Table of Contents

Part II

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human

All-Too-Human

A Book For Free Spirits

Part II

Translated By

CONTENTS

Translator’s Introduction.

Preface.

Part I. Miscellaneous Maxims And Opinions.

Part II. The Wanderer And His Shadow.

Footnotes

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION.

The publication of Human, all-too-Human extends over the period

1878-1880. Of the two divisions which constitute the Second Part,

“Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions” appeared in 1879, and “The Wanderer

and his Shadow” in 1880, Nietzsche being then in his thirty-sixth year.

The Preface was added in 1886. The whole book forms Nietzsche’s first

lengthy contribution to literature. His previous works comprise only the

philological treatises, The Birth of Tragedy, and the essays on Strauss,

Schopenhauer, and Wagner in Thoughts out of Season.

With the volumes of Human, all-too-Human Nietzsche appears for the first

time in his true colours as philosopher. His purely scholarly

publications, his essays in literary and musical criticism—especially the

essay on Richard Wagner at Bayreuth—had, of course, foreshadowed his work

as a thinker.

These efforts, however, had been mere fragments, from which hardly any one

could observe that a new philosophical star had arisen on the horizon. But

by 1878 the period of transition had definitely set in. Outwardly, the new

departure is marked by Nietzsche’s resignation in that year of his

professorship at Bâle—a resignation due partly to ill-health, and partly

to his conviction that his was a voice that should speak not merely to

students of philology, but to all mankind.

Nietzsche himself characterises Human, all-too-Human as “the monument of

a crisis.” He might as fitly have called it the first-fruits of a new

harvest. Now, for the first time, he practises the form which he was to

make so peculiarly his own. We are told—and we may well believe—that the

book came as a surprise even to his most intimate friends. Wagner had

already seen how matters stood at the publication of the first part, and

the gulf between the two probably widened on the appearance of the Second

Part.

Several aphorisms are here, varying in length as in subject, and ranging

over the whole human province—the emotions and aspirations, the religions

and cultures and philosophies, the arts and literatures and politics of

mankind. Equally varied is the range of style, the incisive epigram and

the passage of pure poetry jostling each other on the same page. In this

curious power of alternating between cynicism and lyricism, Nietzsche

appears as the prose counterpart of Heine.

One or two of the aphorisms are of peculiar interest to English readers.

The essay (as it may almost be called) on Sterne (p. 60, No. 113) does

ample justice, if not more than justice, to that wayward genius. The

allusion to Milton (p. 77, No. 150) will come as somewhat of a shock to

English readers, especially to those who hold that in Milton Art triumphed

over Puritanism. It should be remembered, however, that Nietzsche’s view

coincides with Goethe’s. The dictum that Shakespeare’s gold is to be

valued for its quantity rather than its quality (p. 81, No. 162) also

betrays a certain exclusiveness—a legacy from that eighteenth-century

France which appealed so strongly to Nietzsche on its intellectual side.

To Nietzsche, as to Voltaire, Shakespeare is after all “the great

barbarian.”

The title of the book may be explained from a phrase in _Thus Spake

Zarathustra_: “Verily, even the greatest I found—all-too-human.” The

keynote of these volumes is indeed disillusion and destruction. Nor is

this to be wondered at, for all men must sweep away the rubbish before

they can build. Hence we find here little of the constructive philosophy

of Nietzsche—so far as he had a constructive philosophy. The Superman

appears but faintly, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence not at all. For

this very reason, Human, all-too-Human is perhaps the best

starting-point for the study of Nietzsche. The difficulties in style and

thought of the later work—difficulties that at times become well-nigh

insuperable in Thus Spake Zarathustra—are here practically absent. The

book may, in fact, almost be described as “popular,” bearing the same

relation to Nietzsche’s later productions as Wagner’s _Tannhäuser_ and

Lohengrin bear to the Ring.

The translator’s thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Common for his careful

revision of the manuscript and many valuable suggestions.

P. V. C.

PREFACE.

1.

One should only speak where one cannot remain silent, and only speak of

what one has conquered—the rest is all chatter, “literature,” bad

breeding. My writings speak only of my conquests, “I” am in them, with all

that is hostile to me, ego ipsissimus, or, if a more haughty expression

be permitted, ego ipsissimum. It may be guessed that I have many below

me…. But first I always needed time, convalescence, distance,

separation, before I felt the stirrings of a desire to flay, despoil, lay

bare, “represent” (or whatever one likes to call it) for the additional

knowledge of the world, something that I had lived through and outlived,

something done or suffered. Hence all my writings,—with one exception,

important, it is true,—must be antedated—they always tell of a

“behind-me.” Some even, like the first three Thoughts out of Season,

must be thrown back before the period of creation and experience of a

previously published book (The Birth of Tragedy in the case cited, as

any one with subtle powers of observation and comparison could not fail to

perceive). That wrathful outburst against the Germanism, smugness, and

raggedness of speech of old David Strauss, the contents of the first

Thought out of Season, gave a vent to feelings that had inspired me long

before, as a student, in the midst of German culture and cultured

Philistinism (I claim the paternity of the now much used and misused

phrase “cultured Philistinism”). What I said against the “historical

disease” I said as one who had slowly and laboriously recovered from that

disease, and who was not at all disposed to renounce “history” in the

future because he had suffered from her in the past. When in the third

Thought out of Season I gave expression to my reverence for my first and

only teacher, the great Arthur Schopenhauer—I should now give it a far

more personal and emphatic voice—I was for my part already in the throes

of moral scepticism and dissolution, that is, as much concerned with the

criticism as with the study of all pessimism down to the present day. I

already did not believe in “a blessed thing,” as the people say, not even

in Schopenhauer. It was at this very period that an unpublished essay of

mine, “On Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-Moral Sense,” came into being.

Even my ceremonial oration in honour of Richard Wagner, on the occasion of

his triumphal celebration at Bayreuth in 1876—Bayreuth signifies the

greatest triumph that an artist has ever won—a work that bears the

strongest stamp of “individuality,” was in the background an act of homage

and gratitude to a bit of the past in me, to the fairest but most perilous

calm of my sea-voyage … and as a matter of fact a severance and a

farewell. (Was Richard Wagner mistaken on this point? I do not think so.

So long as we still love, we do not paint such pictures, we do not yet

“examine,” we do not place ourselves so far away as is essential for one

who “examines.” “Examining needs at least a secret antagonism, that of an

opposite point of view,” it is said on page 46 of the above-named work

itself, with an insidious, melancholy application that was perhaps

understood by few.) The composure that gave me the power to speak after

many intervening years of solitude and abstinence, first came with the

book, Human, All-too Human, to which this second preface and apologia(1)

is dedicated. As a book for “free spirits” it shows some trace of that

almost cheerful and inquisitive coldness of the psychologist, who has

behind him many painful things that he keeps under him, and moreover

establishes them for himself and fixes them firmly as with a needle-point.

Is it to be wondered at that at such sharp, ticklish work blood flows now

and again, that indeed the psychologist has blood on his fingers and not

only on his fingers?

2.

The Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions were in the first place, like _The

Wanderer and His Shadow_, published separately as continuations and

appendices to the above-mentioned human, all-too human _Book for Free

Spirits_: and at the same time, as a continuation and confirmation of an

intellectual cure, consisting in a course of anti-romantic self-treatment,

such as my instinct, which had always remained healthy, had itself

discovered and prescribed against a temporary attack of the most dangerous

form of romantics. After a convalescence of six years I may well be

permitted to collect these same writings and publish them as a second

volume of Human, All-too Human. Perhaps, if surveyed together, they will

more clearly and effectively teach their lesson—a lesson of health that

may be recommended as a disciplina voluntatis to the more intellectual

natures of the rising generation. Here speaks a pessimist who has often

leaped out of his skin but has always returned into it, thus, a pessimist

with goodwill towards pessimism—at all events a romanticist no longer. And

has not a pessimist, who possesses this serpentine knack of changing his

skin, the right to read a lecture to our pessimists of to-day, who are one

and all still in the toils of romanticism? Or at least to show them how it

is—done?

3.

It was then, in fact, high time to bid farewell, and I soon received

proof. Richard Wagner, who seemed all-conquering, but was in reality only

a decayed and despairing romantic, suddenly collapsed, helpless and

broken, before the Christian Cross…. Was there not a single German with

eyes in his head and sympathy in his heart for this appalling spectacle?

Was I the only one whom he caused—suffering? In any case, the unexpected

event illumined for me in one lightning flash the place that I had

abandoned, and also the horror that is felt by every one who is

unconscious of a great danger until he has passed through it. As I went

forward alone, I shuddered, and not long afterwards I was ill, or rather

more than ill—weary: weary from my ceaseless disappointment about all that

remained to make us modern men enthusiastic, at the thought of the power,

work, hope, youth, love, flung to all the winds: weary from disgust at the

effeminacy and undisciplined rhapsody of this romanticism, at the whole

tissue of idealistic lies and softening of conscience, which here again

had won the day over one of the bravest of men: last, and not least, weary

from the bitterness of an inexorable suspicion—that after this

disappointment I was doomed to mistrust more thoroughly, to despise more

thoroughly, to be alone more thoroughly than ever before. My task—whither

had it flown? Did it not look now as if my task were retreating from me

and as if I should for a long future period have no more right to it? What

was I to do to endure this most terrible privation?—I began by entirely

forbidding myself all romantic music, that ambiguous, pompous, stifling

art, which robs the mind of its sternness and its joyousness and provides

a fertile soil for every kind of vague yearning and spongy sensuality.

“Cave musicam” is even to-day my advice to all who are enough of men to

cling to purity in matters of the intellect. Such music enervates,

softens, feminises, its “eternal feminine” draws us—_down_!(2) My first

suspicion, my most immediate precaution, was directed against romantic

music. If I hoped for anything at all from music, it was in the

expectation of the coming of a musician bold, subtle, malignant, southern,

healthy enough to take an immortal revenge upon that other music.

4.

Lonely now and miserably self-distrustful, I took sides, not without

resentment, against myself and for everything that hurt me and was

hard to me. Thus I once more found the way to that courageous pessimism

that is the antithesis of all romantic fraud, and, as it seems to me

to-day, the way to “myself,” to my task. That hidden masterful Something,

for which we long have no name until at last it shows itself as our

task—that tyrant in us exacts a terrible price for every attempt that we

make to escape him or give him the slip, for every premature act of

self-constraint, for every reconciliation with those to whom we do not

belong, for every activity, however reputable, which turns us aside from

our main purpose, yes, even for every virtue that would fain protect us

from the cruelty of our most individual responsibility. “Disease” is

always the answer when we wish to have doubts of our rights to our own

task, when we begin to make it easier for ourselves in any way. How

strange and how terrible! It is our very alleviations for which we have to

make the severest atonement! And if we want to return to health, we have

no choice left—we must load ourselves more heavily than we were ever

laden before.

5.

It was then that I learnt the hermitical habit of speech acquired only by

the most silent and suffering. I spoke without witnesses, or rather

indifferent to the presence of witnesses, so as not to suffer from

silence, I spoke of various things that did not concern me in a style that

gave the impression that they did. Then, too, I learnt the art of showing

myself cheerful, objective, inquisitive in the presence of all that is

healthy and evil—is this, in an invalid, as it seems to me, his “good

taste”? Nevertheless, a more subtle eye and sympathy will not miss what

perhaps gives a charm to these writings—the fact that here speaks one who

has suffered and abstained in such a way as if he had never suffered or

abstained. Here equipoise, composure, even gratitude towards life shall

be maintained, here rules a stern, proud, ever vigilant, ever susceptible

will, which has undertaken the task of defending life against pain and

snapping off all conclusions that are wont to grow like poisonous fungi

from pain, disappointment, satiety, isolation and other morasses. Perhaps

this gives our pessimists a hint to self-examination? For it was then that

I hit upon the aphorism, “a sufferer has as yet no right to pessimism,”

and that I engaged in a tedious, patient campaign against the unscientific

first principles of all romantic pessimism, which seeks to magnify and

interpret individual, personal experiences into “general judgments,”

universal condemnations—it was then, in short, that I sighted a new world.

