a man of violence himself. At
that time a man went through a long schooling of corporeal tortures and
privations, and found even in a certain kind of cruelty toward himself,
in a voluntary use of pain, a necessary means for his preservation;
at that time a person trained his environment to the endurance of
pain; at that time a person willingly inflicted pain, and saw the most
frightful things of this kind happen to others without having any
other feeling than for his own security. As regards the distress of
the soul however, I now look at every man with respect to whether he
knows it by experience or by description; whether he still regards it
as necessary to simulate this knowledge, perhaps as an indication of
more refined culture; or whether, at the bottom of his heart, he does
not at all believe in great sorrows of soul, and at the naming of them
calls to mind a similar experience as at the naming of great corporeal
sufferings, such as tooth-aches, and stomach-aches. It is thus,
however, that it seems to be with most people at present. Owing to
the universal inexperience of both kinds of pain, and the comparative
rarity of the spectacle of a sufferer, an important consequence
results: people now hate pain far more than earlier man did, and
calumniate it worse than ever; indeed people nowadays can hardly endure
the _thought_ of pain, and make out of it an affair of conscience and
a reproach to collective existence. The appearance of pessimistic
philosophies is not at all the sign of great and dreadful miseries; for
these interrogative marks regarding the worth of life appear in periods
when the refinement and alleviation of existence already deem the
unavoidable gnat-stings of the soul and body as altogether too bloody
and wicked; and in the poverty of actual experiences of pain, would now
like to make _painful general ideas_ appear as suffering of the worst
kind.--There might indeed be a remedy for pessimistic philosophies and
the excessive sensibility which seems to me the real "distress of the
present":--but perhaps this remedy already sounds too cruel, and would
itself be reckoned among the symptoms owing to which people at present
conclude that "existence is something evil." Well! the remedy for "the
distress" is _distress._

49.

_Magnanimity and allied Qualities.--_Those paradoxical phenomena,
such as the sudden coldness in the demeanour of good-natured men, the
humour of the melancholy, and above all _magnanimity,_ as a sudden
renunciation of revenge or of the gratification of envy--appear
in men in whom there is a powerful inner impulsiveness, in men of
sudden satiety and sudden disgust. Their satisfactions are so rapid
and violent that satiety, aversion and flight into the antithetical
taste, immediately follow upon them: in this contrast the convulsion
of feeling liberates itself, in one person by sudden coldness, in
another by laughter, and in a third by tear and self-sacrifice. The
magnanimous person appears to me--at least that kind of magnanimous
person who has always made most impression--as a man with the strongest
thirst for vengeance, to whom a gratification presents itself close at
hand, and who _already_ drinks it off _in imagination_ so copiously,
thoroughly, and to the last drop, that an excessive, rapid disgust
follows this rapid licentiousness;--he now elevates himself "above
himself," as one says, and forgives his enemy, yea, blesses and honours
him. With this violence done to himself, however, with this mockery
of his impulse to revenge, even still so powerful he merely yields
to the new impulse, the disgust which has become powerful, and does
this just as impatiently and licentiously, as a short time previously
he _forestalled,_ and as it were exhausted, the joy of revenge with
his fantasy. In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in
revenge, but a different quality of egoism.

50.

_The Argument of Isolation._--The reproach of conscience, even in the
most conscientious, is weak against the feeling: "This and that are
contrary to the good morals of _your_ society." A cold glance or a
wry mouth on the part of those among whom and for whom one has been
educated, is still _feared_ even by the strongest. What is really
feared there? Isolation! as the argument which demolishes even the
best arguments for a person or cause!--It is thus that the gregarious
instinct speaks in us.

51.

_Sense for Truth.--_Commend me to all scepticism where I am permitted
to answer: "Let us put it to the test!" But I don't wish to hear
anything more of things and questions which do not admit of being
tested. That is the limit of my "sense for truth": for bravery has
there lost its right.

52.

_What others Know of us.--_That which we know of ourselves and have
in our memory is not so decisive for the happiness of our life as is
generally believed. One day it flashes upon our mind what _others_ know
of us (or think they know)--and then we acknowledge that it is the more
powerful. We get on with our bad conscience more easily than with our
bad reputation.

53.

_Where Goodness Begins.--_Where bad eyesight can no longer see the evil
impulse as such, on account of its refinement,--there man sets up the
kingdom of goodness; and the feeling of having now gone over into the
kingdom of goodness brings all those impulses (such as the feelings
of security, of comfortableness, of benevolence) into simultaneous
activity, which were threatened and confined by the evil impulses.
Consequently, the duller the eye so much the further does goodness
extend! Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the populace and of children!
Hence the gloominess and grief (allied to the bad conscience) of great
thinkers.

54.

_The Consciousness of Appearance.--_How wonderfully and novelly, and
at the same time how awfully and ironically, do I feel myself situated
with respect to collective existence, with my knowledge! I have
_discovered_ for myself that the old humanity and animality, yea, the
collective primeval age, and the past of all sentient being, continues
to meditate, love, hate, and reason in me,--I have suddenly awoke in
the midst of this dream, but merely to the consciousness that I just
dream, and that I _must_ dream on in order not to perish; just as
the sleep-walker must dream on in order not to tumble down. What is
it that is now "appearance" to me! Verily, not the antithesis of any
kind of essence,--what knowledge can I assert of any kind of essence
whatsoever, except merely the predicates of its appearance! Verily
not a dead mask which one could put upon an unknown X, and which to
be sure one could also remove! Appearance is for me the operating
and living thing itself; which goes so far in its self-mockery as to
make me feel that here there is appearance, and Will o' the Wisp, and
spirit-dance, and nothing more,--that among all these dreamers, I
also, the "thinker," dance my dance, that the thinker is a means of
prolonging further the terrestrial dance, and in so far is one of the
masters of ceremony of existence, and that the sublime consistency
and connectedness of all branches of knowledge is perhaps, and will
perhaps, be the best means for _maintaining_ the universality of the
dreaming, the complete, mutual understandability of all those dreamers,
and thereby _the duration of the dream_.

55.

_The Ultimate Nobility of Character._--What then makes a person
"noble"? Certainly not that he makes sacrifices; even the frantic
libertine makes sacrifices. Certainly not that he generally follows
his passions; there are contemptible passions. Certainly not that
he does something for others, and without selfishness; perhaps the
effect of selfishness is precisely at its greatest in the noblest
persons.--But that the passion which seizes the noble man is a
peculiarity, without his knowing that it is so: the use of a rare
and singular measuring-rod, almost a frenzy: the feeling of heat in
things which feel cold to all other persons: a divining of values
for which scales have not yet been invented: a sacrificing on altars
which are consecrated to an unknown God: a bravery without the desire
for honour: a self-sufficiency which has superabundance, and imparts
to men and things. Hitherto, therefore, it has been the rare in man,
and the unconsciousness of this rareness, that has made men noble.
Here, however, let us consider that everything ordinary, immediate,
and indispensable, in short, what has been most preservative of the
species, and generally the _rule_ in mankind hitherto, has been judged
unreasonable and calumniated in its entirety by this standard, in
favour of the exceptions. To become the advocate of the rule--that
may perhaps be: the ultimate form and refinement in which nobility of
character will reveal itself on earth.

56.

_The Desire for Suffering._--When I think of the desire to do
something, how it continually tickles and stimulates millions of
young Europeans, who cannot endure themselves and all their ennui,--I
conceive that there must be a desire in them to suffer something,
in order to derive from their suffering a worthy motive for acting,
for doing something. Distress is necessary! Hence the cry of the
politicians, hence the many false trumped-up, exaggerated "states of
distress" of all possible kinds, and the blind readiness to believe in
them. This young world desires that there should arrive or appear _from
the outside--not_ happiness--but misfortune; and their imagination is
already busy beforehand to form a monster out of it, so that they may
afterwards be able to fight with a monster. If these distress-seekers
felt the power to benefit themselves, to do something for themselves
from internal sources, they would also understand how to create a
distress of their own, specially their own, from internal sources.
Their inventions might then be more refined, and their gratifications
might sound like good music: while at present they fill the world with
their cries of distress, and consequently too often with the _feeling
of distress_ in the first place! They do not know what to make of
themselves--and so they paint the misfortune of others on the wall;
they always need others! And always again other others!--Pardon me, my
friends, I have ventured to paint my _happiness_ on the wall.

BOOK SECOND

57.

_To the Realists._--Ye sober beings, who feel yourselves armed against
passion and fantasy, and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out
of your emptiness, ye call yourselves realists, and give to understand
that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you; before
you alone reality stands unveiled, and ye yourselves would perhaps
be the best part of it,--oh, ye dear images of Sais! But are not ye
also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky
beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured
artist?[1]--and what is "reality" to an enamoured artist! Ye still
carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin
in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still
a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your
love of "reality," for example--oh, that is an old, primitive "love"!
In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of
this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice,
irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled
and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What
is "real" in them? Remove the phantasm and the whole human _element_
therefrom, ye sober ones! Yes, if ye could do _that!_ If ye could
forget your origin, your past, your preparatory schooling,--your whole
history as man and beast! There is no "reality" for us--nor for you
either, ye sober ones,--we are far from being so alien to one another
as ye suppose; and perhaps our good-will to get beyond drunkenness is
just as respectable as your belief that ye are altogether _incapable_
of drunkenness.

[1] Schiller's poem, "The Veiled Image of Sais," is again referred to
here.--TR.

58.

_Only as Creators!_--It has caused me the greatest trouble, and for
ever causes me the greatest trouble, to perceive that unspeakably more
depends upon _what things are called,_ than on what they are. The
reputation, the name and appearance, the importance, the usual measure
and weight of things--each being in origin most frequently an error and
arbitrariness thrown over the things like a garment, and quite alien
to their essence and even to their exterior--have gradually, by the
belief therein and its continuous growth from generation to generation,
grown as it were on-and-into things and become their very body; the
appearance at the very beginning becomes almost always the essence in
the end, and _operates_ as the essence! What a fool he would be who
would think it enough to refer here to this origin and this nebulous
veil of illusion, in order to _annihilate_ that which virtually passes
for the world--namely, so-called "reality"! It is only as creators
that we can annihilate!--But let us not forget this: it suffices to
create new names and valuations and probabilities, in order in the long
run to create new "things."

59.

_We Artists!_--When we love a woman we have readily a hatred against
nature, on recollecting all the disagreeable natural functions to
which every woman is subject; we prefer not to think of them at all,
but if once our soul touches on these things it twitches impatiently,
and glances, as we have said, contemptuously at nature:--we are hurt;
nature seems to encroach upon our possessions, and with the profanest
hands. We then shut our ears against all physiology, and we decree in
secret that "we will hear nothing of the fact that man is something
else than _soul and form!"_ "The man under the skin" is an abomination
and monstrosity, a blasphemy of God and of love to all lovers.--Well,
just as the lover still feels with respect to nature and natural
functions, so did every worshipper of God and his "holy omnipotence"
feel formerly: in all that was said of nature by astronomers,
geologists, physiologists, and physicians, he saw an encroachment on
his most precious possession, and consequently an attack,--and moreover
also an impertinence of the assailant! The "law of nature" sounded to
him as blasphemy against God; in truth he would too willingly have
seen the whole of mechanics traced back to moral acts of volition and
arbitrariness:--but because nobody could render him this service,
he _concealed_ nature and mechanism from himself as best he could,
and lived in a dream. Oh, those men of former times understood how to
_dream,_ and did not need first to go to sleep!--and we men of the
present day also still understand it too well, with all our good-will
for wakefulness and daylight! It suffices to love, to hate, to desire,
and in general to feel _immediately_ the spirit and the power of the
dream come over us, and we ascend, with open eyes and indifferent
to all danger, the most dangerous paths, to the roofs and towers of
fantasy, and without any giddiness, as persons born for climbing--we
the night-walkers by day! We artists! We concealers of naturalness! We
moon-struck and God-struck ones! We death-silent, untiring wanderers
on heights which we do not see as heights, but as our plains, as our
places of safety!

60.

_Women and their Effect in the Distance._--Have I still ears? Am I
only ear, and nothing else besides? Here I stand in the midst of the
surging of the breakers, whose white flames fork up to my feet;--from
all sides there is howling, threatening, crying, and screaming at me,
while in the lowest depths the old earth-shaker sings his aria hollow
like a roaring bull; he beats such an earth-shaker's measure thereto,
that even the hearts of these weathered rock-monsters tremble at the
sound. Then, suddenly, as if born out of nothingness, there appears
before the portal of this hellish labyrinth, only a few fathoms
distant,--a great sailing-ship gliding silently along like a ghost. Oh,
this ghostly beauty! With what enchantment it seizes me! What? Has all
the repose and silence in the world embarked here? Does my happiness
itself sit in this quiet place, my happier ego, my second immortalised
self? Still not dead, but also no longer living? As a ghost-like,
calm, gazing, gliding, sweeping, neutral being? Similar to the ship,
which, with its white sails, like an immense butterfly, passes over
the dark sea! Yes! Passing _over_ existence! That is it! That would be
it!--It seems that the noise here has made me a visionary? All great
noise causes one to place happiness in the calm and the distance. When
a man is in the midst of _his_ hubbub, in the midst of the breakers
of his plots and plans, he there sees perhaps calm, enchanting beings
glide past him, for whose happiness and retirement he longs--_they are
women._ He almost thinks that there with the women dwells his better
self; that in these calm places even the loudest breakers become still
as death, and life itself a dream of life. But still! but still! my
noble enthusiast, there is also in the most beautiful sailing-ship so
much noise and bustling, and alas, so much petty, pitiable bustling!
The enchantment and the most powerful effect of women is, to use
the language of philosophers, an effect at a distance, an _actio
in distans;_ there belongs thereto, however, primarily and above
all,--_distance!_

6l.

_In Honour of Friendship._--That the sentiment of friendship was
regarded by antiquity as the highest sentiment, higher even than the
most vaunted pride of the self-sufficient and wise, yea, as it were its
sole and still holier brotherhood, is very well expressed by the story
of the Macedonian king who made the present of a talent to a cynical
Athenian philosopher from whom he received it back again. "What?"
said the king, "has he then no friend?" He therewith meant to say, "I
honour this pride of the wise and independent man, but I should have
honoured his humanity still higher, if the friend in him had gained
the victory over his pride. The philosopher has lowered himself in my
estimation, for he showed that he did not know one of the two highest
sentiments--and in fact the higher of them!"

62.

_Love.--_Love pardons even the passion of the beloved.

63.

_Woman in Music--How_ does it happen that warm and rainy winds bring
the musical mood and the inventive delight in melody with them? Are
they not the same winds that fill the churches and give women amorous
thoughts?

64.

_Sceptics._--I fear that women who have grown old are more sceptical in
the secret recesses of their hearts than any of the men; they believe
in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue
and profundity is to them only the disguising of this "truth," the very
desirable disguising of a _pudendum,_--an affair, therefore, of decency
and modesty, and nothing more!

65.

_Devotedness._--There are noble women with a certain poverty of spirit,
who, in order to _express_ their profoundest devotedness, have no other
alternative but to offer their virtue and modesty: it is the highest
thing they have. And this present is often accepted without putting the
recipient under such deep obligation as the giver supposed,--a very
melancholy story!

66.

_The Strength of the Weak.--_Women are all skilful in exaggerating
their weaknesses, indeed they are inventive in weaknesses, so as to
seem quite fragile ornaments to which even a grain of dust does harm;
their existence is meant to bring home to man's mind his coarseness,
and to appeal to his conscience. They thus defend themselves against
the strong and all "rights of might."

67.

_Self-dissembling._--She loves him now and has since been looking
forth with as quiet confidence as a cow; but alas! It was precisely
his delight that she seemed so fitful and absolutely incomprehensible!
He had rather too much steady weather in himself already! Would she
not do well to feign her old character? to feign indifference? Does
not--love itself advise her _to do so? Vivat comœdia!_

68.

_Will and Willingness._--Some one brought a youth to a wise man,
and said, "See, this is one who is being corrupted by women!" The
wise man shook his head and smiled. "It is men," he called out, "who
corrupt women; and everything that women lack should be atoned for
and improved in men--for man creates for himself the ideal of woman,
and woman moulds herself according to this ideal."--"You are too
tender-hearted towards women," said one of the bystanders, "you do not
know them!" The wise man answered: "Man's attribute is will, woman's
attribute is willingness--such is the law of the sexes, verily! a
hard law for woman! All human beings are innocent of their existence,
women, however, are doubly innocent; who could have enough of salve
and gentleness for them!"--"What about salve! What about gentleness!"
called out another person in the crowd, "we must educate women
better!"--"We must educate men better," said the wise man, and made a
sign to the youth to follow him.--The youth, however, did not follow
him.

69.

_Capacity for Revenge--_That a person cannot and consequently will not
defend himself, does not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes; but
we despise the person who has neither the ability nor the good-will
for revenge--whether it be a man or a woman. Would a woman be able to
captivate us (or, as people say, to "fetter" us) whom we did not credit
with knowing how to employ the dagger (any kind of dagger) skilfully
_against us_ under certain circumstances? Or against herself; which in
a certain case might be the severest revenge (the Chinese revenge).

70.

_The Mistresses of the Masters--_A powerful contralto voice, as
we occasionally hear it in the theatre, raises suddenly for us the
curtain on possibilities in which we usually do not believe; all at
once we are convinced that somewhere in the world there may be women
with high, heroic, royal souls, capable and prepared for magnificent
remonstrances, resolutions, and self-sacrifices, capable and prepared
for domination over men, because in them the best in man, superior to
sex, has become a corporeal ideal. To be sure, it is not the intention
of the theatre that such voices should give such a conception of women;
they are usually intended to represent the ideal male lover, for
example, a Romeo; but, to judge by my experience, the theatre regularly
miscalculates here, and the musician also, who expects such effects
from such a voice. People do not believe in _these_ lovers; these
voices still contain a tinge of the motherly and housewifely character,
and most of all when love is in their tone.

71.

_On Female Chastity.--_There is something quite astonishing and
extraordinary in the education of women of the higher class; indeed,
there is perhaps nothing more paradoxical. All the world is agreed
to educate them with as much ignorance as possible _in eroticis,_
and to inspire their soul with a profound shame of such things, and
the extremest impatience and horror at the suggestion of them. It is
really here only that all the "honour" of woman is at stake; what would
one not forgive them in other respects! But here they are intended
to remain ignorant to the very backbone:--they are intended to have
neither eyes, ears, words, nor thoughts for this, their "wickedness";
indeed knowledge here is already evil. And then! To be hurled as with
an awful thunderbolt into reality and knowledge with marriage--and
indeed by him whom they most love and esteem: to have to encounter love
and shame in contradiction, yea, to have to feel rapture, abandonment,
duty, sympathy, and fright at the unexpected proximity of God and
animal, and whatever else besides! all at once!--There, in fact, a
psychic entanglement has been effected which is quite unequalled!
Even the sympathetic curiosity of the wisest discerner of men does
not suffice to divine how this or that woman gets along with the
solution of this enigma and the enigma of this solution; what dreadful,
far-reaching suspicions must awaken thereby in the poor unhinged soul;
and forsooth, how the ultimate philosophy and scepticism of the woman
casts anchor at this point!--Afterwards the same profound silence as
before and often even a silence to herself, a shutting of her eyes to
herself.--Young wives on that account make great efforts to appear
superficial and thoughtless the most ingenious of them simulate a kind
of impudence.--Wives easily feel their husbands as a question-mark to
their honour, and their children as an apology or atonement,--they
require children, and wish for them in quite another spirit than a
husband wishes for them.--In short, one cannot be gentle enough towards
women!

72.

_Mothers._--Animals think differently from men with respect to females;
with them the female is regarded as the productive being. There is no
paternal love among them, but there is such a thing as love of the
children of a beloved, and habituation to them. In the young, the
females find gratification for their lust of dominion; the young are a
property, an occupation, something quite comprehensible to them, with
which they can chatter: all this conjointly is maternal love,--it is
to be compared to the love of the artist for his work. Pregnancy has
made the females gentler, more expectant, more timid, more submissively
inclined; and similarly intellectual pregnancy engenders the character
of the contemplative, who are allied to women in character:--they are
the masculine mothers.--Among animals the masculine sex is regarded as
the beautiful sex.

73.

_Saintly Cruelty.--_A man holding a newly born child in his hands
came to a saint. "What should I do with this child," he asked, "it
is wretched, deformed, and has not even enough of life to die" "Kill
it," cried the saint with a dreadful voice, "kill it, and then hold
it in thy arms for three days and three nights to brand it on thy
memory:--thus wilt thou never again beget a child when it is not the
time for thee to beget."--When the man had heard this he went away
disappointed; and many found fault with the saint because he had
advised cruelty; for he had advised to kill the child. "But is it not
more cruel to let it live?" asked the saint.

74.

_The Unsuccessful--_Those poor women always fail of success who become
agitated and uncertain, and talk too much in presence of him whom they
love; for men are most successfully seduced by a certain subtle and
phlegmatic tenderness.

75.

_The Third Sex._--"A small man is a paradox, but still a man,--but
a small woman seems to me to be of another sex in comparison with
well-grown ones"--said an old dancing-master. A small woman is never
beautiful--said old Aristotle.

76.

_The greatest Danger._--Had there not at all times been a larger
number of men who regarded the cultivation of their mind--their
"rationality"--as their pride, their obligation, their virtue, and were
injured or shamed by all play of fancy and extravagance of thinking--as
lovers of "sound common sense":--mankind would long ago have perished!
Incipient _insanity_ has hovered, and hovers continually over mankind
as its greatest danger: it is precisely the breaking out of inclination
in feeling, seeing, and hearing; the enjoyment of the unruliness of
the mind; the delight in human unreason. It is not truth and certainty
that is the antithesis of the world of the insane, but the universality
and all-obligatoriness of a belief, in short, non-voluntariness in
forming opinions. And the greatest labour of human beings hitherto has
been to agree with one another regarding a number of things, and to
impose upon themselves a _law of agreement_--indifferent whether these
things are true or false. This is the discipline of the mind which has
preserved mankind;--but the counter-impulses are still so powerful that
one can really speak of the future of mankind with little confidence.
The ideas of things still continually shift and move, and will perhaps
alter more than ever in the future; it is continually the most select
spirits themselves who strive against universal obligatoriness--the
investigators of _truth_ above all! The accepted belief, as the belief
of all the world, continually engenders a disgust and a new longing
in the more ingenious minds; and already the slow _tempo_ which it
demands for all intellectual processes (the imitation of the tortoise,
which is here recognised as the rule) makes the artists and poets
runaways:--it is in these impatient spirits that a downright delight
in delirium breaks out, because delirium has such a joyful _tempo!_
Virtuous intellects, therefore, are needed--ah! I want to use the
least ambiguous word,--_virtuous stupidity_ is needed, imperturbable
conductors of the _slow_ spirits are needed, in order that the faithful
of the great collective belief may remain with one another and dance
their dance further: it is a necessity of the first importance that
here enjoins and demands. _We others are the exceptions and the
danger,_--we eternally need protection--Well, there can actually be
something said in favour of the exceptions _provided that they never
want to become the rule._

77.

_The Animal with good Conscience._--It is not unknown to me that there
is vulgarity in everything that pleases Southern Europe--whether it be
Italian opera (for example, Rossini's and Bellini's), or the Spanish
adventure-romance (most readily accessible to us in the French garb of
Gil Blas)--but it does not offend me, any more than the vulgarity which
one encounters in a walk through Pompeii, or even in the reading of
every ancient book: what is the reason of this? Is it because shame is
lacking here, and because the vulgar always comes forward just as sure
and certain of itself as anything noble, lovely, and passionate in the
same kind of music or romance? "The animal has its rights like man, so
let it run about freely; and you, my dear fellow-man, are still this
animal, in spite of all!"--that seems to me the moral of the case, and
the peculiarity of southern humanity. Bad taste has its rights like
good taste, and even a prerogative over the latter when it is the great
requisite, the sure satisfaction, and as it were a universal language,
an immediately intelligible mask and attitude; the excellent, select
taste on the other hand has always something of a seeking, tentative
character, not fully certain that it understands,--it is never, and
has never been popular! The _masque_ is and remains popular! So let
all this masquerade run along in the melodies and cadences, in the
leaps and merriment of the rhythm of these operas! Quite the ancient
life! What does one understand of it, if one does not understand the
delight in the masque, the good conscience of all masquerade! Here is
the bath and the refreshment of the ancient spirit:--and perhaps this
bath was still more necessary for the rare and sublime natures of the
ancient world than for the vulgar.--On the other hand, a vulgar turn in
northern works, for example in German music, offends me unutterably.
There is _shame_ in it, the artist has lowered himself in his own
sight, and could not even avoid blushing: we are ashamed with him, and
are so hurt because we surmise that he believed he had to lower himself
on our account.

78.

_What we should be Grateful for.--_It is only the artists, and
especially the theatrical artists, who have furnished men with eyes
and ears to hear and see with some pleasure what everyone is in
himself, what he experiences and aims at: it is only _they_ who have
taught us how to estimate the hero that is concealed in each of these
common-place men, and the art of looking at ourselves from a distance
as heroes, and as it were simplified and transfigured--the art of
"putting ourselves on the stage" before ourselves. It is thus only that
we get beyond some of the paltry details in ourselves! Without that art
we should be nothing but foreground, and would live absolutely under
the spell of the perspective which makes the closest and the commonest
seem immensely large and like reality in itself.--Perhaps there is
merit of a similar kind in the religion which commanded us to look at
the sinfulness of every individual man with a magnifying-glass, and
made a great, immortal criminal of the sinner; in that it put eternal
perspectives around man, it taught him to see himself from a distance,
and as something past, something entire.

79.

_The Charm of Imperfection.--_I see here a poet, who, like so many
men, exercises a higher charm by his imperfections than by all that
is rounded off and takes perfect shape under his hands,--indeed,
he derives his advantage and reputation far more from his actual
limitations than from his abundant powers. His work never expresses
altogether what he would really like to express, what he _would like
to have seen:_ he appears to have had the foretaste of a vision and
never the vision itself:--but an extraordinary longing for this
vision has remained in his soul; and from this he derives his equally
extraordinary eloquence of longing and craving. With this he raises
those who listen to him above his work and above all "works," and
gives them wings to rise higher than hearers have ever risen before,
thus making them poets and seers themselves; they then show an
admiration for the originator of their happiness, as if he had led them
immediately to the vision of his holiest and ultimate verities, as if
he had reached his goal, and had actually _seen_ and communicated his
vision. It is to the advantage of his reputation that he has not really
arrived at his goal.

80.

_Art and Nature._--The Greeks (or at least the Athenians) liked to
hear good talking: indeed they had an eager inclination for it, which
distinguished them more than anything else from non-Greeks. And so they
required good talking even from passion on the stage, and submitted
to the unnaturalness of dramatic verse with delight:--in nature,
forsooth, passion is so sparing of words! so dumb and confused! Or if
it finds words, so embarrassed and irrational and a shame to itself! We
have now, all of us, thanks to the Greeks, accustomed ourselves to this
unnaturalness on the stage, as we endure that other unnaturalness, the
_singing_ passion, and willingly endure it, thanks to the Italians.--It
has become a necessity to us, which we cannot satisfy out of the
resources of actuality, to hear men talk well and in full detail in the
most trying situations: it enraptures us at present when the tragic
hero still finds words, reasons, eloquent gestures, and on the whole
a bright spirituality, where life approaches the abysses, and where
the actual man mostly loses his head, and certainly his fine language.
This kind of _deviation from nature_ is perhaps the most agreeable
repast for man's pride: he loves art generally on account of it, as the
expression of high, heroic unnaturalness and convention. One rightly
objects to the dramatic poet when he does not transform everything into
reason and speech, but always retains a remnant of _silence:_--just as
one is dissatisfied with an operatic musician who cannot find a melody
for the highest emotion, but only an emotional, "natural" stammering
and crying. Here nature _has to_ be contradicted! Here the common
charm of illusion _has to_ give place to a higher charm! The Greeks
go far, far in this direction--frightfully far! As they constructed
the stage as narrow as possible and dispensed with all the effect of
deep backgrounds, as they made pantomime and easy motion impossible
to the actor, and transformed him into a solemn, stiff, masked bogey,
so they have also deprived passion itself of its deep background, and
have dictated to it a law of fine talk; indeed, they have really done
everything to counteract the elementary effect of representations that
inspire pity and terror: _they did not want pity and terror,_--with due
deference, with the highest deference to Aristotle! but he certainly
did not hit the nail, to say nothing of the head of the nail, when
he spoke about the final aim of Greek tragedy! Let us but look at
the Grecian tragic poets with respect to _what_ most excited their
diligence, their inventiveness, and their emulation,--certainly it
was not the intention of subjugating the spectators by emotion! The
Athenian went to the theatre _to hear fine talking!_ And fine talking
was arrived at by Sophocles!--pardon me this heresy!--It is very
different with _serious opera:_ all its masters make it their business
to prevent their personages being understood. "An occasional word
picked up may come to the assistance of the inattentive listener; but
on the whole the situation must be self-explanatory,--the _talking_ is
of no account!"--so they all think, and so they have all made fun of
the words. Perhaps they have only lacked courage to express fully their
extreme contempt for words: a little additional insolence in Rossini,
and he would have allowed la-la-la-la to be sung throughout--and it
might have been the rational course! The personages of the opera are
_not_ meant to be believed "in their words," but in their tones! That
is the difference, that is the fine _unnaturalness_ on account of which
people go to the opera! Even the _recitativo secco_ is not really
intended to be heard as words and text: this kind of half-music is
meant rather in the first place to give the musical ear a little repose
(the repose from _melody,_ as from the sublimest, and on that account
the most straining enjoyment of this art),--but very soon something
different results, namely, an increasing impatience, an increasing
resistance, a new longing for _entire_ music, for melody.--How is it
with the art of Richard Wagner as seen from this standpoint? Is it
perhaps the same? Perhaps otherwise? It would often seem to me as if
one needed to have learned by heart both the words _and_ the music of
his creations before the performances; for without that--so it seemed
to me--me _may hear_ neither the words, nor even the music.

81.

_Grecian Taste_--"What is beautiful in it?"--asked a certain
geometrician, after a performance of the _Iphigenia--_"there is nothing
proved in it!" Could the Greeks have been so far from this taste? In
Sophocles at least "everything is proved."

82.

_Esprit Un-Grecian._--The Greeks were exceedingly logical and plain
in all their thinking; they did not get tired of it, at least during
their long flourishing period, as is so often the case with the French;
who too willingly made a little excursion into the opposite, and in
fact endure the spirit of logic only when it betrays its _sociable_
courtesy, its sociable self-renunciation, by a multitude of such little
excursions into its opposite. Logic appears to them as necessary as
bread and water, but also like these as a kind of prison-fare, as
soon as it is to be taken pure and by itself. In good society one
must never want to be in the right absolutely and solely, as all pure
logic requires; hence the little dose of irrationality in all French
_esprit_.--The social sense of the Greeks was far less developed than
that of the French in the present and the past; hence, so little
_esprit_ in their cleverest men, hence, so little wit, even in their
wags, hence--alas! But people will not readily believe these tenets of
mine, and how much of the kind I have still on my soul!--_Est res magna
tacere_--says Martial, like all garrulous people.

83.

_Translations._--One can estimate the amount of the historical sense
which an age possesses by the way in which it makes _translations_ and
seeks to embody in itself past periods and literatures. The French
of Corneille, and even the French of the Revolution, appropriated
Roman antiquity in a manner for which we would no longer have the
courage--owing to our superior historical sense. And Roman antiquity
itself: how violently, and at the same time how naïvely, did it lay
its hand on everything excellent and elevated belonging to the older
Grecian antiquity! How they translated these writings into the Roman
present! How they wiped away intentionally and unconcernedly the
wing-dust of the butterfly moment! It is thus that Horace now and then
translated Alcæus or Archilochus, it is thus that Propertius translated
Callimachus and Philetas (poets of equal rank with Theocritus, if
we _be allowed_ to judge): of what consequence was it to them that
the actual creator experienced this and that, and had inscribed the
indication thereof in his poem!--as poets they were averse to the
antiquarian, inquisitive spirit which precedes the historical sense;
as poets they did not respect those essentially personal traits and
names, nor anything peculiar to city, coast, or century, such as its
costume and mask, but at once put the present and the Roman in its
place. They seem to us to ask: "Should we not make the old new for
ourselves, and adjust _ourselves_ to it? Should we not be allowed
to inspire this dead body with our soul? for it is dead indeed: how
loathsome is everything dead!"--They did not know the pleasure of the
historical sense; the past and the alien was painful to them, and
as Romans it was an incitement to a Roman conquest. In fact, they
conquered when they translated,--not only in that they omitted the
historical: they added also allusions to the present; above all, they
struck out the name of the poet and put their own in its place--not
with the feeling of theft, but with the very best conscience of the
_Imperium Romanum_.

84.

_The Origin of Poetry.--_The lovers of the fantastic in man, who
at the same time represent the doctrine of instinctive morality,
draw this conclusion: "Granted that utility has been honoured at
all times as the highest divinity, where then in all the world has
poetry come from?--this rhythmising of speech which thwarts rather
than furthers plainness of communication, and which, nevertheless,
has sprung up everywhere on the earth, and still springs up, as a
mockery of all useful purpose! The wildly beautiful irrationality
of poetry refutes you, ye utilitarians! The wish _to get rid of_
utility in some way--that is precisely what has elevated man, that
is what has inspired him to morality and art!" Well, I must here
speak for once to please the utilitarians,--they are so seldom in the
right that it is pitiful! In the old times which called poetry into
being, people had still utility in view with respect to it, and a
very important utility--at the time when rhythm was introduced into
speech, that force which arranges all the particles of the sentence
anew, commands the choosing of the words, recolours the thought, and
makes it more obscure, more foreign, and more distant: to be sure a
_superstitious utility!_ It was intended that a human entreaty should
be more profoundly impressed upon the Gods by virtue of rhythm, after
it had been observed that men could remember a verse better than an
unmetrical speech. It was likewise thought that people could make
themselves audible at greater distances by the rhythmical beat; the
rhythmical prayer seemed to come nearer to the ear of the Gods. Above
all, however, people wanted to have the advantage of the elementary
conquest which man experiences in himself when he hears music: rhythm
is a constraint; it produces an unconquerable desire to yield, to join
in; not only the step of the foot, but also the soul itself follows
the measure,--probably the soul of the Gods also, as people thought!
They attempted, therefore, to _constrain_ the Gods by rhythm, and to
exercise a power over them; they threw poetry around the Gods like a
magic noose. There was a still more wonderful idea, and it has perhaps
operated most powerfully of all in the originating of poetry. Among
the Pythagoreans it made its appearance as a philosophical doctrine
and as an artifice of teaching: but long before there were philosophers
music was acknowledged to possess the power of unburdening the
emotions, of purifying the soul, of soothing the _ferocia animi_--and
this was owing to the rhythmical element in music. When the proper
tension and harmony of the soul were lost a person had to _dance_
to the measure of the singer,--that was the recipe of this medical
art. By means of it Terpander quieted a tumult, Empedocles calmed
a maniac, Damon purged a love-sick youth; by means of it even the
maddened, revengeful Gods were treated for the purpose of a cure. This
was effected by driving the frenzy and wantonness of their emotions
to the highest pitch, by making the furious mad, and the revengeful
intoxicated with vengeance all the orgiastic cults seek to discharge
the _ferocia_ of a deity all at once, and thus make an orgy, so that
the deity may feel freer and quieter afterwards, and leave man in
peace. _Melos,_ according to its root, signifies a soothing agency,
not because the song is gentle itself, but because its after-effect is
gentle.--And not only in the religious song, but also in the secular
song of the most ancient times, the prerequisite is that the rhythm
should exercise a magical influence; for example, in drawing water, or
in rowing: the song is for the enchanting of the spirits supposed to be
active thereby; it makes them obliging, involuntary and the instruments
of man. And as often as a person acts he has occasion to sing, _every_
action is dependent on the assistance of spirits: magic song and
incantation appear to be the original form of poetry. When verse also
came to be used in oracles--the Greeks said that the hexameter was
invented at Delphi,--the rhythm was here also intended to exercise
a compulsory influence. To make a prophecy--that means originally
(according to what seems to me the probable derivation of the Greek
word) to determine something; people thought they could determine the
future by winning Apollo over to their side: he who, according to the
most ancient idea, is far more than a foreseeing deity. According as
the formula is pronounced with literal and rhythmical correctness,
it determines the future: the formula, however, is the invention of
Apollo, who as the God of rhythm, can also determine the goddesses of
fate--Looked at and investigated as a whole, was there ever anything
_more serviceable_ to the ancient superstitious species of human being
than rhythm? People could do everything with it: they could make labour
go on magically; they could compel a God to appear, to be near at
hand, and listen to them; they could arrange the future for themselves
according to their will; they could unburden their own souls of any
kind of excess (of anxiety, of mania, of sympathy, of revenge), and not
only their own souls, but the souls of the most evil spirits,--without
verse a person was nothing, by means of verse a person became almost
a God. Such a fundamental feeling no longer allows itself to be
fully eradicated,--and even now, after millenniums of long labour
in combating such superstition, the very wisest of us occasionally
becomes the fool of rhythm, be it only that one _perceives_ a thought
to be _truer_ when it has a metrical form and approaches with a
divine hopping. Is it not a very funny thing that the most serious
philosophers, however anxious they are in other respects for strict
certainty, still appeal to _poetical sayings_ in order to give their
thoughts force and credibility? and yet it is more dangerous to a truth
when the poet assents to it than when he contradicts it! For, as Homer
says, "Minstrels speak much falsehood!"--

85.

