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Title: The Joyful Wisdom
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Joyful Wisdom" ***
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
_The First Complete and Authorised English Translation_
EDITED BY
DR OSCAR LEVY
[Illustration]
VOLUME TEN
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
("LA GAYA SCIENZA")
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of the First Edition of
One Thousand Five Hundred
Copies this is
No.
_FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE_
THE
JOYFUL WISDOM
("LA GAYA SCIENZA")
TRANSLATED BY
THOMAS COMMON
WITH POETRY RENDERED BY
PAUL V. COHN
AND
MAUDE D. PETRE
_I stay to mine house confined,
Nor graft my wits on alien stock;
And mock at every master mind
That never at itself could mock._
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: & LONDON
1910
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed at THE DARIEN PRESS, _Edinburgh_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
EDITORIAL NOTE vii
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 1
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE: A PRELUDE IN RHYME 11
BOOK FIRST 29
BOOK SECOND 93
BOOK THIRD 149
BOOK FOURTH: SANCTUS JANUARIUS 211
BOOK FIFTH: WE FEARLESS ONES 273
APPENDIX: SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-BIRD 355
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.
1.
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...
2.
——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....
3.
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....
4.
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 _shamefacedness_ 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._
-----
Footnote 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.
Footnote 2:
An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of Sais."—TR.
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE.
A PRELUDE IN RHYME.
1.
_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.
2.
_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.
3.
_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!"
4.
_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.
5.
_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_.
6.
_Worldly Wisdom._
Stay not on level plain,
Climb not the mount too high,
But half-way up remain—
The world you'll best descry!
7.
_Vademecum—Vadetecum._
Attracted by my style and talk
You'd follow, in my footsteps walk?
Follow yourself unswervingly,
So—careful!—shall you follow me.
8.
_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!
9.
_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._[3]
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.[4]
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 bewrays 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 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._[5]
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._[6]
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!
-----
Footnote 3:
Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.
Footnote 4:
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.
Footnote 5:
Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.
Footnote 6:
Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.
BOOK FIRST
1.
_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 on longer reflection 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 worth while 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 towards 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_ be loved, _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!
2.
_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 gifted men and the
noblest women still belong to this "greater number." But what is
kind-heartedness, refinement and genius to me, if the man with 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
still betrayed itself, at least 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.
3.
_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. Besides, 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.
4.
_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.
5.
_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.
6.
_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"!
7.
_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
avarice, 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.
8.
_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!
9.
_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 aftershoots 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,
unless he should 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,"[7] must also be ready to be "sorrowful unto
death"?(ref. same footnote) 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!
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 them. 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
those 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, the 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, and 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, the 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, can
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, it itself, and the
whole landscape around and under us, is 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 experience a sudden
aversion towards anyone who surprises them in a state of tender, or
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 do not make any 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 of the results they have for himself, but in
respect of 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 refuses 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 the 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 freethinking 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
internally they have disquietude and labour. 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 "fatherland"; 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 condition of
mind 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
the 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 the 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 just on that account 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 purblind humility not at all
rare, and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once for all
unqualified 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, therefore, to be without piety toward the dying, the
wretched 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 burden 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 the 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 one's best Qualities._—Our 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 life,
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 after-thoughts: 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 he now 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 are
yet so many retroactive powers 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 who 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 amici, comoedia 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
unfastidiously and with so little selection for this or that cause:
_that_ which attracts them is the sight of eagerness about any 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 has in his
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 tears 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.
-----
Footnote 7:
Allusions to the song of Clara in Goethe's "Egmont."—TR.
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?[8]—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.
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" formerly feel: 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 dead-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, yet 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_!
61.
_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 women who have become old are more sceptical in the
secret recesses of their hearts than any of the men are; 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 of 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 the 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 the
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: that 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 great many 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
fore-ground, 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 to make a great,
immortal criminal out 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—one _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: no, 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, the 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. First of all, it was 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 means, not
because the song is gentle itself, but because its after-effect makes
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 soul, 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, "The
singers 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 likewise
always among the first to glorify the _new_ excellency, and often _seem_
to be those who first of all 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 the 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, 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, though he be also 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. Schopenhauerian is Wagner's hatred of the Jews,
to whom he is unable to 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 straightforwardness,
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
foolish, 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 re-duction 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
immodest 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 declarations 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 perception of
the _height at which_ beauty begins to shed its charm even over Germans,
raises German artists to the height, to the supreme 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!
-----
Footnote 8:
Schiller's poem, "The Veiled Image of Sais," is again referred to
here.—TR.
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 has 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 whenever 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 in fact 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 things 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 might 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 would 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
events are moral events, 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
weaker: 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, at least in order to be used, 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, even 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 after 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 of 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 Leo's 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 homesickness 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? Backwards, sideways, forwards, 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 aeternam 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 God Ram-Ram-Ram (and so on,
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 in a dreadful
manner. 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 from now.
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 the
extent of our 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 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?"[9] 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 of all Christianity.
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 believe 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 it is for man alone,
of all the animals, that there are no _eternal_ horizons and
perspectives.