Optimism for the sake of restitution, in order at some time to have the

right to become a pessimist—do you understand that? Just as a physician

transfers his patient to totally strange surroundings, in order to

displace him from his entire “past,” his troubles, friends, letters,

duties, stupid mistakes and painful memories, and teaches him to stretch

out hands and senses towards new nourishment, a new sun, a new future: so

I, as physician and invalid in one, forced myself into an utterly

different and untried zone of the soul, and particularly into an absorbing

journey to a strange land, a strange atmosphere, into a curiosity for all

that was strange. A long process of roaming, seeking, changing followed, a

distaste for fixity of any kind—a dislike for clumsy affirmation and

negation: and at the same time a dietary and discipline which aimed at

making it as easy as possible for the soul to fly high, and above all

constantly to fly away. In fact a minimum of life, an unfettering from all

coarser forms of sensuality, an independence in the midst of all marks of

outward disfavour, together with the pride in being able to live in the

midst of all this disfavour: a little cynicism perhaps, a little of the

“tub of Diogenes,” a good deal of whimsical happiness, whimsical gaiety,

much calm, light, subtle folly, hidden enthusiasm—all this produced in the

end a great spiritual strengthening, a growing joy and exuberance of

health. Life itself rewards us for our tenacious will to life, for such a

long war as I waged against the pessimistic weariness of life, even for

every observant glance of our gratitude, glances that do not miss the

smallest, most delicate, most fugitive gifts…. In the end we receive

Life’s great gifts, perhaps the greatest it can bestow—we regain our

task.

6.

Should my experience—the history of an illness and a convalescence, for it

resulted in a convalescence—be only my personal experience? and merely

just my “Human, All-too-human”? To-day I would fain believe the reverse,

for I am becoming more and more confident that my books of travel were not

penned for my sole benefit, as appeared for a time to be the case. May I,

after six years of growing assurance, send them once more on a journey for

an experiment?—May I commend them particularly to the ears and hearts of

those who are afflicted with some sort of a “past,” and have enough

intellect left to suffer even intellectually from their past? But above

all would I commend them to you whose burden is heaviest, you choice

spirits, most encompassed with perils, most intellectual, most courageous,

who must be the conscience of the modern soul and as such be versed in

its science:(3) in whom is concentrated all of disease, poison or danger

that can exist to-day: whose lot decrees that you must be more sick than

any individual because you are not “mere individuals”: whose consolation

it is to know and, ah! to walk the path to a new health, a health of

to-morrow and the day after: you men of destiny, triumphant, conquerors of

time, the healthiest and the strongest, you good Europeans!

7.

To express finally in a single formula my opposition to the romantic

pessimism of the abstinent, the unfortunate, the conquered: there is a

will to the tragic and to pessimism, which is a sign as much of the

severity as of the strength of the intellect (taste, emotion, conscience).

With this will in our hearts we do not fear, but we investigate ourselves

the terrible and the problematical elements characteristic of all

existence. Behind such a will stand courage and pride and the desire for a

really great enemy. That was my pessimistic outlook from the first—a new

outlook, methinks, an outlook that even at this day is new and strange? To

this moment I hold to it firmly and (if it will be believed) not only

for myself but occasionally against myself…. You would prefer to

have that proved first? Well, what else does all this long preface—prove?

SILS-MARIA, UPPER ENGADINE,

September, 1886.

PART I. MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS.

1.

TO THE DISILLUSIONED IN PHILOSOPHY.—If you hitherto believed in the

highest value of life and now find yourselves disillusioned, must you

immediately get rid of life at the lowest possible price?

2.

OVERNICE.—One can even become overnice as regards the clearness of

concepts. How disgusted one is then at having truck with the half-clear,

the hazy, the aspiring, the doubting! How ridiculous and yet not

mirth-provoking is their eternal fluttering and straining without ever

being able to fly or to grasp!

3.

THE WOOERS OF REALITY.—He who realises at last how long and how thoroughly

he has been befooled, embraces out of spite even the ugliest reality. So

that in the long run of the world’s history the best men have always been

wooers of reality, for the best have always been longest and most

thoroughly deceived.

4.

ADVANCE OF FREETHINKING.—The difference between past and present

freethinking cannot better be characterised than by that aphorism for the

recognition and expression of which all the fearlessness of the eighteenth

century was needed, and which even then, if measured by our modern view,

sinks into an unconscious naïveté. I mean Voltaire’s aphorism,

“croyez-moi, mon ami, l’erreur aussi a son mérite.”

5.

A HEREDITARY SIN OF PHILOSOPHERS.—Philosophers have at all times

appropriated and corrupted the maxims of censors of men (moralists), by

taking them over without qualification and trying to prove as necessary

what the moralists only meant as a rough indication or as a truth suited

to their fellow-countrymen or fellow-townsmen for a single decade.

Moreover, the philosophers thought that they were thereby raising

themselves above the moralists! Thus it will be found that the celebrated

teachings of Schopenhauer as to the supremacy of the will over the

intellect, of the immutability of character, the negativity of

pleasure—all errors, in the sense in which he understands them—rest upon

principles of popular wisdom enunciated by the moralists. Take the very

word “will,” which Schopenhauer twisted so as to become a common

denotation of several human conditions and with which he filled a gap in

the language (to his own great advantage, in so far as he was a moralist,

for he became free to speak of the will as Pascal had spoken of it). In

the hands of its creator, Schopenhauer’s “will,” through the philosophic

craze for generalisation, already turned out to be a bane to knowledge.

For this will was made into a poetic metaphor, when it was held that all

things in nature possess will. Finally, that it might be applied to all

kinds of disordered mysticism, the word was misused by a fraudulent

convention. So now all our fashionable philosophers repeat it and seem to

be perfectly certain that all things have a will and are in fact One Will.

According to the description generally given of this All-One-Will, this is

much as if one should positively try to have the stupid Devil for one’s

God.

6.

AGAINST VISIONARIES.—The visionary denies the truth to himself, the liar

only to others.

7.

ENMITY TO LIGHT.—If we make it clear to any one that, strictly, he can

never speak of truth, but only of probability and of its degrees, we

generally discover, from the undisguised joy of our pupil, how greatly men

prefer the uncertainty of their intellectual horizon, and how in their

heart of hearts they hate truth because of its definiteness.—Is this due

to a secret fear felt by all that the light of truth may at some time be

turned too brightly upon themselves? To their wish to be of some

consequence, and accordingly their concealment from the world of what they

are? Or is it to be traced to their horror of the all-too brilliant light,

to which their crepuscular, easily dazzled, bat-like souls are not

accustomed, so that hate it they must?

8.

CHRISTIAN SCEPTICISM.—Pilate, with his question, “What is Truth?” is now

gleefully brought on the scene as an advocate of Christ, in order to cast

suspicion on all that is known or knowable as being mere appearance, and

to erect the Cross on the appalling background of the Impossibility of

Knowledge.

9.

“NATURAL LAW,” A PHRASE OF SUPERSTITION.—When you talk so delightedly of

Nature acting according to law, you must either assume that all things in

Nature follow their law from a voluntary obedience imposed by

themselves—in which case you admire the morality of Nature: or you are

enchanted with the idea of a creative mechanician, who has made a most

cunning watch with human beings as accessory ornaments.—Necessity, through

the expression, “conformity to law,” then becomes more human and a coign

of refuge in the last instance for mythological reveries.

10.

FALLEN FORFEIT TO HISTORY.—All misty philosophers and obscurers of the

world, in other words all metaphysicians of coarse or refined texture are

seized with eyeache, earache, and toothache when they begin to suspect

that there is truth in the saying: “All philosophy has from now fallen

forfeit to history.” In view of their aches and pains we may pardon them

for throwing stones and filth at him who talks like this, but this

teaching may itself thereby become dirty and disreputable for a time and

lose in effect.

11.

THE PESSIMIST OF THE INTELLECT.—He whose intellect is really free will

think freely about the intellect itself, and will not shut his eyes to

certain terrible aspects of its source and tendency. For this reason

others will perhaps designate him the bitterest opponent of free thought

and give him that dreadful, abusive name of “pessimist of the intellect”:

accustomed as they are to typify a man not by his strong point, his

pre-eminent virtue, but by the quality that is most foreign to his nature.

12.

THE METAPHYSICIANS’ KNAPSACK.—To all who talk so boastfully of the

scientific basis of their metaphysics it is best to make no reply. It is

enough to tug at the bundle that they rather shyly keep hidden behind

their backs. If one succeeds in lifting it, the results of that

“scientific basis” come to light, to their great confusion: a dear little

“God,” a genteel immortality, perhaps a little spiritualism, and in any

case a complicated mass of poor-sinners’-misery and pharisee-arrogance.

13.

OCCASIONAL HARMFULNESS OF KNOWLEDGE.—The utility involved in the unchecked

investigation of knowledge is so constantly proved in a hundred different

ways that one must remember to include in the bargain the subtler and

rarer damage which individuals must suffer on that account. The chemist

cannot avoid occasionally being poisoned or burnt at his experiments. What

applies to the chemist, is true of the whole of our culture. This, it may

be added, clearly shows that knowledge should provide itself with healing

balsam against burns and should always have antidotes ready against

poisons.

14.

THE CRAVING OF THE PHILISTINE.—The Philistine thinks that his most urgent

need is a purple patch or turban of metaphysics, nor will he let it slip.

Yet he would look less ridiculous without this adornment.

15.

ENTHUSIASTS.—With all that enthusiasts say in favour of their gospel or

their master they are defending themselves, however much they comport

themselves as the judges and not the accused: because they are

involuntarily reminded almost at every moment that they are exceptions and

have to assert their legitimacy.

16.

THE GOOD SEDUCES TO LIFE.—All good things, even all good books that are

written against life, are strong means of attraction to life.

17.

THE HAPPINESS OF THE HISTORIAN.—“When we hear the hair-splitting

metaphysicians and prophets of the after-world speak, we others feel

indeed that we are the ‘poor in spirit,’ but that ours is the heavenly

kingdom of change, with spring and autumn, summer and winter, and theirs

the after-world, with its grey, everlasting frosts and shadows.” Thus

soliloquised a man as he walked in the morning sunshine, a man who in his

pursuit of history has constantly changed not only his mind but his heart.

In contrast to the metaphysicians, he is happy to harbour in himself not

an “immortal soul” but many mortal souls.

18.

THREE VARIETIES OF THINKERS.—There are streaming, flowing, trickling

mineral springs, and three corresponding varieties of thinkers. The layman

values them by the volume of the water, the expert by the contents of the

water—in other words, by the elements in them that are not water.

19.

THE PICTURE OF LIFE.—The task of painting the picture of life, often as it

has been attempted by poets and philosophers, is nevertheless irrational.

Even in the hands of the greatest artist-thinkers, pictures and miniatures

of one life only—their own—have come into being, and indeed no other

result is possible. While in the process of developing, a thing that

develops, cannot mirror itself as fixed and permanent, as a _definite

object_.

20.

TRUTH WILL HAVE NO GODS BEFORE IT.—The belief in truth begins with the

doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

21.

WHERE SILENCE IS REQUIRED.—If we speak of freethinking as of a highly

dangerous journey over glaciers and frozen seas, we find that those who do

not care to travel on this track are offended, as if they had been

reproached with cowardice and weak knees. The difficult, which we find to

be beyond our powers, must not even be mentioned in our presence.

22.

Historia in Nuce.—The most serious parody I ever heard was this: “In the

beginning was the nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the

nonsense was God.”(4)

23.

INCURABLE.—The idealist is incorrigible: if he be thrown out of his

Heaven, he makes himself a suitable ideal out of Hell. Disillusion him,

and lo! he will embrace disillusionment with no less ardour than he

recently embraced hope. In so far as his impulse belongs to the great

incurable impulses of human nature, he can bring about tragic destinies

and later become a subject for tragedy himself, for such tragedies as deal

with the incurable, implacable, inevitable in the lot and character of

man.

24.

APPLAUSE ITSELF AS THE CONTINUATION OF THE PLAY.—Sparkling eyes and an

amiable smile are the tributes of applause paid to all the great comedy of

world and existence—but this applause is a comedy within a comedy, meant

to tempt the other spectators to a plaudite amici.

25.

COURAGE FOR TEDIUM.—He who has not the courage to allow himself and his

work to be considered tedious, is certainly no intellect of the first

rank, whether in the arts or in the sciences.—A scoffer, who happened for

once in a way to be a thinker, might add, with a glance at the world and

at history: “God did not possess this courage, for he wanted to make and

he made all things so interesting.”

26.