_The Good and the Beautiful._--Artists, glorify continually--they do
nothing else,--and indeed they glorify all those conditions and things
that have a reputation, so that man may feel himself good or great, or
intoxicated, or merry, or pleased and wise by it. Those _select_ things
and conditions whose value for human _happiness_ is regarded as secure
and determined, are the objects of artists: they are ever lying in wait
to discover such things, to transfer them into the domain of art. I
mean to say that they are not themselves the valuers of happiness and
of the happy ones, but they always press close to these valuers with
the greatest curiosity and longing, in order immediately to use their
valuations advantageously. As besides their impatience, they have also
the big lungs of heralds and the feet of runners, they are generally
always among the first to glorify the _new_ excellency, and often
_seem_ to be the first who have called it good and valued it as good.
This, however, as we have said, is an error; they are only faster and
louder than the actual valuers:--And who then are these?--They are the
rich and the leisurely.

86.

_The Theatre.--_This day has given me once more strong and elevated
sentiments, and if I could have music and art in the evening, I know
well what music and art I should _not_ like to have; namely, none of
that which would fain intoxicate its hearers and _excite_ them to a
crisis of strong and high feeling,--those men with commonplace souls,
who in the evening are not like victors on triumphal cars, but like
tired mules to whom life has rather too often applied the whip. What
would those men at all know of "higher moods," unless there were
expedients for causing ecstasy and idealistic strokes of the whip!--and
thus they have their inspirers as they have their wines. But what is
their drink and their drunkenness to _me!_ Does the inspired one need
wine? He rather looks with a kind of disgust at the agency and the
agent which are here intended to produce an effect without sufficient
reason,--an imitation of the high tide of the soul! What? One gives
the mole wings and proud fancies--before going to sleep, before he
creeps into his hole? One sends him into the theatre and puts great
magnifying-glasses to his blind and tired eyes? Men, whose life is
not "action" but business, sit in front of the stage and look at
strange beings to whom life is more than business? "This is proper,"
you say, "this is entertaining, this is what culture wants!"--Well
then! culture is too often lacking in me, for this sight is too often
disgusting to me. He who has enough of tragedy and comedy in himself
surely prefers to remain away from the theatre; or as an exception,
the whole procedure--theatre and public and poet included--becomes for
him a truly tragic and comic play, so that the performed piece counts
for little in comparison. He who is something like Faust and Manfred,
what does it matter to him about the Fausts and Manfreds of the
theatre!--while it certainly gives him something to think about _that_
such figures are brought into the theatre at all. The _strongest_
thoughts and passions before those who are not capable of thought
and passion--but of _intoxication_ only! And _those_ as a means to
this end! And theatre and music the hashish-smoking and betel-chewing
of Europeans! Oh, who will narrate to us the whole history of
narcotics!--It is almost the history of "culture," the so-called higher
culture!

87.

_The Conceit of Artists._I think artists often do not know what they
can do best, because they are too conceited, and have set their minds
on something loftier than those little plants appear to be, which
can grow up to perfection on their soil, fresh, rare, and beautiful.
The final value of their own garden and vineyard is superciliously
underestimated by them, and their love and their insight are not of the
same quality. Here is a musician, who, more than any one else, has the
genius for discovering the tones peculiar to suffering, oppressed,
tortured souls, and who can endow even dumb animals with speech. No
one equals him in the colours of the late autumn, in the indescribably
touching happiness of a last, a final, and all too short enjoyment; he
knows a chord for those secret and weird midnights of the soul when
cause and effect seem out of joint, and when every instant something
may originate "out of nothing." He draws his resources best of all
out of the lower depths of human happiness, and so to speak, out of
its drained goblet, where the bitterest and most nauseous drops have
ultimately, for good or for ill, commingled with the sweetest. He
knows the weary shuffling along of the soul which can no longer leap
or fly, yea, not even walk; he has the shy glance of concealed pain,
of understanding without comfort, of leave-taking without avowal; yea,
as the Orpheus of all secret misery, he is greater than anyone; and in
fact much has been added to art by him which was hitherto inexpressible
and not even thought worthy of art, and which was only to be scared
away, by words, and not grasped many small and quite microscopic
features of the soul: yes, he is the master of miniature. But he does
not _wish_ to be so! His _character_ is more in love with large walls
and daring frescoes! He fails to see that his _spirit_ has a different
taste and inclination, and prefers to sit quietly in the corners of
ruined houses:--concealed in this way, concealed even from himself,
he there paints his proper masterpieces, all of which are very short,
often only one bar in length,--there only does he become quite good,
great, and perfect, perhaps there only.--But he does not know it! He is
too conceited to know it.

88.

_Earnestness for the Truth._--Earnest for the truth! What different
things men understand by these words! Just the same opinions, and modes
of demonstration and testing which a thinker regards as a frivolity
in himself, to which he has succumbed with shame at one time or
other,--just the same opinions may give to an artist, who comes in
contact with them and accepts them temporarily, the consciousness that
the profoundest earnestness for the truth has now taken hold of him,
and that it is worthy of admiration that, although an artist, he at the
same time exhibits the most ardent desire for the antithesis of the
apparent. It is thus possible that a person may, just by his pathos of
earnestness, betray how superficially and sparingly his intellect has
hitherto operated in the domain of knowledge.--And is not everything
that we consider _important_ our betrayer? It shows where our motives
lie, and where our motives are altogether lacking.

89.

_Now and Formerly._--Of what consequence is all our art in artistic
products, if that higher art, the art of the festival, be lost by us?
Formerly all artistic products were exhibited on the great festive-path
of humanity, as tokens of remembrance, and monuments of high and happy
moments. One now seeks to allure the exhausted and sickly from the
great suffering-path of humanity for a wanton moment by means of works
of art; one furnishes them with a little ecstasy and insanity.

90.

_Lights and Shades.--_Books and writings are different with different
thinkers. One writer has collected together in his book all the
rays of light which he could quickly plunder and carry home from an
illuminating experience; while another gives only the shadows, and the
grey and black replicas of that which on the previous day had towered
up in his soul.

91.

_Precaution.--_Alfieri, as is well known, told a great many
falsehoods when he narrated the history of his life to his astonished
contemporaries. He told falsehoods owing to the despotism toward
himself which he exhibited, for example, in the way in which he created
his own language, and tyrannised himself into a poet:--he finally found
a rigid form of sublimity into which he _forced_ his life and his
memory; he must have suffered much in the process.--I would also give
no credit to a history of Plato's life written by himself, as little as
to Rousseau's, or to the _Vita nuova_ of Dante.

92.

_Prose and Poetry._--Let it be observed that the great masters of prose
have almost always been poets as well, whether openly, or only in
secret and for the "closet"; and in truth one only writes good prose
_in view of poetry!_ For prose is an uninterrupted, polite warfare with
poetry; all its charm consists in the fact that poetry is constantly
avoided and contradicted; every abstraction wants to have a gibe at
poetry, and wishes to be uttered with a mocking voice; all dryness and
coolness is meant to bring the amiable goddess into an amiable despair;
there are often approximations and reconciliations for the moment, and
then a sudden recoil and a burst of laughter; the curtain is often
drawn up and dazzling light let in just while the goddess is enjoying
her twilights and dull colours; the word is often taken out of her
mouth and chanted to a melody while she holds her fine hands before her
delicate little ears:--and so there are a thousand enjoyments of the
warfare, the defeats included, of which the unpoetic, the so-called
prose--men know nothing at all:--they consequently write and speak
only bad prose! _Warfare is the father of all good things,_ it is also
the father of good prose!--There have been four very singular and
truly poetical men in this century who have arrived at mastership in
prose, for which otherwise this century is not suited, owing to lack
of poetry, as we have indicated. Not to take Goethe into account, for
he is reasonably claimed by the century that produced him, I look only
on Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter
Savage Landor the author of _Imaginary Conversations,_ as worthy to be
called masters of prose.

93.

_But why, then, do you Write?_--A: I do not belong to those who _think_
with the wet pen in hand; and still less to those who yield themselves
entirely to their passions before the open ink-bottle, sitting on
their chair and staring at the paper. I am always vexed and abashed
by writing; writing is a necessity for me,--even to speak of it in a
simile is disagreeable. B: But why, then, do you write? A: Well, my
dear Sir, to tell you in confidence, I have hitherto found no other
means of _getting rid of_ my thoughts. B: And why do you wish to get
rid of them? A: Why I wish? Do I really wish! I must--B: Enough! Enough!

94.

_Growth after Death._--Those few daring words about moral matters
which Fontenelle threw into his immortal _Dialogues of the Dead,_ were
regarded by his age as paradoxes and amusements of a not unscrupulous
wit; even the highest judges of taste and intellect saw nothing more
in them,--indeed, Fontenelle himself perhaps saw nothing more. Then
something incredible takes place: these thoughts become truths! Science
proves them! The game becomes serious! And we read those dialogues with
a feeling different from that with which Voltaire and Helvetius read
them, and we involuntarily raise their originator into another and
_much higher_ class of intellects than they did.--Rightly?' Wrongly?

95.

_Chamfort._--That such a judge of men and of the multitude as
Chamfort should side with the multitude, instead of standing apart
in philosophical resignation and defence--I am at a loss to explain
this, except as follows:--There was an instinct in him stronger than
his wisdom, and it had never been gratified: the hatred against all
_noblesse_ of blood; perhaps his mother's old and only too explicable
hatred, which was consecrated in him by love of her,--an instinct of
revenge from his boyhood, which waited for the hour to avenge his
mother. But then the course of his life, his genius, and alas! most of
all, perhaps, the paternal blood in his veins, had seduced him to rank
and consider himself equal to the _noblesse--_for many, many years!
In the end, however, he could not endure the sight of himself, the
"old man" under the old _régime,_ any longer; he got into a violent,
penitential passion, and _in this state_ he put on the raiment of the
populace as _his_ special kind of hair-shirt! His bad conscience was
the neglect of revenge.--If Chamfort had then been a little more of
the philosopher, the Revolution would not have had its tragic wit and
its sharpest sting; it would have been regarded as a much more stupid
affair, and would have had no such seductive influence on men's minds.
But Chamfort's hatred and revenge educated an entire generation;
and the most illustrious men passed through his school. Let us but
consider that Mirabeau looked up to Chamfort as to his higher and older
self, from whom he expected (and endured) impulses, warnings, and
condemnations,--Mirabeau, who as a man belongs to an entirely different
order of greatness, as the very foremost among the statesman-geniuses
of yesterday and to-day.--Strange, that in spite of such a friend and
advocate--we possess Mirabeau's letters to Chamfort--this wittiest of
all moralists has remained unfamiliar to the French, quite the same
as Stendhal, who has perhaps had the most penetrating eyes and ears
of any. Frenchman of _this_ century. Is it because the latter had
really too much of the German and the Englishman in his nature for the
Parisians to endure him?--while Chamfort, a man with ample knowledge
of the profundities and secret motives of the soul, gloomy, suffering,
ardent--a thinker who found laughter necessary as the remedy of life,
and who almost gave himself up as lost every day that he had not
laughed,--seems much more like an Italian, and related by blood to
Dante and Leopardi, than like a Frenchman. One knows Chamfort's last
words: "_Ah! mon ami,_" he said to Sieyès, "_je m'en vais enfin de ce
monde, où il faut que le cœur se brise ou se bronze_--." These were
certainly not the words of a dying Frenchman.

96.

_Two Orators.--_Of these two orators the one arrives at a full
understanding of his case only when he yields himself to emotion; it is
only this that pumps sufficient blood and heat into his brain to compel
his high intellectuality to reveal itself The other attempts, indeed,
now and then to do the same: to state his case sonorously, vehemently,
and spiritedly with the aid of emotion,--but usually with bad success.
He then very soon speaks obscurely and confusedly; he exaggerates,
makes omissions, and excites suspicion of the justice of his case:
indeed, he himself feels this suspicion, and the sudden changes into
the coldest and most repulsive tones (which raise a doubt in the hearer
as to his passionateness being genuine) are thereby explicable. With
him emotion always drowns the spirit; perhaps because it is stronger
than in the former. But he is at the height of his power when he
resists the impetuous storm of his feeling, and as it were scorns it;
it is then only that his spirit emerges fully from its concealment, a
spirit logical, mocking and playful, but nevertheless awe-inspiring.

97.

_The Loquacity of Authors._--There is a loquacity of anger--frequent in
Luther, also in Schopenhauer. A loquacity which comes from too great a
store of conceptual formulæ, as in Kant. A loquacity which comes from
delight in ever new modifications of the same idea: one finds it in
Montaigne. A loquacity of malicious natures: whoever reads writings of
our period will recollect two authors in this connection. A loquacity
which comes from delight in fine words and forms of speech: by no means
rare in Goethe's prose. A loquacity which comes from pure satisfaction
in noise and confusion of feelings: for example in Carlyle.

98.

_In Honour of Shakespeare._--The best thing I could say in honour of
Shakespeare, _the man,_ is that he believed in Brutus, and cast not
a shadow of suspicion on the kind of virtue which Brutus represents!
It is to him that Shakespeare consecrated his best tragedy--it is
at present still called by a wrong name,--to him, and to the most
terrible essence of lofty morality. Independence of soul!--that is
the question at issue! No sacrifice can be too great there: one must
be able to sacrifice to it even one's dearest friend, although he be
the grandest of men, the ornament of the world, the genius without
peer,--if one really loves freedom as the freedom of great souls, and
if _this_ freedom be threatened by him:--it is thus that Shakespeare
must have felt! The elevation in which he places Cæsar is the most
exquisite honour he could confer upon Brutus; it is thus only that he
lifts into vastness the inner problem of his hero, and similarly the
strength of soul which could cut _this knot!--_And was it actually
political freedom that impelled the poet to sympathy with Brutus,--and
made him the accomplice of Brutus? Or was political freedom merely
a symbol for something inexpressible? Do we perhaps stand before
some sombre event or adventure of the poet's own soul, which has
remained unknown, and of which he only cared to speak symbolically?
What is all Hamlet-melancholy in comparison with the melancholy of
Brutus!--and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he knew the
other, by experience! Perhaps he also had his dark hour and his bad
angel, just as Brutus had them!--But whatever similarities and secret
relationships of that kind there may have been, Shakespeare cast
himself on the ground and felt unworthy and alien in presence of the
aspect and virtue of Brutus:--he has inscribed the testimony thereof
in the tragedy itself. He has twice brought in a poet in it, and twice
heaped upon him such an impatient and extreme contempt, that it sounds
like a cry,--like the cry of self-contempt. Brutus, even Brutus loses
patience when the poet appears, self-important, pathetic and obtrusive,
as poets usually are,--persons who seem to abound in the possibilities
of greatness, even moral greatness, and nevertheless rarely attain even
to ordinary uprightness in the philosophy of practice and of life "He
may know the times, _but I know his temper_,--away with the jigging
fool!"--shouts Brutus. We may translate this back into the soul of the
poet that composed it.

99.

_The Followers of Schopenhauer.--_What one sees at the contact
of civilized peoples with barbarians,--namely, that the lower
civilization regularly accepts in the first place the vices, weaknesses
and excesses of the higher; then, from that point onward, feels the
influence of a charm; and finally, by means of the appropriated
vices and weaknesses also allows something of the valuable influence
of the higher culture to leaven it:-one can also see this close at
hand and without journeys to barbarian peoples, to be sure, somewhat
refined and spiritualised, and not so readily palpable. What are
the German followers of _Schopenhauer_ still accustomed to receive
first of all from their master?--those who, when placed beside his
superior culture, must deem themselves sufficiently barbarous to be
first of all barbarously fascinated and seduced by him. Is it his hard
matter-of-fact sense, his inclination to clearness and rationality,
which often makes him appear so English, and so unlike Germans?
Or the strength of his intellectual conscience, which _endured_ a
life-long contradiction of "being" and "willing," and compelled him
to contradict himself constantly even in his writings on almost
every point? Or his purity in matters relating to the Church and the
Christian God?--for here he was pure as no German philosopher had
been hitherto, so that he lived and died "as a Voltairian." Or his
immortal doctrines of the intellectuality of intuition, the apriority
of the law of causality, the instrumental nature of the intellect,
and the non-freedom of the will? No, nothing of this enchants, nor
is felt as enchanting; but Schopenhauer's mystical embarrassments
and shufflings in those passages where the matter-of-fact thinker
allowed himself to be seduced and corrupted by the vain impulse to be
the unraveller of the world's riddle: his undemonstrable doctrine of
_one will_ ("all causes are merely occasional causes of the phenomenon
of the will at such a time and at such a place," "the will to live,
whole and undivided, is present in every being, even in the smallest,
as perfectly as in the sum of all that was, is, and will be"); his
_denial of the individual_ ("all lions are really only one lion,"
"plurality of individuals is an appearance," as also _development_ is
only an appearance: he calls the opinion of Lamarck "an ingenious,
absurd error"); his fantasy about _genius_ ("in æsthetic contemplation
the individual is no longer an individual, but a pure, will-less,
painless, timeless subject of knowledge," "the subject, in that it
entirely merges in the contemplated object, has become this object
itself"); his nonsense about _sympathy,_ and about the outburst of
the _principium individuationis_ thus rendered possible, as the
source of all morality; including also such assertions as, "dying
is really the design of existence," "the possibility should not be
absolutely denied that a magical effect could proceed from a person
already dead":--these, and similar _extravagances_ and vices of the
philosopher, are always first accepted and made articles of faith;
for vices and extravagances are always easiest to imitate, and do not
require a long preliminary practice. But let us speak of the most
celebrated of the living Schopenhauerians, Richard Wagner.--It has
happened to him as it has already happened to many an artist: he made
a mistake in the interpretation of the characters he created, and
misunderstood the unexpressed philosophy of the art peculiarly his
own. Richard Wagner allowed himself to be misled by Hegel's influence
till the middle of his life; and he did the same again when later on
he read Schopenhauer's doctrine between the lines of his characters,
and began to express himself with such terms as "will," "genius,"
and "sympathy." Nevertheless it will remain true that nothing is
more counter to Schopenhauer's spirit than the essentially Wagnerian
element in Wagner's heroes: I mean the innocence of the supremest
selfishness, the belief in strong passion as the good in itself, in
a word, the Siegfried trait in the countenances of his heroes. "All
that still smacks more of Spinoza than of me,"--Schopenhauer would
probably have said. Whatever good reasons, therefore, Wagner might have
had to be on the outlook for other philosophers than Schopenhauer,
the enchantment to which he succumbed in respect to this thinker, not
only made him blind towards all other philosophers, but even towards
science itself; his entire art is more and more inclined to become
the counterpart and complement of the Schopenhauerian philosophy,
and it always renounces more emphatically the higher ambition to
become the counterpart and complement of human knowledge and science.
And not only is he allured thereto by the whole mystic pomp of this
philosophy (which would also have allured a Cagliostro), the peculiar
airs and emotions of the philosopher have all along been seducing him
as well! For example, Wagner's indignation about the corruption of
the German language is Schopenhauerian; and if one should commend his
imitation in this respect, it is nevertheless not to be denied that
Wagner's style itself suffers in no small degree from all the tumours
and turgidities, the sight of which made Schopenhauer so furious;
and that, in respect to the German-writing Wagnerians, Wagneromania
is beginning to be as dangerous as only some kinds of Hegelomania
have been. From Schopenhauer comes Wagner's hatred of the Jews, to
whom he cannot do justice even in their greatest exploit: are not
the Jews the inventors of Christianity! The attempt of Wagner to
construe Christianity as a seed blown away from Buddhism, and his
endeavour to initiate a Buddhistic era in Europe, under a temporary
approximation to Catholic-Christian formulas and sentiments, are both
Schopenhauerian. Wagner's preaching in favour of pity in dealing with
animals is Schopenhauerian; Schopenhauer's predecessor here, as is
well known, was Voltaire, who already perhaps, like his successors,
knew how to disguise his hatred of certain men and things as pity
towards animals. At least Wagner's hatred of science, which manifests
itself in his preaching, has certainly not been inspired by the
spirit of charitableness and kindness--nor by the _spirit_ at all, as
is sufficiently obvious.--Finally, it is of little importance what
the philosophy of an artist is, provided it is only a supplementary
philosophy, and does not do any injury to his art itself. We cannot
be sufficiently on our guard against taking a dislike to an artist on
account of an occasional, perhaps very unfortunate and presumptuous
masquerade; let us not forget that the dear artists are all of them
something of actors--and must be so; it would be difficult for them
to hold out in the long run without stage-playing. Let us be loyal to
Wagner in that which is _true_ and original in him,--and especially
in this point, that we, his disciples, remain loyal to ourselves
in that which is true and original in us. Let us allow him his
intellectual humours and spasms, let us in fairness rather consider
what strange nutriments and necessaries an art like his _is entitled
to,_ in order to be able to live and grow! It is of no account that
he is often wrong as a thinker; justice and patience are not _his_
affair. It is sufficient that his life is right in his own eyes, and
maintains its right,--the life which calls to each of us: "Be a man,
and do not follow me--but thyself! thyself!" _Our_ life, also ought to
maintain its right in our own eyes! We also are to grow and blossom
out of ourselves, free and fearless, in innocent selfishness! And so,
on the contemplation of such a man, these thoughts still ring in my
ears to-day, as formerly: "That passion is better than stoicism or
hypocrisy; that straight-forwardness, even in evil, is better than
losing oneself in trying to observe traditional morality; that the free
man is just as able to be good as evil, but that the unemancipated
man is a disgrace to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly
bliss; finally, that _all who wish to be free must become so through
themselves,_ and that freedom falls to nobody's lot as a gift from
Heaven." (_Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,_ Vol. I. of this Translation,
pp. 199-200).

100.

_Learning to do Homage._--One must learn the art of homage, as well as
the art of contempt. Whoever goes in new paths and has led many persons
therein, discovers with astonishment how awkward and incompetent
all of them are in the expression of their gratitude, and indeed how
rarely gratitude _is able_ even to express itself. It is always as if
something comes into people's throats when their gratitude wants to
speak so that it only hems and haws, and becomes silent again. The way
in which a thinker succeeds in tracing the effect of his thoughts,
and their transforming and convulsing power, is almost a comedy: it
sometimes seems as if those who have been operated upon felt profoundly
injured thereby, and could only assert their independence, which they
suspect to be threatened, by all kinds of improprieties. It needs
whole generations in order merely to devise a courteous convention
of gratefulness; it is only very late that the period arrives when
something of spirit and genius enters into gratitude Then there is
usually some one who is the great receiver of thanks, not only for the
good he himself has done, but mostly for that which has been gradually
accumulated by his predecessors, as a treasure of what is highest and
best.

101.

_Voltaire_--Wherever there has been a court, it has furnished the
standard of good-speaking and with this also the standard of style for
writers The court language, however, is the language of the courtier
who _has no profession,_ and who even in conversations on scientific
subjects avoids all convenient, technical expressions, because they
smack of the profession; on that account the technical expression, and
everything that betrays the specialist, is a _blemish of style_ in
countries which have a court culture. At present, when all courts have
become caricatures of past and present times, one is astonished to find
even Voltaire unspeakably reserved and scrupulous on this point (for
example, in his judgments concerning such stylists as Fontenelle and
Montesquieu),--we are now, all of us, emancipated from court taste,
while Voltaire was its _perfecter!_

102.

_A Word for Philologists.--_It is thought that there are books so
valuable and royal that whole generations of scholars are well
employed when through their efforts these books are kept genuine and
intelligible,--to confirm this belief again and again is the purpose
of philology. It presupposes that the rare men are not lacking
(though they may not be visible), who actually know how to use such
valuable books:--those men perhaps who write such books themselves,
or could write them. I mean to say that philology presupposes a noble
belief,--that for the benefit of some few who are always "to come," and
are not there, a very great amount of painful, and even dirty labour
has to be done beforehand: it is all labour _in usum Delphinorum_.

103.

_German Music._--German music, more than any other, has now become
European music; because the changes which Europe experienced through
the Revolution have therein alone found expression: it is only German
music that knows how to express the agitation of popular masses, the
tremendous artificial uproar, which does not even need to be very
noisy,--while Italian opera, for example, knows only the choruses of
domestics or soldiers, but not "the people." There is the additional
fact that in all German music a profound _bourgeois_ jealousy of
the _noblesse_ can be traced, especially a jealousy of _esprit_ and
_élégance,_ as the expressions of a courtly, chivalrous, ancient, and
self-confident society. It is not music like that of Goethe's musician
at the gate, which was pleasing also "in the hall," and to the king as
well; it is not here said: "The knights looked on with martial air;
with bashful eyes the ladies." Even the Graces are not allowed in
German music without a touch of remorse; it is only with Pleasantness,
the country sister of the Graces that the German begins to feel morally
at ease--and from this point up to his enthusiastic, learned, and often
gruff "sublimity" (the Beethoven-like sublimity), he feels more and
more so. If we want to imagine the man of _this_ music,--well, let us
just imagine Beethoven as he appeared beside Goethe, say, at their
meeting at Teplitz: as semi-barbarism beside culture, as the masses
beside the nobility, as the good-natured man beside the good and more
than "good" man, as the visionary beside the artist, as the man needing
comfort beside the comforted, as the man given to exaggeration and
distrust beside the man of reason, as the crank and self-tormenter, as
the foolishly enraptured, blessedly unfortunate, sincerely immoderate
man! as the pretentious and awkward man,--and altogether as the
"untamed man": it was thus that Goethe conceived and characterised
him, Goethe, the exceptional German, for whom a music of equal rank
has not yet been found!--Finally, let us consider whether the present
continually extending contempt of melody and the stunting of the sense
for melody among Germans should not be understood as a democratic
impropriety and an after-effect of the Revolution? For melody has
such an obvious delight in conformity to law, and such an aversion to
everything evolving, unformed and arbitrary, that it sounds like a note
out of the _ancient_ European regime, and as a seduction and guidance
back to it.

104.

_The Tone of the German Language._--We know whence the German
originated which for several centuries has been the universal literary
language of Germany. The Germans, with their reverence for everything
that came from the _court,_ intentionally took the chancery style as
their pattern in all that they had to _write,_ especially in their
letters, records, wills, &c. To write in the chancery style, that
was to write in court and government style,--that was regarded as
something select, compared with the language of the city in which a
person lived. People gradually drew this inference, and spoke also
as they wrote,--they thus became still more select in the forms of
their words, in the choice of their terms and modes of expression,
and finally also in their tones: they affected a court tone when they
spoke, and the affectation at last became natural. Perhaps nothing
quite similar has ever happened elsewhere:--the predominance of the
literary style over the talk, and the formality and affectation of an
entire people becoming the basis of a common and no longer dialectical
language. I believe that the sound of the German language in the
Middle Ages, and especially after the Middle Ages, was extremely
rustic and vulgar; it has ennobled itself somewhat during the last
centuries, principally because it was found necessary to imitate so
many French, Italian, and Spanish sounds, and particularly on the part
of the German (and Austrian) nobility, who could not at all content
themselves with their mother-tongue. But notwithstanding this practice,
German must have sounded intolerably vulgar to Montaigne, and even
to Racine: even at present, in the mouths of travellers among the
Italian populace, it still sounds very coarse, sylvan, and hoarse, as
if it had originated in smoky rooms and outlandish districts.--Now I
notice that at present a similar striving after selectness of tone is
spreading among the former admirers of the chancery style, and that
the Germans are beginning to accommodate themselves to a peculiar
"witchery of sound," which might in the long run become an actual
danger to the German language,--for one may seek in vain for more
execrable sounds in Europe. Something mocking, cold, indifferent and
careless in the voice: that is what at present sounds "noble" to the
Germans--and I hear the approval of this nobleness in the voices of
young officials, teachers, women, and trades-people; indeed, even
the little girls already imitate this German of the officers. For the
officer, and in fact the Prussian officer is the inventor of these
tones: this same officer, who as soldier and professional man possesses
that admirable tact for modesty which the Germans as a whole might
well imitate (German professors and musicians included!). But as soon
as he speaks and moves he is the most inmodest and inelegant figure
in old Europe--no doubt unconsciously to himself! And unconsciously
also to the good Germans, who gaze at him as the man of the foremost
and most select society, and willingly let him "give them his tone."
And indeed he gives it to them!--in the first place it is the
sergeant-majors and non-commissioned officers that imitate his tone
and coarsen it. One should note the roars of command, with which the
German cities are absolutely surrounded at present, when there is
drilling at all the gates: what presumption, furious imperiousness,
and mocking coldness speaks in this uproar! Could the Germans actually
be a musical people?--It is certain that the Germans martialise
themselves at present in the tone of their language: it is probable
that, being exercised to speak martially, they will finally write
martially also. For habituation to definite tones extends deeply into
the character:--people soon have the words and modes of expression, and
finally also the thoughts which just suit these tones! Perhaps they
already write in the officers' style; perhaps I only read too little
of what is at present written in Germany to know this. But one thing
I know all the surer: the German public decorations which also reach
places abroad, are not inspired by German music, but just by that new
tone of tasteless arrogance. Almost in every speech of the foremost
German statesman, and even when he makes himself heard through his
imperial mouth-piece, there is an accent which the ear of a foreigner
repudiates with aversion: but the Germans endure it,--they endure
themselves.

105.

_The Germans as Artists.--_When once a German actually experiences
passion (and not only, as is usual, the mere inclination to it), he
then behaves just as he must do in passion, and does not think further
of his behaviour. The truth is, however, that he then behaves very
awkwardly and uglily, and as if destitute of rhythm and melody; so that
onlookers are pained or moved thereby, but nothing more--_unless_ he
elevate himself to the sublimity and enrapturedness of which certain
passions are capable. Then even the German becomes _beautiful._ The
consciousness of the _height at which_ beauty begins to shed its
charm even over Germans, forces German artists to the height and
the super-height, and to the extravagances of passion: they have an
actual, profound longing, therefore, to get beyond, or at least to
look beyond the ugliness and awkwardness--into a better, easier, more
southern, more sunny world. And thus their convulsions are often merely
indications that they would like to _dance:_ these poor bears in whom
hidden nymphs and satyrs, and sometimes still higher divinities, carry
on their game!

106.

_Music as Advocate._--"I have a longing for a master of the musical
art," said an innovator to his disciple, "that he may learn from me
my ideas and speak them more widely in his language: I shall thus be
better able to reach men's ears and hearts. For by means of tones one
can seduce men to every error and every truth: who could _refute_ a
tone?"--"You would, therefore, like to be regarded as irrefutable?"
said his disciple. The innovator answered: "I should like the germ to
become a tree. In order that a doctrine may become a tree, it must be
believed in for a considerable period; in order that it may be believed
in it must be regarded as irrefutable. Storms and doubts and worms and
wickedness are necessary to the tree, that it may manifest its species
and the strength of its germ; let it perish if it is not strong enough!
But a germ is always merely annihilated,--not refuted!"--When he had
said this, his disciple called out impetuously: "But I believe in your
cause, and regard it as so strong that I will say everything against
it, everything that I still have in my heart."--The innovator laughed
to himself and threatened the disciple with his finger. "This kind of
discipleship," said he then, "is the best, but it is dangerous, and not
every kind of doctrine can stand it."

107.

_Our Ultimate Gratitude to Art._--If we had not approved of the Arts
and invented this sort of cult of the untrue, the insight into the
general untruth and falsity of things now given us by science--an
insight into delusion and error as conditions of intelligent and
sentient existence--would be quite unendurable. _Honesty_ would have
disgust and suicide in its train. Now, however, our honesty has a
counterpoise which helps us to escape such consequences;--namely, Art,
as the _good-will_ to illusion. We do not always restrain our eyes from
rounding off and perfecting in imagination: and then it is no longer
the eternal imperfection that we carry over the river of Becoming--for
we think we carry a _goddess,_ and are proud and artless in rendering
this service. As an æsthetic phenomenon existence is still _endurable_
to us; and by Art, eye and hand and above all the good conscience are
given to us, _to be able_ to make such a phenomenon out of ourselves.
We must rest from ourselves occasionally by contemplating and looking
down upon ourselves, and by laughing or weeping _over_ ourselves from
an artistic remoteness: we must discover the _hero,_ and likewise the
_fool,_ that is hidden in our passion for knowledge; we must now and
then be joyful in our folly, that we may continue to be joyful in our
wisdom! And just because we are heavy and serious men in our ultimate
depth, and are rather weights than men, there is nothing that does us
so much good as the _fool's cap and bells:_ we need them in presence of
ourselves--we need all arrogant, soaring, dancing, mocking, childish
and blessed Art, in order not to lose the _free dominion over things_
which our ideal demands of us. It would be _backsliding_ for us,
with our susceptible integrity, to lapse entirely into morality, and
actually become virtuous monsters and scarecrows, on account of the
over-strict requirements which we here lay down for ourselves. We
ought also to _be able_ to stand _above_ morality, and not only stand
with the painful stiffness of one who every moment fears to slip and
fall, but we should also be able to soar and play above it! How could
we dispense with Art for that purpose, how could we dispense with the
fool?--And as long as you are still _ashamed_ of yourselves in any
way, you still do not belong to us!

BOOK THIRD

108.

_New Struggles._--After Buddha was dead people showed his shadow for
centuries afterwards in a cave,--an immense frightful shadow. God is
dead:--but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be
caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow.--And
we--we have still to overcome his shadow!

109.

_Let us be on our Guard._--Let us be on our guard against thinking
that the world is a living being. Where could it extend itself? What
could it nourish itself with? How could it grow and increase? We know
tolerably well what the organic is; and we are to reinterpret the
emphatically derivative, tardy, rare and accidental, which we only
perceive on the crust of the earth, into the essential, universal
and eternal, as those do who call the universe an organism? That
disgusts me. Let us now be on our guard against believing that the
universe is a machine; it is assuredly not constructed with a view
to _one_ end; we invest it with far too high an honour with the word
"machine." Let us be on our guard against supposing that anything so
methodical as the cyclic motions of our neighbouring stars obtains
generally and throughout the universe; indeed a glance at the
Milky Way induces doubt as to whether there are not many cruder and
more contradictory motions there, and even stars with continuous,
rectilinearly gravitating orbits, and the like. The astral arrangement
in which we live is an exception; this arrangement, and the relatively
long durability which is determined by it, has again made possible the
exception of exceptions, the formation of organic life. The general
character of the world, on the other hand, is to all eternity chaos;
not by the absence of necessity, but in the sense of the absence of
order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever else our æsthetic
humanities are called. Judged by our reason, the unlucky casts are far
oftenest the rule, the exceptions are not the secret purpose; and the
whole musical box repeats eternally its air, which can never be called
a melody,--and finally the very expression, "unlucky cast" is already
an anthropomorphising which involves blame. But how could we presume to
blame or praise the universe! Let us be on our guard against ascribing
to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites; it is neither
perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of
the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man! It is altogether
unaffected by our æsthetic and moral judgments! Neither has it any
self-preservative instinct, nor instinct at all; it also knows no law.
Let us be on our guard against saying that there are laws in nature.
There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who
obeys, no one who transgresses. When you know that there is no design,
you know also that there is no chance: for it is only where there is a
world of design that the word "chance" has a meaning. Let us be on our
guard against saying that death is contrary to life. The living being
is only a species of dead being, and a very rare species.--Let us be on
our guard against thinking that the world eternally creates the new.
There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is just another such
error as the God of the Eleatics. But when shall we be at an end with
our foresight and precaution! When will all these shadows of God cease
to obscure us? When shall we have nature entirely undeified! When shall
we be permitted to _naturalise_ ourselves by means of the pure, newly
discovered, newly redeemed nature?

110.

_Origin of Knowledge._--Throughout immense stretches of time the
intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them proved to be useful
and preservative of the species: he who fell in with them, or inherited
them, waged the battle for himself and his offspring with better
success. Those erroneous articles of faith which were successively
transmitted by inheritance, and have finally become almost the property
and stock of the human species, are, for example, the following:--that
there are enduring things, that there are equal things, that there are
things, substances, and bodies, that a thing is what it appears, that
our will is free, that what is good for me is also good absolutely. It
was only very late that the deniers and doubters of such propositions
came forward,--it was only very late that truth made its appearance
as the most impotent form of knowledge. It seemed as if it were
impossible to get along with truth, our organism was adapted for
the very opposite; all its higher functions, the perceptions of the
senses, and in general every kind of sensation, co-operated with those
primevally embodied, fundamental errors. Moreover, those propositions
became the very standards of knowledge according to which the "true"
and the "false" were determined--throughout the whole domain of pure
logic. The _strength_ of conceptions does not, therefore, depend on
their degree of truth, but on their antiquity, their embodiment, their
character as conditions of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to
conflict, there has never been serious contention; denial and doubt
have there been regarded as madness. The exceptional thinkers like the
Eleatics, who, in spite of this, advanced and maintained the antitheses
of the natural errors, believed that it was possible also _to live_
these counterparts: it was they who devised the sage as the man of
immutability, impersonality and universality of intuition, as one and
all at the same time, with a special faculty for that reverse kind of
knowledge; they were of the belief that their knowledge was at the same
time the principle of _life._ To be able to affirm all this, however,
they had to _deceive_ themselves concerning their own condition: they
had to attribute to themselves impersonality and unchanging permanence,
they had to mistake the nature of the philosophic individual, deny the
force of the impulses in cognition, and conceive of reason generally
as an entirely free and self-originating activity; they kept their
eyes shut to the fact that they also had reached their doctrines in
contradiction to valid methods, or through their longing for repose or
for exclusive possession or for domination. The subtler development of
sincerity and of scepticism finally made these men impossible; their
life also, and their judgments, turned out to be dependent on the
primeval impulses and fundamental errors of all sentient being.--The
subtler sincerity and scepticism arose wherever two antithetical
maxims appeared to be _applicable_ to life, because both of them were
compatible with the fundamental errors; where, therefore, there could
be contention concerning a higher or lower degree of _utility_ for
life; and likewise where new maxims proved to be, not necessarily
useful, but at least not injurious, as expressions of an intellectual
impulse to play a game that was like all games innocent and happy. The
human brain was gradually filled with such judgments and convictions;
and in this tangled skein there arose ferment, strife and lust for
power. Not only utility and delight, but every kind of impulse took
part in the struggle for "truths": the intellectual struggle became
a business, an attraction, a calling, a duty, an honour--: cognizing
and striving for the true finally arranged themselves as needs among
other needs. From that moment, not only belief and conviction, but also
examination, denial, distrust and contradiction became _forces;_ all
"evil" instincts were subordinated to knowledge, were placed in its
service, and acquired the prestige of the permitted, the honoured,
the useful, and finally the appearance and innocence of the _good._
Knowledge, thus became a portion of life itself, and as life it became
a continually growing power: until finally the cognitions and those
primeval, fundamental errors clashed with each other, both as life,
both as power, both in the same man. The thinker is now the being in
whom the impulse to truth and those life-preserving errors wage their
first conflict, now that the impulse to truth has also _proved_ itself
to be a life-preserving power. In comparison with the importance of
this conflict everything else is indifferent; the final question
concerning the conditions of life is here raised, and the first attempt
is here made to answer it by experiment. How far is truth susceptible
of embodiment?--that is the question, that is the experiment.