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
numskull. 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 close 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 effect of the things themselves.
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 properly 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, very seriously endangered by a 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 any way 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 for once, 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 aeterni._—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 Liberty Attained?_—To be no longer ashamed of
oneself.
-----
Footnote 9:
This means that true love does not look for reciprocity.—TR.
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 possessor! 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 flowed away: 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, seek first 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 it could some day produce such
men also—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 or 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 or 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 in 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, say that _morality
is something forbidden_! Perhaps you will thus win over for those things
the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the _heroic_. But
then there must be something formidable in them, and not as hitherto
something disgusting! 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: to him who only casts a glance now
and then at science, as in 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 that
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 that 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 high 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 _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. And now it has died in these dry words, and hangs and flaps about
in them—and I hardly know now, 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 that 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 life, 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 into 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, we who think and feel, that actually
and unceasingly _make_ something which does not yet 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 it not 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
Homer_! 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 a 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, and dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to do
it _well_, as well as it 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, nor 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 suit 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 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 always 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 suffering, and call it "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
shall perish, just 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_[10]—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.
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, were 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 about 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 all that
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 meaning of war and victory!
325.
_What Belongs to Greatness._—Who can attain to anything great if he does
not feel the force and will in himself _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 anguish and hears the cry of
this anguish—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, or feverish flurry of thought, or a
peaceful position, or good and bad reminiscences, intentions,
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 life, 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 bidding us seek in it the true
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:—these 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 nor 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 a
_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 thinking proper: 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 right well 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_ all things that we now 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 reflected about
yourself, 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 appears to
you as 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 individual,
quite individual 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 or retrospect, _every_
action is and remains an impenetrable affair,—that our opinions of
"good," "noble" and "great" can never be demonstrated 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_ to it.
And therefore, three cheers for physics! And still louder cheers for
that which _impels_ us to it—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 support 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 aught more 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 unto 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.
-----
Footnote 10:
The distinction between ethos and pathos in Aristotle is, broadly,
that between internal character and external circumstance.—P. V. C.
BOOK FIFTH
WE FEARLESS ONES
"Carcasse, tu trembles? Tu
tremblerais bien davantage, si
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
really 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 a 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 includes 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, the godless 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, and 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 at all is binding, after the truth has
dawned upon them that to 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 still 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 has hitherto 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 have 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 become liable to
a suspicion of 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 one who
commands, who 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"[11] 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_.")
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
most 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 furthest removed 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 latest 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 man 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 people ever 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 the people can pour forth its heart with impunity,
by whom it can _get rid_ of its 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 inertiae_, 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 would require to "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,
consequently, 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 value 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 conviction,
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 an 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 _Graeculus 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 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 this 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 so
individual, so much an exception 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 of the divinity of existence, with the help at the very last
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 background. 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 there 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_,"[12] 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.
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 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 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
to 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 that 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, that 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, in India as well as in Greece,
_above all a means of concealment_? Sometimes, perhaps, from the point
of view of education which hallows so many lies, it has been 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 the action generally from the cause of 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 the 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, the "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-historical
institution from the very beginning, for the rearing of actors, a
genuine 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 monogamic 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 the man (who is rarely and tardily
convinced of having this "possession"), which makes his love continue;
in that case it is even possible that the 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_"—as
Mephistopheles says); but one has not got 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 all 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 do we divine how a person has arrived at his thoughts:—whether
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 as I was 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,[13] 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: that is to say, instead of the craftsman and
expert, 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 well
enough that all great modern artists suffer from bad consciences?...)
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 it is really that my
body _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
_that_." 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 _contradict_ all that
his ear and heart, spoilt as they are for listening, prize, relish and
prefer:—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 not at all fit 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_, 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.—also 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 the 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
already 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 expressly 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 us has become very thin: the thawing wind
blows; we ourselves, the homeless ones, are an influence that breaks the
ice, and the other all 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 back of our minds 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 as "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, also the too deeply
pledged 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, nor
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 _wants_ in fact to get outside,
or aloft, is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiarly 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 accord with 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 _singer_, what does it matter! That—has always been
"The Singer's Curse."[14] 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?...
-----
Footnote 11:
In German the expression _Kopf zu waschen_, besides the literal sense,
also means "to give a person a sound drubbing."—TR.
Footnote 12:
"_Germany, Germany, above all_": the first line of the German national
song.—TR.
Footnote 13:
An allusion to the German Proverb, "Handwerk hat einen goldenen
Boden."—TR.
Footnote 14:
Title of the well-known poem of Uhland.—TR.
APPENDIX
SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-BIRD
TO GOETHE.[15]
"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.[16]
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.[17]
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.
-----
Footnote 15:
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!"
Footnote 16:
Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by permission of the editor
of the _Nation_, in which it appeared on April 17, 1909.
Footnote 17:
Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by permission of the editor
of the _Nation_, in which it appeared on May 15, 1909.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES:
Transcriber's Note
The original spelling and punctuation has been retained.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
Italicized words and phrases in the text version are presented by
surrounding the text with underscores.
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