FROM THE MOST INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF THE THINKER.—Nothing is harder for a

man than to conceive of an object impersonally, I mean to see in it an

object and not a person. One may even ask whether it is possible for him

to dispense for a single moment with the machinery of his instinct to

create and construct a personality. After all, he associates with his

thoughts, however abstract they may be, as with individuals, against whom

he must fight or to whom he must attach himself, whom he must protect,

support and nourish. Let us watch or listen to ourselves at the moment

when we hear or discover a new idea. Perhaps it displeases us because it

is so defiant and so autocratic, and we unconsciously ask ourselves

whether we cannot place a contradiction of it by its side as an enemy, or

fasten on to it a “perhaps” or a “sometimes”: the mere little word

“probably” gives us a feeling of satisfaction, for it shatters the

oppressive tyranny of the unconditional. If, on the other hand, the new

idea enters in gentle shape, sweetly patient and humble, and falling at

once into the arms of contradiction, we put our autocracy to the test in

another way. Can we not come to the aid of this weak creature, stroke it

and feed it, give it strength and fulness, and truth and even

unconditionality? Is it possible for us to show ourselves parental or

chivalrous or compassionate towards our idea?—Then again, we see here a

judgment and there a judgment, sundered from each other, never looking at

or making any movement towards each other. So we are tickled by the

thought, whether it be not here feasible to make a match, to draw a

conclusion, with the anticipation that if a consequence follows this

conclusion it is not only the two judgments united in wedlock but the

matchmakers that will gain honour. If, however, we cannot acquire a hold

upon that thought either on the path of defiance and ill-will or on that

of goodwill (if we hold it to be true)—then we submit to it and do homage

to it as a leader and a prince, give it a chair of honour, and speak not

of it without a flourish of trumpets: for we are bright in its brightness.

Woe to him who tries to dim this brightness! Perhaps we ourselves one day

grow suspicious of our idea. Then we, the indefatigable “king-makers” of

the history of the intellect, cast it down from its throne and immediately

exalt its adversary. Surely if this be considered and thought out a little

further, no one will speak of an “absolute impulse to knowledge”!

Why, then, does man prefer the true to the untrue, in this secret combat

with thought-personalities, in this generally clandestine matchmaking of

thoughts, constitution-founding of thoughts, child-rearing of thoughts,

nursing and almsgiving of thoughts? For the same reason that he practises

honesty in intercourse with real persons: now from habit, heredity, and

training, originally because the true, like the fair and the just, is

more expedient and more reputable than the untrue. For in the realm of

thought it is difficult to assume a power and glory that are built on

error or on falsehood. The feeling that such an edifice might at some time

collapse is humiliating to the self-esteem of the architect—he is ashamed

of the fragility of the material, and, as he considers himself more

important than the rest of the world, he would fain construct nothing that

is less durable than the rest of the world. In his longing for truth he

embraces the belief in a personal immortality, the most arrogant and

defiant idea that exists, closely allied as it is to the underlying

thought, pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim! His work has become his

“ego,” he transforms himself into the Imperishable with its universal

challenge. It is his immeasurable pride that will only employ the best and

hardest stones for the work—truths, or what he holds for such. Arrogance

has always been justly called the “vice of the sage”; yet without this

vice, fruitful in impulses, Truth and her status on earth would be in a

parlous plight. In our propensity to fear our thoughts, concepts and

words, and yet to honour ourselves in them, unconsciously to ascribe to

them the power of rewarding, despising, praising, and blaming us, and so

to associate with them as with free intellectual personalities, as with

independent powers, as with our equals—herein lie the roots of the

remarkable phenomenon which I have called “intellectual conscience.” Thus

something of the highest moral species has bloomed from a black root.

27.

THE OBSCURANTISTS.—The essential feature of the black art of obscurantism

is not its intention of clouding the brain, but its attempt to darken the

picture of the world and cloud our idea of existence. It often employs the

method of thwarting all illumination of the intellect, but at times it

uses the very opposite means, seeking by the highest refinement of the

intellect to induce a satiety of the intellect’s fruits. Hair-splitting

metaphysicians, who pave the way for scepticism and by their excessive

acumen provoke a distrust of acumen, are excellent instruments of the more

subtle form of obscurantism.—Is it possible that even Kant may be applied

to this purpose? Did he even intend something of the sort, for a time at

least, to judge from his own notorious exposition: “to clear the way for

belief by setting limitations to knowledge”?—Certainly he did not succeed,

nor did his followers, on the wolf and fox tracks of this highly refined

and dangerous form of obscurantism—the most dangerous of all, for the

black art here appears in the garb of light.

28.

BY WHAT KIND OF PHILOSOPHY ART IS CORRUPTED.—When the mists of a

metaphysical-mystical philosophy succeed in making all æsthetic phenomena

opaque, it follows that these phenomena cannot be comparatively valued,

inasmuch as each becomes individually inexplicable. But when once they

cannot be compared for the sake of valuation, there arises an entire

absence-of-criticism, a blind indulgence. From this source springs a

continual diminution of the enjoyment of art (which is only distinguished

from the crude satisfaction of a need by the highest refinement of taste

and appreciation). The more taste diminishes, the more does the desire for

art change and revert to a vulgar hunger, which the artist henceforth

seeks to appease by ever coarser fare.

29.

ON GETHSEMANE.—The most painful thing a thinker can say to artists is:

“Could ye not watch with me one hour?”

30.

AT THE LOOM.—There are many (artists and women, for instance) who work

against the few that take a pleasure in untying the knot of things and

unravelling their woof. The former always want to weave the woof together

again and entangle it and so turn the conceived into the unconceived and

if possible inconceivable. Whatever the result may be, the woof and knot

always look rather untidy, because too many hands are working and tugging

at them.

31.

IN THE DESERT OF SCIENCE.—As the man of science proceeds on his modest and

toilsome wanderings, which must often enough be journeys in the desert, he

is confronted with those brilliant mirages known as “philosophic systems.”

With magic powers of deception they show him that the solution of all

riddles and the most refreshing draught of true water of life are close at

hand. His weary heart rejoices, and he well-nigh touches with his lips the

goal of all scientific endurance and hardship, so that almost

unconsciously he presses forward. Other natures stand still, as if

spellbound by the beautiful illusion: the desert swallows them up, they

become lost to science. Other natures, again, that have often experienced

these subjective consolations, become very disheartened and curse the

salty taste which these mirages leave behind in the mouth and from which

springs a raging thirst—without one’s having come one step nearer to any

sort of a spring.

32.

THE SO-CALLED “REAL REALITY.”—When the poet depicts the various

callings—such as those of the warrior, the silk-weaver, the sailor—he

feigns to know all these things thoroughly, to be an expert. Even in the

exposition of human actions and destinies he behaves as if he had been

present at the spinning of the whole web of existence. In so far he is an

impostor. He practises his frauds on pure ignoramuses, and that is why he

succeeds. They praise him for his deep, genuine knowledge, and lead him

finally into the delusion that he really knows as much as the individual

experts and creators, yes, even as the great world-spinners themselves. In

the end, the impostor becomes honest, and actually believes in his own

sincerity. Emotional people say to his very face that he has the “higher”

truth and sincerity—for they are weary of reality for the time being, and

accept the poetic dream as a pleasant relaxation and a night’s rest for

head and heart. The visions of the dream now appear to them of more value,

because, as has been said, they find them more beneficial, and mankind has

always held that what is apparently of more value is more true, more real.

All that is generally called reality, the poets, conscious of this power,

proceed with intention to disparage and to distort into the uncertain, the

illusory, the spurious, the impure, the sinful, sorrowful, and deceitful.

They make use of all doubts about the limits of knowledge, of all

sceptical excesses, in order to spread over everything the rumpled veil of

uncertainty. For they desire that when this darkening process is complete

their wizardry and soul-magic may be accepted without hesitation as the

path to “true truth” and “real reality.”

33.

THE WISH TO BE JUST AND THE WISH TO BE A JUDGE.—Schopenhauer, whose

profound understanding of what is human and all-too-human and original

sense for facts was not a little impaired by the bright leopard-skin of

his metaphysic (the skin must first be pulled off him if one wants to find

the real moralist genius beneath)—Schopenhauer makes this admirable

distinction, wherein he comes far nearer the mark than he would himself

dare to admit: “Insight into the stern necessity of human actions is the

boundary line that divides philosophic from other brains.” He worked

against that wonderful insight of which he was sometimes capable by the

prejudice that he had in common with the moral man (not the moralist), a

prejudice that he expresses quite guilelessly and devoutly as follows:

“The ultimate and true explanation of the inner being of the entirety of

things must of necessity be closely connected with that about the ethical

significance of human actions.” This connection is not “necessary” at all:

such a connection must rather be rejected by that principle of the stern

necessity of human actions, that is, the unconditioned non-freedom and

non-responsibility of the will. Philosophic brains will accordingly be

distinguished from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical

significance of morality. This must create between the two kinds of brain

a gulf of a depth and unbridgeableness of which the much-deplored gulf

between “cultured” and “uncultured” scarcely gives a conception. It is

true that many back doors, which the “philosophic brains,” like

Schopenhauer’s own, have left for themselves, must be recognised as

useless. None leads into the open, into the fresh air of the free will,

but every door through which people had slipped hitherto showed behind it

once more the gleaming brass wall of fate. For we are in a prison, and can

only dream of freedom, not make ourselves free. That the recognition of

this fact cannot be resisted much longer is shown by the despairing and

incredible postures and grimaces of those who still press against it and

continue their wrestling-bout with it. Their attitude at present is

something like this: “So no one is responsible for his actions? And all is

full of guilt and the consciousness of guilt? But some one must be the

sinner. If it is no longer possible or permissible to accuse and sentence

the individual, the one poor wave in the inevitable rough-and-tumble of

the waves of development—well, then, let this stormy sea, this development

itself, be the sinner. Here is free will: this totality can be accused and

sentenced, can atone and expiate. _So let God be the sinner and man his

redeemer._ Let the world’s history be guilt, expiation, and self-murder.

Let the evil-doer be his own judge, the judge his own hangman.” This

Christianity strained to its limits—for what else is it?—is the last

thrust in the fencing-match between the teaching of unconditioned morality

and the teaching of unconditioned non-freedom. It would be quite horrible

if it were anything more than a logical pose, a hideous grimace of the

underlying thought, perhaps the death-convulsion of the heart that seeks a

remedy in its despair, the heart to which delirium whispers: “Behold, thou

art the lamb which taketh away the sin of God.” This error lies not only

in the feeling, “I am responsible,” but just as much in the contradiction,

“I am not responsible, but some one must be.” That is simply not true.

Hence the philosopher must say, like Christ, “Judge not,” and the final

distinction between the philosophic brains and the others would be that

the former wish to be just and the latter wish to be judges.

34.

Sacrifice.—You hold that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?—Just

consider whether in every action that is done with deliberation, in the

best as in the worst, there be not a sacrifice.

35.

AGAINST THE “TRIERS OF THE REINS” OF MORALITY.—One must know the best and

the worst that a man is capable of in theory and in practice before one

can judge how strong his moral nature is and can be. But this is an

experiment that one can never carry out.

36.

SERPENT’S TOOTH.—Whether we have a serpent’s tooth or not we cannot know

before some one has set his heel upon our necks. A wife or a mother could

say: until some one has put his heel upon the neck of our darling, our

child.—Our character is determined more by the absence of certain

experiences than by the experiences we have undergone.

37.

DECEPTION IN LOVE.—We forget and purposely banish from our minds a good

deal of our past. In other words, we wish our picture, that beams at us

from the past, to belie us, to flatter our vanity—we are constantly

engaged in this self-deception. And you who talk and boast so much of

“self-oblivion in love,” of the “absorption of the ego in the other

person”—you hold that this is something different? So you break the

mirror, throw yourselves into another personality that you admire, and

enjoy the new portrait of your ego, though calling it by the other

person’s name—and this whole proceeding is not to be thought

self-deception, self-seeking, you marvellous beings?—It seems to me that

those who hide something of themselves from themselves, or hide their

whole selves from themselves, are alike committing a theft from the

treasury of knowledge. It is clear, then, against what transgression the

maxim “Know thyself” is a warning.

38.

TO THE DENIER OF HIS VANITY.—He who denies his own vanity usually

possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to

avoid the necessity of despising himself.

39.

WHY THE STUPID SO OFTEN BECOME MALIGNANT.—To those arguments of our

adversary against which our head feels too weak our heart replies by

throwing suspicion on the motives of his arguments.

40.

THE ART OF MORAL EXCEPTIONS.—An art that points out and glorifies the

exceptional cases of morality—where the good becomes bad and the unjust

just—should rarely be given a hearing: just as now and again we buy

something from gipsies, with the fear that they are diverting to their own

pockets much more than their mere profit from the purchase.

41.

ENJOYMENT AND NON-ENJOYMENT OF POISONS.—The only decisive argument that

has always deterred men from drinking a poison is not that it is deadly,

but that it has an unpleasant taste.

42.

THE WORLD WITHOUT CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN.—If men only committed such deeds

as do not give rise to a bad conscience, the human world would still look

bad and rascally enough, but not so sickly and pitiable as at

present.—Enough wicked men without conscience have existed at all times,

and many good honest folk lack the feeling of pleasure in a good

conscience.

43.

THE CONSCIENTIOUS.—It is more convenient to follow one’s conscience than

one’s intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an

encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and

so few intelligent people.