111.

_Origin of the Logical._--Where has logic originated in men's heads?
Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally
_have_ been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than
we do at present, perished; albeit that they may have come nearer to
truth than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern the "like" often
enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to
him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in
his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all
similar cases immediately divined the equality. The preponderating
inclination, however, to deal with the similar as the equal--an
illogical inclination, for there is nothing equal in itself--first
created the whole basis of logic. It was just so (in order that the
conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to
logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to
it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to be
overlooked, and remain unperceived; the beings not seeing correctly
had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux." In itself
every high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every sceptical
inclination, is a great danger to life. No living being might have
been preserved unless the contrary inclination--to affirm rather than
suspend judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, to assent
rather than deny, to decide rather than be in the right--had been
cultivated with extraordinary assiduity.--The course of logical thought
and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle
of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical
and unjust; we experience usually only the result of the struggle, so
rapidly and secretly does this primitive mechanism now operate in us.

112.

_Cause and Effect._--We say it is "explanation"; but it is only in
"description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge
and science. We describe better,--we explain just as little as our
predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naïve
man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, "cause"
and "effect," as it was said; we have perfected the conception of
becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the
conception. The series of "causes" stands before us much more complete
in every case; we conclude that this and that must first precede in
order that that other may follow--but we have not _grasped_ anything
thereby. The peculiarity, for example, in every chemical process seems
a "miracle," the same as before, just like all locomotion; nobody
has "explained" impulse. How could we ever explain! We operate only
with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms,
divisible times, divisible spaces--how can explanation ever be possible
when we first make everything a _conception,_ our conception! It is
sufficient to regard science as the exactest humanising of things that
is possible; we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by
describing things and their successions. Cause and effect: there is
probably never any such duality; in fact there is a _continuum_ before
us, from which we isolate a few portions;--just as we always observe
a motion as isolated points, and therefore do not properly see it,
but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads
us into error; it is however only an abruptness for us. There is an
infinite multitude of processes in that abrupt moment which escape us.
An intellect which could see cause and effect as a _continuum,_ which
could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception,
as things arbitrarily separated and broken--would throw aside the
conception of cause and effect, and would deny all conditionality.

113.

_The Theory of Poisons._--So many things have to be united in order
that scientific thinking may arise, and all the necessary powers
must have been devised, exercised, and fostered singly! In their
isolation, however, they have very often had quite a different
effect than at present, when they are confined within the limits of
scientific thinking and kept mutually in check:--they have operated as
poisons; for example, the doubting impulse, the denying impulse, the
waiting impulse, the collecting impulse, the disintegrating impulse.
Many hecatombs of men were sacrificed ere these impulses learned to
understand their juxtaposition and regard themselves as functions of
one organising force in one man! And how far are we still from the
point at which the artistic powers and the practical wisdom of life
shall co-operate with scientific thinking, so that a higher organic
system may be formed, in relation to which the scholar, the physician,
the artist, and the lawgiver, as we know them at present, will seem
sorry antiquities!

114.

_The Extent of the Moral._--We construct a new picture, which we see
immediately with the aid of all the old experiences which we have
had, _always according to the degree_ of our honesty and justice.
The only experiences are moral experiences, even in the domain of
sense-perception.

115.

_The Four Errors._--Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw
himself always imperfect; secondly,-he attributed to himself--imaginary
qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation
to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of
values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so
that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state
stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted
the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity,
humaneness, and "human dignity."

116.

_Herd-Instinct._--Wherever we meet with a morality we find a
valuation and order of rank of the human impulses and activities.
These valuations and orders of rank are always the expression of the
needs of a community or herd: that which is in the first place to
_its_ advantage--and in the second place and third place--is also the
authoritative standard for the worth of every individual. By morality
the individual is taught to become a function of the herd, and to
ascribe to himself value only as a function. As the conditions for
the maintenance of one community have been very different from those
of another community, there have been very different moralities;
and in respect to the future essential transformations of herds and
communities, states and societies, one can prophesy that there will
still be very divergent moralities. Morality is the herd-instinct in
the individual.

117.

_The Herd's Sting of Conscience._--In the longest and remotest ages
of the human race there was quite a different sting of conscience
from that of the present day. At present one only feels responsible
for what one intends and for what one does, and we have our pride
in ourselves. All our professors of jurisprudence start with this
sentiment of individual independence and pleasure, as if the source
of right had taken its rise here from the beginning. But throughout
the longest period in the life of mankind there was nothing more
terrible to a person than to feel himself independent. To be alone,
to feel independent, neither to obey nor to rule, to represent an
individual--that was no pleasure to a person then, but a punishment; he
was condemned "to be an individual." Freedom of thought was regarded as
discomfort personified. While we feel law and regulation as constraint
and loss, people formerly regarded egoism as a painful thing, and a
veritable evil. For a person to be himself, to value himself according
to his own measure and weight--that was then quite distasteful. The
inclination to such a thing would have been regarded as madness; for
all miseries and terrors were associated with being alone. At that
time the "free will" had bad conscience in close proximity to it; and
the less independently a person acted, the more the herd-instinct, and
not his personal character, expressed itself in his conduct, so much
the more moral did he esteem himself. All that did injury to the herd,
whether the individual had intended it or not, then caused him a sting
of conscience--and his neighbour likewise, indeed the whole herd!--It
is in this respect that we have most changed our mode of thinking.

118.

_Benevolence--_Is it virtuous when a cell transforms itself into the
function of a stronger cell? It must do so. And is it wicked when
the stronger one assimilates the other? It must do so likewise: it
is necessary, for it has to have abundant indemnity and seeks to
regenerate itself. One has therefore to distinguish the instinct
of appropriation and the instinct of submission in benevolence,
according as the stronger or the weaker feels benevolent. Gladness
and covetousness are united in the stronger person, who wants to
transform something to his function: gladness and desire-to-be-coveted
in the weaker person, who would like to become a function.--The former
case is essentially pity, a pleasant excitation of the instinct of
appropriation at the sight of the weak: it is to be remembered,
however, that "strong" and "weak" are relative conceptions.

119.

_No Altruism!_/--I see in many men an excessive impulse and delight
in wanting to be a function; they strive after it, and have the
keenest scent for all those positions in which precisely _they_
themselves can be functions. Among such persons are those women who
transform themselves into just that function of a man that is but
weakly-developed in him, and then become his purse, or his politics, or
his social intercourse. Such beings maintain themselves best when they
insert themselves in an alien organism; if they do not succeed they
become vexed, irritated, and eat themselves up.

120.

_Health of the Soul._--The favourite medico-moral formula (whose
originator was Ariston of Chios), "Virtue is the health of the soul,"
would, for all practical purposes, have to be altered to this: "Thy
virtue is the health of thy soul." For there is no such thing as
health in itself, and all attempts to define a thing in that way have
lamentably failed. It is necessary to know thy aim, thy horizon,
thy powers, thy impulses, thy errors, and especially the ideals and
fantasies of thy soul, in order to determine _what health_ implies even
for thy _body._ There are consequently innumerable kinds of physical
health; and the more one again permits the unique and unparalleled to
raise its head, the more one unlearns the dogma of the "Equality of
men," so much the more also must the conception of a normal health,
together with a normal diet and a normal course of disease, be
abrogated by our physicians. And then only would it be time to turn
our thoughts to the health and disease of the _soul,_ and make the
special virtue of everyone consist in its health; but, to be sure,
what appeared as health in one person might appear as the contrary of
health in another. In the end the great question might still remain
open:--Whether we could _do without_ sickness for the development of
our virtue, and whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge
would not especially need the sickly soul as well as the sound one; in
short, whether the mere will to health is not a prejudice, a cowardice,
and perhaps an instance of the subtlest barbarism and unprogressiveness?

121.

_Life no Argument._--We have arranged for ourselves a world in which
we can live--by the postulating of bodies, lines, surfaces, causes and
effects, motion and rest, form and content: without these articles of
faith no one could manage to live at present! But for all that they
are still unproved. Life is no argument; error might be among the
conditions of life.

122.

_The Element of Moral Scepticism in Christianity._--Christianity also
has made a great contribution to enlightenment, and has taught moral
scepticism --in a very impressive and effective manner, accusing and
embittering, but with untiring patience and subtlety; it annihilated
in every individual the belief in his virtues: it made the great
virtuous ones, of whom antiquity had no lack, vanish for ever from
the earth, those popular men, who, in the belief in their perfection,
walked about with the dignity of a hero of the bull-fight. When,
trained in this Christian school of scepticism, we now read the moral
books of the ancients, for example those of Seneca and Epictetus, we
feel a pleasurable superiority, and are full of secret insight and
penetration,--it seems to us as if a child talked before an old man, or
a pretty, gushing girl before La Rochefoucauld:--we know better what
virtue is! After all, however, we have applied the same scepticism to
all _religious_ states and processes, such as sin, repentance, grace,
sanctification, &c., and have allowed the worm to burrow so well, that
we have now the same feeling of subtle superiority and insight even
in reading all Christian books:--we know also the religious feelings
better! And it is time to know them well and describe them well, for
the pious ones of the old belief die out also; let us save their
likeness and type, at least for the sake of knowledge.

123.

_Knowledge more than a Means._--Also _without_ this passion--I refer
to the passion for knowledge--science would be furthered: science has
hitherto increased and grown up without it. The good faith in science,
the prejudice in its favour, by which States are at present dominated
(it was even the Church formerly), rests fundamentally on the fact that
the absolute inclination and impulse has so rarely revealed itself in
it, and that science is regarded _not_ as a passion, but as a condition
and an "ethos." Indeed, _amour-plaisir_ of knowledge (curiosity) often
enough suffices, _amour-vanité_ suffices, and habituation to it, with
the afterthought of obtaining honour and bread; it even suffices for
many that they do not know what to do with a surplus of leisure, except
to continue reading, collecting, arranging, observing and narrating;
their "scientific impulse" is their ennui. Pope Leo X once (in the
brief to Beroaldus) sang the praise of science; he designated it as the
finest ornament and the greatest pride of our life, a noble employment
in happiness and in misfortune; "without it," he says finally, "all
human undertakings would be without a firm basis,--even with it they
are still sufficiently mutable and insecure!" But this rather sceptical
Pope, like all other ecclesiastical panegyrists of science, suppressed
his ultimate judgment concerning it. If one may deduce from his words
what is remarkable enough for such a lover of art, that he places
science above art it is alter all, however, only from politeness that
he omits to speak of that which he places high above all science:
the "revealed truth," and the "eternal salvation o the soul,"--what
are ornament, pride, entertainment and security of life to him, in
comparison thereto? "Science is something of secondary rank, nothing
ultimate or unconditioned, no object of passion"--this judgment was
kept back in Leos soul: the truly Christian judgment concerning
science! In antiquity its dignity and appreciation were lessened by
the fact that, even among its most eager disciples, the striving after
_virtue_ stood foremost and that people thought they had given the
highest praise to knowledge when they celebrated it as the best means
to virtue. It is something new in history that knowledge claims to be
more than a means.

124.

_In the Horizon of the Infinite._--We have left the land and have gone
aboard ship! We have broken down the bridge behind us,--nay, more, the
land behind us! Well, little ship! look out! Beside thee is the ocean;
it is true it does not always roar, and sometimes it spreads out like
silk and gold and a gentle reverie. But times will come when thou wilt
feel that it is infinite, and that there is nothing more frightful than
infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt itself free, and now strikes
against the walls of this cage! Alas, if home-sickness for the land
should attack thee, as if there had been more _freedom_ there,--and
there is no "land" any longer!

125.

_The Madman._--Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright
morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out
unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!"--As there were many people
standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal
of amusement. Why! is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a
child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of
us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?--the people cried out
laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst
and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called
out. "I mean to tell you! _We have killed him,_--you and I! We are all
his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up
the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What
did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it
now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on
unceasingly? Back-wards, sideways, forewards, in all directions? Is
there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite
nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become
colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall
we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise
of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine
putrefaction?--for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead!
And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most
murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the
world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,--who
will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse
ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is
not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves
have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a
greater event,--and on account of it, all who are born after us belong
to a higher history than any history hitherto!"--Here the madman was
silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and
looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground,
so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early,"
he then said, "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event
is still on its way, and is travelling,--it has not yet reached men's
ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs
time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard.
This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star,--_and yet
they have done it!"--It_ is further stated that the madman made his way
into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his _Requiem
æternam deo._ When led out and called to account, he always gave the
reply: "What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and
monuments of God?"--

126.

_Mystical Explanations._--Mystical explanations are regarded as
profound; the truth is that they do not even go the length of being
superficial.

127.

_After-Effect of the most Ancient Religiousness.--_The thoughtless
man thinks that the Will is the only thing that operates, that willing
is something simple, manifestly given, underived, and comprehensible
in itself. He is convinced that when he does anything, for example,
when he delivers a blow, it is _he_ who strikes, and he has struck
because he _willed_ to strike. He does not notice anything of a problem
therein, but the feeling of _willing_ suffices to him, not only for
the acceptance of cause and effect, but also for the belief that he
_understands_ their relationship. Of the mechanism of the occurrence,
and of the manifold subtle operations that must be performed in order
that the blow may result, and likewise of the incapacity of the Will
in itself to effect even the smallest part of those operations--he
knows nothing. The Will is to him a magically operating force; the
belief in the Will as the cause of effects is the belief in magically
operating forces. In fact, whenever he saw anything happen, man
originally believed in a Will as cause, and in personally _willing_
beings operating in the background,--the conception of mechanism was
very remote from him. Because, however, man for immense periods of
time believed only in persons (and not in matter, forces, things,
&c.), the belief in cause and effect has become a fundamental belief
with him, which he applies everywhere when anything happens,--and even
still uses instinctively as a piece of atavism of remotest origin. The
propositions, "No effect without a cause," and "Every effect again
implies a cause," appear as generalisations of several less general
propositions:--"Where there is operation there has been _willing_."
"Operating is only possible on _willing_ beings." "There is never
a pure, resultless experience of activity, but every experience
involves stimulation of the Will" (to activity, defence, revenge or
retaliation). But in the primitive period of the human race, the
latter and the former propositions were identical, the first were not
generalisations of the second, but the second were explanations of
the first.--Schopenhauer, with his assumption that all that exists is
something _volitional,_ has set a primitive mythology on the throne;
he seems never to have attempted an analysis of the Will, because
he _believed_ like everybody in the simplicity and immediateness of
all volition:--while volition is in fact such a cleverly practised
mechanical process that it almost escapes the observing eye. I set the
following propositions against those of Schopenhauer:--Firstly, in
order that Will may arise, an idea of pleasure and pain is necessary.
Secondly, that a vigorous excitation may be felt as pleasure or pain,
is the affair of the _interpreting_ intellect, which, to be sure,
operates thereby for the most part unconsciously to us, and one and the
same excitation _may_ be interpreted as pleasure or pain. Thirdly, it
is only in an intellectual being that there is pleasure, displeasure
and Will; the immense majority of organisms have nothing of the kind.

128.

_The Value of Prayer.--_Prayer has been devised for such men as have
never any thoughts of their own, and to whom an elevation of the soul
is unknown, or passes unnoticed; what shall these people do in holy
places and in all important situations in life which require repose and
some kind of dignity? In order at least that they may not _disturb,_
the wisdom of all the founders of religions, the small as well as
the great, has commended to them the formula of prayer, as a long
mechanical labour of the lips, united with an effort of the memory,
and with a uniform, prescribed attitude of hands and feet--_and_ eyes!
They may then, like the Tibetans, chew the cud of their "_om mane
padme hum,"_ innumerable times, or, as in Benares, count the name of
the God Ram-Ram-Ram (etc., with or without grace) on their fingers;
or honour Vishnu with his thousand names of invocation, Allah with his
ninety-nine; or they may make use of the prayer-wheels and the rosary:
the main thing is that they are settled down for a time at this work,
and present a tolerable appearance; their mode of prayer is devised
for the advantage of the pious who have thought and elevation of their
own. But even these have their weary hours when a series of venerable
words and sounds, and a mechanical, pious ritual does them good. But
supposing that these rare men--in every religion the religious man is
an exception--know how to help themselves, the poor in spirit do not
know, and to forbid them the prayer-babbling would mean to take their
religion from them, a fact which Protestantism brings more and more to
light. All that religion wants with such persons is that they should
_keep still_ with their eyes, hands, legs, and all their organs: they
thereby become temporarily beautified and--more human-looking!

129.

_The Conditions for God.--_"God himself cannot subsist without wise
men," said Luther, and with good reason; but "God can still less
subsist without unwise men,"--good Luther did not say that!

130.

_A Dangerous Resolution.--_The Christian resolution to find the world
ugly and bad, has made the world ugly and bad.

131.

_Christianity and Suicide._--Christianity made use of the excessive
longing for suicide at the time of its origin as a lever for its power:
it left only two forms of suicide, invested them with the highest
dignity and the highest hopes, and forbade all others with dreadful
threatenings. But martyrdom and the slow self-annihilation of the
ascetic were permitted.

132.

_Against Christianity._--It is now no longer our reason, but our taste
that decides against Christianity.

133.

_Axioms._--An unavoidable hypothesis on which mankind must always fall
back again, is in the long run _more powerful_ than the most firmly
believed belief in something untrue (like the Christian belief). In the
long run: that means a hundred thousand years hence.

134.

_Pessimists as Victims._--When a profound dislike of existence gets
the upper hand, the after-effect of a great error in diet of which a
people has been long guilty comes to light. The spread of Buddhism
(_not_ its origin) is thus to a considerable extent dependent on the
excessive and almost exclusive rice-fare of the Indians, and on the
universal enervation that results therefrom. Perhaps the modern,
European discontentedness is to be looked upon as caused by the fact
that the world of our forefathers, the whole Middle Ages, was given to
drink, owing to the influence of German tastes in Europe: the Middle
Ages, that means the alcoholic poisoning of Europe.--The German dislike
of life (including the influence of the cellar-air and stove-poison in
German dwellings), is essentially a cold-weather complaint.

135.

_Origin of Sin_--Sin, as it is at present felt wherever Christianity
prevails or has prevailed is a Jewish feeling and a Jewish invention;
and in respect to this background of all Christian morality
Christianity has in fact aimed at "Judaising" the whole world. To
what an extent this has succeeded in Europe is traced most accurately
in our remarkable alienness to Greek antiquity--a world without the
feeling of sin--in our sentiments even at present; in spite of all the
good will to approximation and assimilation, which whole generations
and many distinguished individuals have not failed to display. "Only
when thou _repentest_ is God gracious to thee"--that would arouse
the laughter or the wrath of a Greek: he would say, "Slaves may have
such sentiments." Here a mighty being, an almighty being, and yet a
revengeful being, is presupposed; his power is so great that no injury
whatever can be done to him except in the point of honour. Every sin is
an infringement of respect, a _crimen læsæ majestatis divinæ_?--and
nothing more! Contrition, degradation, rolling-in-the-dust,--these
are the first and last conditions on which his favour depends: the
restoration, therefore, of his divine honour! If injury be caused
otherwise by sin, if a profound, spreading evil be propagated by it,
an evil which, like a disease, attacks and strangles one man after
another--that does not trouble this honour-craving Oriental in heaven;
sin is an offence against him, not against mankind!--to him on whom
he has bestowed his favour he bestows also this indifference to the
natural consequences of sin. God and mankind are here thought of as
separated as so antithetical that sin against the latter cannot be at
all possible,--all deeds are to be looked upon _solely with respect to
their supernatural consequences,_ and not with respect to their natural
results: it is thus that the Jewish feeling, to which all that is
natural seems unworthy in itself, would have things. The _Greeks,_ on
the other hand, were more familiar with the thought that transgression
also may have dignity,--even theft, as in the case of Prometheus, even
the slaughtering of cattle as the expression of frantic jealousy, as in
the case of Ajax; in their need to attribute dignity to transgression
and embody it therein, they invented _tragedy,_--an art and a delight,
which in its profoundest essence has remained alien to the Jew, in
spite of all his poetic endowment and taste for the sublime.

136.

_The Chosen People._--The Jews, who regard themselves as the chosen
people among the nations, and that too because they are the moral
genius among the nations (in virtue of their capacity for _despising_
the human in themselves _more_ than any other people)--the Jews have
a pleasure in their divine monarch and saint similar to that which
the French nobility had in Louis XIV. This nobility had allowed its
power and autocracy to be taken from it, and had become contemptible:
in order not to feel this, in order to be able to forget it, an
_unequalled_ royal magnificence, royal authority and plenitude of power
was needed, to which there was access only for the nobility. As in
accordance with this privilege they raised themselves to the elevation
of the court, and from that elevation saw everything under them,--saw
everything contemptible,--they got beyond all uneasiness of conscience.
They thus elevated intentionally the tower of the royal power more and
more into the clouds, and set the final coping-stone of their own power
thereon.

137.

_Spoken in Parable._--A Jesus Christ was only possible in a
Jewish landscape--I mean in one over which the gloomy and sublime
thunder-cloud of the angry Jehovah hung continually. Here only was
the rare, sudden flashing of a single sunbeam through the dreadful,
universal and continuous nocturnal-day regarded as a miracle of "love,"
as a beam of the most unmerited "grace." Here only could Christ dream
of his rainbow and celestial ladder on which God descended to man;
everywhere else the clear weather and the sun were considered the rule
and the commonplace.

138.

_The Error of Christ.--_The founder of Christianity thought there was
nothing from which men suffered so much as from their sins:--it was
his error, the error of him who felt himself without sin, to whom
experience was lacking in this respect! It was thus that his soul
filled with that marvellous, fantastic pity which had reference to
a trouble that even among his own people, the inventors of sin, was
rarely a great trouble! But Christians understood subsequently how
to do justice to their master, and how to sanctify his error into a
"truth."

139.

_Colour of the Passions.--_Natures such as the apostle Paul, have
an evil eye for the passions; they learn to know only the filthy,
the distorting, and the heart-breaking in them,--their ideal aim,
therefore, is the annihilation of the passions; in the divine they see
complete purification from passion. The Greeks, quite otherwise than
Paul and the Jews, directed their ideal aim precisely to the passions,
and loved, elevated, embellished and deified them: in passion they
evidently not only felt themselves happier, but also purer and diviner
than otherwise.--And now the Christians? Have they wished to become
Jews in this respect? Have they perhaps become Jews?

140.

_Too Jewish.--_If God had wanted to become an object of love, he would
first of all have had to forgo judging and justice:-a judge, and even
a gracious judge, is no object of love. The founder of Christianity
showed too little of the finer feelings in this respect--being a Jew.

141.

_Too Oriental._--What? A God who loves men provided that they believe
in him, and who hurls frightful glances and threatenings at him who
does not believe in this love! What? A conditioned love as the feeling
of an almighty God! A love which has not even become master of the
sentiment of honour and of the irritable desire for vengeance! How
Oriental is all that! "If I love thee, what does it concern thee?"[1]
is already a sufficient criticism of the whole of Christianity.

142.

_Frankincense.--Buddha_ says: "Do not flatter thy benefactor!" Let one
repeat this saying in a Christian church:--it immediately purifies the
air.

143.

_The Greatest Utility of Polytheism._--For the individual to set up
his _own_ ideal and derive from it his laws, his pleasures and his
rights--_that_ has perhaps been hitherto regarded as the most monstrous
of all human aberrations, and as idolatry in itself; in fact, the
few who have ventured to do this have always needed to apologise to
themselves, usually in this wise: "Not I! not I! but _a God,_ through
my instrumentality!" It was in the marvellous art and capacity for
creating Gods--in polytheism--that this impulse was permitted to
discharge itself, it was here that it became purified, perfected, and
ennobled; for it was originally a commonplace and unimportant impulse,
akin to stubbornness, disobedience and envy. To be _hostile_ to this
impulse towards the individual ideal,--that was formerly the law of
every morality. There was then only one norm, "the man"--and every
people believed that it _had_ this one and ultimate norm. But above
himself, and outside of himself, in a distant over-world, a person
could see a _multitude of norms:_ the one God was not the denial
or blasphemy of the other Gods! It was here that individuals were
first permitted, it was here that the right of individuals was first
respected. The inventing of Gods, heroes, and supermen of all kinds,
as well as co-ordinate men and undermen--dwarfs, fairies, centaurs,
satyrs, demons, devils--was the inestimable preliminary to the
justification of the selfishness and sovereignty of the individual: the
freedom which was granted to one God in respect to other Gods, was at
last given to the individual himself in respect to laws, customs and
neighbours. Monotheism, on the contrary, the rigid consequence of the
doctrine of one normal human being--consequently the belief in a normal
God, beside whom there are only false, spurious Gods--has perhaps been
the greatest danger of mankind in the past: man was then threatened
by that premature state of inertia, which, so far as we can see, most
of the other species of animals reached long ago, as creatures who
all believed in one normal animal and ideal in their species, and
definitely translated their morality of custom into flesh and blood. In
polytheism man's free-thinking and many-sided thinking had a prototype
set up: the power to create for himself new and individual eyes, always
newer and more individualised: so that these are no _eternal_ horizons
and perspectives.

[1] This means that true love does not look for reciprocity.

144.

_Religious Wars._--The greatest advance of the masses hitherto has
been religious war, for it proves that the masses have begun to deal
reverently with conceptions of things. Religious wars only result
when human reason generally has been refined by the subtle disputes
of sects; so that even the populace becomes punctilious and regards
trifles as important, actually thinking it possible that the "eternal
salvation of the soul" may depend upon minute distinctions of concepts.

145.

_Danger of Vegetarians._--The immense prevalence of rice-eating impels
to the use of opium and narcotics, in like manner as the immense
prevalence of potato-eating impels to the use of brandy:--it also
impels, however, in its more subtle after-effects to modes of thought
and feeling which operate narcotically. This is in accord with the fact
that those who promote narcotic modes of thought and feeling, like
those Indian teachers, praise a purely vegetable diet, and would like
to make it a law for the masses: they want thereby to call forth and
augment the need which _they_ are in a position to satisfy.

146.

_German Hopes.--_Do not let us forget that the names of peoples are
generally names of reproach. The Tartars, for example, according to
their name, are "the dogs"; they were so christened by the Chinese.
_"Deutschen"_ (Germans) means originally "heathen": it is thus that the
Goths after their conversion named the great mass of their unbaptized
fellow-tribes, according to the indication in their translation of
the Septuagint, in which the heathen are designated by the word which
in Greek signifies "the nations." (See Ulfilas.)--It might still be
possible for the Germans to make an honourable name ultimately out
of their old name of reproach, by becoming the first _non-Christian_
nation of Europe; for which purpose Schopenhauer, to their honour,
regarded them as highly qualified. The work of _Luther_ would thus be
consummated,--he who taught them to be anti-Roman, and to say: "Here
_I_ stand! _I_ cannot do otherwise!"--

147.

_Question and Answer._--What do savage tribes at present accept
first of all from Europeans? Brandy and Christianity, the European
narcotics.--And by what means are they fastest ruined?--By the European
narcotics.

148.

_Where Reformations Originate._--At the time of the great corruption
of the church it was least of all corrupt in Germany: it was on
that account that the Reformation originated _here,_ as a sign that
even the beginnings of corruption were felt to be unendurable. For,
comparatively speaking, no people was ever more Christian than the
Germans at the time of Luther; their Christian culture was just about
to burst into bloom with a hundred-fold splendour,--one night only was
still lacking; but that night brought the storm which put an end to all.

149.

_The Failure of Reformations._--It testifies to the higher culture of
the Greeks, even in rather early ages, that attempts to establish new
Grecian religions frequently failed; it testifies that quite early
there must have been a multitude of dissimilar individuals in Greece,
whose dissimilar troubles were not cured by a single recipe of faith
and hope. Pythagoras and Plato, perhaps also Empedocles, and already
much earlier the Orphic enthusiasts, aimed at founding new religions;
and the two first-named were so endowed with the qualifications for
founding religions, that one cannot be sufficiently astonished at their
failure: they just reached the point of founding sects. Every time that
the Reformation of an entire people fails and only sects raise their
heads, one may conclude that the people already contains many types,
and has begun to free itself from the gross herding instincts and
the morality of, custom,--a momentous state of suspense, which one is
accustomed to disparage as decay of morals and corruption, while it
announces the maturing of the egg and the early rupture of the shell.
That Luther's Reformation succeeded in the north, is a sign that the
north had remained backward in comparison with the south of Europe, and
still had requirements tolerably uniform in colour and kind; and there
would have been no Christianising of Europe at all, if the culture of
the old world of the south had not been gradually barbarized by an
excessive admixture of the blood of German barbarians, and thus lost
its ascendency. The more universally and unconditionally an individual,
or the thought of an individual, can operate, so much more homogeneous
and so much lower must be the mass that is there operated upon; while
counter-strivings betray internal counter-requirements, which also want
to gratify and realise themselves. Reversely, one may always conclude
with regard to an actual elevation of culture, when powerful and
ambitious natures only produce a limited and sectarian effect: this is
true also for the separate arts, and for the provinces of knowledge.
Where there is ruling there are masses: where there are masses there is
need of slavery. Where there is slavery the individuals are but few,
and have the instincts and conscience of the herd opposed to them.

150.

_Criticism of Saints._--Must one then, in order to have a virtue, be
desirous of having it precisely in its most brutal form?--as the
Christian saints desired and needed;--those who only _endured_ life
with the thought that at the sight of their virtue self-contempt might
seize every man. A virtue with such an effect I call brutal.

151.

_The Origin of Religion._--The metaphysical requirement is not the
origin of religions, as Schopenhauer claims, but only a _later sprout_
from them. Under the dominance of religious thoughts we have accustomed
ourselves to the idea of "another (back, under, or upper) world," and
feel an uncomfortable void and privation through the annihilation
of the religious illusion;--and then "another world" grows out of
this feeling once more, but now it is only a metaphysical world, and
no longer a religious one. That however which in general led to the
assumption of "another world" in primitive times, was _not_ an impulse
or requirement, but an _error_ in the interpretation of certain natural
phenomena, a difficulty of the intellect.

152.

_The greatest Change._--The lustre and the hues of all things have
changed! We no longer quite understand how earlier men conceived of the
most familiar and frequent things,--for example, of the day, and the
awakening in the morning: owing to their belief in dreams the waking
state seemed to them differently illuminated. And similarly of the
whole of life, with its reflection of death and its significance: our
"death" is an entirely different death. All events were of a different
lustre, for a God shone forth in them; and similarly of all resolutions
and peeps into the distant future: for people had oracles, and secret
hints, and believed in prognostication. "Truth" was conceived in quite
a different manner, for the insane could formerly be regarded as its
mouthpiece--a thing which makes _us_ shudder, or laugh. Injustice made
a different impression on the feelings: for people were afraid of
divine retribution, and not only of legal punishment and disgrace. What
joy was there in an age when men believed in the devil and tempter!
What passion was there when people saw demons lurking close at hand!
What philosophy was there when doubt was regarded as sinfulness of the
most dangerous kind, and in fact as an outrage on eternal love, as
distrust of everything good, high, pure, and compassionate!--We have
coloured things anew, we paint them over continually,--but what have we
been able to do hitherto in comparison with the _splendid colouring_ of
that old master!--I mean ancient humanity.

153.

_Homo poeta._--"I myself who have made this tragedy of tragedies
altogether independently, in so far as it is completed; I who have
first entwined the perplexities of morality about existence, and
have tightened them so that only a God could unravel them--so Horace
demands!--I have already in the fourth act killed all the Gods--for the
sake of morality! What is now to be done about the fifth act? Where
shall I get the tragic _dénouement!_ Must I now think about a comic
_dénouement_?"

154.

_Differences in the Dangerousness of Life._--You don't know at all what
you experience; you run through life as if intoxicated, and now and
then fall down a stair. Thanks however to your intoxication you still
do not break your limbs: your muscles are too languid and your head too
confused to find the stones of the staircase as hard as we others do!
For, us life is a greater danger: we are made of glass--alas, if we
should _strike against_ anything! And all is lost if we should _fall_!

155.

_What we Lack._--We love the _grandeur_ of Nature, and have discovered
it; that is because human grandeur is lacking in our minds. It was
the reverse with the Greeks: their feeling towards Nature was quite
different from ours.

156.

_The most Influential Person._--The fact that a person resists the
whole spirit of his age, stops it at the door and calls it to account,
_must_ exert an influence! It is indifferent whether he wishes to exert
an influence; the point is that he _can_.

157.

_Mentiri._--Take care!--he reflects: he will have a lie ready
immediately. This is a stage in the civilisation of whole nations.
Consider only what the Romans expressed by _mentiri!_

158.

_An Inconvenient Peculiarity._--To find everything deep is an
inconvenient peculiarity: it makes one constantly strain one's eyes, so
that in the end one always finds more than one wishes.

159.

_Every Virtue has its Time._--The honesty of him who is at present
inflexible often causes him remorse; for inflexibility is the virtue of
a time different from that in which honesty prevails.

160.

_In Intercourse with Virtues._--One can also be undignified and
flattering towards a virtue.

161.

_To the Admirers of the Age._--The runaway priest and the liberated
criminal are continually making grimaces; what they want is a look
without a past. But have you ever seen men who know that their looks
reflect the future, and who are so courteous to you, the admirers of
the "age," that they assume a look without a future?--

162.

_Egoism._--Egoism is the _perspective_ law of our sentiment, according
to which the near appears large and momentous, while in the distance
the magnitude and importance of all things diminish.

163.

_After a Great Victory._--The best thing in a great victory is that
it deprives the conqueror of the fear of defeat. "Why should I not be
worsted for once?" he says to himself, "I am now rich enough to stand
it."

164.

_Those who Seek Repose._--I recognise the minds that seek repose by the
many _dark_ objects with which they surround themselves: those who want
to sleep darken their chambers, or creep into caverns. A hint to those
who do not know what they really seek most, and would like to know!

165.

_The Happiness of Renunciation._--He who has absolutely dispensed with
something for a long time will almost imagine, when he accidentally
meets with it again, that he has discovered it,--and what happiness
every discoverer has! Let us be wiser than the serpents that lie too
long in the same sunshine.

166.

_Always in our own Society._--All that is akin to me in nature and
history speaks to me, praises me, urges me forward and comforts me--:
other things are unheard by me, or immediately forgotten. We are only
in our own society always.

167.

_Misanthropy and Philanthropy._--We only speak about being sick of men
when we can no longer digest them, and yet have the stomach full of
them. Misanthropy is the result of a far too eager philanthropy and
"cannibalism,"--but who ever bade you swallow men like oysters, my
Prince Hamlet?

168.

_Concerning an Invalid._--"Things go badly with him!"--What is
wrong?--" He suffers from the longing to be praised, and finds no
sustenance for it."--Inconceivable! All the world does honour to him,
and he is reverenced not only in deed but in word!--"Certainly, but he
is dull of hearing for the praise. When a friend praises him it sounds
to him as if the friend praised himself; when an enemy praises him,
it sounds to him as if the enemy wanted to be praised for it; when,
finally, some one else praises him--there are by no means so many of
these, he is so famous!--he is offended because they neither want him
for a friend nor for an enemy; he is accustomed to say: 'What do I care
for those who can still pose as the all-righteous towards me!'"

169.

_Avowed Enemies._--Bravery in presence of an enemy is a thing by
itself: a person may possess it and still be a coward and an irresolute
num-skull. That was Napoleon's opinion concerning the "bravest man" he
knew, Murat:--whence it follows that avowed enemies are indispensable
to some men, if they are to attain to _their_ virtue, to their
manliness, to their cheerfulness.

170.

_With, the Multitude._--He has hitherto gone with the multitude and is
its panegyrist; but one day he will be its opponent! For he follows
it in the belief that his laziness will find its advantage thereby:
he has not yet learned that the multitude is not lazy enough for him!
that it always presses forward! that it does not allow any one to stand
still!--And he likes so well to stand still!

171.

_Fame._--When the gratitude of many to one casts aside all shame, then
fame originates.

172.

_The Perverter of Taste._--A: "You are a perverter of taste--they say
so everywhere!" B: "Certainly! I pervert every one's taste for his
party:--no party forgives me for that."

173.

_To be Profound and to Appear Profound._--He who knows that he is
profound strives for clearness; he who would like to appear profound to
the multitude strives for obscurity. The multitude thinks everything
profound of which it cannot see the bottom; it is so timid and goes so
unwillingly into the water.

174.

_Apart._--Parliamentarism, that is to say, the public permission to
choose between five main political opinions, insinuates itself into
the favour of the numerous class who would fain _appear_ independent
and individual, and like to fight for their opinions. After all,
however, it is a matter of indifference whether one opinion is imposed
upon the herd, or five opinions are permitted to it.--He who diverges
from the five public opinions and goes apart, has always the whole herd
against him.

175.

_Concerning Eloquence._--What has hitherto had the most convincing
eloquence? The rolling of the drum: and as long as kings have this at
their command, they will always be the best orators and popular leaders.

176.