44.

OPPOSITE MEANS OF AVOIDING BITTERNESS.—One temperament finds it useful to

be able to give vent to its disgust in words, being made sweeter by

speech. Another reaches its full bitterness only by speaking out: it is

more advisable for it to have to gulp down something—the restraint that

men of this stamp place upon themselves in the presence of enemies and

superiors improves their character and prevents it from becoming too acrid

and sour.

45.

NOT TO BE TOO DEJECTED.—To get bed-sores is unpleasant, but no proof

against the merits of the cure that prescribes that you should take to

your bed. Men who have long lived outside themselves, and have at last

devoted themselves to the inward philosophic life, know that one can also

get sores of character and intellect. This, again, is on the whole no

argument against the chosen way of life, but necessitates a few small

exceptions and apparent relapses.

46.

THE HUMAN “THING IN ITSELF.”—The most vulnerable and yet most

unconquerable of things is human vanity: nay, through being wounded its

strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

47.

THE FARCE OF MANY INDUSTRIOUS PERSONS.—By an excess of effort they win

leisure for themselves, and then they can do nothing with it but count the

hours until the tale is ended.

48.

THE POSSESSION OF JOY ABOUNDING.—He that has joy abounding must be a good

man, but perhaps he is not the cleverest of men, although he has reached

the very goal towards which the cleverest man is striving with all his

cleverness.

49.

IN THE MIRROR OF NATURE.—Is not a man fairly well described, when we are

told that he likes to walk between tall fields of golden corn: that he

prefers the forest and flower colours of sere and chilly autumn to all

others, because they point to something more beautiful than Nature has

ever attained: that he feels as much at home under big broad-leaved walnut

trees as among his nearest kinsfolk: that in the mountains his greatest

joy is to come across those tiny distant lakes from which the very eyes of

solitude seem to peer at him: that he loves that grey calm of the misty

twilight that steals along the windows on autumn and early winter evenings

and shuts out all soulless sounds as with velvet curtains: that in unhewn

stones he recognises the last remaining traces of the primeval age, eager

for speech, and honours them from childhood upwards: that, lastly, the sea

with its shifting serpent skin and wild-beast beauty is, and remains to

him, unfamiliar?—Yes, something of the man is described herewith, but the

mirror of Nature does not say that the same man, with (and not even “in

spite of”) all his idyllic sensibilities, might be disagreeable, stingy,

and conceited. Horace, who was a good judge of such matters, in his famous

beatus ille qui procul negotiis puts the tenderest feeling for country

life into the mouth of a Roman money-lender.

50.

POWER WITHOUT VICTORY.—The strongest cognition (that of the complete

non-freedom of the human will) is yet the poorest in results, for it has

always had the mightiest of opponents—human vanity.

51.

PLEASURE AND ERROR.—A beneficial influence on friends is exerted by one

man unconsciously, through his nature; by another consciously, through

isolated actions. Although the former nature is held to be the higher, the

latter alone is allied to good conscience and pleasure—the pleasure in

justification by good works, which rests upon a belief in the volitional

character of our good and evil doing—that is to say, upon a mistake.

52.

THE FOLLY OF COMMITTING INJUSTICE.—The injustice we have inflicted

ourselves is far harder to bear than the injustice inflicted upon us by

others (not always from moral grounds, be it observed). After all, the

doer is always the sufferer—that is, if he be capable of feeling the sting

of conscience or of perceiving that by his action he has armed society

against himself and cut himself off. For this reason we should beware

still more of doing than of suffering injustice, for the sake of our own

inward happiness—so as not to lose our feeling of well-being—quite apart

from any consideration of the precepts of religion and morality. For in

suffering injustice we have the consolation of a good conscience, of hope

and of revenge, together with the sympathy and applause of the just, nay

of the whole of society, which is afraid of the evil-doer. Not a few are

skilled in the impure self-deception that enables them to transform every

injustice of their own into an injustice inflicted upon them from without,

and to reserve for their own acts the exceptional right to the plea of

self-defence. Their object, of course, is to make their own burden

lighter.

53.

ENVY WITH OR WITHOUT A MOUTHPIECE.—Ordinary envy is wont to cackle when

the envied hen has laid an egg, thereby relieving itself and becoming

milder. But there is a yet deeper envy that in such a case becomes dead

silent, desiring that every mouth should be sealed and always more and

more angry because this desire is not gratified. Silent envy grows in

silence.

54.

ANGER AS A SPY.—Anger exhausts the soul and brings its very dregs to

light. Hence, if we know no other means of gaining certainty, we must

understand how to arouse anger in our dependents and adversaries, in order

to learn what is really done and thought to our detriment.

55.

DEFENCE MORALLY MORE DIFFICULT THAN ATTACK.—The true heroic deed and

masterpiece of the good man does not lie in attacking opinions and

continuing to love their propounders, but in the far harder task of

defending his own position without causing or intending to cause bitter

heartburns to his opponent. The sword of attack is honest and broad, the

sword of defence usually runs out to a needle point.

56.

HONEST TOWARDS HONESTY.—One who is openly honest towards himself ends by

being rather conceited about this honesty. He knows only too well why he

is honest—for the same reason that another man prefers outward show and

hypocrisy.

57.

COALS OF FIRE.—The heaping of coals of fire on another’s head is generally

misunderstood and falls flat, because the other knows himself to be just

as much in the right, and on his side too has thought of collecting coals.

58.

DANGEROUS BOOKS.—A man says: “Judging from my own case, I find that this

book is harmful.” Let him but wait, and perhaps one day he will confess

that the book did him a great service by thrusting forward and bringing to

light the hidden disease of his soul.—Altered opinions alter not at all

(or very little) the character of a man: but they illuminate individual

facets of his personality, which hitherto, in another constellation of

opinions, had remained dark and unrecognisable.

59.

SIMULATED PITY.—We simulate pity when we wish to show ourselves superior

to the feeling of animosity, but generally in vain. This point is not

noticed without a considerable enhancement of that feeling of animosity.

60.

OPEN CONTRADICTION OFTEN CONCILIATORY.—At the moment when a man openly

makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the

whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter. Sometimes,

however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He

ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free

from the tortures of suppressed envy.

61.

SEEING OUR LIGHT SHINING.—In the darkest hour of depression, sickness, and

guilt, we are still glad to see others taking a light from us and making

use of us as of the disk of the moon. By this roundabout route we derive

some light from our own illuminating faculty.

62.

FELLOWSHIP IN JOY.(5)—The snake that stings us means to hurt us and

rejoices in so doing: the lowest animal can picture to itself the pain

of others. But to picture to oneself the joy of others and to rejoice

thereat is the highest privilege of the highest animals, and again,

amongst them, is the property only of the most select

specimens—accordingly a rare “human thing.” Hence there have been

philosophers who denied fellowship in joy.

63.

Supplementary Pregnancy.—Those who have arrived at works and deeds are

in an obscure way, they know not how, all the more pregnant with them, as

if to prove supplementarily that these are their children and not those of

chance.

64.

HARD-HEARTED FROM VANITY.—Just as justice is so often a cloak for

weakness, so men who are fairly intelligent, but weak, sometimes attempt

dissimulation from ambitious motives and purposely show themselves unjust

and hard, in order to leave behind them the impression of strength.

65.

HUMILIATION.—If in a large sack of profit we find a single grain of

humiliation we still make a wry face even at our good luck.

66.

EXTREME HEROSTRATISM.(6)—There might be Herostratuses who set fire to

their own temple, in which their images are honoured.

67.

A WORLD OF DIMINUTIVES.—The fact that all that is weak and in need of help

appeals to the heart induces in us the habit of designating by diminutive

and softening terms all that appeals to our hearts—and accordingly

making such things weak and clinging to our imaginations.

68.

THE BAD CHARACTERISTIC OF SYMPATHY.—Sympathy has a peculiar impudence for

its companion. For, wishing to help at all costs, sympathy is in no

perplexity either as to the means of assistance or as to the nature and

cause of the disease, and goes on courageously administering all its quack

medicines to restore the health and reputation of the patient.

69.

IMPORTUNACY.—There is even an importunacy in relation to works, and the

act of associating oneself from early youth on an intimate footing with

the illustrious works of all times evinces an entire absence of

shame.—Others are only importunate from ignorance, not knowing with whom

they have to do—for instance classical scholars young and old in relation

to the works of the Greeks.

70.

THE WILL IS ASHAMED OF THE INTELLECT.—In all coolness we make reasonable

plans against our passions. But we make the most serious mistake in this

connection in being often ashamed, when the design has to be carried out,

of the coolness and calculation with which we conceived it. So we do just

the unreasonable thing, from that sort of defiant magnanimity that every

passion involves.

71.

WHY THE SCEPTICS OFFEND MORALITY.—He who takes his morality solemnly and

seriously is enraged against the sceptics in the domain of morals. For

where he lavishes all his force, he wishes others to marvel but not to

investigate and doubt. Then there are natures whose last shred of morality

is just the belief in morals. They behave in the same way towards

sceptics, if possible still more passionately.

72.

SHYNESS.—All moralists are shy, because they know they are confounded with

spies and traitors, so soon as their penchant is noticed. Besides, they

are generally conscious of being impotent in action, for in the midst of

work the motives of their activity almost withdraw their attention from

the work.

73.

A DANGER TO UNIVERSAL MORALITY.—People who are at the same time noble and

honest come to deify every devilry that brings out their honesty, and to

suspend for a time the balance of their moral judgment.

74.

THE SADDEST ERROR.—It is an unpardonable offence when one discovers that

where one was convinced of being loved, one is only regarded as a

household utensil and decoration, whereby the master of the house can find

an outlet for his vanity before his guests.

75.

LOVE AND DUALITY.—What else is love but understanding and rejoicing that

another lives, works, and feels in a different and opposite way to

ourselves? That love may be able to bridge over the contrasts by joys, we

must not remove or deny those contrasts. Even self-love presupposes an

irreconcileable duality (or plurality) in one person.

76.

SIGNS FROM DREAMS.—What one sometimes does not know and feel accurately in

waking hours—whether one has a good or a bad conscience as regards some

person—is revealed completely and unambiguously by dreams.

77.

DEBAUCHERY.—Not joy but joylessness is the mother of debauchery.

78.

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.—No one accuses without an underlying notion of

punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. All

complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise. Whether we do

one or the other, we always make some one responsible.

79.

DOUBLY UNJUST.—We sometimes advance truth by a twofold injustice: when we

see and represent consecutively the two sides of a case which we are not

in a position to see together, but in such a way that every time we

mistake or deny the other side, fancying that what we see is the whole

truth.

80.

MISTRUST.—Self-mistrust does not always proceed uncertainly and shyly, but

sometimes in a furious rage, having worked itself into a frenzy in order

not to tremble.

81.

PHILOSOPHY OF PARVENUS.—If you want to be a personality you must even hold

your shadow in honour.

82.

KNOWING HOW TO WASH ONESELF CLEAN.—We must know how to emerge cleaner from

unclean conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves even with

dirty water.

83.

LETTING YOURSELF GO.—The more you let yourself go, the less others let you

go.

84.

THE INNOCENT ROGUE.—There is a slow, gradual path to vice and rascality of

every description. In the end, the traveller is quite abandoned by the

insect-swarms of a bad conscience, and although a thorough scoundrel he

walks in innocence.

85.

MAKING PLANS.—Making plans and conceiving projects involves many agreeable

sentiments. He that had the strength to be nothing but a contriver of

plans all his life would be a happy man. But one must occasionally have a

rest from this activity by carrying a plan into execution, and then comes

anger and sobriety.

86.

WHEREWITH WE SEE THE IDEAL.—Every efficient man is blocked by his

efficiency and cannot look out freely from its prison. Had he not also a

goodly share of imperfection, he could, by reason of his virtue, never

arrive at an intellectual or moral freedom. Our shortcomings are the eyes

with which we see the ideal.

87.

DISHONEST PRAISE.—Dishonest praise causes many more twinges of conscience

than dishonest blame, probably only because we have exposed our capacity

for judgment far more completely through excessive praise than through

excessive and unjust blame.

88.

HOW ONE DIES IS INDIFFERENT.—The whole way in which a man thinks of death

during the prime of his life and strength is very expressive and

significant for what we call his character. But the hour of death itself,

his behaviour on the death-bed, is almost indifferent. The exhaustion of

waning life, especially when old people die, the irregular or insufficient

nourishment of the brain during this last period, the occasionally violent

pain, the novel and untried nature of the whole position, and only too

often the ebb and flow of superstitious impressions and fears, as if dying

were of much consequence and meant the crossing of bridges of the most

terrible kind—all this forbids our using death as a testimony concerning

the living. Nor is it true that the dying man is generally more honest

than the living. On the contrary, through the solemn attitude of the

bystanders, the repressed or flowing streams of tears and emotions, every

one is inveigled into a comedy of vanity, now conscious, now unconscious.

The serious way in which every dying man is treated must have been to many

a poor despised devil the highest joy of his whole life and a sort of

compensation and repayment for many privations.

89.

MORALITY AND ITS SACRIFICE.—The origin of morality may be traced to two

ideas: “The community is of more value than the individual,” and “The

permanent interest is to be preferred to the temporary.” The conclusion

drawn is that the permanent interest of the community is unconditionally

to be set above the temporary interest of the individual, especially his

momentary well-being, but also his permanent interest and even the

prolongation of his existence. Even if the individual suffers by an

arrangement that suits the mass, even if he is depressed and ruined by it,

morality must be maintained and the victim brought to the sacrifice. Such

a trend of thought arises, however, only in those who are not the

victims—for in the victim’s case it enforces the claim that the individual

might be worth more than the many, and that the present enjoyment, the

“moment in paradise,”(7) should perhaps be rated higher than a tame

succession of untroubled or comfortable circumstances. But the philosophy

of the sacrificial victim always finds voice too late, and so victory

remains with morals and morality: which are really nothing more than the

sentiment for the whole concept of morals under which one lives and has

been reared—and reared not as an individual but as a member of the whole,

as a cipher in a majority. Hence it constantly happens that the individual

makes himself into a majority by means of his morality.

90.

THE GOOD AND THE GOOD CONSCIENCE.—You hold that all good things have at

all times had a good conscience? Science, which is certainly a very good

thing, has come into the world without such a conscience and quite free

from all pathos, rather clandestinely, by roundabout ways, walking with

shrouded or masked face like a sinner, and always with the feeling at

least of being a smuggler. Good conscience has bad conscience for its

stepping-stone, not for its opposite. For all that is good has at one time

been new and consequently strange, against morals, immoral, and has gnawed

like a worm at the heart of the fortunate discoverer.

91.

SUCCESS SANCTIFIES THE INTENTIONS.—We should not shrink from treading the

road to a virtue, even when we see clearly that nothing but egotism, and

accordingly utility, personal comfort, fear, considerations of health,

reputation, or glory, are the impelling motives. These motives are styled

ignoble and selfish. Very well, but if they stimulate us to some

virtue—for example, self-denial, dutifulness, order, thrift, measure, and

moderation—let us listen to them, whatever their epithets may be! For if

we reach the goal to which they summon us, then the virtue we have

attained, by means of the pure air it makes us breathe and the spiritual

well-being it communicates, ennobles the remoter impulses of our action,

and afterwards we no longer perform those actions from the same coarse

motives that inspired us before.—Education should therefore force the

virtues on the pupil, as far as possible, according to his disposition.

Then virtue, the sunshine and summer atmosphere of the soul, can

contribute her own share of work and add mellowness and sweetness.

92.

DABBLERS IN CHRISTIANITY, NOT CHRISTIANS.—So that is your Christianity!—To

annoy humanity you praise “God and His Saints,” and again when you want to

praise humanity you go so far that God and His Saints must be annoyed.—I

wish you would at least learn Christian manners, as you are so deficient

in the civility of the Christian heart.

93.

THE RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS IMPRESSION OF NATURE.—A true believer must

be to us an object of veneration, but the same holds good of a true,

sincere, convinced unbeliever. With men of the latter stamp we are near to

the high mountains where mighty rivers have their source, and with

believers we are under vigorous, shady, restful trees.

94.

JUDICIAL MURDER.—The two greatest judicial murders(8) in the world’s

history are, to speak without exaggeration, concealed and well-concealed

suicide. In both cases a man willed to die, and in both cases he let his

breast be pierced by the sword in the hand of human injustice.

95.

“LOVE.”—The finest artistic conception wherein Christianity had the

advantage over other religious systems lay in one word—Love. Hence it

became the lyric religion (whereas in its two other creations Semitism

bestowed heroico-epical religions upon the world). In the word “love”

there is so much meaning, so much that stimulates and appeals to memory

and hope, that even the meanest intelligence and the coldest heart feel

some glimmering of its sense. The cleverest woman and the lowest man think

of the comparatively unselfish moments of their whole life, even if with

them Eros never soared high: and the vast number of beings who miss love

from their parents or children or sweethearts, especially those whose

sexual instincts have been refined away, have found their heart’s desire

in Christianity.

96.

THE FULFILMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.—In Christianity there is also an Epicurean

trend of thought, starting from the idea that God can only demand of man,

his creation and his image, what it is possible for man to fulfil, and

accordingly that Christian virtue and perfection are attainable and often

attained. Now, for instance, the belief in loving one’s enemies—even if it

is only a belief or fancy, and by no means a psychological reality (a real

love)—gives unalloyed happiness, so long as it is genuinely believed. (As

to the reason of this, psychologist and Christian might well differ.)

Hence earthly life, through the belief, I mean the fancy, that it

satisfies not only the injunction to love our enemies, but all the other

injunctions of Christianity, and that it has really assimilated and

embodied in itself the Divine perfection according to the command, “Be

perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” might actually become a holy

life. Thus error can make Christ’s promise come true.

97.

OF THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY.—We may be allowed to form a conjecture as

to the disappearance of Christianity and as to the places where it will be

the slowest to retreat, if we consider where and for what reasons

Protestantism spread with such startling rapidity. As is well known,

Protestantism promised to do far more cheaply all that the old Church did,

without costly masses, pilgrimages, and priestly pomp and circumstance. It

spread particularly among the Northern nations, which were not so deeply

rooted as those of the South in the old Church’s symbolism and love of

ritual. In the South the more powerful pagan religion survived in

Christianity, whereas in the North Christianity meant an opposition to and

a break with the old-time creed, and hence was from the first more

thoughtful and less sensual, but for that very reason, in times of peril,

more fanatical and more obstinate. If from the standpoint of thought we

succeed in uprooting Christianity, we can at once know the point where it

will begin to disappear—the very point at which it will be most stubborn

in defence. In other places it will bend but not break, lose its leaves

but burst into leaf afresh, because the senses, and not thought, have gone

over to its side. But it is the senses that maintain the belief that with

all its expensive outlay the Church is more cheaply and conveniently

managed than under the stern conditions of work and wages. Yet what does

one hold leisure (or semi-idleness) to be worth, when once one has become

accustomed to it? The senses plead against a dechristianised world, saying

that there would be too much work to do in it and an insufficient supply

of leisure. They take the part of magic—that is, they let God work himself

(_oremus nos, Deus laboret_).

98.

THEATRICALITY AND HONESTY OF UNBELIEVERS.—There is no book that contains

in such abundance or expresses so faithfully all that man occasionally

finds salutary—ecstatic inward happiness, ready for sacrifice or death in

the belief in and contemplation of his truth—as the book that tells of

Christ. From that book a clever man may learn all the means whereby a book

can be made into a world-book, a vade-mecum for all, and especially that

master-means of representing everything as discovered, nothing as future

and uncertain. All influential books try to leave the same impression, as

if the widest intellectual horizon were circumscribed here and as if about

the sun that shines here every constellation visible at present or in the

future must revolve.—Must not then all purely scientific books be poor in

influence on the same grounds as such books are rich in influence? Is not

the book fated to live humble and among humble folk, in order to be

crucified in the end and never resurrected? In relation to what the

religious inform us of their “knowledge” and their “holy spirit,” are not

all upright men of science “poor in spirit”? Can any religion demand more

self-denial and draw the selfish out of themselves more inexorably than

science?—This and similar things we may say, in any case with a certain

theatricality, when we have to defend ourselves against believers, for it

is impossible to conduct a defence without a certain amount of

theatricality. But between ourselves our language must be more honest, and

we employ a freedom that those believers are not even allowed, in their

own interests, to understand. Away, then, with the monastic cowl of

self-denial, with the appearance of humility! Much more and much better—so

rings our truth! If science were not linked with the pleasure of

knowledge, the utility of the thing known, what should we care for

science? If a little faith, love, and hope did not lead our souls to

knowledge, what would attract us to science? And if in science the ego

means nothing, still the inventive, happy ego, every upright and

industrious ego, means a great deal in the republic of the men of science.

The homage of those who pay homage, the joy of those whom we wish well or

honour, in some cases glory and a fair share of immortality, is the

personal reward for every suppression of personality: to say nothing here

of meaner views and rewards, although it is just on this account that the

majority have sworn and always continue to swear fidelity to the laws of

the republic and of science. If we had not remained in some degree

unscientific, what would science matter to us? Taking everything together

and speaking in plain language: “To a purely knowing being knowledge would

be indifferent.”—Not the quality but the quantity of faith and devoutness

distinguishes us from the pious, the believers. We are content with less.

But should one of them cry out to us: “Be content and show yourselves

contented!” we could easily answer: “As a matter of fact, we do not belong

to the most discontented class. But you, if your faith makes you happy,

show yourselves to be happy. Your faces have always done more harm to your

faith than our reasons! If that glad message of your Bible were written in

your faces, you would not need to demand belief in the authority of that

book in such stiff-necked fashion. Your words, your actions should

continually make the Bible superfluous—in fact, through you a new Bible

should continually come into being. As it is, your apologia for

Christianity is rooted in your unchristianity, and with your defence you

write your own condemnation. If you, however, should wish to emerge from

your dissatisfaction with Christianity, you should ponder over the

experience of two thousand years, which, clothed in the modest form of a

question, may be voiced as follows: ‘If Christ really intended to redeem

the world, may he not be said to have failed?’ ”

99.

THE POET AS GUIDE TO THE FUTURE.—All the surplus poetical force that still

exists in modern humanity, but is not used under our conditions of life,

should (without any deduction) be devoted to a definite goal—not to

depicting the present nor to reviving and summarising the past, but to

pointing the way to the future. Nor should this be so done as if the poet,

like an imaginative political economist, had to anticipate a more

favourable national and social state of things and picture their

realisation. Rather will he, just as the earlier poets portrayed the

images of the Gods, portray the fair images of men. He will divine those

cases where, in the midst of our modern world and reality (which will not

be shirked or repudiated in the usual poetic fashion), a great, noble soul

is still possible, where it may be embodied in harmonious, equable

conditions, where it may become permanent, visible, and representative of

a type, and so, by the stimulus to imitation and envy, help to create the

future. The poems of such a poet would be distinguished by appearing

secluded and protected from the heated atmosphere of the passions. The

irremediable failure, the shattering of all the strings of the human

instrument, the scornful laughter and gnashing of teeth, and all tragedy

and comedy in the usual old sense, would appear by the side of this new

art as mere archaic lumber, a blurring of the outlines of the

world-picture. Strength, kindness, gentleness, purity, and an unsought,

innate moderation in the personalities and their action: a levelled soil,

giving rest and pleasure to the foot: a shining heaven mirrored in faces

and events: science and art welded into a new unity: the mind living

together with her sister, the soul, without arrogance or jealousy, and

enticing from contrasts the grace of seriousness, not the impatience of

discord—all this would be the general environment, the background on which

the delicate differences of the embodied ideals would make the real

picture, that of ever-growing human majesty. Many roads to this poetry of

the future start from Goethe, but the quest needs good pathfinders and

above all a far greater strength than is possessed by modern poets, who

unscrupulously represent the half-animal and the immaturity and

intemperance that are mistaken by them for power and naturalness.

100.

THE MUSE AS PENTHESILEA.(9)—“Better to rot than to be a woman without

charm.” When once the Muse thinks thus, the end of her art is again at

hand. But it can be a tragic and also a comic finale.

101.

THE CIRCUITOUS PATH TO THE BEAUTIFUL.—If the beautiful is to be identified

with that which gives pleasure—and thus sang the Muses once—the useful is

often the necessary circuitous path to the beautiful, and has a perfect

right to spurn the shortsighted censure of men who live for the moment,

who will not wait, and who think that they can reach all good things

without ever taking a circuitous path.

102.

AN EXCUSE FOR MANY A TRANSGRESSION.—The ceaseless desire to create, the

eternal looking outward of the artist, hinders him from becoming better

and more beautiful as a personality: unless his craving for glory be great

enough to compel him to exhibit in his relations with other men a growth

corresponding to the growing beauty and greatness of his works. In any

case he has but a limited measure of strength, and how could the

proportion of strength that he spends on himself be of any benefit to his

work—or vice versa?

103.

SATISFYING THE BEST PEOPLE.—If we have satisfied the best people of our

time with our art, it is a sign that we shall not satisfy the best people

of the succeeding period. We have indeed “lived for all time,” and the

applause of the best people ensures our fame.(10)

104.