_Compassion._--The poor, ruling princes! All their rights now change
unexpectedly into claims, and all these claims immediately sound like
pretensions! And if they but say "we," or "my people," wicked old
Europe begins laughing. Verily, a chief-master-of-ceremonies of the
modern world would make little ceremony with them; perhaps he would
decree that "_les souverains rangent aux parvenus._"

177.

_On "Educational Matters."_--In Germany an important educational means
is lacking for higher men; namely, the laughter of higher men; these
men do not laugh in Germany.

178.

_For Moral Enlightenment_.--The Germans must be talked out of their
Mephistopheles--and out of their Faust also. These are two moral
prejudices against the value of knowledge.

179.

_Thoughts.--_Thoughts are the shadows of our sentiments--always however
obscurer, emptier and simpler.

180.

_The Good Time for Free Spirits._--Free Spirits take liberties even
with regard to Science--and meanwhile they are allowed to do so,--while
the Church still remains!--In so far they have now their good time.

181.

_Following and Leading._--A: "Of the two, the one will always follow,
the other will always lead, whatever be the course of their destiny.
_And yet_ the former is superior to the other in virtue and intellect."
B: "And yet? And yet? That is spoken for the others; not for me, not
for us!--_Fit secundum regulam._"

182.

_In Solitude._--When one lives alone one does not speak too loudly,
and one does not write too loudly either, for one fears the hollow
reverberation--the criticism of the nymph Echo.--And all voices sound
differently in solitude!

183.

_The Music of the Best Future._--The first musician for me would be he
who knew only the sorrow of the profoundest happiness, and no other
sorrow: there has not hitherto been such a musician.

184.

_Justice._--Better allow oneself to be robbed than have scarecrows
around one--that is my taste. And under all circumstances it is just a
matter of taste--and nothing more!

185.

_Poor._--He is now poor, but not because everything has been taken from
him, but because he has thrown everything away:--what does he care? He
is accustomed to find new things.--It is the poor who misunderstand his
voluntary poverty.

186.

_Bad Conscience._--All that he now does is excellent and proper--and
yet he has a bad conscience with it all. For the exceptional is his
task.

187.

_Offensiveness in Expression._--This artist offends me by the way in
which he expresses his ideas, his very excellent ideas: so diffusely
and forcibly, and with such gross rhetorical artifices, as if he
were speaking to the mob. We feel always as if "in bad company" when
devoting some time to his art.

188.

_Work._--How closely work and the workers now stand even to the most
leisurely of us! The royal courtesy in the words: "We are all workers,"
would have been a cynicism and an indecency even under Louis XIV.

189.

_The Thinker._--He is a thinker: that is to say, he knows how to take
things more simply than they are.

190.

_Against Eulogisers._--A: "One is only praised by one's equals!" B:
"Yes! And he who praises you says: 'You are my equal!'"

191.

_Against many a Vindication._--The most perfidious manner of injuring a
cause is to vindicate it intentionally with fallacious arguments.

192.

_The Good-natured._--What is it that distinguishes the good-natured,
whose countenances beam kindness, from other people? They feel quite
at ease in presence of a new person, and are quickly enamoured of him;
they therefore wish him well; their first opinion is: "He pleases me."
With them there follow in succession the wish to appropriate (they make
little scruple about the person's worth), rapid appropriation, joy in
the possession, and actions in favour of the person possessed.

193.

_Kant's Joke._--Kant tried to prove, in a way that dismayed
"everybody," that "everybody" was in the right:--that was his secret
joke. He wrote against the learned, in favour of popular prejudice; he
wrote, however, for the learned and not for the people.

194.

_The "Open-hearted" Man._--That man acts probably always from concealed
motives; for he has always communicable motives on his tongue, and
almost in his open hand.

195.

_Laughable!_--See! See! He runs _away_ from men--: they follow him,
however, because he runs _before_ them,--they are such a gregarious lot!

196.

_The Limits of our Sense of Hearing._--We hear only the questions to
which we are capable of finding an answer.

197.

_Caution therefore!_--There is nothing we are fonder of communicating
to others than the seal of secrecy--together with what is under it.

198.

_Vexation of the Proud Man._--The proud man is vexed even with those
who help him forward: he looks angrily at his carriage-horses.

199.

_Liberality._--Liberality is often only a form of timidity in the rich.

200.

_Laughing._--To laugh means to love mischief, but with a good
conscience.

201.

_In Applause._--In applause there is always some kind of noise: even in
self-applause.

202.

_A Spendthrift._--He has not yet the poverty of the rich man who
has counted all his treasure,--he squanders his spirit with the
irrationalness of the spendthrift Nature.

203.

_Hic niger est_.--Usually he has no thoughts,--but in exceptional cases
bad thoughts come to him.

204.

_Beggars and Courtesy._--"One is not discourteous when one knocks at a
door with a stone when the bell-pull is awanting"--so think all beggars
and necessitous persons, but no one thinks they are in the right.

205.

_Need._--Need is supposed to be the cause of things; but in truth it is
often only the result of things.

206.

_During the Rain._--It rains, and I think of the poor people who now
crowd together with their many cares, which they are unaccustomed to
conceal; all of them, therefore, ready and anxious to give pain to one
another, and thus provide themselves with a pitiable kind of comfort,
even in bad weather. This, this only, is the poverty of the poor!

207.

_The Envious Man._--That is an envious man--it is not desirable that he
should have children; he would be envious of them, because he can no
longer be a child.

208.

_A Great Man!_--Because a person is "a great man," we are not
authorised to infer that he is a man. Perhaps he is only a boy, or a
chameleon of all ages, or a bewitched girl.

209.

_A Mode of Asking for Reasons._--There is a mode of asking for our
reasons which not only makes us forget our best reasons, but also
arouses in us a spite and repugnance against reason generally:-a very
stupefying mode of questioning, and really an artifice of tyrannical
men!

210.

_Moderation in Diligence._--One must not be anxious to surpass the
diligence of one's father--that would make one ill.

211.

_Secret Enemies._--To be able to keep a secret enemy--that is a luxury
which the morality even of the highest-minded persons can rarely afford.

212.

_Not Letting oneself be Deluded._--His spirit has bad manners, it is
hasty and always stutters with impatience; so that one would hardly
suspect the deep breathing and the large chest of the soul in which it
resides.

213.

_The Way to Happiness._--A sage asked of a fool the way to happiness.
The fool answered without delay, like one who had been asked the way
to the next town: "Admire yourself, and live on the street!" "Hold,"
cried the sage, "you require too much; it suffices to admire oneself!"
The fool replied: "But how can one constantly admire without constantly
despising?"

214.

_Faith Saves._--Virtue gives happiness and a state of blessedness only
to those who have a strong faith in their virtue:--not, however, to
the more refined souls whose virtue consists of a profound distrust of
themselves and of all virtue. After all, therefore, it is "faith that
saves" here also!--and be it well observed, _not_ virtue!

215.

_The Ideal and the Material._--You have a noble ideal before your eyes:
but are you also such a noble stone that such a divine image could be
formed out of you? And without that--is not all your labour barbaric
sculpturing? A blasphemy of your ideal?

216.

_Danger in the Voice._--With a very loud voice a person is almost
incapable of reflecting on subtle matters.

217.

_Cause and Effect._--Before the effect one believes in other causes
than after the effect.

218.

_My Antipathy._--I do not like those people who, in order to produce
an effect, have to burst like bombs, and in whose neighbourhood one is
always in danger of suddenly losing one's hearing--or even something
more.

219.

_The Object of Punishment._--The object of punishment is to improve
him _who punishes,_--that is the ultimate appeal of those who justify
punishment.

220.

_Sacrifice._--The victims think otherwise than the spectators about
sacrifice and sacrificing: but they have never been allowed to express
their opinion.

221.

_Consideration._--Fathers and sons are much more considerate of one
another than mothers and daughters.

222.

_Poet and Liar._--The poet sees in the liar his foster-brother whose
milk he has drunk up; the latter has thus remained wretched, and has
not even attained to a good conscience.

223.

_Vicariousness of the Senses._--"We have also eyes in order to hear
with them,"--said an old confessor who had grown deaf; "and among the
blind he that has the longest ears is king."

224.

_Animal Criticism._--I fear the animals regard man as a being
like themselves, seriously endangered by the loss of sound animal
understanding;--they regard him perhaps as the absurd animal, the
laughing animal, the crying animal, the unfortunate animal.

225.

_The Natural._--"Evil has always had the great effect! And Nature is
evil! Let us therefore be natural!"--so reason secretly the great
aspirants after effect, who are too often counted among great men.

226.

_The Distrustful and their Style._--We say the strongest things simply,
provided people are about us who believe in our strength:--such an
environment educates to "simplicity of style." The distrustful, on the
other hand, speak emphatically; they make things emphatic.

227.

_Fallacy, Fallacy._--He cannot rule himself; therefore that woman
concludes that it will be easy to rule him, and throws out her lines to
catch him;--the poor creature, who in a short time will be his slave.

228.

_Against Mediators._--He who attempts to mediate between two decided
thinkers is rightly called mediocre: he has not an eye for seeing the
unique; similarising and equalising are signs of weak eyes.

229.

_Obstinacy and Loyalty._--Out of obstinacy he holds fast to a cause of
which the questionableness has become obvious,--he calls that, however,
his "loyalty."

230.

_Lack of Reserve._--His whole nature fails to _convince_--that results
from the fact that he has never been reticent about a good action he
has performed.

231.

_The "Plodders."_--Persons slow of apprehension think that slowness
forms part of knowledge.

232.

_Dreaming._--Either one does not dream at all, or one dreams in
an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same
fashion:--either not at all, or in an interesting manner.

233.

_The most Dangerous Point of View._--What I now do, or neglect to do,
is as important _for all that is to come,_ as the greatest event of the
past: in this immense perspective of effects all actions are equally
great and small.

234.

_Consolatory Words of a Musician._--"Your life does not sound into
people's ears: for them you live a dumb life, and all refinements of
melody, all fond resolutions in following or leading the way, are
concealed from them. To be sure you do not parade the thoroughfares
with regimental music,--but these good people have no right to say on
that account that your life is lacking in music. He that hath ears let
him hear."

235.

_Spirit and Character._--Many a one attains his full height of
character, but his spirit is not adapted to the elevation,--and many a
one reversely.

236.

_To Move the Multitude._--Is it not necessary for him who wants to
move the multitude to give a stage representation of himself? Has he
not first to translate himself into the grotesquely obvious, and then
_set forth_ his whole personality and cause in that vulgarised and
simplified fashion?

237.

_The Polite Man._--"He is so polite!"--Yes, he has always a sop
for Cerberus with him, and is so timid that he takes everybody for
Cerberus, even you and me,--that is his "politeness."

238.

_Without Envy._--He is wholly without envy, but there is no merit
therein: for he wants to conquer a land which no one has yet possessed
and hardly any one has even seen.

239.

_The Joyless Person._--A single joyless person is enough to make
constant displeasure and a clouded heaven in a household; and it is
only by a miracle that such a person is lacking!--Happiness is not
nearly such a contagious disease;--how is that?

240.

_On the Sea-Shore._--I would not build myself a house (it is an element
of my happiness not to be a house-owner!). If I had to do so, however,
I should build it, like many of the Romans, right into the sea,--I
should like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster.

241.

_Work and Artist._--This artist is ambitious and nothing more;
ultimately, however, his work is only a magnifying-glass, which he
offers to every one who looks in his direction.

242.

_Suum cuique._--However great be my greed of knowledge, I cannot
appropriate aught of things but what already belongs to me,--the
property of others still remains in the things. How is it possible for
a man to be a thief or a robber?

243.

_Origin of "Good" and "Bad."_--He only will devise an improvement who
can feel that "this is not good."

244.

_Thoughts and Words._--Even our thoughts we are unable to render
completely in words.

245.

_Praise in Choice._--The artist chooses his subjects; that is his mode
of praising.

246.

_Mathematics._--We want to carry the refinement and rigour of
mathematics into all the sciences, as far as it is in any way possible,
not in the belief that we shall apprehend things in this way, but in
order thereby to _assert_ our human relation to things. Mathematics is
only a means to general and ultimate human knowledge.

247.

_Habits._--All habits make our hand wittier and our wit unhandier.

248.

_Books._--Of what account is a book that never carries us away beyond
all books?

249.

_The Sigh of the Seeker of Knowledge._--"Oh, my covetousness! In this
soul there is no disinterestedness--but an all-desiring self, which,
by means of many individuals, would fain see as with _its own_ eyes,
and grasp as with _its own_ hands--a self bringing back even the entire
past, and wanting to lose nothing that could in anyway belong to it!
Oh, this flame of my covetousness! Oh, that I were reincarnated in a
hundred individuals!"--He who does not know this sigh by experience,
does not know the passion of the seeker of knowledge either.

250.

_Guilt._--Although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even
the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the
guilt, nevertheless, was not there. So it is with all guilt.

251.

_Misunderstood Sufferers._--Great natures suffer otherwise than their
worshippers imagine; they suffer most severely from the ignoble, petty
emotions of certain evil moments; in short, from doubt of their own
greatness;--not however from the sacrifices and martyrdoms which their
tasks require of them. As long as Prometheus sympathises with men and
sacrifices himself for them, he is happy and proud in himself; but on
becoming envious of Zeus and of the homage which mortals pay him--then
Prometheus suffers!

252.

_Better to be in Debt._--"Better to remain in debt than to pay with
money which does not bear our stamp!"--that is what our sovereignty
prefers.

253.

_Always at Home._--One day we attain our _goal_--and then refer with
pride to the long journeys we have made to reach it. In truth, we did
not notice that we travelled. We got into the habit of thinking that we
were _at home_ in every place.

254.

_Against Embarrassment._--He who is always thoroughly occupied is rid
of all embarrassment.

255.

_Imitators._--A: "What? You don't want to have imitators?" B: "I
don't want people to do anything _after_ me; I want every one to do
something _before_ himself (as a pattern to himself)--just as _I_ do."
A: "Consequently--?"

256.

_Skinniness._--All profound men have their happiness in imitating
the flying-fish at times, and playing on the crests of the waves;
they think that what is best of all in things is their surface: their
skinniness--_sit venia verbo_.

257.

_From Experience._--A person often does not know how rich he is, until
he learns from experience what rich men even play the thief on him.

258.

_The Deniers of Chance._--No conqueror believes in chance.

259.

_From Paradise._--"Good and Evil are God's prejudices"--said the
serpent.

260.

_One times One._--One only is always in the wrong, but with two truth
begins.--One only cannot prove himself right; but two are already
beyond refutation.

261.

_Originality._--What is originality? To _see_ something that does
not yet bear a name, that cannot yet be named, although it is before
everybody's eyes. As people are usually constituted, it is the name
that first makes a thing generally visible to them.--Original persons
have also for the most part been the namers of things.

262.

_Sub specie æterni._--A: "You withdraw faster and faster from the
living; they will soon strike you out of their lists!"--B: "It is the
only way to participate in the privilege of the dead." A: "In what
privilege?"--B: "No longer having to die."

263.

_Without Vanity._--When we love we want our defects to remain
concealed,--not out of vanity, but lest the person loved should suffer
therefrom. Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,--and not
out of vanity either.

264.

_What we Do._--What we do is never understood, but only praised and
blamed.

265.

_Ultimate Scepticism._--But what after all are man's truths?--They are
his _irrefutable_ errors.

266.

_Where Cruelty is Necessary._--He who is great is cruel to his
second-rate virtues and judgments.

267.

_With a high Aim._--With a high aim a person is superior even to
justice, and not only to his deeds and his judges.

268.

_What makes Heroic?_--To face simultaneously one's greatest suffering
and one's highest hope.

269.

_What dost thou Believe in?_--In this: That the weights of all things
must be determined anew.

270.

_What Saith thy Conscience?_--"Thou shalt become what thou art."

271.

_Where are thy Greatest Dangers?_--In pity.

272.

_What dost thou Love in others?_--My hopes.

273.

_Whom dost thou call Bad?_--Him who always wants to put others to shame.

274.

_What dost thou think most humane?_--To spare a person shame.

275.

_What is the Seal of Attained Liberty?_--To be no longer ashamed of
oneself.

BOOK FOURTH

SANCTUS JANUARIUS

Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from
its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea:
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,--
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint!

_Genoa,_ January 1882.

276.

_For the New Year._--I still live, I still think; I must still live,
for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ To-day
everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite
thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself
to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,--a thought
which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my
future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters
in things as the beautiful:--I shall thus be one of those who beautify
things. _Amor fati:_ let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to
wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to
accuse the accusers. _Looking aside,_ let that be my sole negation!
And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a
yea-sayer!

277.

_Personal Providence._--There is a certain climax in life, at which,
notwithstanding all our freedom, and however much we may have denied
all directing reason and goodness in the beautiful chaos of existence,
we are once more in great danger of intellectual bondage, and have to
face our hardest test. For now the thought of a personal Providence
first presents itself before us with its most persuasive force, and
has the best of advocates, apparentness, in its favour, now when it
is obvious that all and everything that happens to us always _turns
out for the best._ The life of every day and of every hour seems to be
anxious for nothing else but always to prove this proposition anew;
let it be what it will, bad or good weather, the loss of a friend,
a sickness, a calumny, the non-receipt of a letter, the spraining
of one's foot, a glance into a shop-window, a counter-argument, the
opening of a book, a dream, a deception:--it shows itself immediately,
or very soon afterwards, as something "not permitted to be absent,"--it
is full of profound significance and utility precisely _for us!_ Is
there a more dangerous temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in
the Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods, and believe in
some anxious and mean Divinity, who knows personally every little hair
on our heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most wretched
services? Well--I mean in spite of all this! we want to leave the
Gods alone (and the serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content
ourselves with the assumption that our own practical and theoretical
skilfulness in explaining and suitably arranging events has now reached
its highest point. We do not want either to think too highly of this
dexterity of our wisdom, when the wonderful harmony which results from
playing on our instrument sometimes surprises us too much: a harmony
which sounds too well for us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In
fact, now and then there is one who plays _with_ us--beloved Chance: he
leads our hand occasionally, and even the all-wisest Providence could
not devise any finer music than that of which our foolish hand is then
capable.

278.

_The Thought of Death._--It gives me a melancholy happiness to live
in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices:
how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and
drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will
soon be so still for all these shouting, lively, life-loving people!
How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling-companion stands behind
him! It is always as in the last moment before the departure of an
emigrant-ship: people have more than ever to say to one another, the
hour presses, the ocean with its lonely silence waits impatiently
behind all the noise--so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all,
all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that
the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this
self-deafening and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be foremost in
this future,--and yet death and the stillness of death are the only
things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that
this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost
no influence on men, and that they are the _furthest_ from regarding
themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that
men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would fain do
something to make the idea of life even a hundred times _more worthy of
their attention_.

279.

_Stellar Friendship_.--We were friends, and have become strangers to
each other. But this is as it ought to be, and we do not want either
to conceal or obscure the fact, as if we had to be ashamed of it. We
are two ships, each of which has its goal and its course; we may,
to be sure, cross one another in our paths, and celebrate a feast
together as we did before,--and then the gallant ships lay quietly in
one harbour, and in one sunshine, so that it might have been thought
they were already at their goal, and that they had had one goal. But
then the almighty strength of our tasks forced us apart once more into
different seas and into different zones, and perhaps we shall never see
one another again,--or perhaps we may see one another, but not know
one another again; the different seas and suns have altered us! That
we had to become strangers to one another is the law to which we are
_subject_: just by that shall we become more sacred to one another!
Just by that shall the thought of our former friendship become holier!
There is probably some immense, invisible curve and stellar orbit in
which our courses and goals, so widely different, may be _comprehended_
as small stages of the way,--let us raise ourselves to this thought!
But our life is too short, and our power of vision too limited for us
to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility.--And
so we will _believe_ in our stellar friendship, though we should have
to be terrestrial enemies to one another.

280.

_Architecture for Thinkers._--An insight is needed (and that probably
very soon) as to what is specially lacking in our great cities--namely,
quiet, spacious, and widely extended places for reflection, places
with long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too sunny days,
where no noise of wagons or of shouters would penetrate, and where
a more refined propriety would prohibit loud praying even to the
priest: buildings and situations which as a whole would express the
sublimity of self-communion and seclusion from the world. The time
is past when the Church possessed the monopoly of reflection, when
the _vita contemplativa_ had always in the first place to be the
_vita religiosa:_ and everything that the Church has built expresses
this thought. I know not how we could content ourselves with their
structures, even if they should be divested of their ecclesiastical
purposes: these structures speak a far too pathetic and too biassed
speech, as houses of God and places of splendour for supernatural
intercourse, for us godless ones to be able to think _our thoughts_ in
them. We want to have _ourselves_ translated into stone and plant, we
want to go for a walk in _ourselves_ when we wander in these halls and
gardens.

281.

_Knowing how to Find the End._--Masters of the first rank are
recognised by knowing in a perfect manner how to find the end, in
the whole as well as in the part; be it the end of a melody or of a
thought, be it the fifth act of a tragedy or of a state affair. The
masters of the second degree always become restless towards the end,
and seldom dip down into the sea with such proud, quiet equilibrium
as for example, the mountain-ridge at _Porto fino_--where the Bay of
Genoa sings its melody to an end.

282.

_The Gait._--There are mannerisms of the intellect by which even
great minds betray that they originate from the populace, or from the
semi-populace--it is principally the gait and step, of their thoughts
which betray them; they cannot _walk._ It was thus that even Napoleon,
to his profound chagrin, could not walk "legitimately" and in princely
fashion on occasions when it was necessary to do so properly, as in
great coronation processions and on similar occasions: even there he
was always just the leader of a column--proud and brusque at the same
time, and very self-conscious of it all.--It is something laughable to
see those writers who make the folding robes of their periods rustle
around them: they want to cover their _feet_.

283.

_Pioneers._--I greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and
warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again
into honour! For it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age,
and gather the force which the latter will one day require,--the age
which will carry heroism into knowledge, and _wage war_ for the sake
of ideas and their consequences. For that end many brave pioneers
are now needed, who, however, cannot originate out of nothing,--and
just as little out of the sand and slime of present-day civilisation
and the culture of great cities: men silent, solitary and resolute,
who know how to be content and persistent in invisible activity: men
who with innate disposition seek in all things that which is _to be
overcome_ in them: men to whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity, and
contempt of the great vanities belong just as much as do magnanimity in
victory and indulgence to the trivial vanities of all the vanquished:
men with an acute and independent judgment regarding all victors, and
concerning the part which chance has played in the winning of victory
and fame: men with their own holidays, their own work-days, and their
own periods of mourning; accustomed to command with perfect assurance,
and equally ready, if need be, to obey, proud in the one case as in
the other, equally serving their own interests: men more imperilled,
more productive, more happy! For believe me!--the secret of realising
the largest productivity and the greatest enjoyment of existence is
_to live in danger!_ Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send
your ships into unexplored seas! Live in war with your equals and with
yourselves! Be robbers and spoilers, ye knowing ones, as long as ye
cannot be rulers and possessors! The time will soon pass when you
can be satisfied to live like timorous deer concealed in the forests.
Knowledge will finally stretch out her hand for that which belongs to
her:--she means to _rule_ and _possess,_ and you with her!

284.

_Belief in Oneself_--In general, few men have belief in
themselves:--and of those few some are endowed with it as a useful
blindness or partial obscuration of intellect (what would they perceive
if they could see _to the bottom of themselves!_). The others must
first acquire the belief for themselves: everything good, clever, or
great that they do, is first of all an argument against the sceptic
that dwells in them: the question is how to convince or persuade _this
sceptic,_ and for that purpose genius almost is needed. They are
signally dissatisfied with themselves.

285.

_Excelsior!_--"Thou wilt never more pray, never more worship, never
more repose in infinite trust--thou refusest to stand still and
dismiss thy thoughts before an ultimate wisdom, an ultimate virtue, an
ultimate power,--thou hast no constant guardian and friend in thy seven
solitudes--thou livest without the outlook on a mountain that has snow
on its head and fire in its heart--there is no longer any requiter for
thee, nor any amender with, his finishing touch--there is no longer any
reason in that which happens, or any love in that which will happen
to thee--there is no longer any resting-place for thy weary heart,
where it has only to find and no longer to seek, thou art opposed to
any kind of ultimate peace, thou desirest the eternal recurrence of
war and peace:--man of renunciation, wilt thou renounce in all these
things? Who will give thee the strength to do so? No one has yet had
this strength!"--There is a lake which one day refused to flow away,
and threw up a dam at the place where it had hitherto discharged: since
then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very
renunciation will also furnish us with the strength with which the
renunciation itself can be borne; perhaps man will ever rise higher and
higher from that point onward, when he no longer _flows out_ into a God.

286.

_A Digression._--Here are hopes; but what will you see and hear of
them, if you have not experienced glance and glow and dawn of day in
your own souls? I can only suggest--I cannot do more! To move the
stones, to make animals men--would you have me do that? Alas, if you
are yet stones and animals, you must seek your Orpheus!

287.

_Love of Blindness._--"My thoughts," said the wanderer to his shadow,
"ought to show me where I stand, but they should not betray to me
_whither I go._ I love ignorance of the future, and do not want to come
to grief by impatience and anticipatory tasting of promised things."

288.

_Lofty Moods._--It seems to me that most men do not believe in lofty
moods, unless it be for the moment, or at the most for a quarter of
an hour,--except the few who know by experience a longer duration of
high feeling. But to be absolutely a man with a single lofty feeling,
the incarnation of a single lofty mood--that has hitherto been only a
dream and an enchanting possibility: history does not yet give us any
trustworthy example of it Nevertheless one might also some day produce
such men--when a multitude of favourable conditions have been created
and established, which at present even the happiest chance is unable to
throw together. Perhaps that very state which has hitherto entered into
our soul as an exception, felt with horror now and then, may be the
usual condition of those future souls: a continuous movement between
high and low, and the feeling of high and low, a constant state of
mounting as on steps, and at the same time reposing as on clouds.

289.

_Aboard Ship!_--When one considers how a full philosophical
justification of his mode of living and thinking operates upon every
individual--namely, as a warming, blessing, and fructifying sun,
specially shining on him; how it makes him independent of praise and
blame, self-sufficient, rich and generous in the bestowal of happiness
and kindness; how it unceasingly transforms the evil to the good,
brings all the energies to bloom and maturity, and altogether hinders
the growth of the greater and lesser weeds of chagrin and discontent
--one at last cries out importunately: Oh, that many such new suns were
created! The evil man, also, the unfortunate man, and the exceptional
man, shall each have his philosophy, his rights, and his sunshine! It
is not sympathy with them that is necessary!--we must unlearn this
arrogant fancy, notwithstanding that humanity has so long learned
it and used it exclusively,--we have not to set up any confessor,
exorcist, or pardoner for them! It is a new _justice,_ however, that is
necessary! And a new solution! And new philosophers! The moral earth
also is round! The moral earth also has its antipodes! The antipodes
also have their right to exist! there is still another world to
discover--and more than one! Aboard ship! ye philosophers!

290.

_One Thing is Needful_--To "give style" to one's character--that is
a grand and a rare art! He who surveys all that his nature presents
in its strength and in its weakness, and then fashions it into an
ingenious plan, until everything appears artistic and rational, and
even the weaknesses enchant the eye--exercises that admirable art. Here
there has been a great amount of second nature added, there a portion
of first nature has been taken away:--in both cases with long exercise
and daily labour at the task. Here the ugly, which does not permit of
being taken away, has been concealed, there it has been re-interpreted
into the sublime. Much of the vague, which refuses to take form, has
been reserved and utilised for the perspectives:--it is meant to give
a hint of the remote and immeasurable. In the end, when the work has
been completed, it is revealed how it was the constraint of the same
taste that organised and fashioned it in whole and in part: whether
the taste was good or bad is of less importance than one thinks,--it
is sufficient that it was _a taste!_--It will be the strong imperious
natures which experience their most refined joy in such constraint, in
such confinement and perfection under their own law; the passion of
their violent volition lessens at the sight of all disciplined nature,
all conquered and ministering nature: even when they have palaces to
build and gardens to lay out, it is not to their taste to allow nature
to be free.--It is the reverse with weak characters who have not power
over themselves, and _hate_ the restriction of style: they feel that if
this repugnant constraint were laid upon them, they would necessarily
become _vulgarised_ under it: they become slaves as soon as they serve,
they hate service. Such intellects--they may be intellects of the first
rank--are always concerned with fashioning and interpreting themselves
and their surroundings as _free_ nature--wild, arbitrary, fantastic,
confused and surprising: and it is well for them to do so, because only
in this manner can they please themselves! For one thing is needful:
namely, that man should _attain to_ satisfaction with himself--be it
but through this or that fable and artifice: it is only then that man's
aspect is at all endurable! He who is dissatisfied with himself is
ever ready to avenge himself on that account: we others will be his
victims, if only in having always to endure his ugly aspect. For the
aspect of the ugly makes one mean and sad.

291.

_Genoa._--I have looked upon this city, its villas and
pleasure-grounds, and the wide circuit of its inhabited heights and
slopes, for a considerable time: in the end I must say that I see
_countenances_ out of past generations,--this district is strewn with
the images of bold and autocratic men. They have _lived_ and have
wanted to live on--they say so with their houses, built and decorated
for centuries, and not for the passing hour: they were well disposed
to life, however ill-disposed they may often have been towards
themselves. I always see the builder, how he casts his eye on all
that is built around him far and near, and likewise on the city, the
sea, and the chain of mountains; how he expresses power and conquest
with his gaze: all this he wishes to fit into _his_ plan, and in the
end make it his _property,_ by its becoming a portion of the same.
The whole district is overgrown with this superb, insatiable egoism
of the desire to possess and exploit; and as these men when abroad
recognised no frontiers, and in their thirst for the new placed a new
world beside the old, so also at home everyone rose up against everyone
else, and devised some mode of expressing his superiority, and of
placing between himself and his neighbour his personal illimitableness.
Everyone won for himself his home once more by over-powering it with
his architectural thoughts, and by transforming it into a delightful
sight for his race. When we consider the mode of building cities in
the north, the law and the general delight in legality and obedience,
impose upon us: we thereby divine the propensity to equality and
submission which must have ruled in those builders. Here, however, on
turning every corner you find a man by himself, who knows the sea,
knows adventure, and knows the Orient, a man who is averse to law and
to neighbour, as if it bored him to have to do with them, a man who
scans all that is already old and established, with envious glances:
with a wonderful craftiness of fantasy, he would like, at least in
thought, to establish all this anew, to lay his hand upon it, and
introduce his meaning into it--if only for the passing hour of a sunny
afternoon, when for once his insatiable and melancholy soul feels
satiety, and when only what is his own, and nothing strange, may show
itself to his eye.

292.

_To the Preachers of Morality._--I do not mean to moralise, but to
those who do, I would give this advice: if you mean ultimately to
deprive the best things and the best conditions of all honour and
worth, continue to speak of them in the same way as heretofore! Put
them at the head of your morality, and speak from morning till night
of the happiness of virtue, of repose of soul, of righteousness, and
of reward and punishment in the nature of things: according as you
go on in this manner, all these good things will finally acquire a
popularity and a street-cry for themselves: but then all the gold on
them will also be worn off, and more besides: all the gold _in them_
will have changed into lead. Truly, you understand the reverse art of
alchemy, the depreciating of the most valuable things! Try, just for
once, another recipe, in order not to realise as hitherto the opposite
of what you mean to attain: _deny_ those good things, withdraw from
them the applause of the populace and discourage the spread of them,
make them once more the concealed chastities of solitary souls, and
say: _morality is something forbidden!_ Perhaps you will thus attract
to your cause the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the
_heroic._ But then there must be something formidable in it, and not
as hitherto something disgusting I Might one not be inclined to say at
present with reference to morality what Master Eckardt says: "I pray
God to deliver me from God!"

293.

_Our Atmosphere._--We know it well: in him who only casts a glance now
and then at science, as when taking a walk (in the manner of women,
and alas! also like many artists), the strictness in its service,
its inexorability in small matters as well as in great, its rapidity
in weighing, judging and condemning, produce something of a feeling
of giddiness and fright. It is especially terrifying to him that the
hardest is here demanded, that the best is done without the reward of
praise or distinction; it is rather as among soldiers--almost nothing
but blame and sharp reprimand _is heard_; for doing well prevails here
as the rule, doing ill as the exception; the rule, however, has, here
as everywhere, a silent tongue. It is the same with this "severity of
science" as with the manners and politeness of the best society: it
frightens the uninitiated. He, however, who is accustomed to it, does
not like to live anywhere but in this clear, transparent, powerful, and
highly electrified atmosphere, this _manly_ atmosphere. Anywhere else
it is not pure and airy enough for him: he suspects that _there_ his
best art would neither be properly advantageous to anyone else, nor a
delight to himself, that through misunderstandings half of his life
would slip through his fingers, that much foresight, much concealment,
and reticence would constantly be necessary,--nothing but great and
useless losses of power! In _this_ keen and clear element, however,
he has his entire power: here he can fly! Why should he again go down
into those muddy waters where he has to swim and wade and soil his
wings!--No! There it is too hard for us to live! we cannot help it that
we are born for the atmosphere, the pure atmosphere, we rivals of the
ray of light; and that we should like best to ride like it on the atoms
of ether, not away from the sun, but _towards the sun_! That, however,
we cannot do:--so we want to do the only thing that is in our power:
namely, to bring light to the earth, we want to be "the light of the
earth!" And for that purpose we have our wings and our swiftness and
our severity, on that account we are manly, and even terrible like the
fire. Let those fear us, who do not know how to warm and brighten
themselves by our influence!

294.

_Against the Disparagers of Nature._--They are disagreeable to me,
those men in whom every natural inclination forthwith becomes a
disease, something disfiguring, or even disgraceful. _They_ have
seduced us to the opinion that the inclinations and impulses of men are
evil; _they_ are the cause of our great injustice to our own nature,
and to all nature! There are enough of men who _may_ yield to their
impulses gracefully and carelessly: but they do not do so, for fear
of that imaginary "evil thing" in nature! _That is the cause_ why
there is so little nobility to be found among men: the indication of
which will always be to have no fear of oneself, to expect nothing
disgraceful from oneself, to fly without hesitation whithersoever we
are impelled--we free-born birds! Wherever we come, there will always
be freedom and sunshine around us.

295.

_Short-lived Habits._--I love short-lived habits, and regard them as an
invaluable means for getting a knowledge of _many_ things and various
conditions, to the very bottom of their sweetness and bitterness; my
nature is altogether arranged for short-lived habits, even in the needs
of its bodily health, and in general, _as far as_ I can see, from the
lowest up to the highest matters. I always think that _this_ will at
last satisfy me permanently (the short-lived habit has also this
characteristic belief of passion, the belief in everlasting duration;
I am to be envied for having found it and recognised it), and then it
nourishes me at noon and at eve, and spreads a profound satisfaction
around me and in me, so that I have no longing for anything else, not
needing to compare, or despise, or hate. But one day the habit has had
its time: the good thing separates from me, not as something which then
inspires disgust in me--but peaceably, and as though satisfied with
me, as I am with it; as if we had to be mutually thankful, and _thus_
shook hands for farewell. And already the new habit waits at the door,
and similarly also my belief--indestructible fool and sage that I
am!--that this new habit will be the right one, the ultimate right one.
So it is with me as regards foods, thoughts, men, cities, poems, music,
doctrines, arrangements of the day, and modes of life.--On the other
hand, I hate _permanent_ habits, and feel as if a tyrant came into
my neighbourhood, and as if my life's breath _condensed,_ when events
take such a form that permanent habits seem necessarily to grow out
of them: for example, through an official position, through constant
companionship with the same persons, through a settled abode, or
through a uniform state of health. Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I
am gratefully disposed to all my misery and sickness, and to whatever
is imperfect in me, because such things leave me a hundred back-doors
through which I can escape from permanent habits. The most unendurable
thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without
habits, a life which continually required improvisation:--that would
be my banishment and my Siberia.

296.

_A Fixed Reputation._--A fixed reputation was formerly a matter of
the very greatest utility; and wherever society continues to be
ruled by the herd-instinct, it is still most suitable for every
individual _to give_ to his character and business _the appearance_
of unalterableness,--even when they are not so in reality. "One can
rely on him, he remains the same"--that is the praise which has most
significance in all dangerous conditions of society. Society feels with
satisfaction that it has a reliable _tool_ ready at all times in the
virtue of this one, in the ambition of that one, and in the reflection
and passion of a third one,--it honours this _tool-like nature,_ this
self-constancy, this unchangeableness in opinions, efforts, and even in
faults, with the highest honours. Such a valuation, which prevails and
has prevailed everywhere simultaneously with the morality of custom,
educates "characters," and brings all changing, re-learning, and
self-transforming into _disrepute._ Be the advantage of this mode of
thinking ever so great otherwise, it is in any case the mode of judging
which is most injurious _to knowledge:_ for precisely the good-will of
the knowing one ever to declare himself unhesitatingly as _opposed_ to
his former opinions, and in general to be distrustful of all that wants
to be fixed in him--is here condemned and brought into disrepute. The
disposition of the thinker, as incompatible with a "fixed reputation,"
is regarded as _dishonourable,_ while the petrifaction of opinions has
all the honour to itself:--we have at present still to live under the
interdict of such rules! How difficult it is to live when one feels
that the judgment of many millenniums is around one and against one. It
is probable that for many millenniums knowledge was afflicted with a
bad conscience, and there must have been much self-contempt and secret
misery in the history of the greatest intellects.

297.

_Ability to Contradict_--Everyone knows at present that the ability,
to endure contradiction is a good indication of culture. Some people
even know that the higher man courts opposition, and provokes it, so as
to get a cue to his hitherto unknown partiality. But the _ability_ to
contradict, the attainment of a _good_ conscience in hostility to the
accustomed, the traditional and the hallowed,--that is more than both
the above-named abilities, and is the really great, new and astonishing
thing in our culture, the step of all steps of the emancipated
intellect: who knows that?--

298.

_A Sigh._--I caught this notion on the way, and rapidly took the
readiest, poor words to hold it fast, so that it might not again fly
away. But it has died in these dry words, and hangs and flaps about in
them--and now I hardly know, when I look upon it, how I could have had
such happiness when I caught this bird.

299.

_What one should Learn from Artists._--What means have we for making
things beautiful, attractive, and desirable, when they are not so?--and
I suppose they are never so in themselves! We have here something to
learn from physicians, when, for example, they dilute what is bitter,
or put wine and sugar into their mixing-bowl; but we have still more to
learn from artists, who in fact, are continually concerned in devising
such inventions and artifices. To withdraw from things until one no
longer sees much of them, until one has even to see things into them,
_in order to see them at all_--or to view them from the side, and as in
a frame--or to place them so that they partly disguise themselves and
only permit of perspective views--or to look at them through coloured
glasses, or in the light of the sunset--or to furnish them with a
surface or skin which is not fully transparent: we should learn all
this from artists, and moreover be wiser than they. For this fine power
of theirs usually ceases with them where art ceases and life begins;
_we,_ however, want to be the poets of our lives, and first of all in
the smallest and most commonplace matters.

300.

_Prelude to Science._--Do you believe then that the sciences would
have arisen and grown up if the sorcerers, alchemists, astrologers
and witches had not been their forerunners; those who, with their
promisings and foreshadowings, had first to create a thirst, a hunger,
and a taste for _hidden and forbidden_ powers? Yea, that infinitely
more had to be _promised_ than could ever be fulfilled, in order that
something might be fulfilled in the domain of knowledge? Perhaps
the whole of _religion,_ also, may appear to some distant age as an
exercise and a prelude, in like manner as the prelude and preparation
of science here exhibit themselves, though _not_ at all practised and
regarded as such. Perhaps religion may have been the peculiar means for
enabling individual men to enjoy but once the entire self-satisfaction
of a God and all his self-redeeming power. Indeed!--one may ask--would
man have learned at all to get on the tracks of hunger and thirst
for _himself,_ and to extract satiety and fullness out of _himself,_
without that religious schooling and preliminary history? Had
Prometheus first to _fancy_ that he had _stolen_ the light, and that he
did penance for the theft,--in order finally to discover that he had
created the light, _in that he had longed for the light,_ and that not
only man, but also _God,_ had been the work of _his_ hands and the clay
in his hands? All mere creations of the creator?--just as the illusion,
the theft, the Caucasus, the vulture, and the whole tragic Prometheia
of all thinkers?

301.

_Illusion of the Contemplative._--Higher men are distinguished from
lower, by seeing and hearing immensely more, and in a thoughtful
manner--and it is precisely this that distinguishes man from the
animal, and the higher animal from the lower. The world always becomes
fuller for him who grows up to the full stature of humanity; there are
always more interesting fishing-hooks, thrown out to him; the number of
his stimuli is continually on the increase, and similarly the varieties
of his pleasure and pain,--the higher man becomes always at the same
time happier and unhappier. An _illusion,_ however, is his constant
accompaniment all along: he thinks he is placed as a _spectator_ and
_auditor_ before the great pantomime and concert of life; he calls his
nature a _contemplative nature,_ and thereby overlooks the fact that
he himself is also a real creator, and continuous poet of life,--that
he no doubt differs greatly from the _actor_ in this drama, the
so-called practical man, but differs still more from a mere onlooker or
spectator _before_ the stage. There is certainly _vis contemplativa,_
and re-examination of his work peculiar to him as poet, but at the
same time, and first and foremost, he has the _vis creativa,_ which
the practical man or doer _lacks,_ whatever appearance and current
belief may say to the contrary. It is we, who think and feel, that
actually and unceasingly _make_ something which did not before exist:
the whole eternally increasing world of valuations, colours, weights,
perspectives, gradations, affirmations and negations. This composition
of ours is continually learnt, practised, and translated into flesh and
actuality, and even into the commonplace, by the so-called practical
men (our actors, as we have said). Whatever has _value_ in the
present world, has not it in itself, by its nature,--nature is always
worthless:--but a value was once given to it, bestowed upon it and it
was _we_ who gave and bestowed! We only have created the world _which
is of any account to man!_--But it is precisely this knowledge that we
lack, and when we get hold of it for a moment we have forgotten it the
next: we misunderstand our highest power, we contemplative men, and
estimate ourselves at too low a rate,--we are neither as _proud nor as
happy_ as we might be.

302.

_The Danger of the Happiest Ones._--To have fine senses and a fine
taste; to be accustomed to the select and the intellectually best as
our proper and readiest fare; to be blessed with a strong, bold, and
daring soul; to go through life with a quiet eye and a firm step,
ever ready for the worst as for a festival, and full of longing for
undiscovered worlds and seas, men and Gods; to listen to all joyous
music, as if there perhaps brave men, soldiers and seafarers, took a
brief repose and enjoyment, and in the profoundest pleasure of the
moment were overcome with tears and the whole purple melancholy of
happiness: who would not like all this to be _his_ possession, his
condition! It was the _happiness of Homerr_! The condition of him who
invented the Gods for the Greeks,--nay, who invented _his_ Gods for
himself! But let us not conceal the fact that with this happiness of
Homer in one's soul, one is more liable to suffering than any other
creature under the sun! And only at this price do we purchase the most
precious pearl that the waves of existence have hitherto washed ashore!
As its possessor one always becomes more sensitive to pain, and at
last too sensitive: a little displeasure and loathing sufficed in the
end to make Homer disgusted with life. He was unable to solve a foolish
little riddle which some young fishers proposed to him! Yes, the little
riddles are the dangers of the happiest ones!--

303.

_Two Happy Ones._--Certainly this man, notwithstanding his youth,
understands the _improvisation of life,_ and astonishes even the
acutest observers. For it seems that he never makes a mistake,
although he constantly plays the most hazardous games. One is reminded
of the improvising masters of the musical art, to whom even the
listeners would fain ascribe a divine _infallibility_ of the hand,
notwithstanding that they now and then make a mistake, as every mortal
is liable to do. But they are skilled and inventive, and always ready
in a moment to arrange into the structure of the score the most
accidental tone (where the jerk of a finger or a humour brings it
about), and to animate the accident with a fine meaning and soul.--Here
is quite a different man: everything that he intends and plans fails
with him in the long run. That on which he has now and again set his
heart has already brought him several times to the abyss, and to the
very verge of ruin; and if he has as yet got out of the scrape, it
certainly has not been merely with a "black eye." Do you think he is
unhappy over it? He resolved long ago not to regard his own wishes and
plans as of so much importance. "If this does not succeed with me,"
he says to himself, "perhaps that will succeed; and on the whole I do
not know but that I am under more obligation to thank my failures than
any of my successes. Am I made to be headstrong, and to wear the bull's
horns? That which constitutes the worth and the sum of life _for me,_
lies somewhere else; I know more of life, because I have been so often
on the point of losing it; and just on that account I _have_ more of
life than any of you!"

304.

_In Doing we Leave Undone._--In the main all those moral systems are
distasteful to me which say: "Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome
thyself!" On the other hand I am favourable to those moral systems
which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning
till evening, to dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to
do it _well,_ as well as is possible for _me_ alone! From him who so
lives there fall off one after the other the things that do not pertain
to such a life: without hatred or antipathy, he sees _this_ take leave
of him to-day, and _that_ to-morrow, like the yellow leaves which every
livelier breeze strips from the tree: or he does not see at all that
they take leave of him, so firmly is his eye fixed upon his goal, and
generally forward, not sideways, backward, or downward. "Our doing must
determine what we leave undone; in that we do, we leave undone"--so
it pleases me, so runs _my placitum._ But I do not mean to strive with
open eyes for my impoverishment; I do not like any of the negative
virtues whose very essence is negation and self-renunciation.

305.

_Self-control--_Those moral teachers who first and foremost order man
to get himself into his own power, induce thereby a curious infirmity
in him--namely, a constant sensitiveness with reference to all natural
strivings and inclinations, and as it were, a sort of itching. Whatever
may henceforth drive him, draw him, allure or impel him, whether
internally or externally--it always seems to this sensitive being as if
his self-control were in danger: he is no longer at liberty to trust
himself to any instinct, to any free flight, but stands constantly with
defensive mien, armed against himself, with sharp distrustful eye, the
eternal watcher of his stronghold, to which office he has appointed
himself. Yes, he can be _great_ in that position! But how unendurable
he has now become to others, how difficult even for himself to bear,
how impoverished and cut off from the finest accidents of his soul!
Yea, even from all further _instruction! _ For we must be able to lose
ourselves at times, if we want to learn something of what we have not
in ourselves.

306.

_Stoic and Epicurean._--The Epicurean selects the situations, the
persons, and even the events which suits his extremely sensitive,
intellectual constitution; he renounces the rest--that is to say, by
far the greater part of experience--because it would be too strong and
too heavy fare for him. The Stoic, on the contrary, accustoms himself
to swallow stones and vermin, glass-splinters and scorpions, without
feeling any disgust: his stomach is meant to become indifferent in the
end to all that the accidents of existence cast into it:--he reminds
one of the Arabic sect of the Assaua, with which the French became
acquainted in Algiers; and like those insensible persons, he also likes
well to have an invited public at the exhibition of his insensibility,
the very thing the Epicurean willingly dispenses with:--he has of
course his "garden"! Stoicism may be quite advisable for men with whom
fate improvises, for those who live in violent times and are dependent
on abrupt and changeable individuals. He, however, who _anticipates_
that fate will permit him to spin "a long thread," does well to make
his arrangements in Epicurean fashion; all men devoted to intellectual
labour have done it hitherto! For it would be a supreme loss to them to
forfeit their fine sensibility, and to acquire the hard, stoical hide
with hedgehog prickles in exchange.

307.

_In Favour of Criticism._--Something now appears to thee as an error
which thou formerly lovedst as a truth, or as a probability: thou
pushest it from thee and imaginest that thy reason has there gained a
victory. But perhaps that error was then, when thou wast still another
person--thou art always another person,--just as necessary to thee as
all thy present "truths," like a skin, as it were, which concealed and
veiled from thee much which thou still mayst not see. Thy new life,
and not thy reason, has slain that opinion for thee: _thou dost not
require it any longer,_ and now it breaks down of its own accord, and
the irrationality crawls out of it as a worm into the light. When we
make use of criticism it is not something arbitrary and impersonal,--it
is, at least very often, a proof that there are lively, active forces
in us, which cast a skin. We deny, and must deny, because something in
us _wants_ to live and affirm itself, something which we perhaps do not
as yet know, do not as yet see!--So much in favour of criticism.

308.

_The History of each Day.--_What is it that constitutes the history
of each day for thee? Look at thy habits of which it consists: are
they the product of numberless little acts of cowardice and laziness,
or of thy bravery and inventive reason? Although the two cases are so
different, it is possible that men might bestow the same praise upon
thee, and that thou mightst also be equally useful to them in the one
case as in the other. But praise and utility and respectability may
suffice for him whose only desire is to have a good conscience,--not
however for thee, the "trier of the reins," who hast a _consciousness
of the conscience!_

309.

_Out of the Seventh Solitude._--One day the wanderer shut a door behind
him, stood still, and wept. Then he said: "Oh, this inclination and
impulse towards the true, the real, the non-apparent, the certain! How
I detest it! Why does this gloomy and passionate taskmaster follow
just _me?_ I should like to rest, but it does not permit me to do so.
Are there not a host of things seducing me to tarry! Everywhere there
are gardens of Armida for me, and therefore there will ever be fresh
separations and fresh bitterness of heart! I must set my foot forward,
my weary wounded foot: and because I feel I must do this, I often cast
grim glances back at the most beautiful things which could not detain
me--_because_ they could not detain me!"

310.

_Will and Wave._--How eagerly this wave comes hither, as if it were
a question of its reaching something! How it creeps with frightful
haste into the innermost corners of the rocky cliff! It seems that
it wants to forestall some one; it seems that something is concealed
there that has value, high value.--And now it retreats somewhat more
slowly, still quite white with excitement,--is it disappointed? Has it
found what it sought? Does it merely pretend to be disappointed?--But
already another wave approaches, still more eager and wild than the
first, and its soul also seems to be full of secrets, and of longing
for treasure-seeking. Thus live the waves,--thus live we who exercise
will!--I do not say more.--But what! Ye distrust me? Ye are angry at
me, ye beautiful monsters? Do ye fear that I will quite betray your
secret? Well! Just be angry with me, raise your green, dangerous
bodies as high as ye can, make a wall between me and the sun--as at
present! Verily, there is now nothing more left of the world save
green twilight and green lightning-flashes. Do as ye will, ye wanton
creatures, roar with delight and wickedness--or dive under again, pour
your emeralds down into the depths, and cast your endless white tresses
of foam and spray over them--it is all the same to me, for all is so
well with you, and I am so pleased with you for it all: how could I
betray _you!_ For--take this to heart!--I know you and your secret, I
know your race! You and I are indeed of one race! You and I have indeed
one secret!

311.

_Broken Lights._--We are not always brave, and when we are weary,
people of our stamp are liable to lament occasionally in this
wise:--"It is so hard to cause pain to men--oh, that it should be
necessary! What good is it to live concealed, when we do not want to
keep to ourselves that which causes vexation? Would it not be more
advisable to live in the madding crowd, and compensate individuals
for sins that are committed, and must be committed, against mankind
in general? Foolish with fools, vain with the vain, enthusiastic
with enthusiasts? Would that not be reasonable when there is such
an inordinate amount of divergence in the main? When I hear of the
malignity of others against me--is not my first feeling that of
satisfaction? It is well that it should be so!--I seem to myself to say
to them--I am so little in harmony with you, and have so much truth
on my side: see henceforth that ye be merry at my expense as often as
ye can! Here are my defects and mistakes, here are my illusions, my
bad taste, my confusion, my tears, my vanity, my owlish concealment,
my contradictions! Here you have something to laugh at! Laugh then,
and enjoy yourselves! I am not averse to the law and nature of things,
which is that defects and errors should give pleasure!--To be sure,
there were once 'more glorious' times, when as soon as any one got
an idea, however moderately new it might be, he would think himself
so _indispensable_ as to go out into the street with it, and call to
everybody: 'Behold! the kingdom of heaven is at hand!'--I should not
miss myself, if I were a-wanting. We are none of us indispensable!"--As
we have said, however, we do not think thus when we are brave; we do
not think _about it_ at all.

312.

_My Dog._--I have given a name to my pain, and call it "a dog,"--it
is just as faithful, just as importunate and shameless, just as
entertaining, just as wise, as any other dog--and I can domineer
over it, and vent my bad humour on it, as others do with their dogs,
servants, and wives.

313.

_No Picture of a Martyr._--I will take my cue from Raphael, and not
paint any more martyr-pictures. There are enough of sublime things
without its being necessary to seek sublimity where it is linked with
cruelty; moreover my ambition would not be gratified in the least if I
aspired to be a sublime executioner.

314.

_New Domestic Animals._--I want to have my lion and my eagle about me,
that I may always have hints and premonitions concerning the amount of
my strength or weakness. Must I look down on them to-day, and be afraid
of them? And will the hour come once more when they will look up to me,
and tremble?--

315.

_The Last Hour._--Storms are my danger. Shall I have my storm in which
I perish, as Oliver Cromwell perished in his storm? Or shall I go out
as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and
weary of itself--a burnt-out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself
out, so as _not to burn out?_

316.

_Prophetic Men._--Ye cannot divine how sorely prophetic men suffer: ye
think only that a fine "gift" has been given to them, and would fain
have it yourselves,--but I will express my meaning by a simile. How
much may not the animals suffer from the electricity of the atmosphere
and the clouds! Some of them, as we see, have a prophetic faculty with
regard to the weather, for example, apes (as one can observe very well
even in Europe,--and not only in menageries, but at Gibraltar). But
it never occurs to us that it is their _sufferings_--that are their
prophets! When strong positive electricity, under the influence of
an approaching cloud not at all visible, is suddenly converted into
negative electricity, and an alteration of the weather is imminent,
these animals then behave as if an enemy were approaching them, and
prepare for defence, or flight: they generally hide themselves,--they
do not think of the bad weather as weather, but as an enemy whose hand
they already _feel!_

317.

_Retrospect._--We seldom become conscious of the real pathos of any
period of life as such, as long as we continue in it, but always
think it is the only possible and reasonable thing for us henceforth,
and that it is altogether _ethos_ and not _pathos_[1]--to speak and
distinguish like the Greeks. A few notes of music to-day recalled a
winter and a house, and a life of utter solitude to my mind, and at the
same time the sentiments in which I then lived: I thought I should be
able to live in such a state always. But now I understand that it was
entirely pathos and passion, something comparable to this painfully
bold and truly comforting music,--it is not one's lot to have these
sensations for years, still less for eternities: otherwise one would
become too "ethereal" for this planet.

[1] The distinction between ethos and pathos in Aristotle is, broadly,
that between internal character and external circumstance.--P. V. C.

318.

_Wisdom in Pain._--In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure:
like the latter it is one of the best self-preservatives of a species.
Were it not so, pain would long ago have been done away with; that it
is hurtful is no argument against it, for to be hurtful is its very
essence. In pain I hear the commanding call of the ship's captain:
"Take in sail!" "Man," the bold seafarer, must have learned to set
his sails in a thousand different ways, otherwise he could not have
sailed long, for the ocean would soon have swallowed him up. We must
also know how to live with reduced energy: as soon as pain gives its
precautionary signal, it is time to reduce the speed--some great
danger, some storm, is approaching, and we do well to "catch" as little
wind as possible--It is true that there are men who, on the approach of
severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear
more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing;
indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These
are the heroic men, the great _pain-bringers_ of mankind: those few
and rare ones who need just the same apology as pain generally,--and
verily, it should not be denied them! They are forces of the greatest
importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because
they are opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this
kind of happiness.

319.

_As Interpreters of our Experiences._--One form of honesty has always
been lacking among founders of religions and their kin:--they have
never made their experiences a matter of the intellectual conscience.
"What did I really experience? What then took place in me and around
me? Was my understanding clear enough? Was my will directly opposed
to all deception of the senses, and courageous in its defence against
fantastic notions?"--None of them ever asked these questions, nor
to this day do any of the good religious people ask them. They have
rather a thirst for things which are _contrary to reason,_ and they
don't want to have too much difficulty in satisfying this thirst,--so
they experience "miracles" and "regenerations," and hear the voices of
angels! But we who are different, who are thirsty for reason, want to
look as carefully into our experiences as in the case of a scientific
experiment, hour by hour, day by day! We ourselves want to be our own
experiments, and our own subjects of experiment.

320.

_On Meeting Again._--A: Do I quite understand you? You are in search
of something? _Where,_ in the midst of the present, actual world, is
_your_ niche and star? Where can _you_ lay yourself in the sun, so that
you also may have a surplus of well-being, that your existence may
justify itself? Let everyone do that for himself--you seem to say,
--and let him put talk about generalities, concern for others and
society, out of his mind!--B: I want more; I am no seeker. I want to
create my own sun for myself.

321.

_A New Precaution._--Let us no longer think so much about punishing,
blaming, and improving! We shall seldom be able to alter an individual,
and if we should succeed in doing so, something else may also succeed,
perhaps unawares: _we_ may have been altered by him! Let us rather see
to it that our own influence on _all that is to come_ outweighs and
overweighs his influence! Let us not struggle in direct conflict!--all
blaming, punishing, and desire to improve comes under this category.
But let us elevate ourselves all the higher! Let us ever give to our
pattern more shining colours! Let us obscure, the other by our light!
No! We do not mean to become _darker_ ourselves on his account, like
those who punish and are discontented! Let us rather go aside! Let us
look away!

322.

_A Simile._--Those thinkers in whom all the stars move in cyclic
orbits, are not the most profound. He who looks into himself, as into
an immense universe, and carries Milky Ways in himself, knows also
how irregular all Milky Ways are; they lead into the very chaos and
labyrinth of existence.

323.

_Happiness in Destiny._--Destiny confers its greatest distinction
upon us when it has made us fight for a time on the side of our
adversaries. We are thereby _predestined_ to a great victory.

324.

_In Media Vita._--No! Life has not deceived me! On the contrary, from
year to year I find it richer, more desirable and more mysterious--from
the day on which the great liberator broke my fetters, the thought
that life may be an experiment of the thinker--and not a duty, not
a fatality, not a deceit!--And knowledge itself may be for others
something different; for example, a bed of ease, or the path to a
bed of ease, or an entertainment, or a course of idling,--for me
it is a world of dangers and victories, in which even the heroic
sentiments have their arena and dancing-floor. _"Life as a means to
knowledge"_--with this principle in one's heart, one can not only be
brave, but can even _live joyfully and laugh joyfully!_ And who could
know how to laugh well and live well, who did not first understand the
full significance of war and victory?

325.

_What Belongs to Greatness._--Who can attain to anything great if he
does not feel in himself the force and will _to inflict_ great pain?
The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and
even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal
distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry
of it--that is great, that belongs to greatness.

326.

_Physicians of the Soul and Pain._--All preachers of morality, as
also all theologians, have a bad habit in common: all of them try to
persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical
cure is necessary. And because mankind as a whole has for centuries
listened too eagerly to those teachers, something of the superstition
that the human race is in a very bad way has actually come over men:
so that they are now far too ready to sigh; they find nothing more
in life and make melancholy faces at each other, as if life were
indeed very hard _to endure._ In truth, they are inordinately assured
of their life and in love with it, and full of untold intrigues and
subtleties for suppressing everything disagreeable, and for extracting
the thorn from pain and misfortune. It seems to me that people always
speak _with exaggeration_ about pain and misfortune, as if it were a
matter of good behaviour to exaggerate here: on the other hand people
are intentionally silent in regard to the number of expedients for
alleviating pain; as for instance, the deadening of it, feverish
flurry of thought, a peaceful position, or good and bad reminiscences,
intentions, and hopes,--also many kinds of pride and fellow-feeling,
which have almost the effect of anæsthetics: while in the greatest
degree of pain fainting takes place of itself. We understand very well
how to pour sweetness on our bitterness, especially on the bitterness
of our soul; we find a remedy in our bravery and sublimity, as well
as in the nobler delirium of submission and resignation. A loss
scarcely remains a loss for an hour: in some way or other a gift from
heaven has always fallen into our lap at the same moment--a new form
of strength, for example: be it but a new opportunity for the exercise
of strength! What have the preachers of morality not dreamt concerning
the inner "misery" of evil men! What _lies_ have they not told us
about the misfortunes of impassioned men! Yes, lying is here the right
word: they were only too well aware of the overflowing happiness of
this kind of man, but they kept silent as death about it; because it
was a refutation of their theory, according to which happiness only
originates through the annihilation of the passions and the silencing
of the will! And finally, as regards the recipe of all those physicians
of the soul and their recommendation of a severe radical cure, we may
be allowed to ask: Is our life really painful and burdensome enough
for us to exchange it with advantage for a Stoical mode of living, and
Stoical petrification? We do _not_ feel _sufficiently miserable_ to
have to feel ill in the Stoical fashion!

327.

_Taking Things Seriously._--The intellect is with most people an
awkward, obscure and creaking machine, which is difficult to set in
motion: they call it "_taking a thing seriously_" when they work with
this machine and want to think well--oh, how burdensome must good
thinking be to them! That delightful animal, man, seems to lose his
good-humour whenever he thinks well; he becomes "serious"! And "where
there is laughing and gaiety, thinking cannot be worth anything:
"--so speaks the prejudice of this serious animal against all "Joyful
Wisdom."--Well, then! Let us show that it is prejudice!

328.

_Doing Harm to Stupidity._--It is certain that the belief in the
reprehensibility of egoism, preached with such stubbornness and
conviction, has on the whole done harm to egoism (_in favour of the
herd-instinct,_ as I shall repeat a hundred times!), especially by
depriving it of a good conscience, and by bidding us seek in it the
source of all misfortune. "Thy selfishness is the bane of thy life"--so
rang the preaching for millenniums: it did harm, as we have said,
to selfishness, and deprived it of much spirit, much cheerfulness,
much ingenuity, and much beauty; it stultified and deformed and
poisoned selfishness!--Philosophical antiquity, on the other hand,
taught that there was another principal source of evil: from Socrates
downwards, the thinkers were never weary of preaching that "your
thoughtlessness and stupidity, your unthinking way of living according
to rule, and your subjection to the opinion of your neighbour, are
the reasons why you so seldom attain to happiness,--we thinkers are,
as thinkers, the happiest of mortals." Let us not decide here whether
this preaching against stupidity was more sound than the preaching
against selfishness; it is certain, however, that stupidity was thereby
deprived of its good conscience:--those philosophers _did harm to
stupidity._

329.

_Leisure and Idleness._--There is an Indian savagery, a savagery
peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans
strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work--the
characteristic vice of the new world--already begins to infect
old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange
lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long
reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with
a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial
newspaper; we live like men who are continually "afraid of letting
opportunities slip." "Better do anything whatever, than nothing"--this
principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste
may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this
hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye
for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is
the _clumsy perspicuity_ which is now everywhere demanded in all
positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows,
in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers,
pupils, leaders and princes,--one has no longer either time or energy
for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any _esprit_ in
conversation, or for any _otium_ whatever. For life in the hunt for
gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to
exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling:
the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than
another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse
_permitted:_ in them, however, people are tired, and would not only
like "to let themselves go," but _to stretch their legs_ out wide in
awkward style. The way people write their _letters_ nowadays is quite
in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true
"sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art,
it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh,
this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh,
this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! _Work_ is winning over
more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment
already calls itself "need of recreation," and even begins to be
ashamed of itself. "One owes it to one's health," people say, when they
are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could
not yield to the desire for the _vita contemplativa_ (that is to say,
excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad
conscience.--Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action"
that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family _concealed_
his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under
the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible:--the
"doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in _otium_ and
_bellum_ is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient
prejudice!

330.

_Applause._--The thinker does not need applause or the clapping of
hands, provided he be sure of the clapping of his own hands: the
latter, however, he cannot do without. Are there men who could also
do without this, and in general without any kind of applause? I doubt
it: and even as regards the wisest, Tacitus, who is no calumniator
of the wise, says: _quando etiam sapientibus gloriæ cupido novissima
exuitur_--that means with him: never.

331.

_Better Deaf than Deafened._--Formerly a person wanted to have his
_calling,_ but that no longer suffices to-day, for the market has
become too large,--there has now to be _bawling._ The consequence
is that even good throats outcry each other, and the best wares are
offered for sale with hoarse voices; without market-place bawling and
hoarseness there is now no longer any genius.--It is, sure enough, an
evil age for the thinker: he has to learn to find his stillness betwixt
two noises, and has to pretend to be deaf until he finally becomes so.
As long as he has not learned this, he is in danger of perishing from
impatience and headaches.

332.

_The Evil Hour._--There has perhaps been an evil hour for every
philosopher, in which he thought: What do I matter, if people should
not believe my poor arguments!--And then some malicious bird has flown
past him and twittered: "What do you matter? What do you matter?"

333.

_What does Knowing Mean?--Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed
intelligere!_ says Spinoza, so simply and sublimely, as is his wont.
Nevertheless, what else is this _intelligere_ ultimately, but just
the form in which the three other things become perceptible to us all
at once? A result of the diverging and opposite impulses of desiring
to deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge is possible each of
these impulses must first have brought forward its one-sided view of
the object or event. The struggle of these one-sided views occurs
afterwards, and out of it there occasionally arises a compromise, a
pacification, a recognition of rights on all three sides, a sort of
justice and agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agreement
all those impulses can maintain themselves in existence and retain
their mutual rights. We, to whose consciousness only the closing
reconciliation scenes and final settling of accounts of these long
processes manifest themselves, think on that account that _intelligere_
is something conciliating, just and good, something essentially
antithetical to the impulses; whereas it is only _a certain relation of
the impulses to one another._ For a very long time conscious thinking
was regarded as the only thinking: it is now only that the truth dawns
upon us that the greater part of our intellectual activity goes on
unconsciously and unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the impulses
which are here in mutual conflict understand rightly how to make
themselves felt by _one another,_ and how to cause pain:--the violent
sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers, may have its origin
here (it is the exhaustion of the battle-field). Aye, perhaps in our
struggling interior there is much concealed _heroism,_ but certainly
nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-itself, as Spinoza supposed.
_Conscious_ thinking, and especially that of the philosopher, is the
weakest, and on that account also the relatively mildest and quietest
mode of thinking: and thus it is precisely the philosopher who is most
easily misled concerning the nature of knowledge.

334.

_One must Learn to Love.--_This is our experience in music: we must
first _learn_ in general _to hear,_ to hear fully, and to distinguish a
theme or a melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by itself;
then we need to exercise effort and good-will in order _to endure_ it
in spite of its strangeness we need patience towards its aspect and
expression and indulgence towards what is odd in it:--in the end there
comes a moment when we are _accustomed_ to it, when we expect it, when
it dawns upon us that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then
it goes on to exercise its spell and charm more and more, and does not
cease until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers, who want
it, and want it again, and ask for nothing better from the world.--It
is thus with us, however, not only in music: it is precisely thus
that we have _learned to love_ everything that we love. We are always
finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience reasonableness
and gentleness towards what is unfamiliar, by the unfamiliar slowly
throwing off its veil and presenting itself to us as a new, ineffable
beauty:--that is its _thanks_ for our hospitality. He also who loves
himself must have learned it in this way: there is no other way. Love
also has to be learned.

335.

_Cheers for Physics!_--How many men are there who know how to observe?
And among the few who do know,--how many observe themselves? "Everyone
is furthest from himself"--all the "triers of the reins" know that
to their discomfort; and the saying, "Know thyself," in the mouth
of a God and spoken to man, is almost a mockery. But that the case
of self-observation is so desperate, is attested best of all by the
manner in which _almost everybody_ talks of the nature of a moral
action, that prompt, willing, convinced, loquacious manner, with its
look, its smile, and its pleasing eagerness! Everyone seems inclined
to say to you: "Why, my dear Sir, that is precisely _my_ affair! You
address yourself with your question to him who _is authorised_ to
answer, for I happen to be wiser with regard to this matter than in
anything else. Therefore, when a man decides that '_this is right_,'
when he accordingly concludes that '_it must therefore be done,_ and
thereupon _does_ what he has thus recognised as right and designated
as necessary--then the nature of his action is _moral!"_ But, my
friend, you are talking to me about three actions instead of one: your
deciding, for instance, that "this is right," is also an action,--could
one not judge either morally or immorally? _Why_ do you regard
this, and just this, as right?--"Because my conscience tells me so;
conscience never speaks immorally, indeed it determines in the first
place what shall be moral!"--But why do you _listen_ to the voice of
your conscience? And in how far are you justified in regarding such a
judgment as true and infallible? This _belief_--is there no further
conscience for it? Do you know nothing of an intellectual conscience?
A conscience behind your "conscience"? Your decision, "this is right,"
has a previous history in your impulses, your likes and dislikes, your
experiences and non-experiences; "_how_ has it originated?" you must
ask, and afterwards the further question: "_what_ really impels me to
give ear to it?" You can listen to its command like a brave soldier
who hears the command of his officer. Or like a woman who loves him
who commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid of the commander.
Or like a blockhead who follows because he has nothing to say to the
contrary. In short, you can give ear to your conscience in a hundred
different ways. But _that_ you hear this or that judgment as the voice
of conscience, consequently, _that_ you feel a thing to be right--may
have its cause in the fact that you have never thought about your
nature, and have blindly accepted from your childhood what has been
designated to you as _right:_ or in the fact that hitherto bread
and honours have fallen to your share with that which you call your
duty,--it is "right" to you, because it seems to be _your_ "condition
of existence" (that you, however, have a _right_ to existence seems
to you irrefutable!). The _persistency_ of your moral judgment might
still be just a proof of personal wretchedness or impersonality; your
"moral force" might have its source in your obstinacy--or in your
incapacity to perceive new ideals! And to be brief: if you had thought
more acutely, observed more accurately, and had learned more, you would
no longer under all circumstances call this and that your "duty" and
your "conscience": the knowledge _how moral judgments have in general
always originated_ would make you tired of these pathetic words,--as
you have already grown tired of other pathetic words, for instance
"sin," "salvation," and "redemption."--And now, my friend, do not talk
to me about the categorical imperative! That word tickles my ear,
and I must laugh in spite of your presence and your seriousness. In
this connection I recollect old Kant, who, as a punishment for having
_gained possession surreptitiously_ of the "thing in itself"--also a
very ludicrous affair!--was imposed upon by the categorical imperative,
and with that in his heart _strayed back again_ to "God," the "soul,"
"freedom," and "immortality," like a fox which strays back into its
cage: and it had been _his_ strength and shrewdness which had _broken
open_ this cage!--What? You admire the categorical imperative in you?
This "persistency" of your so-called moral judgment? This absoluteness
of the feeling that "as I think on this matter, so must everyone
think"? Admire rather your _selfishness_ therein! And the blindness,
paltriness, and modesty of your selfishness! For it is selfishness in a
person to regard _his_ judgment as universal law, and a blind, paltry
and modest selfishness besides, because it betrays that you have not
yet discovered yourself, that you have not yet created for yourself
any personal, quite personal ideal:--for this could never be the ideal
of another, to say nothing of all, of every one!--He who still thinks
that "each would have to act in this manner in this case," has not yet
advanced half a dozen paces in self-knowledge: otherwise he would know
that there neither are, nor can be, similar actions,--that every action
that has been done, has been done in an entirely unique and inimitable
manner, and that it will be the same with regard to all future
actions; that all precepts of conduct (and even the most esoteric and
subtle precepts of all moralities up to the present), apply only to
the coarse exterior,--that by means of them, indeed, a semblance of
equality can be attained, _but only a semblance,_--that in outlook and
retrospect, _every_ action is, and remains, an impenetrable affair,
--that our opinions of the "good," "noble" and "great" can never be
proved by our actions, because no action is cognisable,--that our
opinions, estimates, and tables of values are certainly among the most
powerful levers in the mechanism of our actions, that in every single
case, nevertheless, the law of their mechanism is untraceable. Let us
_confine_ ourselves, therefore, to the purification of our opinions
and appreciations, and to the _construction of new tables of value of
our own:_--we will, however, brood no longer over the "moral worth of
our actions"! Yes, my friends! As regards the whole moral twaddle of
people about one another, it is time to be disgusted with it! To sit
in judgment morally ought to be opposed to our taste! Let us leave
this nonsense and this bad taste to those who have nothing else to do,
save to drag the past a little distance further through time, and who
are never themselves the present,--consequently to the many, to the
majority! We, however, _would seek to become what we are,--_the new,
the unique, the incomparable, making laws for ourselves and creating
ourselves! And for this purpose we must become the best students and
discoverers of all the laws and necessities in the world. We must be
_physicists_ in order to be _creators_ in that sense--whereas hitherto
all appreciations and ideals have been based on _ignorance_ of physics,
or in _contradiction_ thereto. And therefore, three cheers for physics!
And still louder cheers for that which _impels_ us thereto--our honesty.

336.

_Avarice of Nature_--Why has nature been so niggardly towards humanity
that she has not let human beings shine, this man more and that man
less, according to their inner abundance of light? Why have not great
men such a fine visibility in their rising and setting as the sun? How
much less equivocal would life among men then be!

337.

_Future "Humanity."--_When I look at this age with the eye of a distant
future, I find nothing so remarkable in the man of the present day as
his peculiar virtue and sickness called "the historical sense." It is a
tendency to something quite new and foreign in history: if this embryo
were given several centuries and more, there might finally evolve out
of it a marvellous plant, with a smell equally marvellous, on account
of which our old earth might be more pleasant to live in than it has
been hitherto. We moderns are just beginning to form the chain of a
very powerful, future sentiment, link by link,--we hardly know what
we are doing. It almost seems to us as if it were not the question
of a new sentiment, but of the decline of all old sentiments:--the
historical sense is still something so poor and cold, and many are
attacked by it as by a frost, and are made poorer and colder by it. To
others it appears as the indication of stealthily approaching age, and
our planet is regarded by them as a melancholy invalid, who, in order
to forget his present condition, writes the history of his youth. In
fact, this is one aspect of the new sentiment. He who knows how to
regard the history of man in its entirety as _his own history,_ feels
in the immense generalisation all the grief of the invalid who thinks
of health, of the old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of
the lover who is robbed of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is
destroyed, of the hero on the evening of the indecisive battle which
has brought him wounds and the loss of a friend. But to bear this
immense sum of grief of all kinds, to be able to bear it, and yet still
be the hero who at the commencement of a second day of battle greets
the dawn and his happiness, as one who has an horizon of centuries
before and behind him, as the heir of all nobility, of all past
intellect, and the obligatory heir (as the noblest) of all the old
nobles; while at the same time the first of a new nobility, the equal
of which has never been seen nor even dreamt of: to take all this upon
his soul, the oldest, the newest, the losses, hopes, conquests, and
victories of mankind: to have all this at last in one soul, and to
comprise it in one feeling:--this would necessarily furnish a happiness
which man has not hitherto known,--a God's happiness, full of power and
love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness which, like the sun in
the evening, continually gives of its inexhaustible riches and empties
into the sea,--and like the sun, too, feels itself richest when even
the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! This divine feeling might
then be called--humanity!

338.