OF ONE SUBSTANCE.—If we are of one substance with a book or a work of art,

we think in our heart of hearts that it must be excellent, and are

offended if others find it ugly, over-spiced, or pretentious.

105.

SPEECH AND EMOTION.—That speech is not given to us to communicate our

emotions may be seen from the fact that all simple men are ashamed to seek

for words to express their deeper feelings. These feelings are expressed

only in actions, and even here such men blush if others seem to divine

their motives. After all, among poets, to whom God generally denies this

shame, the more noble are more monosyllabic in the language of emotion,

and evince a certain constraint: whereas the real poets of emotion are for

the most part shameless in practical life.

106.

A MISTAKE ABOUT A PRIVATION.—He that has not for a long time been

completely weaned from an art, and is still always at home in it, has no

idea how small a privation it is to live without that art.

107.

THREE-QUARTER STRENGTH.—A work that is meant to give an impression of

health should be produced with three-quarters, at the most, of the

strength of its creator. If he has gone to his farthest limit, the work

excites the observer and disconcerts him by its tension. All good things

have something lazy about them and lie like cows in the meadow.

108.

REFUSING TO HAVE HUNGER AS A GUEST.—As refined fare serves a hungry man as

well as and no better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist will

not dream of inviting the hungry man to his meal.

109.

LIVING WITHOUT ART AND WINE.—It is with works of art as with wine—it is

better if one can do without both and keep to water, and if from the inner

fire and inner sweetness of the soul the water spontaneously changes again

into wine.

110.

THE PIRATE-GENIUS.—The pirate-genius in art, who even knows how to deceive

subtle minds, arises when some one unscrupulously and from youth upwards

regards all good things, that are not protected by law, as the property of

a particular person, as his legitimate spoil. Now all the good things of

past ages and masters lie free around us, hedged about and protected by

the reverential awe of the few who know them. To these few our

robber-genius, by the force of his impudence, bids defiance and

accumulates for himself a wealth that once more calls forth homage and

awe.

111.

TO THE POETS OF GREAT TOWNS.—In the gardens of modern poetry it will

clearly be observed that the sewers of great towns are too near. With the

fragrance of flowers is mingled something that betrays abomination and

putrescence. With pain I ask: “Must you poets always request wit and dirt

to stand godfather, when an innocent and beautiful sensation has to be

christened by you? Are you obliged to dress your noble goddess in a hood

of devilry and caricature? But whence this necessity, this obligation?”

The reason is—because you live too near the sewers.

112.

OF THE SALT OF SPEECH.—No one has ever explained why the Greek writers,

having at command such an unparalleled wealth and power of language, made

so sparing a use of their resources that every post-classical Greek book

appears by comparison crude, over-coloured, and extravagant. It is said

that towards the North Polar ice and in the hottest countries salt is

becoming less and less used, whereas on the other hand the dwellers on the

plains and by the coast in the more temperate zones use salt in great

abundance. Is it possible that the Greeks from a twofold reason—because

their intellect was colder and clearer but their fundamental passionate

nature far more tropical than ours—did not need salt and spice to the same

extent that we do?

113.

THE FREEST WRITER.—In a book for free spirits one cannot avoid mention of

Laurence Sterne, the man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of his

century. May he be satisfied with the honour of being called the freest

writer of all times, in comparison with whom all others appear stiff,

square-toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case we should not

speak of the clear and rounded but of “the endless melody”—if by this

phrase we arrive at a name for an artistic style in which the definite

form is continually broken, thrust aside and transferred to the realm of

the indefinite, so that it signifies one and the other at the same time.

Sterne is the great master of double entendre, this phrase being

naturally used in a far wider sense than is commonly done when one applies

it to sexual relations. We may give up for lost the reader who always

wants to know exactly what Sterne thinks about a matter, and whether he be

making a serious or a smiling face (for he can do both with one wrinkling

of his features; he can be and even wishes to be right and wrong at the

same moment, to interweave profundity and farce). His digressions are at

once continuations and further developments of the story, his maxims

contain a satire on all that is sententious, his dislike of seriousness is

bound up with a disposition to take no matter merely externally and on the

surface. So in the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty

whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a feeling most closely akin to

that of floating in the air. He, the most versatile of writers,

communicates something of this versatility to his reader. Yes, Sterne

unexpectedly changes the parts, and is often as much reader as author, his

book being like a play within a play, a theatre audience before another

theatre audience. We must surrender at discretion to the mood of Sterne,

although we can always expect it to be gracious. It is strangely

instructive to see how so great a writer as Diderot has affected this

double entendre of Sterne’s—to be equally ambiguous throughout is just

the Sternian super-humour. Did Diderot imitate, admire, ridicule, or

parody Sterne in his Jacques le Fataliste? One cannot be exactly

certain, and this uncertainty was perhaps intended by the author. This

very doubt makes the French unjust to the work of one of their first

masters, one who need not be ashamed of comparison with any of the

ancients or moderns. For humour (and especially for this humorous attitude

towards humour itself) the French are too serious. Is it necessary to add

that of all great authors Sterne is the worst model, in fact the

inimitable author, and that even Diderot had to pay for his daring? What

the worthy Frenchmen and before them some Greeks and Romans aimed at and

attained in prose is the very opposite of what Sterne aims at and attains.

He raises himself as a masterly exception above all that artists in

writing demand of themselves—propriety, reserve, character, steadfastness

of purpose, comprehensiveness, perspicuity, good deportment in gait and

feature. Unfortunately Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely

related to Sterne the writer. His squirrel-soul sprang with insatiable

unrest from branch to branch; he knew what lies between sublimity and

rascality; he had sat on every seat, always with unabashed watery eyes and

mobile play of feature. He was—if language does not revolt from such a

combination—of a hard-hearted kindness, and in the midst of the joys of a

grotesque and even corrupt imagination he showed the bashful grace of

innocence. Such a carnal and spiritual hermaphroditism, such untrammelled

wit penetrating into every vein and muscle, was perhaps never possessed by

any other man.

114.

A CHOICE REALITY.—Just as the good prose writer only takes words that

belong to the language of daily intercourse, though not by a long way all

its words—whence arises a choice style—so the good poet of the future will

only represent the real and turn his eyes away from all fantastic,

superstitious, half-voiced, forgotten stories, to which earlier poets

devoted their powers. Only reality, though by a long way not every

reality—but a choice reality.

115.

DEGENERATE SPECIES OF ART.—Side by side with the genuine species of art,

those of great repose and great movement, there are degenerate

species—weary, blasé art and excited art. Both would have their weakness

taken for strength and wish to be confounded with the genuine species.

116.

A HERO IMPOSSIBLE FROM LACK OF COLOUR.—The typical poets and artists of

our age like to compose their pictures upon a background of shimmering

red, green, grey, and gold, on the background of nervous sensuality—a

condition well understood by the children of this century. The drawback

comes when we do not look at these pictures with the eyes of our

century. Then we see that the great figures painted by these artists have

something flickering, tremulous, and dizzy about them, and accordingly we

do not ascribe to them heroic deeds, but at best mock-heroic, swaggering

misdeeds.

117.

OVERLADEN STYLE.—The overladen style is a consequence of the

impoverishment of the organising force together with a lavish stock of

expedients and intentions. At the beginnings of art the very reverse

conditions sometimes appear.

118.

PULCHRUM EST PAUCORUM HOMINUM.—History and experience tell us that the

significant grotesqueness that mysteriously excites the imagination and

carries one beyond everyday reality, is older and grows more luxuriantly

than the beautiful and reverence for the beautiful in art: and that it

begins to flourish exceedingly when the sense for beauty is on the wane.

For the vast majority of mankind this grotesque seems to be a higher need

than the beautiful, presumably because it contains a coarser narcotic.

119.

ORIGINS OF TASTE IN WORKS OF ART.—If we consider the primary germs of the

artistic sense, and ask ourselves what are the various kinds of joy

produced by the firstlings of art—as, for example, among savage tribes—we

find first of all the joy of understanding what another means. Art in this

case is a sort of conundrum, which causes its solver pleasure in his own

quick and keen perceptions.—Then the roughest works of art remind us of

the pleasant things we have actually experienced, and so give joy—as, for

example, when the artist alludes to a chase, a victory, a wedding.—Again,

the representation may cause us to feel excited, touched, inflamed, as for

instance in the glorification of revenge and danger. Here the enjoyment

lies in the excitement itself, in the victory over tedium.—The memory,

too, of unpleasant things, so far as they have been overcome or make us

appear interesting to the listener as subjects for art (as when the singer

describes the mishaps of a daring seaman), can inspire great joy, the

credit for which is given to art.—A more subtle variety is the joy that

arises at the sight of all that is regular and symmetrical in lines,

points, and rhythms. For by a certain analogy is awakened the feeling for

all that is orderly and regular in life, which one has to thank alone for

all well-being. So in the cult of symmetry we unconsciously do homage to

rule and proportion as the source of our previous happiness, and the joy

in this case is a kind of hymn of thanksgiving. Only when a certain

satiety of the last-mentioned joy arises does a more subtle feeling step

in, that enjoyment might even lie in a violation of the symmetrical and

regular. This feeling, for example, impels us to seek reason in apparent

unreason, and the sort of æsthetic riddle-guessing that results is in a

way the higher species of the first-named artistic joy.—He who pursues

this speculation still further will know what kind of hypotheses for the

explanation of æsthetic phenomena are hereby fundamentally rejected.

120.

NOT TOO NEAR.—It is a disadvantage for good thoughts when they follow too

closely on one another, for they hide the view from each other. That is

why great artists and writers have made an abundant use of the mediocre.

121.

ROUGHNESS AND WEAKNESS.—Artists of all periods have made the discovery

that in roughness lies a certain strength, and that not every one can be

rough who wants to be: also that many varieties of weakness have a

powerful effect on the emotions. From this source are derived many

artistic substitutes, which not even the greatest and most conscientious

artists can abstain from using.

122.

GOOD MEMORY.—Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that

his memory is too good.

123.

AROUSING INSTEAD OF APPEASING HUNGER.—Great artists fancy that they have

taken full possession of a soul. In reality, and often to their painful

disappointment, that soul has only been made more capacious and

insatiable, so that a dozen greater artists could plunge into its depths

without filling it up.

124.

ARTISTS’ ANXIETY.—The anxiety lest people may not believe that their

figures are alive can mislead many artists of declining taste to portray

these figures so that they appear as if mad. From the same anxiety, on the

other hand, Greek artists of the earliest ages gave even dead and sorely

wounded men that smile which they knew as the most vivid sign of

life—careless of the actual forms bestowed by nature on life at its last

gasp.

125.

THE CIRCLE MUST BE COMPLETED.—He who follows a philosophy or a genre of

art to the end of its career and beyond, understands from inner experience

why the masters and disciples who come after have so often turned, with a

depreciatory gesture, into a new groove. The circle must be described—but

the individual, even the greatest, sits firm on his point of the

circumference, with an inexorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle

ought never to be completed.

126.

THE OLDER ART AND THE SOUL OF THE PRESENT.—Since every art becomes more

and more adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the more

lively, delicate, energetic, and passionate states, the later masters,

spoilt by these means of expression, do not feel at their ease in the

presence of the old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients had

merely been lacking in the means of making their souls speak clearly, also

perhaps in some necessary technical preliminaries. They think that they

must render some assistance in this quarter, for they believe in the

similarity or even unity of all souls. In truth, however, measure,

symmetry, a contempt for graciousness and charm, an unconscious severity

and morning chilliness, an evasion of passion, as if passion meant the

death of art—such are the constituents of sentiment and morality in all

old masters, who selected and arranged their means of expression not at

random but in a necessary connection with their morality. Knowing this,

are we to deny those that come after the right to animate the older works

with their soul? No, for these works can only survive through our giving

them our soul, and our blood alone enables them to speak to us. The real

“historic” discourse would talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the

great artists less by that barren timidity that allows every word, every

note to remain intact than by energetic endeavours to aid them continually

to a new life.—True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life and hear

one of his works performed with that modern animation and nervous

refinement that bring glory to our masters of execution, he would probably

be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should raise his hand to

curse or to bless, but perhaps say at last: “Well, well! That is neither I

nor not-I, but a third thing—it seems to me, too, something right, if not

just the right thing. But you must know yourselves what to do, as in any

case it is you who have to listen. As our Schiller says, ‘the living man

is right.’ So have it your own way, and let me go down again.”

127.

AGAINST THE DISPARAGERS OF BREVITY.—A brief dictum may be the fruit and

harvest of long reflection. The reader, however, who is a novice in this

field and has never considered the case in point, sees something embryonic

in all brief dicta, not without a reproachful hint to the author,

requesting him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared food.