_The Will to Suffering and the Compassionate._--Is it to your advantage
to be above all compassionate? And is it to the advantage of the
sufferers when you are so? But let us leave the first question for a
moment without an answer.--That from which we suffer most profoundly
and personally is almost incomprehensible and inaccessible to every
one else: in this matter we are hidden from our neighbour even when
he eats at the same table with us. Everywhere, however, where we are
_noticed_ as sufferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow way;
it belongs to the nature of the emotion of pity to _divest_ unfamiliar
suffering of its properly personal character:--our "benefactors"
lower our value and volition more than our enemies. In most benefits
which are conferred on the unfortunate there is something shocking
in the intellectual levity with which the compassionate person plays
the rôle of fate: he knows nothing of all the inner consequences and
complications which are called misfortune for _me_ or for _you!_ The
entire economy of my soul and its adjustment by "misfortune," the
uprising of new sources and needs, the closing up of old wounds, the
repudiation of whole periods of the past--none of these things which
may be connected with misfortune preoccupy the dear sympathiser. He
wishes _to succour,_ and does not reflect that there is a personal
necessity for misfortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight
watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as necessary to me and
to you as their opposites, yea, that, to speak mystically, the path to
one's own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one's own
hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. The "religion of compassion" (or
"the heart") bids him help, and he thinks he has helped best when he
has helped most speedily! If you adherents of this religion actually
have the same sentiments towards yourselves which you have towards your
fellows, if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an
hour, and continually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard
suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, as deserving of
annihilation, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides
your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and
this is perhaps the mother of the former)--_the religion of smug ease._
Ah, how little you know of the _happiness_ of man, you comfortable
and good-natured ones!--for happiness and misfortune are brother and
sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, _remain
small_ together! But now let us return to the first question.--How is
it at all possible for a person to keep to _his_ path! Some cry or
other is continually calling one aside: our eye then rarely lights on
anything without it becoming necessary for us to leave for a moment our
own affairs and rush to give assistance. I know there are hundreds of
respectable and laudable methods of making me stray _from my course,_
and in truth the most "moral" of methods! Indeed, the opinion of the
present-day preachers of the morality of compassion goes so far as to
imply that just this, and this alone is moral:--to stray from _our_
course to that extent and to run to the assistance of our neighbour. I
am equally certain that I need only give myself over to the sight of
one case of actual distress, and I, too, _am_ lost! And if a suffering
friend said to me, "See, I shall soon die, only promise to die with
me"--I might promise it, just as--to select for once bad examples for
good reasons--the sight of a small, mountain people struggling for
freedom,. would bring me to the point of offering them my hand and my
life. Indeed, there is even a secret seduction in all this awakening
of compassion, and calling for help: our "own way" is a thing too
hard and insistent, and too far removed from the love and gratitude
of others,--we escape from it and from our most personal conscience,
not at all unwillingly, and, seeking security in the conscience of
others, we take refuge in the lovely temple of the "religion of pity."
As soon now as any war breaks out, there always breaks out at the
same time a certain secret delight precisely in the noblest class of
the people: they rush with rapture to meet the new danger of _death,_
because they believe that in the sacrifice for their country they have
finally that long-sought-for permission--the permission _to shirk
their aim:_--war is for them a detour to suicide, a detour, however,
with a good conscience. And although silent here about some things,
I will not, however, be silent about my morality, which says to me:
Live in concealment in order that thou _mayest_ live to thyself. Live
_ignorant_ of that which seems to thy age to be most important! Put at
least the skin of three centuries betwixt thyself, and the present day!
And the clamour of the present day, the noise of wars and revolutions,
ought to be a murmur to thee! Thou wilt also want to help, but only
those whose distress thou entirely _understandest,_ because they have
_one_ sorrow and _one_ hope in common with thee--thy _friends:_ and
only in _the_ way that thou helpest thyself:--I want to make them more
courageous, more enduring, more simple, more joyful! I want to teach
them that which at present so few understand, and the preachers of
fellowship in sorrow least of all:--namely, _fellowship in joy!_

339.

_Vita femina._--To see the ultimate beauties in a work--all knowledge
and good-will is not enough; it requires the rarest, good chance for
the veil of clouds to move for once from the summits, and for the sun
to shine on them. We must not only stand at precisely the right place
to see this, our very soul itself must have pulled away the veil from
its heights, and must be in need of an external expression and simile,
so as to have a hold and remain master of itself. All these, however,
are so rarely united at the same time that I am inclined to believe
that the highest summit of all that is good, be it work, deed, man, or
nature, has hitherto remained for most people, and even for the best,
as something concealed and shrouded:--that, however, which unveils
itself to us, _unveils itself to us but once._ The Greeks indeed
prayed: "Twice and thrice, everything beautiful!" Ah, they had their
good reason to call on the Gods, for ungodly actuality does not furnish
us with the beautiful at all, or only does so once! I mean to say that
the world is overfull of beautiful things, but it is nevertheless
poor, very poor, in beautiful moments, and in the unveiling of those
beautiful things. But perhaps this is the greatest charm of life: it
puts a gold-embroidered veil of lovely potentialities over itself,
promising, resisting, modest, mocking, sympathetic, seductive. Yes,
life is a woman!

340.

_The Dying Socrates.--_-I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in
all that he did, said--and did not say. This mocking and amorous demon
and rat-catcher of Athens, who made the most insolent youths tremble
and sob, was not only the wisest babbler that has ever lived, but was
just as great in his silence. I would that he had also been silent in
the last moment of his life,--perhaps he might then have belonged to a
still higher order of intellects. Whether it was death, or the poison,
or piety, or wickedness--something or other loosened his tongue at that
moment, and he said: "O Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepios." For him who
has ears, this ludicrous and terrible "last word" implies: "O Crito,
_life is a long sickness!"_ Is it possible! A man like him, who had
lived cheerfully and to all appearance as a soldier,--was a pessimist!
He had merely put on a good demeanour towards life, and had all along
concealed his ultimate judgment, his profoundest sentiment! Socrates,
Socrates _had suffered from life!_ And he also took his revenge for
it--with that veiled, fearful, pious, and blasphemous phrase! Had
even a Socrates to revenge himself? Was there a grain too little of
magnanimity in his superabundant virtue? Ah, my friends! We must
surpass even the Greeks!

341.

_The Heaviest Burden._--What if a demon crept after thee into thy
loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: "This life,
as thou livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it
once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new
in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh,
and all the unspeakably small and great in thy life must come to thee
again, and all in the same series and sequence--and similarly this
spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment,
and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned
once more, and thou with it, thou speck of dust!"--Wouldst thou not
throw thyself down and gnash thy teeth, and curse the demon that so
spake? Or hast thou once experienced a tremendous moment in which thou
wouldst answer him: "Thou art a God, and never did I hear anything
so divine!" If that thought acquired power over thee as thou art, it
would transform thee, and perhaps crush thee; the question with regard
to all and everything: "Dost thou want this once more, and also for
innumerable times?" would lie as the heaviest burden upon thy activity!
Or, how wouldst thou have to become favourably inclined to thyself and
to life, so as _to long for nothing more ardently_ than for this last
eternal sanctioning and sealing?--

342.

_Incipit Tragœdia._--When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left
his home and the Lake of Urmi, and went into the mountains. There he
enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary
of it. But at last his heart changed,--and rising one morning with the
rosy dawn, he went before the sun and spake thus to it: "Thou great
star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou
shinest! For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou
wouldst have wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been
for me, mine eagle, and my serpent. But we awaited thee every morning,
took from thee thine overflow, and blessed thee for it. Lo! I am weary
of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much honey; I need
hands outstretched to take it. I would fain bestow and distribute,
until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the
poor happy in their riches. Therefore must I descend into the deep, as
thou doest in the evening, when thou goest behind the sea and givest
light also to the nether-world, thou most rich star! Like thee must I
_go down,_ as men say, to whom I shall descend. Bless me then, thou
tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest happiness without
envy! Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow
golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss! Lo!
This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going
to be a man."--Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.

BOOK FIFTH

FEARLESS ONES

"Carcasse, tu trembles? Tu tremblerais bien davantage, tu savais, où je
te mène." _Turenne._

343.

_What our Cheerfulness Signifies._--The most important of more recent
events--that "God is dead," that the belief in the Christian God has
become unworthy of belief--already begins to cast its first shadows
over Europe. To the few at least whose eye, whose _suspecting_ glance,
is strong enough and subtle enough for this drama, some sun seems
to have set, some old, profound confidence seems to have changed
into doubt: our old world must seem to them daily more darksome,
distrustful, strange and "old." In the main, however, one may say that
the event itself is far too great, too remote, too much beyond most
people's power of apprehension, for one to suppose that so much as
the report of it could have _reached_ them; not to speak of many who
already knew _what_ had taken place, and what must all collapse now
that this belief had been undermined,--because so much was built upon
it, so much rested on it, and had become one with it: for example, our
entire European morality. This lengthy, vast and uninterrupted process
of crumbling, destruction, ruin and overthrow which is now imminent:
who has realised it sufficiently to-day to have to stand up as the
teacher and herald of such a tremendous logic of terror, as the prophet
of a period of gloom and eclipse, the like of which has probably never
taken place on earth before?... Even we, the born riddle-readers, who
wait as it were on the mountains posted 'twixt to-day and to-morrow,
and engirt by their contradiction, we, the firstlings and premature
children of the coming century, into whose sight especially the shadows
which must forthwith envelop Europe _should_ already have come--how is
it that even we, without genuine sympathy for this period of gloom,
contemplate its advent without any _personal_ solicitude or fear?
Are we still, perhaps, too much under the _immediate effects_ of the
event--and are these effects, especially as regards _ourselves,_
perhaps the reverse of what was to be expected--not at all sad and
depressing, but rather like a new and indescribable variety of light,
happiness, relief, enlivenment, encouragement, and dawning day?... In
fact, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel ourselves irradiated as
by a new dawn by the report that the "old God is dead"; our hearts
overflow with gratitude, astonishment, presentiment and expectation.
At last the horizon seems open once more, granting even that it is not
bright; our ships can at last put out to sea in face of every danger;
every hazard is again permitted to the discerner; the sea, _our_ sea,
again lies open before us; perhaps never before did such an "open sea"
exist.--

344.

_To what Extent even We are still Pious._--It is said with good reason
that convictions have no civic rights in the domain of science: it is
only when a conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of an
hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experiment, or a regulative
fiction, that its access to the realm of knowledge, and a certain
value therein, can be conceded,--always, however, with the restriction
that it must remain under police supervision, under the police of our
distrust.--Regarded more accurately, however, does not this imply
that only when a conviction _ceases_ to be a conviction can it obtain
admission into science? Does not the discipline of the scientific
spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction?...
It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked whether, _in order
that this discipline may commence,_ it is not necessary that there
should already be a conviction, and in fact one so imperative and
absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other convictions. One
sees that science also rests on a belief: there is no science at all
"without premises." The question whether _truth_ is necessary, must
not merely be affirmed beforehand, but must be affirmed to such an
extent that the principle, belief, or conviction finds expression,
that "there is _nothing more necessary_ than truth, and in comparison
with it everything else has only secondary value."--This absolute
will to truth: what is it? Is it the will _not to allow ourselves to
be deceived?_ Is it the will _not to deceive?_ For the will to truth
could also be interpreted in this fashion, provided one included under
the generalisation, "I will not deceive," the special case, "I will
not deceive myself." But why not deceive? Why not allow oneself to be
deceived?--Let it be noted that the reasons for the former eventuality
belong to a category quite different from those for the latter: one
does not want to be deceived oneself, under the supposition that it
is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived,--in this sense
science would be a prolonged process of caution, foresight and utility;
against which, however, one might reasonably make objections. What? is
not-wishing-to-be-deceived really less injurious, less dangerous, less
fatal? What do you know of the character of existence in all its phases
to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of
absolute distrust, or of absolute trustfulness? In case, however, of
both being necessary, much trusting _and_ much distrusting, whence then
should science derive the absolute belief, the conviction on which it
rests, that truth is more important than anything else, even than every
other conviction? This conviction could not have arisen if truth _and_
untruth had both continually proved themselves to be useful: as is the
case. Thus--the belief in science, which now undeniably exists, cannot
have had its origin in such a utilitarian calculation, but rather _in
spite of_ the fact of the inutility and dangerousness of the "Will
to truth," of "truth at all costs," being continually demonstrated.
"At all costs": alas, we understand that sufficiently well, after
having sacrificed and slaughtered one belief after another at this
altar!--Consequently, "Will to truth" does _not_ imply, "I will not
allow myself to be deceived," but--there is no other alternative--"I
will not deceive, not even myself": _and thus we have reached the
realm of morality._ For, let one just ask oneself fairly: "Why wilt
thou not deceive?" especially if it should seem--and it does seem--as
if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view
to error deceit, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion; and when on
the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life
has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous
πολύτροποι. Such an intention might perhaps, to express it mildly,
be a piece of Quixotism, a little enthusiastic craziness; it might
also, however, be something worse, namely, a destructive principle,
hostile to life.... "Will to Truth,"--that might be a concealed Will to
Death.--Thus the question Why is there science? leads back to the moral
problem: _What in general is the purpose of morality,_ if life, nature,
and history are "non-moral"? There is no doubt that the conscientious
man in the daring and extreme sense in which he is presupposed by the
belief in science, _affirms thereby a world other than_ that of life,
nature, and history; and in so far as he affirms this "other world,"
what? must he not just thereby--deny its counterpart, this world, _our_
world?... But what I have in view will now be understood, namely,
that it is always a _metaphysical belief_ on which our belief in
science rests,--and that even we knowing ones of to-day, landless and
anti-metaphysical, still take _our_ fire from the conflagration kindled
by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the
belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine.... But
what if this itself always becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing
any longer proves itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and
falsehood;--what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent
lie?--

345.

_Morality as a Problem._--A defect in personality revenges itself
everywhere: an enfeebled, lank, obliterated, self-disavowing and
disowning personality is no longer fit for anything good--it is least
of all fit for philosophy. "Selflessness" has no value either in
heaven or on earth; the great problems all demand _great love,_ and
it is only the strong, well-rounded, secure spirits, those who have a
solid basis, that are qualified for them. It makes the most material
difference whether a thinker stands personally related to his problems,
having his fate, his need, and even his highest happiness therein; or
merely impersonally, that is to say, if he can only feel and grasp
them with the tentacles of cold, prying thought. In the latter case
I warrant that nothing comes of it: for the great problems, granting
that they let themselves be grasped at all, do not let themselves
be _held_ by toads and weaklings: that has ever been their taste--a
taste also which they share with all high-spirited women.--How is it
that I have not yet met with any one, not even in books, who seems to
have stood to morality in this position, as one who knew morality as
a problem, and this problem as _his own_ personal need, affliction,
pleasure and passion? It is obvious that up to the present morality
has not been a problem at all; it has rather been the very ground on
which people have met after all distrust, dissension and contradiction,
the hallowed place of peace, where thinkers could obtain rest even
from themselves, could recover breath and revive. I see no one who
has ventured to _criticise_ the estimates of moral worth. I miss in
this connection even the attempts of scientific curiosity, and the
fastidious, groping imagination of psychologists and historians, which
easily anticipates a problem and catches it on the wing, without
rightly knowing what it catches. With difficulty I have discovered
some scanty data for the purpose of furnishing a _history of the
origin_ of these feelings and estimates of value (which is something
different from a criticism of them, and also something different from
a history of ethical systems). In an individual case I have done
everything to encourage the inclination and talent for this kind of
history--in vain, as it would seem to me at present. There is little to
be learned from those historians of morality (especially Englishmen):
they themselves are usually, quite unsuspiciously, under the influence
of a definite morality, and act unwittingly as its armour-bearers and
followers--perhaps still repeating sincerely the popular superstition
of Christian Europe, that the characteristic of moral action consists
in abnegation, self-denial, self-sacrifice, or in fellow-feeling and
fellow-suffering. The usual error in their premises is their insistence
on a certain _consensus_ among human beings, at least among civilised
human beings, with regard to certain propositions of morality, from
thence they conclude that these propositions are absolutely binding
even upon you and me; or reversely, they come to the conclusion that
_no_ morality is binding, after the truth has dawned upon them that
among different peoples moral valuations are _necessarily_ different:
both of which conclusions are equally childish follies. The error
of the more subtle amongst them is that they discover and criticise
the probably foolish opinions of a people about its own morality, or
the opinions of mankind about human morality generally (they treat
accordingly of its origin, its religious sanctions, the superstition
of free will, and such matters), and they think that just by so doing
they have criticised the morality itself. But the worth of a precept,
"Thou shalt," is fundamentally different from and independent of such
opinions about it, and must be distinguished from the weeds of error
with which it has perhaps been overgrown: just as the worth of a
medicine to a sick person is altogether independent of the question
whether he has a scientific opinion about medicine, or merely thinks
about it as an old wife would do. A morality could even have grown _out
of_ an error: but with this knowledge the problem of its worth would
not even be touched.--Thus, no one hitherto has tested the _value_
of that most celebrated of all medicines, called morality: for which
purpose it is first of all necessary for one--_to call it in question._
Well, that is just our work.--

346.

_Our Note of Interrogation._--But you don't understand it? As a matter
of fact, an effort will be necessary in order to understand us. We
seek for words; we seek perhaps also for ears. Who are we after all?
If we wanted simply to call ourselves in older phraseology, atheists,
unbelievers, or even immoralists, we should still be far from thinking
ourselves designated thereby: we are all three in too late a phase for
people generally to conceive, for _you,_ my inquisitive friends, to be
able to conceive, what is our state of mind under the circumstances.
No! we have no longer the bitterness and passion of him who has
broken loose, who has to make for himself a belief, a goal, and even
a martyrdom out of his unbelief! We have become saturated with the
conviction (and have grown cold and hard in it) that things are not
at all divinely ordered in this world, nor even according to human
standards do they go on rationally, mercifully, or justly: we know
the fact that the world in which we live is ungodly, immoral, and
"inhuman,"--we have far too long interpreted it to ourselves falsely
and mendaciously, according to the wish and will of our veneration,
that is to say, according to our _need._ For man is a venerating
animal! But he is also a distrustful animal: and that the world is
_not_ worth what we believed it to be worth is about the surest thing
our distrust has at last managed to grasp. So much distrust, so much
philosophy! We take good care not to say that the world is of _less_
value: it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous when man claims
to devise values _to surpass_ the values of the actual world,--it is
precisely from that point that we have retraced our steps; as from
an extravagant error of human conceit and irrationality, which for a
long period has not been recognised as such. This error had its last
expression in modern Pessimism; an older and stronger manifestation
in the teaching of Buddha; but Christianity also contains it, more
dubiously, to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the less
seductive on that account. The whole attitude of "man _versus_ the
world," man as world-denying principle, man as the standard of the
value of things, as judge of the world, who in the end puts existence
itself on his scales and finds it too light--the monstrous impertinence
of this attitude has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted us,--we
now laugh when we find, "Man _and_ World" placed beside one another,
separated by the sublime presumption of the little word "and"! But how
is it? Have we not in our very laughing just made a further step in
despising mankind? And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising
the existence cognisable _by us?_ Have we not just thereby awakened
suspicion that there is an opposition between the world in which we
have hitherto been at home with our venerations--for the sake of
which we perhaps _endure_ life--and another world _which we ourselves
are:_ an inexorable, radical, most profound suspicion concerning
ourselves, which is continually getting us Europeans more annoyingly
into its power, and could easily face the coming generation with the
terrible alternative: Either do away with your venerations, or--_with
yourselves!"_ The latter would be Nihilism--but would not the former
also be Nihilism? This is _our_ note of interrogation.

347.

_Believers and their Need of Belief._--How much _faith_ a person
requires in order to flourish, how much "fixed opinion" he requires
which he does not wish to have shaken, because he _holds_ himself
thereby--is a measure of his power (or more plainly speaking, of his
weakness). Most people in old Europe, as it seems to me, still need
Christianity at present, and on that account it still finds belief. For
such is man: a theological dogma might be refuted to him a thousand
times,--provided, however, that he had need of it, he would again and
again accept it as "true,"--according to the famous "proof of power"
of which the Bible speaks. Some have still need of metaphysics; but
also the impatient _longing for certainty_ which at present discharges
itself in scientific, positivist fashion among large numbers of the
people, the longing by all means to get at something stable (while
on account of the warmth of the longing the establishing of the
certainty is more leisurely and negligently undertaken):--even this is
still the longing for a hold, a support; in short, the _instinct of
weakness,_ which, while not actually creating religions, metaphysics,
and convictions of all kinds, nevertheless--preserves them. In
fact, around all these positivist systems there fume the vapours
of a certain pessimistic gloom, something of weariness, fatalism,
disillusionment, and fear of new disillusionment--or else manifest
animosity, ill-humour, anarchic exasperation, and whatever there is of
symptom or masquerade of the feeling of weakness. Even the readiness
with which our cleverest contemporaries get lost in wretched corners
and alleys, for example, in Vaterländerei (so I designate Jingoism,
called _chauvinisme_ in France, and "_deutsch_" in Germany), or in
petty æsthetic creeds in the manner of Parisian _naturalisme_ (which
only brings into prominence and uncovers--_that_ aspect of nature which
excites simultaneously disgust and astonishment--they like at present
to call this aspect _la vérité vraie_, or in Nihilism in the St
Petersburg style (that is to say, in the _belief in unbelief,_ even to
martyrdom for it):--this shows always and above all the need of belief,
support, backbone, and buttress.... Belief is always most desired, most
pressingly needed, where there is a lack of will: for the will, as
emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty
and power. That is to say, the less a person knows how to command,
the more urgent is his desire for that; which commands, and commands
sternly,--a God, a prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma,
a party conscience. From whence perhaps it could be inferred that the
two world-religions, Buddhism and Christianity, might well have had the
cause of their rise, and especially of their rapid extension, in an
extraordinary _malady of the will_ And in truth it has been so: both
religions lighted upon a longing, monstrously exaggerated by malady of
the will, for an imperative, a "Thou-shalt," a longing going the length
of despair; both religions were teachers of fanaticism in times of
slackness of will-power, and thereby offered to innumerable persons a
support, a new possibility of exercising will, an enjoyment in willing.
For in fact fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the
weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the
entire sensory-intellectual system, in favour of the over-abundant
nutrition (hypertrophy) of a particular point of view and a particular
sentiment, which then dominates--the Christian calls it his _faith._
When a man arrives at the fundamental conviction that he _requires_ to
be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Reversely, one could imagine
a delight and a power of self-determining, and a _freedom_ of will,
whereby a spirit could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for
certainty, accustomed as it would be to support itself on slender cords
and possibilities, and to dance even on the verge of abysses. Such a
spirit would be the _free spirit par excellence._

348.

_The Origin of the Learned._--The learned man in Europe grows out
of all the different ranks and social conditions, like a plant
requiring no specific soil: on that account he belongs essentially
and involuntarily to the partisans of democratic thought. But this
origin betrays itself. If one has trained one's glance to some
extent to recognise in a learned book or scientific treatise the
intellectual _idiosyncrasy_ of the learned man--all of them have
such idiosyncrasy,--and if we take it by surprise, we shall almost
always get a glimpse behind it of the "antecedent history" of the
learned man and his family, especially of the nature of their callings
and occupations. Where the feeling finds expression, "That is at
last proved, I am now done with it," it is commonly the ancestor
in the blood and instincts of the learned man that approves of the
"accomplished work" in the nook from which he sees things;--the belief
in the proof is only an indication of what has been looked upon for
ages by a laborious family as "good work." Take an example: the sons
of registrars and office-clerks of every kind, whose main task has
always been to arrange a variety of material, distribute it in drawers,
and systematise it generally, evince, when they become learned men,
an inclination to regard a problem as almost solved when they have
systematised it There are philosophers who are at bottom nothing but
systematising brains--the formal part of the paternal occupation has
become its essence to them. The talent for classifications, for tables
of categories, betrays something; it is not for nothing that a person
is the child of his parents. The son of an advocate will also have to
be an advocate as investigator: he seeks as a first consideration, to
carry the point in his case, as a second consideration, he perhaps
seeks to be in the right. One recognises the sons of Protestant
clergymen and schoolmasters by the naïve assurance with which as
learned men they already assume their case to be proved, when it has
but been presented by them staunchly and warmly: they are thoroughly
accustomed to people _believing_ in them,--it belonged to their
fathers' "trade"! A Jew, contrariwise, in accordance with his business
surroundings and the past of his race, is least of all accustomed--to
people believing him. Observe Jewish scholars with regard to this
matter,--they all lay great stress on logic, that is to say, on
_compelling_ assent by means of reasons; they know that they must
conquer thereby, even when race and class antipathy is against them,
even where people are unwilling to believe them. For in fact, nothing
is more democratic than logic: it knows no respect of persons, and
takes even the crooked nose as straight. (In passing we may remark that
in respect to logical thinking, in respect to _cleaner_ intellectual
habits, Europe is not a little indebted to the Jews; above all the
Germans, as being a lamentably _déraisonnable_ race, who, even at the
present day, must always have their "heads washed"[1] in the first
place. Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they have taught
to analyse more subtly, to argue more acutely, to write more clearly
and purely: it has always been their problem to bring a people "to
_raison._")

[1] In German the expression _Kopf zu waschen,_ besides the literal
sense, also means "to give a person a sound drubbing."--TR.

349.

_The Origin of the Learned once more._--To seek self-preservation
merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of
the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the _extension
of power,_ and with this in view often enough calls in question
self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be taken as symptomatic
when individual philosophers, as for example, the consumptive Spinoza,
have seen and have been obliged to see the principal feature of life
precisely in the so-called self-preservative instinct:--they have just
been men in states of distress. That our modern natural sciences have
entangled themselves so much with Spinoza's dogma (finally and most
grossly in Darwinism, with its inconceivably one-sided doctrine of the
"struggle for existence"--), is probably owing to the origin of most of
the inquirers into nature: they belong in this respect to the people,
their forefathers have been poor and humble persons, who knew too well
by immediate experience the difficulty of making a living. Over the
whole of English Darwinism there hovers something of the suffocating
air of over-crowded England, something of the odour of humble people
in need and in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person
ought to emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of
distress does not _prevail,_ but superfluity, even prodigality to the
extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only an _exception,_ a
temporary restriction of the will to live; the struggle, be it great or
small, turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and expansion, on
power, in conformity to the will to power, which is just the will to
live.

350.

_In Honour of Homines Religiosi._--The struggle against the church is
certainly (among other things--for it has a manifold significance)
the struggle of the more ordinary, cheerful, confiding, superficial
natures against the rule of the graver, profounder, more contemplative
natures, that is to say, the more malign and suspicious men, who with
long continued distrust in the worth of life, brood also over their own
worth:--the ordinary instinct of the people, its sensual gaiety, its
"good heart," revolts against them. The entire Roman Church rests on a
Southern suspicion of the nature of man (always misunderstood in the
North), a suspicion whereby the European South has succeeded, to the
inheritance of the profound Orient--the mysterious, venerable Asia--and
its contemplative spirit. Protestantism was a popular insurrection
in favour of the simple, the respectable, the superficial (the North
has always been more good-natured and more shallow than the South),
but it was the French Revolution that first gave the sceptre wholly
and solemnly into the hands of the "good man" (the sheep, the ass,
the goose, and everything incurably shallow, bawling, and fit for the
Bedlam of "modern ideas").

351.

_In Honour of Priestly Natures._--I think that philosophers have always
felt themselves very remote from that which the people (in all classes
of society nowadays) take for wisdom: the prudent, bovine placidity,
piety, and country-parson meekness, which lies in the meadow and
_gazes at_ life seriously and ruminatingly:--this is probably because
philosophers have not had sufficiently the taste of the "people," or
of the country-parson, for that kind of wisdom. Philosophers will
also perhaps be the last to acknowledge that the people _should_
understand something of that which lies furthest from them, something
of the great _passion_ of the thinker, who lives and must live
continually in the storm-cloud of the highest problems and the heaviest
responsibilities (consequently, not gazing at all, to say nothing of
doing so indifferently, securely, objectively). The people venerate an
entirely different type of men when on their part they form the ideal
of a "sage," and they are a thousand times justified in rendering
homage with the highest eulogies and honours to precisely that type
of men--namely, the gentle, serious, simple, chaste, priestly natures
and those related to them,--it is to them that the praise falls due
in the popular veneration of wisdom. And to whom should the multitude
have more reason to be grateful than to these men who pertain to its
class and rise from its ranks, but are persons consecrated, chosen,
and _sacrificed_ for its good--they themselves believe themselves
sacrificed to God,--before whom every one can pour forth his heart with
impunity, by whom he can _get rid_ of his secrets, cares, and worse
things (for the man who "communicates himself" gets rid of himself,
and he who has "confessed" forgets). Here there exists a great need:
for sewers and pure cleansing waters are required also for spiritual
filth, and rapid currents of love are needed, and strong, lowly, pure
hearts, who qualify and sacrifice themselves for such service of the
non-public health-department--for it _is_ a sacrificing, the priest
is, and continues to be, a human sacrifice.... The people regard
such sacrificed, silent, serious men of "faith" as "_wise,"_ that is
to say, as men who have become sages, as "reliable" in relation to
their own unreliability. Who would desire to deprive the people of
that expression and that veneration?--But as is fair on the other
side, among philosophers the priest also is still held to belong to
the "people," and is _not_ regarded as a sage, because, above all,
they themselves do not believe in "sages," and they already scent "the
people" in this very belief and superstition. It was _modesty_ which
invented in Greece the word "philosopher," and left to the play-actors
of the spirit the superb arrogance of assuming the name "wise"--the
modesty of such monsters of pride and self-glorification as Pythagoras
and Plato.--

352.

_Why we can hardly Dispense with Morality.--_The naked man is
generally an ignominious spectacle--I speak of us European males
(and by no means of European females!). If the most joyous company
at table suddenly found themselves stripped and divested of their
garments through the trick of an enchanter, I believe that not only
would the joyousness be gone and the strongest appetite lost;--it
seems that we Europeans cannot at all dispense with the masquerade
that is called clothing. But should not the disguise of "moral men,"
the screening under moral formulæ and notions of decency, the whole
kindly concealment of our conduct under conceptions of duty, virtue,
public sentiment, honourableness, and disinterestedness, have just
as good reasons in support of it? Not that I mean hereby that human
wickedness and baseness, in short, the evil wild beast in us, should
be disguised; on the contrary, my idea is that it is precisely as
_tame animals_ that we are an ignominious spectacle and require moral
disguising,--that the "inner man" in Europe is far from having enough
of intrinsic evil "to let himself be seen" with it (to be _beautiful_
with it). The European disguises himself _in morality_ because he has
become a sick, sickly, crippled animal, who has good reasons for being
"tame," because he is almost an abortion, an imperfect, weak and clumsy
thing.... It is not the fierceness of the beast of prey that finds
moral disguise necessary, but the gregarious animal, with its profound
mediocrity, anxiety and ennui. _Morality dresses up the European_--let
us acknowledge it!--in more distinguished, more important, more
conspicuous guise--in "divine" guise--

353.

_The Origin of Religions._--The real inventions of founders of
religions are, on the one hand, to establish a definite mode of life
and everyday custom, which operates as _disciplina voluntatis,_ and
at the same time does away with ennui; and on the other hand, to give
to that very mode of life an _interpretation,_ by virtue of which it
appears illumined with the highest value; so that it henceforth becomes
a good for which people struggle, and under certain circumstances lay
down their lives. In truth, the second of these inventions is the
more essential: the first, the mode of life, has usually been there
already, side by side, however, with other modes of life, and still
unconscious of the value which it embodies. The import, the originality
of the founder of a religion, discloses itself usually in the fact that
he _sees_ the mode of life, _selects_ it, and _divines_ for the first
time the purpose for which it can be used, how it can be interpreted.
Jesus (or Paul) for example, found around him the life of the common
people in the Roman province, a modest, virtuous, oppressed life: he
interpreted it, he put the highest significance and value into it--and
thereby the courage to despise every other mode of life, the calm
fanaticism of the Moravians, the secret, subterranean self-confidence
which goes on increasing, and is at last ready "to overcome the world"
(that is to say, Rome, and the upper classes throughout the empire).
Buddha, in like manner, found the same type of man,--he found it in
fact dispersed among all the classes and social ranks of a people who
were good and kind (and above all inoffensive), owing to indolence, and
who likewise owing to indolence, lived abstemiously, almost without
requirements. He understood that such a type of man, with all its
_vis inertiæ,_ had inevitably to glide into a belief which promises
_to avoid_ the return of earthly ill (that is to say, labour and
activity generally),--this "understanding" was his genius. The founder
of a religion possesses psychological infallibility in the knowledge
of a definite, average type of souls, who have not yet _recognised_
themselves as akin. It is he who brings them together: the founding of
a religion, therefore, always becomes a long ceremony of recognition.--

354.

_The "Genius of the Species."_--The problem of consciousness (or
more correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when
we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and
it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by
physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to
overtake the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could
in fact think, feel, will, and recollect, we could likewise "act"
in every sense of the term, and nevertheless nothing of it all need
necessarily "come into consciousness" (as one says metaphorically).
The whole of life would be possible without its seeing itself as it
were in a mirror: as in fact even at present the far greater part of
our life still goes on without this mirroring,--and even our thinking,
feeling, volitional life as well, however painful this statement
may sound to an older philosopher. _What_ then is _the purpose_ of
consciousness generally, when it is in the main _superfluous_?--Now it
seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its perhaps extravagant
supposition, that the subtlety and strength of consciousness are always
in proportion to the _capacity for communication_ of a man (or an
animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion
to the _necessity for communication:_ the latter not to be understood
as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of
communicating and making known his necessities would at the same time
have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities. It seems
to me, however, to be so in relation to whole races and successions
of generations: where necessity and need have long compelled men to
communicate with their fellows and understand one another rapidly and
subtly, a surplus of the power and art of communication is at last
acquired as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumulated,
and now waited for an heir to squander it prodigally (the so-called
artists are these heirs, in like manner the orators, preachers, and
authors: all of them men who come at the end of a long succession,
"late-born" always, in the best sense of the word, and as has
been said, _squanderers_ by their very nature). Granted that this
observation is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture that
_consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure
of the necessity for communication,_--that from the first it has been
necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those
commanding and those obeying) and has only developed in proportion
to its utility Consciousness is properly only a connecting network
between man and man,--it is only as such that it has had to develop;
the recluse and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it
The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come
within the range of our consciousness--at least a part of them--is the
result of a terrible, prolonged "must" ruling man's destiny: as the
most endangered animal he _needed_ help and protection; he needed his
fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to
make himself understood--and for all this he needed "consciousness"
first of all: he had to "know" himself what he lacked, to "know" how
he felt, and to "know" what he thought. For, to repeat it once more,
man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know
it; the thinking which is becoming _conscious of itself_ is only the
smallest part thereof, we may say, the most superficial part, the worst
part:--for this conscious thinking alone _is done in words, that is to
say, in the symbols for communication,_ by means of which the origin
of consciousness is revealed. In short, the development of speech and
the development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming
self-conscious) go hand in hand. Let it be further accepted that it is
not only speech that serves as a bridge between man and man, but also
the looks, the pressure and the gestures; our becoming conscious of our
sense impressions, our power of being able to fix them, and as it were
to locate them outside of ourselves, has increased in proportion as the
necessity has increased for communicating them to _others_ by means of
signs. The sign-inventing man is at the same time the man who is always
more acutely self-conscious; it is only as a social animal that man
has learned to become conscious of himself,--he is doing so still, and
doing so more and more.--As is obvious, my idea is that consciousness
does not properly belong to the individual existence of man, but
rather to the social and gregarious nature in him; that, as follows
therefrom, it is only in relation to communal and gregarious utility
that it is finely developed; and that consequently each of us, in
spite of the best intention of _understanding_ himself as individually
as possible, and of "knowing himself," will always just call into
consciousness the non-individual in him, namely, his "averageness";
--that our thought itself is continuously as it were _outvoted_ by the
character of consciousness--by the imperious "genius of the species"
therein--and is translated back into the perspective of the herd.
Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether
personal, unique and absolutely individual--there is no doubt about
it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they _do
not appear so any longer ..._. This is the proper phenomenalism and
perspectivism as I understand it: the nature of _animal consciousness_
involves the notion that the world of which we can become conscious is
only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised
world;--that everything which becomes conscious _becomes_ just thereby
shallow, meagre, relatively stupid,--a generalisation, a symbol, a
characteristic of the herd; that with the evolving of consciousness
there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification,
superficialisation, and generalisation. Finally, the growing
consciousness is a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious
Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As may be conjectured,
it is not the antithesis of subject and object with which I am here
concerned: I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have
remained entangled in the toils of grammar (popular metaphysics).
It is still less the antithesis of "thing in itself" and phenomenon,
for we do not "know" enough to be entitled even _to make such a
distinction._ Indeed, we have not any organ at all for _knowing,_ or
for "truth": we "know" (or believe, or fancy) just as much as may be
_of use_ in the interest of the human herd, the species; and even what
is here called "usefulness" is ultimately only a belief, a fancy, and
perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be
ruined.

355.

_The Origin of our Conception of "Knowledge"_--I take this explanation
from the street. I heard one of the people saying that "he knew me,"
so I asked myself: What do the people really understand by knowledge?
what do they want when they seek "knowledge"? Nothing more than that
what is strange is to be traced back to something _known._ And we
philosophers--have we really understood _anything more_ by knowledge?
The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to so that we no
longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are
habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at
home:--what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known?
the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable,
something which no longer disquiets us? Is it not possible that it
should be the _instinct of fear_ which enjoins upon us to know? Is it
not possible that the rejoicing of the discerner should be just his
rejoicing in the regained feeling of security?... One philosopher
imagined the world "known" when he had traced it back to the "idea":
alas, was it not because the idea was so known, so familiar to him?
because he had so much less fear of the "idea"--Oh, this moderation
of the discerners! let us but look at their principles, and at their
solutions of the riddle of the world in this connection! When they
again find aught in things, among things, or behind things that is
unfortunately very well known to us, for example, our multiplication
table, or our logic, or our willing and desiring, how happy they
immediately are! For "what is known is understood": they are unanimous
as to that. Even the most circumspect among them think that the
known is at least _more easily understood_ than the strange; that
for example, it is methodically ordered to proceed outward from the
"inner world," from "the facts of consciousness," because it is the
world which is _better known to us!_ Error of errors! The known is
the accustomed, and the accustomed is the most difficult of all to
"understand," that is to say, to perceive as a problem, to perceive
as strange, distant, "outside of us."... The great certainty of the
natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the criticism of the
elements of consciousness--_unnatural_ sciences, as one might almost
be entitled to call them--rests precisely on the fact that they take
_what is strange_ as their object: while it is almost like something
contradictory and absurd _to wish_ to take generally what is not
strange as an object....