128.

AGAINST THE SHORTSIGHTED.—Do you think it is piece-work because it is

(and must be) offered you in pieces?

129.

READERS OF APHORISMS.—The worst readers of aphorisms are the friends of

the author, if they make a point of referring the general to the

particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin. This

namby-pamby attitude brings all the author’s trouble to naught, and

instead of a philosophic lesson and a philosophic frame of mind, they

deservedly gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curiosity.

130.

READERS’ INSULTS.—The reader offers a twofold insult to the author by

praising his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and

by expecting the author to be grateful to him on that account.

131.

THE EXCITING ELEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ART.—We fall into a state of

terrible tension when we follow the history of an art—as, for example,

that of Greek oratory—and, passing from master to master, observe their

increasing precautions to obey the old and the new laws and all these

self-imposed limitations. We see that the bow must snap, and that the

so-called “loose” composition, with the wonderful means of expression

smothered and concealed (in this particular case the florid style of

Asianism), was once necessary and almost beneficial.

132.

TO THE GREAT IN ART.—That enthusiasm for some object which you, O great

man, introduce into this world causes the intelligence of the many to be

stunted. The knowledge of this fact spells humiliation. But the enthusiast

wears his hump with pride and pleasure, and you have the consolation of

feeling that you have increased the world’s happiness.

133.

CONSCIENCELESS ÆSTHETES.—The real fanatics of an artistic school are

perhaps those utterly inartistic natures that are not even grounded in the

elements of artistic study and creation, but are impressed with the

strongest of all the elementary influences of an art. For them there is no

æsthetic conscience—hence nothing to hold them back from fanaticism.

134.

HOW THE SOUL SHOULD BE MOVED BY THE NEW MUSIC.—The artistic purpose

followed by the new music, in what is now forcibly but none too lucidly

termed “endless melody,” can be understood by going into the sea,

gradually losing one’s firm tread on the bottom, and finally surrendering

unconditionally to the fluid element. One has to swim. In the previous,

older music one was forced, with delicate or stately or impassioned

movement, to dance. The measure necessary for dancing, the observance of

a distinct balance of time and force in the soul of the hearer, imposed a

continual self-control. Through the counteraction of the cooler draught of

air which came from this caution and the warmer breath of musical

enthusiasm, that music exercised its spell.—Richard Wagner aimed at a

different excitation of the soul, allied, as above said, to swimming and

floating. This is perhaps the most essential of his innovations. His

famous method, originating from this aim and adapted to it—the “endless

melody”—strives to break and sometimes even to despise all mathematical

equilibrium of time and force. He is only too rich in the invention of

such effects, which sound to the old school like rhythmic paradoxes and

blasphemies. He dreads petrifaction, crystallisation, the development of

music into the architectural. He accordingly sets up a three-time rhythm

in opposition to the double-time, not infrequently introduces five-time

and seven-time, immediately repeats a phrase, but with a prolation, so

that its time is again doubled and trebled. From an easy-going imitation

of such art may arise a great danger to music, for by the side of the

superabundance of rhythmic emotion demoralisation and decadence lurk in

ambush. The danger will become very great if such music comes to associate

itself more and more closely with a quite naturalistic art of acting and

pantomime, trained and dominated by no higher plastic models; an art that

knows no measure in itself and can impart no measure to the kindred

element, the all-too-womanish nature of music.

135.

POET AND REALITY.—The Muse of the poet who is not in love with reality

will not be reality, and will bear him children with hollow eyes and all

too tender bones.

136.

MEANS AND END.—In art the end does not justify the means, but holy means

can justify the end.

137.

THE WORST READERS.—The worst readers are those who act like plundering

soldiers. They take out some things that they might use, cover the rest

with filth and confusion, and blaspheme about the whole.

138.

SIGNS OF A GOOD WRITER.—Good writers have two things in common: they

prefer being understood to being admired, and they do not write for the

critical and over-shrewd reader.

139.

THE MIXED SPECIES.—The mixed species in art bear witness to their authors’

distrust of their own strength. They seek auxiliary powers, advocates,

hiding-places—such is the case with the poet who calls in philosophy, the

musician who calls in the drama, and the thinker who calls in rhetoric to

his aid.

140.

SHUTTING ONE’S MOUTH.—When his book opens its mouth, the author must shut

his.

141.

BADGES OF RANK.—All poets and men of letters who are in love with the

superlative want to do more than they can.

142.

COLD BOOKS.—The deep thinker reckons on readers who feel with him the

happiness that lies in deep thinking. Hence a book that looks cold and

sober, if seen in the right light, may seem bathed in the sunshine of

spiritual cheerfulness and become a genuine soul-comforter.

143.

A KNACK OF THE SLOW-WITTED.—The slow-witted thinker generally allies

himself with loquacity and ceremoniousness. By the former he thinks he is

gaining mobility and fluency, by the latter he gives his peculiarity the

appearance of being a result of free will and artistic purpose, with a

view to dignity, which needs slow movement.

144.

LE STYLE BAROQUE.(11)—He who as thinker and writer is not born or

trained to dialectic and the consecutive arrangement of ideas, will

unconsciously turn to the rhetoric and dramatic forms. For, after all, his

object is to make himself understood and to carry the day by force, and he

is indifferent whether, as shepherd, he honestly guides to himself the

hearts of his fellow-men, or, as robber, he captures them by surprise.

This is true of the plastic arts as of music: where the feeling of

insufficient dialectic or a deficiency in expression or narration,

together with an urgent, over-powerful impulse to form, gives birth to

that species of style known as “baroque.” Only the ill-educated and the

arrogant will at once find a depreciatory force in this word. The baroque

style always arises at the time of decay of a great art, when the demands

of art in classical expression have become too great. It is a natural

phenomenon which will be observed with melancholy—for it is a forerunner

of the night—but at the same time with admiration for its peculiar

compensatory arts of expression and narration. To this style belongs

already a choice of material and subjects of the highest dramatic tension,

at which the heart trembles even when there is no art, because heaven and

hell are all too near the emotions: then, the oratory of strong passion

and gestures, of ugly sublimity, of great masses, in fact of absolute

quantity per se (as is shown in Michael Angelo, the father or

grandfather of the Italian baroque stylists): the lights of dusk,

illumination and conflagration playing upon those strongly moulded forms:

ever-new ventures in means and aims, strongly underscored by artists for

artists, while the layman must fancy he sees an unconscious overflowing of

all the horns of plenty of an original nature-art: all these

characteristics that constitute the greatness of that style are neither

possible nor permitted in the earlier ante-classical and classical periods

of a branch of art. Such luxuries hang long on the tree like forbidden

fruit. Just now, when music is passing into this last phase, we may learn

to know the phenomenon of the baroque style in peculiar splendour, and, by

comparison, find much that is instructive for earlier ages. For from Greek

times onward there has often been a baroque style, in poetry, oratory,

prose writing, sculpture, and, as is well known, in architecture. This

style, though wanting in the highest nobility,—the nobility of an

innocent, unconscious, triumphant perfection,—has nevertheless given

pleasure to many of the best and most serious minds of their time. Hence,

as aforesaid, it is presumptuous to depreciate it without reserve, however

happy we may feel because our taste for it has not made us insensible to

the purer and greater style.

145.

THE VALUE OF HONEST BOOKS.—Honest books make the reader honest, at least

by exciting his hatred and aversion, which otherwise cunning cleverness

knows so well how to conceal. Against a book, however, we let ourselves

go, however restrained we may be in our relations with men.

146.

HOW ART MAKES PARTISANS.—Individual fine passages, an exciting general

tenor, a moving and absorbing finale—so much of a work of art is

accessible even to most laymen. In an art period when it is desired to win

over the great majority of the laymen to the side of the artists and to

make a party perhaps for the very preservation of art, the creative artist

will do well to offer nothing more than the above. Then he will not be a

squanderer of his strength, in spheres where no one is grateful to him.

For to perform the remaining functions, the imitation of Nature in her

organic development and growth, would in that case be like sowing seeds in

water.

147.

BECOMING GREAT TO THE DETRIMENT OF HISTORY.—Every later master who leads

the taste of art-lovers into his channel unconsciously gives rise to a

selection and revaluation of the older masters and their works. Whatever

in them is conformable and akin to him, and anticipates and foreshadows

him, appears henceforth as the only important element in them and their

works—a fruit in which a great error usually lies hidden like a worm.

148.

HOW AN EPOCH BECOMES LURED TO ART.—If we teach people by all the

enchantments of artists and thinkers to feel reverence for their defects,

their intellectual poverty, their absurd infatuations and passions (as it

is quite possible to do); if we show them only the lofty side of crime and

folly, only the touching and appealing element in weakness and flabbiness

and blind devotion (that too has often enough been done):—we have employed

the means for inspiring even an unphilosophical and inartistic age with an

ecstatic love of philosophy and art (especially of thinkers and artists as

personalities) and, in the worst case, perhaps with the only means of

defending the existence of such tender and fragile beings.

149.

CRITICISM AND JOY.—Criticism, one-sided and unjust as well as intelligent

criticism, gives so much pleasure to him who exercises it that the world

is indebted to every work and every action that inspires much criticism

and many critics. For criticism draws after it a glittering train of

joyousness, wit, self-admiration, pride, instruction, designs of

improvement.—The God of joy created the bad and the mediocre for the same

reason that he created the good.

150.

BEYOND HIS LIMITS.—When an artist wants to be more than an artist—for

example, the moral awakener of his people—he at last falls in love, as a

punishment, with a monster of moral substance. The Muse laughs, for,

though a kind-hearted Goddess, she can also be malignant from jealousy.

Milton and Klopstock are cases in point.

151.

A GLASS EYE.—The tendency of a talent towards moral subjects, characters,

motives, towards the “beautiful soul” of the work of art, is often only a

glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful soul. It may result,

though rarely, that his eye finally becomes living Nature, if indeed it be

Nature with a somewhat troubled look. But the ordinary result is that the

whole world thinks it sees Nature where there is only cold glass.

152.

WRITING AND DESIRE FOR VICTORY.—Writing should always indicate a victory,

indeed a conquest of oneself which must be communicated to others for

their behoof. There are, however, dyspeptic authors who only write when

they cannot digest something, or when something has remained stuck in

their teeth. Through their anger they try unconsciously to disgust the

reader too, and to exercise violence upon him—that is, they desire

victory, but victory over others.

153.

A GOOD BOOK NEEDS TIME.—Every good book tastes bitter when it first comes

out, for it has the defect of newness. Moreover, it suffers damage from

its living author, if he is well known and much talked about. For all the

world is accustomed to confuse the author with his work. Whatever of

profundity, sweetness, and brilliance the work may contain must be

developed as the years go by, under the care of growing, then old, and

lastly traditional reverence. Many hours must pass, many a spider must

have woven its web about the book. A book is made better by good readers

and clearer by good opponents.

154.

EXTRAVAGANCE AS AN ARTISTIC MEANS.—Artists well understand the idea of

using extravagance as an artistic means in order to convey an impression

of wealth. This is one of those innocent wiles of soul-seduction that the

artist must know, for in his world, which has only appearance in view, the

means to appearance need not necessarily be genuine.

155.

THE HIDDEN BARREL-ORGAN.—Genius, by virtue of its more ample drapery,

knows better than talent how to hide its barrel-organ. Yet after all it

too can only play its seven old pieces over and over again.

156.

THE NAME ON THE TITLE-PAGE.—It is now a matter of custom and almost of

duty for the author’s name to appear on the book, and this is a main cause

of the fact that books have so little influence. If they are good, they

are worth more than the personalities of their authors, of which they are

the quintessences. But as soon as the author makes himself known on the

title-page, the quintessence, from the reader’s point of view, becomes

diluted with the personal, the most personal element, and the aim of the

book is frustrated. It is the ambition of the intellect no longer to

appear individual.

157.

THE MOST CUTTING CRITICISM.—We make the most cutting criticism of a man or

a book when we indicate his or its ideal.

158.

LITTLE OR NO LOVE.—Every good book is written for a particular reader and

men of his stamp, and for that very reason is looked upon unfavourably by

all other readers, by the vast majority. Its reputation accordingly rests

on a narrow basis and must be built up by degrees.—The mediocre and bad

book is mediocre and bad because it seeks to please, and does please, a

great number.

159.

MUSIC AND DISEASE.—The danger of the new music lies in the fact that it

puts the cup of rapture and exaltation to the lips so invitingly, and with

such a show of moral ecstasy, that even the noble and temperate man always

drinks a drop too much. This minimum of intemperance, constantly repeated,

can in the end bring about a deeper convulsion and destruction of mental

health than any coarse excess could do. Hence nothing remains but some day

to fly from the grotto of the nymph, and through perils and billowy seas

to forge one’s way to the smoke of Ithaca and the embraces of a simpler

and more human spouse.