356.

_In what Manner Europe will always become "more Artistic."_--Providing
a living still enforces even in the present day (in our transition
period when so much ceases to enforce) a definite _rôle_ on almost
all male Europeans, their so-called callings; some have the liberty,
an apparent liberty, to choose this rôle themselves, but most have it
chosen for them. The result is strange enough. Almost all Europeans
confound themselves with their rôle when they advance in age; they
themselves are the victims of their "good acting," they have forgotten
how much chance, whim and arbitrariness swayed them when their
"calling" was decided--and how many other rôles they _could_ perhaps
have played: for it is now too late! Looked at more closely, we see
that their characters have actually _evolved_ out of their rôle,
nature out of art. There were ages in which people believed with
unshaken confidence, yea, with piety, in their predestination for
this very business, for that very mode of livelihood, and would not
at all acknowledge chance, or the fortuitous rôle, or arbitrariness
therein. Ranks, guilds, and hereditary trade privileges succeeded] with
the help of this belief, in rearing those extraordinary broad towers
of society which distinguished the Middle Ages, and of which at all
events one thing remains to their credit: capacity for duration (and
duration is a thing of the first rank on earth!). But there are ages
entirely the reverse, the properly democratic ages, in which people
tend to become more and more oblivious of this belief, and a sort of
impudent conviction and quite contrary mode of viewing things comes
to the front, the Athenian conviction which is first observed in the
epoch of Pericles, the American conviction of the present day, which
wants also more and more to become a European conviction: whereby the
individual is convinced that he can do almost anything, that he _can
play almost any rôle,_ whereby everyone makes experiments with himself,
improvises, tries anew, tries with delight, whereby all nature ceases
and becomes art.... The Greeks, having adopted this _rôle-creed--_--an
artist creed, if you will--underwent step by step, as is well known,
a curious transformation, not in every respect worthy of imitation:
_they became actual stage-players;_ and as such they enchanted, they
conquered all the world, and at last even the conqueror of the world,
(for the _Græculus histrio_ conquered Rome, and _not_ Greek culture,
as the naïve are accustomed to say...). What I fear, however, and what
is at present obvious, if we desire to perceive it, is that we modern
men are quite on the same road already; and whenever a man begins to
discover in what respect he plays a rôle, and to what extent he _can_
be a stage-player, he _becomes_ a stage-player.... A new flora and
fauna of men thereupon springs up, which cannot grow in more stable,
more restricted eras--or is left "at the bottom," under the ban and
suspicion of infamy; thereupon the most interesting and insane periods
of history always make their appearance, in which "stage-players,"
_all_ kinds of stage-players, are the real masters. Precisely thereby
another species of man is always more and more injured, and in the
end made impossible: above all the great "architects"; the building
power is now being paralysed; the courage that makes plans for the
distant future is disheartened; there begins to be a lack of organising
geniuses. Who is there who would now venture to undertake works for
the completion of which millenniums would have to be _reckoned_
upon? The fundamental belief is dying out, on the basis of which one
could calculate, promise and anticipate the future in one's plan,
and offer it as a sacrifice thereto, that in fact man has only value
and significance in so far as he is _a stone in a great building;_
for which purpose he has first of all to be _solid,_ he has to be
a "stone."... Above all, not a--stage-player! In short--alas! this
fact will be hushed up for some considerable time to come!--that
which from henceforth will no longer be built, and _can_ no longer
be built, is--a society in the old sense of the term; to build that
structure everything is lacking, above all, the material. _None of
us are any longer material for a society:_ that is a truth which is
seasonable at present! It seems to me a matter of indifference that
meanwhile the most short-sighted, perhaps the most honest, and at any
rate the noisiest species of men of the present day, our friends the
Socialists, believe, hope, dream, and above all scream and scribble
almost the opposite; in fact one already reads their watchword of the
future-: "free society," on all tables and walls. Free society? Indeed!
Indeed! But you know, gentlemen, sure enough whereof one builds it?
Out of wooden iron! Out of the famous wooden iron! And not even out of
wooden....

357.

_The old Problem: "What is German?"_--Let us count up apart the real
acquisitions of philosophical thought for which we have to thank German
intellects: are they in any allowable sense to be counted also to the
credit of the whole race? Can we say that they are at the same time
the work of the "German soul," or at least a symptom of it, in the
sense in which we are accustomed to think, for example, of Plato's
ideomania, his almost religious madness for form, as an event and an
evidence of the "Greek soul"? Or would the reverse perhaps be true?
Were they individually as much _exceptions_ to the spirit of the race,
as was, for example, Goethe's Paganism with a good conscience? Or as
Bismarck's Macchiavelism was with a good conscience, his so-called
"practical politics" in Germany? Did our philosophers perhaps even
go counter to the _need_ of the "German soul"? In short, were the
German philosophers really philosophical _Germans_?--I call to mind
three cases. Firstly, _Leibnitz's_ incomparable insight--with which
he obtained the advantage not only over Descartes, but over all
who had philosophised up to his time,--that consciousness is only
an accident of mental representation, and _not_ its necessary and
essential attribute; that consequently what we call consciousness only
constitutes a state of our spiritual and psychical world (perhaps a
morbid state), and is _far from being that world itself_:--is there
anything German in this thought, the profundity of which has not as
yet been exhausted? Is there reason to think that a person of the
Latin race would not readily have stumbled on this reversal of the
apparent?--for it is a reversal. Let us call to mind secondly, the
immense note of interrogation which _Kant_ wrote after the notion of
causality. Not that he at all doubted its legitimacy, like Hume: on
the contrary, he began cautiously to define the domain within which
this notion has significance generally (we have not even yet got
finished with the marking out of these limits). Let us take thirdly,
the astonishing hit of _Hegel,_ who stuck at no logical usage or
fastidiousness when he ventured to teach that the conceptions of
kinds develop _out of one another:_ with which theory the thinkers
in Europe were prepared for the last great scientific movement, for
Darwinism--for without Hegel there would have been no Darwin. Is there
anything German in this Hegelian innovation which first introduced
the decisive conception of evolution into science?--Yes, without
doubt we feel that there is something of ourselves "discovered" and
divined in all three cases; we are thankful for it, and at the same
time surprised; each of these three principles is a thoughtful piece
of German self-confession, self-understanding, and self-knowledge.
We feel with Leibnitz that "our inner world is far richer, ampler,
and more concealed"; as Germans we are doubtful, like Kant, about the
ultimate validity of scientific knowledge of nature, and in general
about whatever _can_ be known _causaliter:_ the _knowable_ as such
now appears to us of _less_ worth. We Germans should still have been
Hegelians, even though there had never been a Hegel, inasmuch as we
(in contradistinction to all Latin peoples) instinctively attribute
to becoming, to evolution, a profounder significance and higher value
than to that which "is"--we hardly believe at all in the validity of
the concept "being." This is all the more the case because we are not
inclined to concede to our human logic that it is logic in itself, that
it is the only kind of logic (we should rather like, on the contrary,
to convince ourselves that it is only a special case, and perhaps one
of the strangest and most stupid).--A fourth question would be whether
also _Schopenhauer_ with his Pessimism, that is to say, the problem
of _the worth of existence,_ had to be a German. I think not. The
event _after_ which this problem was to be expected with certainty,
so that an astronomer of the soul could have calculated the day and
the hour for it--namely, the decay of the belief in the Christian God,
the victory of scientific atheism,--is a universal European event, in
which all races are to have their share of service and honour. On the
contrary, it has to be ascribed precisely to the Germans--those with
whom Schopenhauer was contemporary,--that they delayed this victory
of atheism longest, and endangered it most. Hegel especially was its
retarder _par excellence,_ in virtue of the grandiose attempt which he
made to persuade us at the very last of the divinity of existence, with
the help of our sixth sense, "the historical sense." As philosopher,
Schopenhauer was the _first_ avowed and inflexible atheist we Germans
have had: his hostility to Hegel had here its motive. The non-divinity
of existence was regarded by him as something understood, palpable,
indisputable; he always lost his philosophical composure and got
into a passion when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the bush
here. It is at this point that his thorough uprightness of character
comes in: unconditional, honest atheism is precisely the _preliminary
condition_ for his raising the problem, as a final and hardwon victory
of the European conscience, as the most prolific act of two thousand
years' discipline to truth, which in the end no longer tolerates the
_lie_ of the belief in a God.... One sees what has really gained the
victory over the Christian God--, Christian morality itself, the
conception of veracity, taken ever more strictly, the confessional
subtlety of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated to
the scientific conscience, to intellectual purity at any price. To
look upon nature as if it were a proof of the goodness and care of a
God; to interpret history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant
testimony to a moral order in the world and a moral final purpose; to
explain personal experiences as pious men have long enough explained
them, as if everything were a dispensation or intimation of Providence,
something planned and sent on behalf of the salvation of the soul: all
that is now _past,_ it has conscience _against_ it, it is regarded
by all the more acute consciences as disreputable and dishonourable,
as mendaciousness, femininism, weakness, and cowardice,--by virtue
of this severity, if by anything, we are _good_ Europeans, the heirs
of Europe's longest and bravest self-conquest. When we thus reject
the Christian interpretation, and condemn its "significance" as a
forgery, we are immediately confronted in a striking manner with the
_Schopenhauerian_ question: _Has existence then a significance at
all?_--the question which will require a couple of centuries even to
be completely heard in all its profundity. Schopenhauer's own answer
to this question was--if I may be forgiven for saying so--a premature,
juvenile reply, a mere compromise, a stoppage and sticking in the very
same Christian-ascetic, moral perspectives, _the belief in which had
got notice to quit_ along with the belief in God.... But he _raised_
the question--as a good European, as we have said, and _not_ as a
German.--Or did the Germans prove at least by the way in which they
seized on the Schopenhauerian question, their inner connection and
relationship to him, their preparation for his problem, and their
_need_ of it? That there has been thinking and printing even in Germany
since Schopenhauer's time on the problem raised by him,--it was late
enough!--does not at all suffice to enable us to decide in favour
of this closer relationship; one could, on the contrary, lay great
stress on the peculiar _awkwardness_ of this post-Schopenhauerian
Pessimism--Germans evidently do not behave themselves here as in
their element. I do not at all allude here to Eduard von Hartmann;
on the contrary, my old suspicion is not vanished even at present
that he is _too clever_ for us; I mean to say that as arrant rogue
from the very first, he did not perhaps make merry solely over German
Pessimism--and that in the end he might probably "bequeathe" to them
the truth as to how far a person could bamboozle the Germans themselves
in the age of bubble companies. But further, are we perhaps to reckon
to the honour of Germans, the old humming-top, Bahnsen, who all his
life spun about with the greatest pleasure around his realistically
dialectic misery and "personal ill-luck,"--was _that_ German? (In
passing I recommend his writings for the purpose for which I myself
have used them, as anti-pessimistic fare, especially on account of his
_elegantia psychologica,_ which, it seems to me, could alleviate even
the most constipated body and soul). Or would it be proper to count
such dilettanti and old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity,
Mainländer, among the genuine Germans? After all he was probably a Jew
(all Jews become mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen, nor
Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of
the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened
glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind,
deranged and problematic, his _honourable_ fright) was not only an
exceptional case among Germans, but a _German_ event: while everything
else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and
our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with
reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: _"Deutschland,
Deutschland, über Alles"_[2] consequently _sub specie speciei,_ namely,
the German _species_), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No!
The Germans of to-day are _not_ pessimists! And Schopenhauer was a
pessimist, I repeat it once more, as a good European, and _not_ as a
German.

[2] "_Germany, Germany, above all_": the first line of the German
national song.--TR.

358.

_The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit._--We Europeans find ourselves in
view of an immense world of ruins, where some things still tower aloft,
while other objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most things
however already lie on the ground, picturesque enough--where were there
ever finer ruins?--overgrown with weeds, large and small. It is the
Church which is this city of decay: we see the religious organisation
of Christianity shaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in God is
overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting
its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity--it
was the last construction of the Romans!--could not of course be
demolished..all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it,
every sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had
to assist in the work of destruction. But that which is strangest is
that those who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve
Christianity, have been precisely those who did most to destroy
it,--the Germans. It seems that the Germans do not understand the
essence of a Church. Are they not spiritual enough, or not distrustful
enough to do so? In any case the structure of the Church rests on
a _southern_ freedom and liberality of spirit, and similarly on a
southern suspicion of nature, man, and spirit,--it rests on a knowledge
of man an experience of man, entirely different from what the north
has had. The Lutheran Reformation in all its length and breadth
was the indignation of the simple against something "complicated."
To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding, in
which much is to be forgiven,--people did not understand the mode of
expression of a _victorious_ Church, and only saw corruption; they
misunderstood the noble scepticism, the _luxury_ of scepticism and
toleration which every victorious, self-confident power permits....
One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as regards
all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly endowed;
he was fatally short-sighted, superficial and imprudent--and above
all, as a man sprung from the people, he lacked all the hereditary
qualities of a ruling caste, and all the instincts for power; so that
his work, his intention to restore the work of the Romans, merely
became involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement of a work of
destruction. He unravelled, he tore asunder with honest rage, where
the old spider had woven longest and most carefully. He gave the
sacred books into the hands of everyone,--they thereby got at last
into the hands of the philologists, that is to say, the annihilators
of every belief based upon books. He demolished the conception of "the
Church" in that he repudiated the belief in the inspiration of the
Councils: for only under the supposition that the inspiring spirit
which had founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it,
still goes on building its house, does the conception of "the Church"
retain its power. He gave back to the priest sexual intercourse:
but three-fourths of the reverence of which the people (and above
all the women of the people) are capable, rests on the belief that
an exceptional man in this respect will also be an exceptional man
in other respects. It is precisely here that the popular belief in
something superhuman in man, in a miracle, in the saving God in man,
has its most subtle and insidious advocate. After Luther had given a
wife to the priest, he had _to take from him_ auricular confession;
that was psychologically right: but thereby he practically did away
with the Christian priest himself, whose profoundest utility has ever
consisted I in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, and a grave for
secrets. "Every man his own priest"--behind such formulæ and their
bucolic slyness, there was concealed in Luther the profoundest hatred
of "higher men," and of the rule of "higher men," as the Church had
conceived them. Luther disowned an ideal which he did not know how
to attain, while he seemed to combat and detest the degeneration
thereof. As a matter of fact, he, the impossible monk, repudiated the
_rule_ of the _homines religiosi_; he consequently brought about
precisely the same thing within the ecclesiastical social order that
he combated so impatiently in the civic order,--namely a "peasant
insurrection."--As to all that grew out of his Reformation afterwards,
good and bad, which can at present be almost counted up--who would
be naïve enough to praise or blame Luther simply on account of these
results? He is innocent of all; he knew not what he did. The art of
making the European spirit shallower especially in the north, or more
_good-natured,_ if people would rather hear it designated by a moral
expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in advance in the Lutheran
Reformation; and similarly there grew out of it the mobility and
disquietude of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief in
the right to freedom, and its "naturalness." If people wish to ascribe
to the Reformation in the last instance the merit of having prepared
and favoured that which we at present honour as "modern science,"
they must of course add that it is also accessory to bringing about
the degeneration of the modern scholar, with his lack of reverence,
of shame and of profundity; and that it is also responsible for all
naïve candour and plain-dealing in matters of knowledge, in short for
the _plebeianism of the spirit_ which is peculiar to the last two
centuries, and from which even pessimism hitherto, has not in any way
delivered us. "Modern ideas" also belong to this peasant insurrection
of the north against the colder, more ambiguous, more suspicious
spirit of the south, which has built itself its greatest monument in
the Christian Church. Let us not forget in the end what a Church is,
and especially in contrast to every "State": a Church is above all an
authoritative organisation which secures to the _most spiritual_ men
the highest rank, and _believes_ in the power of spirituality so far
as to forbid all grosser appliances of authority. Through this alone
the Church is under all circumstances a _nobler_ institution than the
State.--

359.

_Vengeance on Intellect, and other Backgrounds of
Morality._--Morality--where do you think it has its most dangerous and
rancorous advocates?--There, for example, is an ill-constituted man,
who does not possess enough of intellect to be able to take pleasure
in it, and just enough of culture to be aware of the fact; bored,
satiated, and a self-despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by
some hereditary property out of the last consolation, the "blessing
of labour," the self-forgetfulness in the "day's work "; one who is
thoroughly ashamed of his existence--perhaps also harbouring some
vices,--and who on the other hand (by means of books to which he has no
right, or more intellectual society than he can digest), cannot help
vitiating himself more and more, and making himself vain and irritable:
such a thoroughly poisoned man--for intellect becomes poison, culture
becomes poison, possession becomes poison, solitude becomes poison,
to such ill-constituted beings--gets at last into a habitual state
of vengeance and inclination for vengeance.... What do you think he
finds necessary, absolutely necessary in order to give himself the
appearance in his own eyes of superiority over more intellectual men,
so as to give himself the delight of _perfect revenge,_ at least in
imagination? It is always _morality_ that he requires, one may wager
on it; always the big moral words, always the high-sounding words:
justice, wisdom, holiness, virtue; always the Stoicism of gestures (how
well Stoicism hides what one does _not_ possess!); always the mantle
of wise silence, of affability, of gentleness, and whatever else the
idealist-mantle is called, in which the incurable self-despisers and
also the incurably conceited walk about. Let me not be misunderstood:
out of such born _enemies of the spirit_ there arises now and then
the rare specimen of humanity who is honoured by the people under
the name of saint or sage: it is out of such men that there arise
those prodigies of morality that make a noise, and make history,--St
Augustine was one of these men. Fear of the intellect, vengeance on the
intellect--Oh! how often have these powerfully impelling vices become
the root of virtues! Yea, virtue _itself!_--And asking the question
among ourselves, even the philosopher's pretension to wisdom, which has
occasionally been made here and there on the earth, the maddest and
most immodest of all pretensions,--has it not always been _above all_
in India as well as in Greece, _a means of concealment?_ Sometimes,
perhaps, from the point of view of education which hallows so many
lies, it is a tender regard for growing and evolving persons, for
disciples who have often to be guarded against themselves by means of
the belief in a person (by means of an error). In most cases, however,
it is a means of concealment for a philosopher, behind which he seeks
protection, owing to exhaustion, age, chilliness, or hardening; as a
feeling of the approaching end, as the sagacity of the instinct which
animals have before their death,--they go apart, remain at rest, choose
solitude, creep into caves, become _wise_.... What? Wisdom a means of
concealment of the philosopher from--intellect?--

360.

_Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded._--It seems to me one of my
most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish
the cause of an action generally from the cause of an action in a
particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. The first
kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used
in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the
contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first,
an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which
the quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique
and definite manner: the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of
gunpowder. Among those insignificant hazards and lucifer-matches I
count all the so-called "aims," and similarly the still more so-called
"occupations" of people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and
almost indifferent in relation to the immense quantum of force which
presses on, as we have said, to be used up in any way whatever. One
generally looks at the matter in a different manner: one is accustomed
to see the _impelling_ force precisely in the aim (object, calling,
&c.), according to a primeval error,--but it is only the _directing_
force; the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded. And
yet it is not even always a steersman, the directing force.... Is the
"aim" the "purpose," not often enough only an extenuating pretext, an
additional self-blinding of conceit, which does not wish it to be said
that the ship _follows_ the stream into which it has accidentally run?
That it "wishes" to go that way, _because_ it _must_ go that way? That
it has a direction, sure enough, but--not a steersman? We still require
a criticism of the conception of "purpose."

361.

_The Problem of the Actor_--The problem of the actor has disquieted me
the longest; I was uncertain (and am sometimes so still) whether one
could not get at the dangerous conception of "artist"--a conception
hitherto treated with unpardonable leniency--from this point of view.
Falsity with a good conscience; delight in dissimulation breaking forth
as power, pushing aside, overflowing, and sometimes extinguishing
the so-called "character"; the inner longing to play a rôle, to
assume a mask, to put on an _appearance;_ a surplus of capacity for
adaptations of every kind, which can no longer gratify themselves in
the service of the nearest and narrowest utility: all that perhaps
does not pertain _solely_ to the actor in himself?... Such an instinct
would develop most readily in families of the lower class of the
people, who have had to pass their lives in absolute dependence, under
shifting pressure and constraint, who (to accommodate themselves to
their conditions, to adapt themselves always to new circumstances)
had again and again to pass themselves off and represent themselves
as different persons,--thus having gradually qualified themselves to
adjust the mantle to _every_ wind, thereby almost becoming the mantle
itself, as masters of the embodied and incarnated art of eternally
playing the game of hide and seek, which one calls _mimicry_ among the
animals:--until at last this ability, stored up from generation to
generation, has become domineering, irrational and intractable, till as
instinct it begins to command the other instincts, and begets the actor
and "artist" (the buffoon, the pantaloon, the Jack-Pudding, the fool,
and the clown in the first place, also the classical type of servant,
Gil Blas: for in such types one has the precursors of the artist, and
often enough even of the "genius"). Also under higher social conditions
there grows under similar pressure a similar species of men: only the
histrionic instinct is there for the most part held strictly in check
by another instinct, for example, among "diplomatists";--for the rest,
I should think that it would always be open to a good diplomatist to
become a good actor on the stage, provided his dignity "allowed" it. As
regards the _Jews,_ however, the adaptable people _par excellence,_ we
should, in conformity to this line of thought, expect to see among them
a world-wide historical institution at the very first, for the rearing
of actors, a proper breeding-place for actors; and in fact the question
is very pertinent just now: what good actor at present is _not--_a
Jew? The Jew also, as a born literary man, as the actual ruler of the
European press, exercises this power on the basis of his histrionic
capacity: for the literary man is essentially an actor,--he plays the
part of "expert," of "specialist."--Finally _women._ If we consider
the whole history of women, are they not _obliged_ first of all, and
above all to be actresses? If we listen to doctors who have hypnotised
women, or, finally, if we love them--and let ourselves be "hypnotised"
by them--what is always divulged thereby? That they "give themselves
airs," even when they--"give themselves." ... Woman is so artistic ...

362.

_My Belief in the Virilising of Europe._--We owe it to Napoleon (and
not at all to the French Revolution, which had in view the "fraternity"
of the nations, and the florid interchange of good graces among people
generally) that several warlike centuries, which have not had their
like in past history, may now follow one another--in short, that we
have entered upon _the classical age of war,_ war at the same time
scientific and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means,
talents and discipline), to which all coming millenniums will look back
with envy and awe as a work of perfection:--for the national movement
out of which this martial glory springs, is only the counter_-choc_
against Napoleon, and would not have existed without him. To him,
consequently, one will one day be able to attribute the fact that
_man_ in Europe has again got the upper hand of the merchant and the
Philistine; perhaps even of "woman" also, who has become pampered owing
to Christianity and the extravagant spirit of the eighteenth century,
and still more owing to "modern ideas." Napoleon, who saw in modern
ideas, and accordingly in civilisation, something like a personal
enemy, has by this hostility proved himself one of the greatest
continuators of the Renaissance: he has brought to the surface a whole
block of the ancient character, the decisive block perhaps, the block
of granite. And who knows but that this block of ancient character
will in the end get the upper hand of the national movement, and will
have to make itself in a _positive_ sense the heir and continuator of
Napoleon:--who, as one knows, wanted _one_ Europe, which was to be
_mistress of the world._--

363.

_How each Sex has its Prejudice about Love.--_Notwithstanding all the
concessions which I am inclined to make to the monogamie prejudice, I
will never admit that we should speak of _equal_ rights in the love
of man and woman: there are no such equal rights. The reason is that
man and woman understand something different by the term love,--and it
belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex does
_not_ presuppose the same feeling, the same conception of "love," in
the other sex. What woman understands by love is clear enough: complete
surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive,
without any reservation, rather with shame and terror at the thought
of a devotion restricted by clauses or associated with conditions. In
this absence of conditions her love is precisely a _faith:_ woman has
no other.--Man, when he loves a woman, _wants_ precisely this love from
her; he is consequently, as regards himself, furthest removed from the
prerequisites of feminine love; granted, however, that there should
also be men to whom on their side the demand for complete devotion is
not unfamiliar,--well, they are really--not men. A man who loves like a
woman becomes thereby a slave; a woman, however, who loves like a woman
becomes thereby a _more perfect_ woman. ... The passion of woman in its
unconditional renunciation of its own rights presupposes in fact that
there does _not_ exist on the other side an equal _pathos,_ an equal
desire for renunciation: for if both renounced themselves out of love,
there would result--well, I don't know what, perhaps a _horror vacui?_
Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be
merged in the conceptions of "possession" and "possessed"; consequently
she wants one who _takes,_ who does not offer and give himself away,
but who reversely is rather to be made richer in "himself"--by the
increase of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives
to him. Woman gives herself, man takes her.--I do not think one will
get over this natural contrast by any social contract, or with the very
best will to do justice, however desirable it may be to avoid bringing
the severe, frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this
antagonism constantly before our eyes. For love, regarded as complete,
great, and full, is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something
"unmoral."_--Fidelity_ is accordingly included in woman's love, it
follows from the definition thereof; with man fidelity _may_ readily
result in consequence of his love, perhaps as gratitude or idiosyncrasy
of taste, and so-called elective affinity, but it does not belong
to the _essence_ of his love--and indeed so little, that one might
almost be entitled to speak of a natural opposition between love and
fidelity in man, whose love is just a desire to possess, and _not_ a
renunciation and giving away; the desire to possess, however, comes
to an end every time with the possession.... As a matter of fact it
is the more subtle and jealous thirst for possession in a man (who is
rarely and tardily convinced of having this "possession"), which makes
his love continue; in that case it is even possible that his love may
increase after the surrender,--he does not readily own that a woman has
nothing more to "surrender" to him.--

364.

_The Anchorite Speaks._--The art of associating with men rests
essentially on one's skilfulness (which presupposes long exercise) in
accepting a repast, in taking a repast, in the cuisine of which one has
no confidence. Provided one comes to the table with the hunger of a
wolf everything is easy "the worst society gives thee _experience_"--
Mephistopheles says; but one has not always this wolf's-hunger when
one needs it! Alas! how difficult are our fellow-men to digest!
First principle: to stake one's courage as in a misfortune, to seize
boldly, to admire oneself at the same time, to take one's repugnance
between one's teeth, to cram down one's disgust. Second principle:
to "improve" one's fellow-man, by praise for example, so that he may
begin to sweat out his self-complacency; or to seize a tuft of his good
or "interesting" qualities, and pull at it till one gets his whole
virtue out, and can put him under the folds of it. Third principle:
self-hypnotism. To fix one's eye on the object of one's intercourse as
on a glass knob, until, ceasing to feel pleasure or pain thereat, one
falls asleep unobserved, becomes rigid, and acquires a fixed pose: a
household recipe used in married life and in friendship, well tested
and prized as indispensable, but not yet scientifically formulated. Its
proper name is--patience.--

365.

_The Anchorite Speaks once more._--We also have intercourse with "men,"
we also modestly put on the clothes in which people know us (_as
such,_) respect us and seek us; and we thereby mingle in society, that
is to say, among the disguised who do not wish to be so called; we also
do like a prudent masqueraders, and courteously dismiss all curiosity
which has not reference merely to our "clothes" There are however other
modes and artifices for "going about" among men and associating with
them: for example, as a ghost,-which is very advisable when one wants
to scare them, and get rid of them easily. An example: a person grasps
at us, and is unable to seize us. That frightens him. Or we enter by
a closed door. Or when the lights are extinguished. Or after we are
dead The latter is the artifice of _posthumous_ men _par excellence._
("What?" said such a one once impatiently, "do you think we should
delight in enduring this strangeness, coldness, death-stillness about
us, all this subterranean, hidden, dim, undiscovered solitude, which
is called life with us, and might just as well be called death, if we
were not conscious of what _will arise_ out of us,--and that only after
our death shall we attain to _our_ life and become living, ah! very
living! we posthumous men!"--)

366.

_At the Sight of a Learned Book._--We do not belong to those who only
get their thoughts from books, or at the prompting of books,--it is
our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or
dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where
even the paths become thoughtful. Our first question concerning the
value of a book, a man, or a piece of music is: Can it walk? or still
better: Can it dance?... We seldom read; we do not read the worse
for that--oh, how quickly we divine how a person has arrived at his
thoughts:--if it is by sitting before an ink-bottle with compressed
belly and head bent over the paper: oh, how quickly we are then done
with his book! The constipated bowels betray themselves, one may wager
on it, just as the atmosphere of the room, the ceiling of the room, the
smallness of the room, betray themselves.--These were my feelings when
closing a straightforward, learned book, thankful, very thankful, but
also relieved.... In the book of a learned man there is almost always
something oppressive and oppressed: the "specialist" comes to light
somewhere, his ardour, his seriousness, his wrath, his over-estimation
of the nook in which he sits and spins, his hump--every specialist has
his hump. A learned book also always mirrors a distorted soul: every
trade distorts. Look at our friends again with whom we have spent
our youth, after they have taken possession of their science: alas!
how the reverse has always taken place! Alas! how they themselves
are now for ever occupied and possessed by their science! Grown into
their nook, crumpled into unrecognisability, constrained, deprived
of their equilibrium, emaciated and angular everywhere, perfectly
round only in one place,--we are moved and silent when we find them
so. Every handicraft, granting even that it has a golden floor,[3]
has also a leaden ceiling above it, which presses and presses on the
soul, till it is pressed into a strange and distorted shape. There is
nothing to alter here. We need not think that it is at all possible
to obviate this disfigurement by any educational artifice whatever.
Every kind of _perfection_ is purchased at a high price on earth, where
everything is perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert in one's
department at the price of being also a victim of one's department.
But you want to have it otherwise--"more reasonable," above all more
convenient--is it not so, my dear contemporaries? Very well! But then
you will also immediately get something different: instead of the
craftsman and expert, you will get the literary man, the versatile,
"many-sided "littérateur, who to be sure lacks the hump--not taking
account of the hump or bow which he makes before you as the shopman
of the intellect and the "porter" of culture--, the littérateur, who
_is_ really nothing, but "represents" almost everything: he plays
and "represents" the expert, he also takes it upon himself in all
modesty _to see that he is_ paid, honoured and celebrated in this
position.--No, my learned friends! I bless you even on account of
your humps! And also because like me you despise the littérateurs
and parasites of culture! And because you do not know how to make
merchandise of your intellect! And have so many opinions which cannot
be expressed in money value! And because you do not represent anything
which you _are_ not! Because your sole desire is to become masters
of your craft; because you reverence every kind of mastership and
ability, and repudiate with the most relentless scorn everything of a
make-believe, half-genuine, dressed-up, virtuoso, demagogic, histrionic
nature in _litteris et artibus_--all that which does not convince you
by its absolute _genuineness_ of discipline and preparatory training,
or cannot stand your test! (Even genius does not help a person to get
over such a defect, however well it may be able to deceive with regard
to it: one understands this if one has once looked closely at our most
gifted painters and musicians,--who almost without exception, can
artificially and supplementarily appropriate to themselves (by means
of artful inventions of style, make-shifts, and even principles),
the _appearance_ of that genuineness, that solidity of training and
culture; to be sure, without thereby deceiving themselves, without
thereby imposing perpetual silence on their bad consciences. For
you know of course that all great modern artists suffer from bad
consciences?...)

[3] An allusion to the German Proverb, "Handwerk hat einen goldenen
Boden."--TR.

367.

_How one has to Distinguish first of all in Works of Art--_Everything
that is thought, versified, painted and composed, yea, even built and
moulded, belongs either to monologic art, or to art before witnesses.
Under the latter there is also to be included the apparently monologic
art which involves the belief in God, the whole lyric of prayer;
because for a pious man there is no solitude,--we, the godless, have
been the first to devise this invention. I know of no profounder
distinction in all the perspective of the artist than this: Whether he
looks at his growing work of art (at "himself--") with the eye of the
witness; or whether he "has forgotten the world," as is the essential
thing in all monologic art,--it rests _on forgetting,_ it is the music
of forgetting.

368.

_The Cynic Speaks.--_My objections to Wagner's music are physiological
objections. Why should I therefore begin by disguising them Under
æsthetic formulæ? My "point" is that I can no longer breathe freely
when this music begins to operate on me; my _foot_ immediately becomes
indignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance and
march; it demands first of all from music the ecstasies which are in
_good_ walking, striding, leaping and dancing. But do not my stomach,
my heart, my blood and my bowels also protest? Do I not become hoarse
unawares under its influence? And then I ask myself what my body really
_wants_ from music generally. I believe it wants to have _relief:_
so that all animal functions should be accelerated by means of light,
bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that brazen, leaden life
should be gilded by means of golden, good, tender harmonies. My
melancholy would fain rest its head in the hiding-places and abysses
of _perfection:_ for this reason I need music. What do I care for the
drama! What do I care for the spasms of its moral ecstasies, in which
the "people" have their satisfaction! What do I care for the whole
pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor!... It will now be divined that I
am essentially anti-theatrical at heart,--but Wagner on the contrary,
was essentially a man of the stage and an actor, the most enthusiastic
mummer-worshipper that has ever existed, even among musicians!... And
let it be said in passing that if Wagner's theory was that "drama is
the object, and music is only the means to it,"--his _practice_ on the
contrary from beginning to end has been to the effect that "attitude
is the object, drama and even music can never be anything else but
means to _this._" Music as a means of elucidating, strengthening and
intensifying dramatic poses and the actor's appeal to the senses, and
Wagnerian drama only an opportunity for a number of dramatic attitudes!
Wagner possessed, along with all other instincts, the dictatorial
instinct of a great actor in all and everything, and as has been said,
also as a musician.--I once made this clear with some trouble to a
thorough-going Wagnerian, and I had reasons for adding:--"Do be a
little more honest with yourself: we are not now in the theatre. In
the theatre we are only honest in the mass; as individuals we lie,
we belie even ourselves. We leave ourselves at home when we go to the
theatre; we there renounce the right to our own tongue and choice, to
our taste, and even to our courage as we possess it and practise it
within our own four walls in relation to God and man. No one takes his
finest taste in art into the theatre with him, not even the artist
who works for the theatre: there one is people, public, herd, woman,
Pharisee, voting animal, democrat, neighbour, and fellow-creature;
there even the most personal conscience succumbs to the levelling
charm of the 'great multitude'; there stupidity operates as wantonness
and contagion; there the neighbour rules, there one _becomes_ a
neighbour...." (I have forgotten to mention what my enlightened
Wagnerian answered to my physiological objections: "So the fact is that
you are really not healthy enough for our music?"--)

369.

_Juxtapositions in us._--Must we not acknowledge to ourselves, we
artists, that there is a strange discrepancy in us; that on the one
hand our taste, and on the other hand our creative power, keep apart in
an extraordinary manner, continue apart, and have a separate growth;--I
mean to say that they have entirely different gradations and _tempi_ of
age, youth, maturity, mellowness and rottenness? So that, for example,
a musician could all his life create things which _contradicted_
all that his ear and heart, spoilt for listening, prized, relished
and preferred:--he would not even require to be aware of the
contradiction! As an almost painfully regular experience shows, a
person's taste can easily outgrow the taste of his power, even without
the latter being thereby paralysed or checked in its productivity. The
reverse, however, can also to some extent take place,--and it is to
this especially that I should like to direct the attention of artists.
A constant producer, a man who is a "mother" in the grand sense of the
term, one who no longer knows or hears of anything except pregnancies
and child-beds of his spirit, who has no time at all to reflect and
make comparisons with regard to himself and his work, who is also no
longer inclined to exercise his taste, but simply forgets it, letting
it take its chance of standing, lying or falling,--perhaps such a man
at last produces works _on which he is then quite unfit to pass a
judgment:_ so that he speaks and thinks foolishly about them and about
himself. This seems to me almost the normal condition with fruitful
artists,--nobody knows a child worse than its parents--and the rule
applies even (to take an immense example) to the entire Greek world of
poetry and art, which was never "conscious" of what it had done....

370.

_What is Romanticism?_--It will be remembered perhaps, at least among
my friends, that at first I assailed the modern world with some
gross errors and exaggerations, but at any rate with _hope_ in my
heart. I recognised--who knows from what personal experiences?--the
philosophical pessimism of the nineteenth century as the symptom of a
higher power of thought, a more daring courage and a more triumphant
_plenitude_ of life than had been characteristic of the eighteenth
century, the age of Hume, Kant, Condillac, and the sensualists: so that
the tragic view of things seemed to me the peculiar _luxury_ of our
culture, its most precious, noble, and dangerous mode of prodigality;
but nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, a _justifiable_
luxury. In the same way I interpreted for myself German music as the
expression of a Dionysian power in the German soul: I thought I heard
in it the earthquake by means of which a primeval force that had been
imprisoned for ages was finally finding vent--indifferent as to whether
all that usually calls itself culture was thereby made to totter. It
is obvious that I then misunderstood what constitutes the veritable
character both of philosophical pessimism and of German music,--namely,
their _Romanticism._ What is Romanticism? Every art and every
philosophy may be regarded as a healing and helping appliance in the
service of growing, struggling life: they always presuppose suffering
and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferers: on the one hand
those that suffer from _overflowing vitality,_ who need Dionysian art,
and require a tragic view and insight into life; and on the other hand
those who suffer from _reduced vitality,_ who seek repose, quietness,
calm seas, and deliverance from themselves through art or knowledge,
or else intoxication, spasm, bewilderment and madness. All Romanticism
in art and knowledge responds to the twofold craving of the _latter;_
to them Schopenhauer as well as Wagner responded (and responds),--to
name those most celebrated and decided romanticists, who were then
_misunderstood_ by me (_not_ however to their disadvantage, as may be
reasonably conceded to me). The being richest in overflowing vitality,
the Dionysian God and man, may not only allow himself the spectacle
of the horrible and questionable, but even the fearful deed itself,
and all the luxury of destruction, disorganisation and negation. With
him evil, senselessness and ugliness seem as it were licensed, in
consequence of the overflowing plenitude of procreative, fructifying
power, which can convert every desert into a luxuriant orchard.
Conversely, the greatest sufferer, the man poorest in vitality, would
have most need of mildness, peace and kindliness in thought and
action: he would need, if possible, a God who is specially the God
of the sick, a "Saviour"; similarly he would have need of logic, the
abstract intelligibility of existence--for logic soothes and gives
confidence;--in short he would need a certain warm, fear-dispelling
narrowness and imprisonment within optimistic horizons. In this manner
I gradually began to understand Epicurus, the opposite of a Dionysian
pessimist;--in a similar manner also the "Christian," who in fact is
only a type of Epicurean, and like him essentially a romanticist:--and
my vision has always become keener in tracing that most difficult and
insidious of all forms of _retrospective inference,_ in which, most
mistakes have been made--the inference from the work to its author from
the deed to its doer, from the ideal to him who _needs_ it, from every
mode of thinking and valuing to the imperative _want_ behind it.--In
regard to all æsthetic values I now avail myself of this radical
distinction: I ask in every single case, "Has hunger or superfluity
become creative here?" At the outset another distinction might seem to
recommend itself more--it is far more conspicuous,--namely, to have in
view whether the desire for rigidity, for perpetuation, for _being_ is
the cause of the creating, or the desire for destruction, for change,
for the new, for the future--for _becoming._ But when looked at more
carefully, both these kinds of desire prove themselves ambiguous, and
are explicable precisely according to the before-mentioned, and, as it
seems to me, rightly preferred scheme. The desire for _destruction,_
change and becoming, may be the expression of overflowing power,
pregnant with futurity (my _terminus_ for this is of course the word
"Dionysian"); but it may also be the hatred of the ill-constituted,
destitute and unfortunate, which destroys, and _must_ destroy, because
the enduring, yea, all that endures, in fact all being, excites and
provokes it. To understand this emotion we have but to look closely at
our anarchists. The will to _perpetuation_ requires equally a double
interpretation. It may on the one hand proceed from gratitude and
love:--art of this origin will always be an art of apotheosis, perhaps
dithyrambic, as with Rubens, mocking divinely, as with Hafiz, or clear
and kind-hearted as with Goethe, and spreading a Homeric brightness
and glory over everything (in this case I speak of _Apollonian_ art).
It may also, however, be the tyrannical will of a sorely-suffering,
struggling or tortured being, who would like to stamp his most
personal, individual and narrow characteristics, the very idiosyncrasy
of his suffering, as an obligatory law and constraint on others; who,
as it were, takes revenge on all things, in that he imprints, enforces
and brands _his_ image, the image of _his_ torture, upon them. The
latter is _romantic pessimism_ in its most extreme form, whether it be
as Schopenhauerian will-philosophy, or as Wagnerian music:--romantic
pessimism, the last _great_ event in the destiny of our civilisation.
(That there _may be_ quite a different kind of pessimism, a classical
pessimism--this presentiment and vision belongs to me, as something
inseparable from me, as my _proprium_ and _ipsissimum;_ only that the
word "classical" is repugnant to my ears, it has become far too worn,
too indefinite and indistinguishable. I call that pessimism of the
future,--for it is coming! I see it coming!--_Dionysian_ pessimism.)

371.

_We Unintelligible Ones._--Have we ever complained among ourselves of
being misunderstood, misjudged, and confounded with others; of being
calumniated, misheard, and not heard? That is just our lot--alas,
for a long time yet! say, to be modest, until 1901--, it is also our
distinction; we should not have sufficient respect for ourselves if
we wished it otherwise. People confound us with others--the reason
of it is that we ourselves grow, we change continually, we cast off
old bark, we still slough every spring, we always become younger,
higher, stronger, as men of the future, we thrust our roots always
more powerfully into the deep--into evil--, while at the same time we
embrace the heavens ever more lovingly, more extensively, and suck in
their light ever more eagerly with all our branches and leaves. We grow
like trees--that is difficult to understand, like all life!--not in
one place, but everywhere, not in one direction only, but upwards and
outwards, as well as inwards and downwards. At the same time our force
shoots forth in stem, branches, and roots; we are really no longer free
to do anything separately, or to _be_ anything separately.... Such is
our lot, as we have said: we grow in _height;_ and even should it be
our calamity--for we dwell ever closer to the lightning!--well, we
honour it none the less on that account; it is that which we do not
wish to share with others, which we do not wish to bestow upon others,
the fate of all elevation, _our_ fate....

372.

_Why we are not Idealists.--_Formerly philosophers were afraid of
the senses: have we, perhaps, been far too forgetful of this fear?
We are at present all of us sensualists, we representatives of the
present and of the future in philosophy,--_not_ according to theory,
however, but in _praxis,_ in practice.... Those former philosophers,
on the contrary, thought that the senses lured them out of _their_
world, the cold realm of "ideas," to a dangerous southern island,
where they were afraid that their philosopher-virtues would melt away
like snow in the sun. "Wax in the ears," was then almost a condition
of philosophising; a genuine philosopher no longer listened to life,
in so far as life is music, he _denied_ the music of life--it is an
old philosophical superstition that all music is Sirens' music.--Now
we should be inclined at the present day to judge precisely in the
opposite manner (which in itself might be just as false), and to regard
_ideas,_ with their cold, anæmic appearance, and not even in spite of
this appearance, as worse seducers than the senses. They have always
lived on the "blood" of the philosopher, they always consumed his
senses, and indeed, if you will believe me, his "heart" as well. Those
old philosophers were heartless: philosophising was always a species
of vampirism. At the sight of such figures even as Spinoza, do you
not feel a profoundly enigmatical and disquieting sort of impression?
Do you not see the drama which is here performed, the constantly
_increasing pallor_--, the spiritualisation always more ideally
displayed? Do you not imagine some long-concealed blood-sucker in the
background, which makes its beginning with the senses, and in the end
retains or leaves behind nothing but bones and their rattling?--I mean
categories, formulæ, and _words_(for you will pardon me in saying that
what _remains_ of Spinoza, _amor intellectualis dei,_ is rattling and
nothing more! What is _amor,_ what is _deus,_ when they have lost
every drop of blood?...) _In summa:_ all philosophical idealism has
hitherto been something like a disease, where it has not been, as
in the case of Plato, the prudence of superabundant and dangerous
healthfulness, the fear of _overpowerful_ senses, and the wisdom of a
wise Socratic.--Perhaps, is it the case that we moderns are merely not
sufficiently sound _to require_ Plato's idealism? And we do not fear
the senses because----

373.

_"Science" as Prejudice_.--It follows from the laws of class
distinction that the learned, in so far as they belong to the
intellectual middle-class, are debarred from getting even a sight of
the really _great_ problems and notes of interrogation. Besides, their
courage, and similarly their outlook, does not reach so far,--and
above all, their need, which makes them investigators, their innate
anticipation and desire that things should be constituted _in such and
such a way_, their fears and hopes are too soon quieted and set at
rest. For example, that which makes the pedantic Englishman, Herbert
Spencer, so enthusiastic in his way, and impels him to draw a line of
hope, a horizon of desirability, the final reconciliation of "egoism
and altruism" of which he dreams,--that almost causes nausea to people
like us:--a humanity with such Spencerian perspectives as ultimate
perspectives would seem to us deserving of contempt, of extermination!
But the _fact_ that something has to be taken by him as his highest
hope, which is regarded, and may well be regarded, by others merely as
a distasteful possibility, is a note of interrogation which Spencer
could not have foreseen.... It is just the same with the belief with
which at present so many materialistic natural-scientists are content,
the belief in a world which is supposed to have its equivalent and
measure in human thinking and human valuations, a "world of truth"
at which we might be able ultimately to arrive with the help of our
insignificant, four-cornered human reason! What? do we actually wish
to have existence debased in that fashion to a ready-reckoner exercise
and calculation for stay-at-home mathematicians? We should not, above
all, seek to divest existence of its _ambiguous_ character: _good_
taste forbids it, gentlemen, the taste of reverence for everything that
goes beyond your horizon! That a world-interpretation is alone right by
which _you_ maintain your position, by which investigation and work can
go on scientifically in _your_ sense (you really mean _mechanically?_),
an interpretation which acknowledges numbering, calculating, weighing,
seeing and handling, and nothing more--such an idea is a piece of
grossness and naïvety, provided it is not lunacy and idiocy. Would the
reverse not be quite probable, that the most superficial and external
characters of existence--its most apparent quality, its outside, its
embodiment--should let themselves be apprehended first? perhaps alone
allow themselves to be apprehended? A "scientific" interpretation of
the world as you understand it might consequently still be one of the
_stupidest,_ that is to say, the most destitute of significance, of
all possible world-interpretations--I say this in confidence to my
friends the Mechanicians, who to-day like to hobnob with philosophers,
and absolutely believe that mechanics is the teaching of the first and
last laws upon which, as upon a ground-floor, all existence must be
built. But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially
_meaningless_ world! Supposing we valued the _worth_ of a music with
reference to how much it could be counted, calculated, or formulated
--how absurd such a "scientific" estimate of music would be! What
would one have apprehended, understood, or discerned in it! Nothing,
absolutely nothing of what is really "music" in it!...

374.

_Our new "Infinite"_--How far the perspective character of existence
extends, or whether it have any other character at all, whether
an existence without explanation, without "sense" does not just
become "nonsense," whether, on the other hand, all existence is not
essentially an _explaining_ existence--these questions, as is right and
proper, cannot be determined even by the most diligent and severely
conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect, because
in this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its
perspective forms, and _only_ in them. We cannot see round our corner:
it is hopeless curiosity to want to know what other modes of intellect
and perspective there _might_ be: for example, whether any kind of
being could perceive time backwards, or alternately forwards and
backwards (by which another direction of life and another conception
of cause and effect would be given). But I think that we are to-day
at least far from the ludicrous immodesty of decreeing from our nook
that there _can_ only be legitimate perspectives from that nook. The
world, on the contrary, has once more become "infinite" to us: in
so far we cannot dismiss the possibility that it _contains infinite
interpretations._ Once more the great horror seizes us--but who would
desire forthwith to deify once more _this_ monster of an unknown
world in the old fashion? And perhaps worship _the_ unknown thing as
_the_ "unknown person" in future? Ah! there are too many _ungodly_
possibilities of interpretation comprised in this unknown, too much
devilment, stupidity and folly of interpretation,--our own human, all
too human interpretation itself, which we know....

375.

_Why we Seem to be Epicureans._--We are cautious, we modern men,
with regard to final convictions, our distrust lies in wait for the
enchantments and tricks of conscience involved in every strong belief,
in every absolute Yea and Nay: how is this explained? Perhaps one may
see in it a good deal of the caution of the "burnt child," of the
disillusioned idealist; but one may also see in it another and better
element, the joyful curiosity of a former lingerer in a corner, who
has been brought to despair by his nook, and now luxuriates and revels
in its antithesis, in the unbounded, in the "open air in itself." Thus
there is developed an almost Epicurean inclination for knowledge, which
does not readily lose sight of the questionable character of things;
likewise also a repugnance to pompous moral phrases and attitudes, a
taste that repudiates all coarse, square contrasts, and is proudly
conscious of its habitual reserve. For _this too_ constitutes our
pride, this easy tightening of the reins in our headlong impulse
after certainty, this self-control of the rider in his most furious
riding: for now, as of old, we have mad, fiery steeds under us, and if
we delay, it is certainly least of all the danger which causes us to
delay....

376.

_Our Slow Periods._--It is thus that artists feel, and all men of
"works," the maternal species of men: they always believe at every
chapter of their life--a work always makes a chapter--that they have
now reached the goal itself; they would always patiently accept death
with the feeling: "we are ripe for it." This is not the expression
of exhaustion,--but rather that of a certain autumnal sunniness and
mildness, which the work itself, the maturing of the work, always
leaves behind in its originator. Then the _tempo_ of life slows
down--turns thick and flows with honey--into long pauses, into the
belief in _the_ long pause....

377.

_We Homeless Ones.--_Among the Europeans of to-day there are not
lacking those who may call themselves homeless ones in a way which
is at once a distinction and an honour; it is by them that my secret
wisdom and _gaya scienza_ is especially to be laid to heart! For
their lot is hard, their hope uncertain; it is a clever feat to
devise consolation for them. But what good does it do! We children
of the future, how _could_ we be at home in the present? We are
unfavourable to all ideals which could make us feel at home in this
frail, broken-down, transition period; and as regards the "realities"
thereof, we do not believe in their _endurance. _ The ice which still
carries has become very thin: the thawing wind blows; we ourselves,
the homeless ones, are an agency that breaks the ice, and the other
too thin "realities."... We "preserve" nothing, nor would we return
to any past age; we are not at all "liberal," we do not labour for
"progress," we do not need first to stop our ears to the song of
the market-place and the sirens of the future--their song of "equal
rights," "free society," "no longer either lords or slaves," does not
allure us! We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom
of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because
under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest
mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves
love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let
themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves
among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of
things, even of a new slavery--for every strengthening and elevation
of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery. Is it not
obvious that with all this we must feel ill at ease in an age which
claims the honour of being the most humane, gentle and just that the
sun has ever seen? What a pity that at the mere mention of these
fine words, the thoughts at the bottom of our hearts are all the
more unpleasant, that we see therein only the expression--or the
masquerade--of profound weakening, exhaustion, age, and declining
power! What can it matter to us with what kind of tinsel an invalid
decks out his weakness? He may parade it as his _virtue;_ there is no
doubt whatever that weakness makes people gentle, alas, so gentle, so
just, so inoffensive, so "humane"!--The "religion of pity," to which
people would like to persuade us--yes, we know sufficiently well the
hysterical little men and women who need this religion at present as
a cloak and adornment! We are no humanitarians; we should not dare
to speak of our "love of mankind"; for that, a person of our stamp
is not enough of an actor! Or not sufficiently Saint-Simonist, not
sufficiently French. A person must have been affected with a _Gallic_
excess of erotic susceptibility and amorous impatience even to
approach mankind honourably with his lewdness.... Mankind! Was there
ever a more hideous old woman among all old women (unless perhaps it
were "the Truth": a question for philosophers)? No, we do not love
Mankind! On the other hand, however, we are not nearly "German" enough
(in the sense in which the word "German" is current at present) to
advocate nationalism and race-hatred, or take delight in the national
heart-itch and blood-poisoning, on account of which the nations of
Europe are at present bounded off and secluded from one another as
if by quarantines. We are too unprejudiced for that, too perverse,
too fastidious; also too well-informed, and too much "travelled." We
prefer much rather to live on mountains, apart and "out of season,"
in past or coming centuries, in order merely to spare ourselves the
silent rage to which we know we should be condemned as witnesses of a
system of politics which makes the German nation barren by making it
vain, and which is a _petty_ system besides:--will it not be necessary
for this system to plant itself between two mortal hatreds, lest its
own creation should immediately collapse? Will it not _be obliged_
to desire the perpetuation of the petty-state system of Europe?...
We homeless ones are too diverse and mixed in race and descent for
"modern men," and are consequently little tempted to participate in the
falsified racial self-admiration and lewdness which at present display
themselves in Germany, as signs of German sentiment, and which strike
one as doubly false and unbecoming in the people with the "historical
sense." We are, in a word--and it shall be our word of honour!--_good
Europeans,_ the heirs of Europe, the rich, over-wealthy heirs, but too
deeply obligated heirs of millenniums of European thought. As such,
we have also outgrown Christianity, and are disinclined to it--and
just because we have grown _out of_ it, because our forefathers were
Christians uncompromising in their Christian integrity, who willingly
sacrificed possessions and positions, blood and country, for the sake
of their belief. We--do the same. For what, then? For our unbelief?
For all sorts of unbelief? Nay, you know better than that, my friends!
The hidden _Yea_ in you is stronger than all the Nays and Perhapses,
of which you and your age are sick; and when you are obliged to put
out to sea, you emigrants, it is--once more a _faith_ which urges you
thereto!...

378.

_"And once more Grow Clear."_--We, the generous and rich in spirit, who
stand at the sides of the streets like open fountains and would hinder
no one from drinking from us: we do not know, alas! how to defend
ourselves when we should like to do so; we have no means of preventing
ourselves being made _turbid_ and dark,--we have no means of preventing
the age in which we live casting its "up-to-date rubbish" into us, or
of hindering filthy birds throwing their excrement, the boys their
trash, and fatigued resting travellers their misery, great and small,
into us. But we do as we have always done: we take whatever is cast
into us down into our depths--for we are deep, we do not forget--_and
once more grow clear_...

379.

_The Fool's Interruption._--It is not a misanthrope who has written
this book: the hatred of men costs too dear to-day. To hate as they
formerly hated _man,_ in the fashion of Timon, completely, without
qualification, with all the heart, from the pure _love_ of hatred--for
that purpose one would have to renounce contempt:--and how much refined
pleasure, how much patience, how much benevolence even, do we owe to
contempt! Moreover we are thereby the "elect of God": refined contempt
is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue perhaps, we, the
most modern amongst the moderns!... Hatred, on the contrary, makes
equal, it puts men face to face, in hatred there is honour; finally,
in hatred there is _fear,_ quite a large amount of fear. We fearless
ones, however, we, the most intellectual men of the period, know our
advantage well enough to live without fear as the most intellectual
persons of this age. People will not easily behead us, shut us up, or
banish us; they will not even ban or burn our books. The age loves
intellect, it loves us, and needs us, even when we have to give it
to understand that we are artists in despising; that all intercourse
with men is something of a horror to us; that with all our gentleness,
patience, humanity and courteousness, we cannot persuade our nose to
abandon its prejudice against the proximity of man; that we love nature
the more, the less humanly things are done by her, and that we love art
_when_ it is the flight of the artist from man, or the raillery of the
artist at man, or the raillery of the artist at himself....

380.

"_The Wanderer" Speaks._--In order for once to get a glimpse of our
European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other
earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to
know the height of the towers of a city: for that purpose he _leaves_
the city. "Thoughts concerning moral prejudices," if they are not to
be prejudices concerning prejudices, presuppose a position _outside
of_ morality, some sort of world beyond good and evil, to which one
must ascend, climb, or fly--and in the given case at any rate, a
position beyond _our_ good and evil, an emancipation from all "Europe,"
understood as a sum of inviolable valuations which have become part and
parcel of our flesh and blood. That one does _want_ to get outside, or
aloft, is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiar, unreasonable "thou
must"--for even we thinkers have our idiosyncrasies of "unfree will"--:
the question is whether one _can_ really get there. That may depend on
manifold conditions: in the main it is a question of how light or how
heavy we are, the problem of our "specific gravity." One must be _very
light_ in order to impel one's will to knowledge to such a distance,
and as it were beyond one's age, in order to create eyes for oneself
for the survey of millenniums, and a pure heaven in these eyes besides!
One must have freed oneself from many things by which we Europeans of
to-day are oppressed, hindered, held down, and made heavy. The man
of such a "Beyond," who wants to get even in sight of the highest
standards of worth of his age, must first of all "surmount" this age
in himself--it is the test of his power--and consequently not only
his age, but also his past aversion and opposition _to_ his age, his
suffering _caused by_ his age, his unseasonableness, his Romanticism....

381.

_The Question of Intelligibility._--One not only wants to be understood
when one writes, but also--quite as certainly--_not_ to be understood.
It is by no means an objection to a book when someone finds it
unintelligible: perhaps this might just have been the intention of
its author,--perhaps he did not _want_ to be understood by "anyone."
A distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to communicate its
thoughts, always selects its hearers; by selecting them, it at the same
time closes its barriers against "the others." It is there that all the
more refined laws of style have their origin: they at the same time
keep off, they create distance, they prevent "access" (intelligibility,
as we have said,)--while they open the ears of those who are
acoustically related to them. And to say it between ourselves and with
reference to my own case,--I do not desire that either my ignorance, or
the vivacity of my temperament, should prevent me being understood by
_you,_ my friends: I certainly do not desire that my vivacity should
have that effect, however much it may impel me to arrive quickly at
an object, in order to arrive at it at all. For I think it is best to
do with profound problems as with a cold bath--quickly in, quickly
out. That one does not thereby get into the depths, that one does not
get deep enough _down_--is a superstition of the hydrophobic, the
enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. Oh! the great
cold makes one quick!--And let me ask by the way: Is it a fact that a
thing has been misunderstood and unrecognised when it has only been
touched upon in passing, glanced at, flashed at? Must one absolutely
sit upon it in the first place? Must one have brooded on it as on an
egg? _Diu noctuque incubando,_ as Newton said of himself? At least
there are truths of a peculiar shyness and ticklishness which one can
only get hold of suddenly, and in no other way,--which one must either
_take by surprise,_ or leave alone.... Finally, my brevity has still
another value: on those questions which pre-occupy me, I must say a
great deal briefly, in order that it may be heard yet more briefly.
For as immoralist, one has to take care lest one ruins innocence, I
mean the asses and old maids of both sexes, who get nothing from life
but their innocence; moreover my writings are meant to fill them with
enthusiasm, to elevate them, to encourage them in virtue. I should be
at a loss to know of anything more amusing than to see enthusiastic
old asses and maids moved by the sweet feelings of virtue: and "that
have I seen"--spake Zarathustra. So much with respect to brevity; the
matter stands worse as regards my ignorance, of which I make no secret
to myself. There are hours in which I am ashamed of it; to be sure
there are likewise hours in which I am ashamed of this shame. Perhaps
we philosophers, all of us, are badly placed at present with regard to
knowledge: science is growing, the most learned of us are on the point
of discovering that we know too little. But it would be worse still
if it were otherwise,--if we knew too much; our duty is and remains
first of all, not to get into confusion about ourselves. We _are_
different from the learned; although it cannot be denied that amongst
other things we are also learned. We have different needs, a different
growth, a different digestion: we need more, we need also less. There
is no formula as to how much an intellect needs for its nourishment;
if, however, its taste be in the direction of independence, rapid
coming and going, travelling, and perhaps adventure for which only the
swiftest are qualified, it prefers rather to live free on poor fare,
than to be unfree and plethoric. Not fat, but the greatest suppleness
and power is what a good dancer wishes from his nourishment,--and I
know not what the spirit of a philosopher would like better than to be
a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, and also his art, in the end
likewise his sole piety, his "divine service."...

382.

_Great Healthiness._--We, the new, the nameless, the
hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet untried future--we require
for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger,
sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than any healthiness hitherto. He
whose soul longs to experience the whole range of hitherto recognised
values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of
this ideal "Mediterranean Sea," who, from the adventures of his most
personal experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror and
discoverer of the ideal--as likewise how it is with the artist, the
saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet,
and the godly Nonconformist of the old style:--requires one thing above
all for that purpose, _great healthiness--_such healthiness as one not
only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because
one continually sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!--And
now, after having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts
of the ideal, who are more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often
enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless, as said above,
healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, always
healthy again,--it would seem, as if in recompense for it all, that we
have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no
one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal
known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the
questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well
as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand--alas! that
nothing will now any longer satisfy us! How could we still be content
with _the man of the present day_ after such peeps, and with such a
craving in our conscience and consciousness? What a pity; but it is
unavoidable that we should look on the worthiest aims and hopes of the
man of the present day with ill-concealed amusement, and perhaps should
no longer look at them. Another ideal runs on before us, a strange,
tempting ideal, full of danger, to which we should not like to persuade
any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one's _right
thereto:_ the ideal of a spirit who plays naïvely (that is to say
involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everything
that has hitherto been called holy, good, inviolable, divine; to whom
the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their
measure of value, would already imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at
least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the
ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which may often
enough appear _inhuman,_ for example, when put by the side of all past
seriousness on earth, and in comparison with all past solemnities
in bearing, word, tone, look, morality and pursuit, as their truest
involuntary parody,--but with which, nevertheless, perhaps _the great
seriousness_ only commences, the proper interrogation mark is set
up, the fate of the soul changes, the hour-hand moves, and tragedy
_begins_....

383.

_Epilogue._---But while I slowly, slowly finish the painting of this
sombre interrogation-mark, and am still inclined to remind my readers
of the virtues of right reading--oh, what forgotten and unknown
virtues--it comes to pass that the wickedest, merriest, gnome-like
laughter resounds around me: the spirits of my book themselves pounce
upon me, pull me by the ears, and call me to order. "We cannot endure
it any longer," they shout to me, "away, away with this raven-black
music. Is it not clear morning round about us? And green, soft ground
and turf, the domain of the dance? Was there ever a better hour in
which to be joyful? Who will sing us a song, a morning song, so sunny,
so light and so fledged that it will _not_ scare the tantrums,--but
will rather invite them to take part in the singing and dancing.
And better a simple rustic bagpipe than such weird sounds, such
toad-croakings, grave-voices and marmot-pipings, with which you have
hitherto regaled us in your wilderness, Mr Anchorite and Musician of
the Future! No! Not such tones! But let us strike up something more
agreeable and more joyful!"--You would like to have it so, my impatient
friends? Well! Who would not willingly accede to your wishes? My
bagpipe is waiting, and my voice also--it may sound a little hoarse;
take it as it is! don't forget we are in the mountains! But what you
will hear is at least new; and if you do not understand it, if you
misunderstand the _minstrel,_ what does it matter! That--has always
been "The Minstrel's Curse."[4] So much the more distinctly can you
hear his music and melody, so much the better also can you--dance to
his piping. _Would you like_ to do that?...

[4] Title of the well-known poem of Uhland.--TR.

APPENDIX

SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-BIRD

TO GOETHE.[1]

"The Undecaying"
Is but thy label,
God the betraying
Is poets' fable.

Our aims all are thwarted
By the World-wheel's blind roll:
"Doom," says the downhearted,
"Sport," says the fool.

The World-sport, all-ruling,
Mingles false with true:
The Eternally Fooling
Makes us play, too!

THE POET'S CALL.

As 'neath a shady tree I sat
After long toil to take my pleasure,
I heard a tapping "pit-a-pat"
Beat prettily in rhythmic measure.
Tho' first I scowled, my face set hard,
The sound at length my sense entrapping
Forced me to speak like any bard,
And keep true time unto the tapping.

As I made verses, never stopping,
Each syllable the bird went after,
Keeping in time with dainty hopping!
I burst into unmeasured laughter!
What, you a poet? You a poet?
Can your brains truly so addled be?
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.

What doth me to these woods entice?
The chance to give some thief a trouncing?
A saw, an image? Ha, in a trice
My rhyme is on it, swiftly pouncing!
All things that creep or crawl the poet
Weaves in his word-loom cunningly.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.

Like to an arrow, methinks, a verse is,
See how it quivers, pricks and smarts
When shot full straight (no tender mercies!)
Into the reptile's nobler parts!

Wretches, you die at the hand of the poet,
Or stagger like men that have drunk too free.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.

So they go hurrying, stanzas malign,
Drunken words--what a clattering, banging!--
Till the whole company, line on line,
All on the rhythmic chain are hanging.
Has he really a cruel heart, your poet?
Are there fiends who rejoice, the slaughter to see
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.

So you jest at me, bird, with your scornful graces?
So sore indeed is the plight of my head?
And my heart, you say, in yet sorrier case is?
Beware! for my wrath is a thing to dread!
Yet e'en in the hour of his wrath the poet
Rhymes you and sings with the selfsame glee.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.

IN THE SOUTH.[2]

I swing on a bough, and rest
My tired limbs in a nest,
In the rocking home of a bird,
Wherein I perch as his guest,
In the South!

I gaze on the ocean asleep,
On the purple sail of a boat;
On the harbour and tower steep,
On the rocks that stand out of the deep,
In the South!

For I could no longer stay,
To crawl in slow German way;
So I called to the birds, bade the wind
Lift me up and bear me away
To the South!

No reasons for me, if you please;
Their end is too dull and too plain;
But a pair of wings and a breeze,
With courage and health and ease,
And games that chase disease
From the South!

Wise thoughts can move without sound,-But
I've songs that I can't sing alone;
So birdies, pray gather around,
And listen to what I have found
In the South!
. . . . . . . . .
"You are merry lovers and false and gay,
"In frolics and sport you pass the day;
"Whilst in the North, I shudder to say,
"I worshipped a woman, hideous and gray,
"Her name was Truth, so I heard them say,
"But I left her there and I flew away
"To the South!"

BEPPA THE PIOUS.

While beauty in my face is,
Be piety my care,
For God, you know, loves lasses,
And, more than all, the fair.
And if yon hapless monkling
Is fain with me to live,
Like many another monkling,
God surely will forgive.

No grey old priestly devil,
But, young, with cheeks aflame--Who
e'en when sick with revel,
Can jealous be and blame.
To greybeards I'm a stranger,
And he, too, hates the old:
Of God, the world-arranger,
The wisdom here behold!

The Church has ken of living,
And tests by heart and face.
To me she'll be forgiving!
Who will not show me grace?
I lisp with pretty halting,
I curtsey, bid "good day,"
And with the fresh defaulting
I wash the old away!

Praise be this man-God's guerdon,
Who loves all maidens fair,
And his own heart can pardon
The sin he planted there.

While beauty in my face is,
With piety I'll stand,
When age has killed my graces,
Let Satan claim my hand!

THE BOAT OF MYSTERY.

Yester-eve, when all things slept--
Scarce a breeze to stir the lane--
I a restless vigil kept,
Nor from pillows sleep could gain,
Nor from poppies nor--most sure
Of opiates--a conscience pure.

Thoughts of rest I 'gan forswear,
Rose and walked along the strand,
Found, in warm and moonlit air,
Man and boat upon the sand,
Drowsy both, and drowsily
Did the boat put out to sea.

Passed an hour or two perchance,
Or a year? then thought and sense
Vanished in the engulfing trance
Of a vast Indifference.
Fathomless, abysses dread
Opened--then the vision fled.

Morning came: becalmed, the boat
Rested on the purple flood:
"What had happened?" every throat
Shrieked the question: "was there--
Blood?"
Naught had happened! On the swell
We had slumbered, oh, so well!

AN AVOWAL OF LOVE

(_during which, however, the poet fell into a pit_).

Oh marvel! there he flies
Cleaving the sky with wings unmoved--what force
Impels him, bids him rise,
What curb restrains him? Where's his goal, his course?

Like stars and time eterne
He liveth now in heights that life forswore,
Nor envy's self doth spurn:
A lofty flight were't, e'en to see him soar!

Oh albatross, great bird,
Speeding me upward ever through the blue!
I thought of her, was stirred
To tears unending--yea, I love her true!

SONG OF A THEOCRITEAN GOATHERD.

Here I lie, my bowels sore,
Hosts of bugs advancing,
Yonder lights and romp and roar!
What's that sound? They're dancing!

At this instant, so she prated,
Stealthily she'd meet me:
Like a faithful dog I've waited,
Not a sign to greet me!

She promised, made the cross-sign, too,
Could her vows be hollow?
Or runs she after all that woo,
Like the goats I follow?

Whence your silken gown, my maid?
Ah, you'd fain be haughty,
Yet perchance you've proved a jade
With some satyr naughty!

Waiting long, the lovelorn wight
Is filled with rage and poison:
Even so on sultry night
Toadstools grow in foison.

Pinching sore, in devil's mood,
Love doth plague my crupper:
Truly I can eat no food:
Farewell, onion-supper!

Seaward sinks the moon away,
The stars are wan, and flare not:
Dawn approaches, gloomy, grey,
Let Death come! I care not!

"SOULS THAT LACK DETERMINATION."

Souls that lack determination
Rouse my wrath to white-hot flame!
All their glory's but vexation,
All their praise but self-contempt and shame!

Since I baffle their advances,
Will not clutch their leading-string,
They would wither me with glances
Bitter-sweet, with hopeless envy sting.

Let them with fell curses shiver,
Curl their lip the livelong day!
Seek me as they will, forever
Helplessly their eyes shall go astray!

THE FOOL'S DILEMMA.

Ah, what I wrote on board and wall
With foolish heart, in foolish scrawl,
I meant but for their decoration!

Yet say you, "Fools' abomination!
Both board and wall require purgation,
And let no trace our eyes appal!"

Well, I will help you, as I can,
For sponge and broom are my vocation
As critic and as waterman.

But when the finished work I scan,
I'm glad to see each learned owl
With "wisdom" board and wall defoul.

RIMUS REMEDIUM

(_or a Consolation to Sick Poets_).

From thy moist lips,
O Time, thou witch, beslavering me,
Hour upon hour too slowly drips
In vain--I cry, in frenzy's fit,
"A curse upon that yawning pit,
A curse upon Eternity!"

The world's of brass,
A fiery bullock, deaf to wail:
Pain's dagger pierces my cuirass,
Wingéd, and writes upon my bone:
"Bowels and heart the world hath none,
Why scourge her sins with anger's flail?"

Pour poppies now,
Pour venom, Fever, on my brain!
Too long you test my hand and brow:
What ask you? "What--reward is paid?"
A malediction on you, jade,
And your disdain!

No, I retract,
'Tis cold--I hear the rain importune--
Fever, I'll soften, show my tact:
Here's gold--a coin--see it gleam!
Shall I with blessings on you beam,
Call you "good fortune"?

The door opes wide,
And raindrops on my bed are scattered,
The light's blown out--woes multiplied!
He that hath not an hundred rhymes,
I'll wager, in these dolorous times
We'd see him shattered!

MY BLISS.

Once more, St Mark, thy pigeons meet my gaze,
The Square lies still, in slumbering morning mood:
In soft, cool air I fashion idle lays,
Speeding them skyward like a pigeon's brood:
And then recall my minions
To tie fresh rhymes upon their willing pinions.
My bliss! My bliss!

Calm heavenly roof of azure silkiness,
Guarding with shimmering haze yon house divine!
Thee, house, I love, fear--envy, I'll confess,
And gladly would suck out that soul of thine!
"Should I give back the prize?"
Ask not, great pasture-ground for human eyes!
My bliss! My bliss!

Stern belfry, rising as with lion's leap
Sheer from the soil in easy victory,
That fill'st the Square with peal resounding, deep
Wert thou in French that Square's "accent aigu"?
Were I for ages set
In earth like thee, I know what silk-meshed net----
My bliss! My bliss!

Hence, music! First let darker shadows come,
And grow, and merge into brown, mellow night!
Tis early for your pealing, ere the dome
Sparkle in roseate glory, gold-bedight
While yet 'tis day, there's time
For strolling, lonely muttering, forging rhyme--
My bliss! My bliss!

COLUMBUS REDIVIVUS.

Thither I'll travel, that's my notion,
I'll trust myself, my grip,
Where opens wide and blue the ocean
I'll ply my Genoa ship.

New things on new the world unfolds me,
Time, space with noonday die:
Alone thy monstrous eye beholds me,
Awful Infinity!

SILS-MARIA.

Here sat I waiting, waiting, but for naught!
Beyond all good and evil--now by light wrought

To joy, now by dark shadows--all was leisure,
All lake, all noon, all time sans aim, sans measure.

Then one, dear friend, was swiftly changed to twain,
And Zarathustra left my teeming brain....

A DANCING SONG TO THE MISTRAL WIND.[3]

Wildly rushing, clouds outleaping,
Care-destroying, Heaven sweeping,
Mistral wind, thou art my friend!
Surely 'twas one womb did bear us,
Surely 'twas one fate did pair us,
Fellows for a common end.

From the crags I gaily greet you,
Running fast I come to meet you,
Dancing while you pipe and sing.
How you bound across the ocean,
Unimpeded, free in motion,
Swifter than with boat or wing!

Through my dreams your whistle sounded,
Down the rocky stairs I bounded
To the golden ocean wall;
Saw you hasten, swift and glorious,
Like a river, strong, victorious,
Tumbling in a waterfall.

Saw you rushing over Heaven,
With your steeds so wildly driven,
Saw the car in which you flew;
Saw the lash that wheeled and quivered,
While the hand that held it shivered,
Urging on the steeds anew.

Saw you from your chariot swinging,
So that swifter downward springing
Like an arrow you might go
Straight into the deep abysses,
As a sunbeam falls and kisses
Roses in the morning glow.

Dance, oh! dance on all the edges,
Wave-crests, cliffs and mountain ledges,
Ever finding dances new!
Let our knowledge be our gladness,
Let our art be sport and madness,
All that's joyful shall be true!

Let us snatch from every bower,
As we pass, the fairest flower,
With some leaves to make a crown;
Then, like minstrels gaily dancing,
Saint and witch together prancing,
Let us foot it up and down.

Those who come must move as; quickly
As the wind--we'll have no sickly,
Crippled, withered, in our crew.;
Off with hypocrites and preachers,
Proper folk and prosy teachers,
Sweep them from our heaven blue.

Sweep away all sad grimaces,
Whirl the dust into the faces
Of the dismal sick and cold!
Hunt them from our breezy places,
Not for them the wind that braces,
But for men of visage bold.

Off with those who spoil earth's gladness,
Blow away all clouds of sadness,
Till our heaven clear we see;
Let me hold thy hand, best fellow,
Till my joy like tempest bellow!
Freest thou of spirits free!

When thou partest, take a token
Of the joy thou hast awoken,
Take our wreath and fling it far;
Toss it up and catch it never,
Whirl it on before thee ever,
Till it reach the farthest star.

[1] This poem is a parody of the "Chorus Mysticus" which concludes the
second part of Goethe's "Faust." Bayard Taylor's translation of the
passage in "Faust" runs as follows:--

"All things transitory
But as symbols are sent,
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to Event:
The Indescribable
Here it is done:
The Woman-Soul leadeth us
Upward and on!"

[2] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by permission of the
editor of the _Nation,_ in which it appeared on April 17, 1909.

[3] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by permission of the
editor of the _Nation,_ in which it appeared on May 15, 1909.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Joyful Wisdom - Complete Works, Volume Ten" ***

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