160.

ADVANTAGE FOR OPPONENTS.—A book full of intellect communicates something

thereof even to its opponents.

161.

YOUTH AND CRITICISM.—To criticise a book means, for the young, not to let

oneself be touched by a single productive thought therefrom, and to

protect one’s skin with hands and feet. The youngster lives in opposition

to all novelty that he cannot love in the lump, in a position of

self-defence, and in this connection he commits, as often as he can, a

superfluous sin.

162.

EFFECT OF QUANTITY.—The greatest paradox in the history of poetic art lies

in this: that in all that constitutes the greatness of the old poets a man

may be a barbarian, faulty and deformed from top to toe, and still remain

the greatest of poets. This is the case with Shakespeare, who, as compared

with Sophocles, is like a mine of immeasurable wealth in gold, lead, and

rubble, whereas Sophocles is not merely gold, but gold in its noblest

form, one that almost makes us forget the money-value of the metal. But

quantity in its highest intensity has the same effect as quality. That is

a good thing for Shakespeare.

163.

ALL BEGINNING IS DANGEROUS.—The Poet can choose whether to raise emotion

from one grade to another, and so finally to exalt it to a great height—or

to try a surprise attack, and from the start to pull the bell-rope with

might and main. Both processes have their danger—in the first case his

hearer may run away from him through boredom, in the second through

terror.

164.

IN FAVOUR OF CRITICS.—Insects sting, not from malice, but because they too

want to live. It is the same with our critics—they desire our blood, not

our pain.

165.

SUCCESS OF APHORISMS.—The inexperienced, when an aphorism at once

illuminates their minds with its naked truth, always think that it is old

and well known. They look askance at the author, as if he had wanted to

steal the common property of all, whereas they enjoy highly spiced

half-truths, and give the author to understand as much. He knows how to

appreciate the hint, and easily guesses thereby where he has succeeded and

failed.

166.

THE DESIRE FOR VICTORY.—An artist who exceeds the limit of his strength in

all that he undertakes will end by carrying the multitude along with him

through the spectacle of violent wrestling that he affords. Success is not

always the accompaniment only of victory, but also of the desire for

victory.

167.

SIBI SCRIBERE.—The sensible author writes for no other posterity than

his own—that is, for his age—so as to be able even then to take pleasure

in himself.

168.

PRAISE OF THE APHORISM.—A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time,

and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for

every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the

imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains

highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.

169.

THE ART-NEED OF THE SECOND ORDER.—The people may have something of what

can be called art-need, but it is small, and can be cheaply satisfied. On

the whole, the remnant of art (it must be honestly confessed) suffices for

this need. Let us consider, for example, the kind of melodies and songs in

which the most vigorous, unspoiled, and true-hearted classes of the

population find genuine delight; let us live among shepherds, cowherds,

peasants, huntsmen, soldiers, and sailors, and give ourselves the answer.

And in the country town, just in the houses that are the homes of

inherited civic virtue, is it not the worst music at present produced that

is loved and, one might say, cherished? He who speaks of deeper needs and

unsatisfied yearnings for art among the people, as it is, is a crank or an

impostor. Be honest! Only in exceptional men is there now an art-need in

the highest sense—because art is once more on the down-grade, and human

powers and hopes are for the time being directed to other matters.—Apart

from this, outside the populace, there exists indeed, in the higher and

highest strata of society, a broader and more comprehensive art-need, but

of the second order. Here there is a sort of artistic commune, which

possibly means to be sincere. But let us look at the elements! They are in

general the more refined malcontents, who attain no genuine pleasure in

themselves; the cultured, who have not become free enough to dispense with

the consolations of religion, and yet do not find its incense sufficiently

fragrant; the half-aristocratic, who are too weak to combat by a heroic

conversion or renunciation the one fundamental error of their lives or the

pernicious bent of their characters; the highly gifted, who think

themselves too dignified to be of service by modest activity, and are too

lazy for real, self-sacrificing work; girls who cannot create for

themselves a satisfactory sphere of duties; women who have tied themselves

by a light-hearted or nefarious marriage, and know that they are not tied

securely enough; scholars, physicians, merchants, officials who

specialised too early and never gave their lives a free enough scope—who

do their work efficiently, it is true, but with a worm gnawing at their

hearts; finally, all imperfect artists—these are nowadays the true needers

of art! What do they really desire from art? Art is to drive away hours

and moments of discomfort, boredom, half-bad conscience, and, if possible,

transform the faults of their lives and characters into faults of

world-destiny. Very different were the Greeks, who realised in their art

the outflow and overflow of their own sense of well-being and health, and

loved to see their perfection once more from a standpoint outside

themselves. They were led to art by delight in themselves; our

contemporaries—by disgust of themselves.

170.

THE GERMANS IN THE THEATRE.—The real theatrical talent of the Germans was

Kotzebue. He and his Germans, those of higher as well as those of

middle-class society, were necessarily associated, and his contemporaries

should have said of him in all seriousness, “in him we live and move and

have our being.” Here was nothing—no constraint, pretence, or

half-enjoyment: what he could and would do was understood. Yes, until now

the honest theatrical success on the German stage has been in the hands of

the shamefaced or unashamed heirs of Kotzebue’s methods and influence—that

is, as far as comedy still flourishes at all. The result is that much of

the Germanism of that age, sometimes far off from the great towns, still

survives. Good-natured; incontinent in small pleasures; always ready for

tears; with the desire, in the theatre at any rate, to be able to get rid

of their innate sobriety and strict attention to duty and exercise; a

smiling, nay, a laughing indulgence; confusing goodness and sympathy and

welding them into one, as is the essential characteristic of German

sentimentality; exceedingly happy at a noble, magnanimous action; for the

rest, submissive towards superiors, envious of each other, and yet in

their heart of hearts thoroughly self-satisfied—such were they and such

was he.—The second dramatic talent was Schiller. He discovered a class of

hearers which had hitherto never been taken into consideration: among the

callow German youth of both sexes. His poetry responded to their higher,

nobler, more violent if more confused emotions, their delight in the

jingle of moral words (a delight that begins to disappear when we reach

the thirties). Thus he won for himself, by virtue of the passionateness

and partisanship of the young, a success which gradually reacted with

advantage upon those of riper years. Generally speaking, Schiller

rejuvenated the Germans. Goethe stood and still stands above the Germans

in every respect. To them he will never belong. How could a nation in

well-being and well-wishing come up to the intellectuality of Goethe?

Beethoven composed and Schopenhauer philosophised above the heads of the

Germans, and it was above their heads, in the same way, that Goethe wrote

his Tasso, his Iphigenie. He was followed by a small company of highly

cultured persons, who were educated by antiquity, life, and travel, and

had grown out of German ways of thought. He himself did not wish it to be

otherwise.—When the Romantics set up their well-conceived Goethe cult;

when their amazing skill in appreciation was passed on to the disciples of

Hegel, the real educators of the Germans of this century; when the

awakening national ambition turned out advantageous to the fame of the

German poets; when the real standard of the nation, as to whether it could

honestly find enjoyment in anything, became inexorably subordinated to the

judgment of individuals and to that national ambition,—that is, when

people began to enjoy by compulsion,—then arose that false, spurious

German culture which was ashamed of Kotzebue; which brought Sophocles,

Calderon, and even the Second Part of Goethe’s Faust on the stage; and

which, on account of its foul tongue and congested stomach, no longer

knows now what it likes and what it finds tedious.—Happy are those who

have taste, even if it be a bad taste! Only by this characteristic can one

be wise as well as happy. Hence the Greeks, who were very refined in such

matters, designated the sage by a word that means “man of taste,” and

called wisdom, artistic as well as scientific, “taste” (_sophia_).

171.

MUSIC AS A LATE-COMER IN EVERY CULTURE.—Among all the arts that are

accustomed to grow on a definite culture-soil and under definite social

and political conditions, music is the last plant to come up, arising in

the autumn and fading-season of the culture to which it belongs. At the

same time, the first signs and harbingers of a new spring are usually

already noticeable, and sometimes music, like the language of a forgotten

age, rings out into a new, astonished world, and comes too late. In the

art of the Dutch and Flemish musicians the soul of the Christian middle

ages at last found its fullest tone: their sound-architecture is the

posthumous but legitimate and equal sister of Gothic. Not until Handel’s

music was heard the note of the best in the soul of Luther and his kin,

the great Judæo-heroical impulse that created the whole Reformation

movement. Mozart first expressed in golden melody the age of Louis XIV.

and the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain. The eighteenth century—that

century of rhapsody, of broken ideals and transitory happiness—only sang

itself out in the music of Beethoven and Rossini. A lover of sentimental

similes might say that all really important music was a swan-song.—Music

is, in fact, not a universal language for all time, as is so often said in

its praise, but responds exactly to a particular period and warmth of

emotion which involves a quite definite, individual culture, determined by

time and place, as its inner law. The music of Palestrina would be quite

unintelligible to a Greek; and again, what would the music of Rossini

convey to Palestrina?—It may be that our most modern German music, with

all its pre-eminence and desire of pre-eminence, will soon be no longer

understood. For this music sprang from a culture that is undergoing a

rapid decay, from the soil of that epoch of reaction and restoration in

which a certain Catholicism of feeling, as well as a delight in all

indigenous, national, primitive manners, burst into bloom and scattered a

blended perfume over Europe. These two emotional tendencies, adopted in

their greatest strength and carried to their farthest limits, found final

expression in the music of Wagner. Wagner’s predilection for the old

native sagas, his free idealisation of their unfamiliar gods and

heroes,—who are really sovereign beasts of prey with occasional fits of

thoughtfulness, magnanimity, and boredom,—his re-animation of those

figures, to which he gave in addition the mediæval Christian thirst for

ecstatic sensuality and spiritualisation—all this Wagnerian give-and-take

with regard to materials, souls, figures, and words—would clearly express

the spirit of his music, if it could not, like all music, speak quite

unambiguously of itself. This spirit wages the last campaign of reaction

against the spirit of illumination which passed into this century from the

last, and also against the supernational ideas of French revolutionary

romanticism and of English and American insipidity in the reconstruction

of state and society.—But is it not evident that the spheres of thought

and emotion apparently suppressed by Wagner and his school have long since

acquired fresh strength, and that his late musical protest against them

generally rings into ears that prefer to hear different and opposite

notes; so that one day that high and wonderful art will suddenly become

unintelligible and will be covered by the spider’s web of oblivion?—In

considering this state of affairs we must not let ourselves be led astray

by those transitory fluctuations which arise like a reaction within a

reaction, as a temporary sinking of the mountainous wave in the midst of

the general upheaval. Thus, this decade of national war, ultramontane

martyrdom, and socialistic unrest may, in its remoter after-effect, even

aid the Wagnerian art to acquire a sudden halo, without guaranteeing that

it “has a future” or that it has the future. It is in the very nature of

music that the fruits of its great culture-vintage should lose their taste

and wither earlier than the fruits of the plastic arts or those that grow

on the tree of knowledge. Among all the products of the human artistic

sense ideas are the most solid and lasting.

172.

THE POET NO LONGER A TEACHER.—Strange as it may sound to our time, there

were once poets and artists whose soul was above the passions with their

delights and convulsions, and who therefore took their pleasure in purer

materials, worthier men, more delicate complications and dénouements. If

the artists of our day for the most part unfetter the will, and so are

under certain circumstances for that very reason emancipators of life,

those were tamers of the will, enchanters of animals, creators of men. In

fact, they moulded, remoulded, and new-moulded life, whereas the fame of

poets of our day lies in unharnessing, unchaining, and shattering.—The

ancient Greeks demanded of the poet that he should be the teacher of grown

men. How ashamed the poet would be now if this demand were made of him! He

is not even a good student of himself, and so never himself becomes a good

poem or a fine picture. Under the most favourable circumstances he remains

the shy, attractive ruin of a temple, but at the same time a cavern of

cravings, overgrown like a ruin with flowers, nettles, and poisonous

weeds, inhabited and haunted by snakes, worms, spiders, and birds; an

object for sad reflection as to why the noblest and most precious must

grow up at once like a ruin, without the past and future of perfection.

173.

LOOKING FORWARD AND BACKWARD.—An art like that which streams out of Homer,

Sophocles, Theocritus, Calderon, Racine, Goethe, as the superabundance of

a wise and harmonious conduct of life—that is the true art, at which we

grasp when we have ourselves become wiser and more harmonious. It is not

that barbaric, if ever so delightful, outpouring of hot and highly

coloured things from an undisciplined, chaotic soul, which is what we

understood by “art” in our youth. It is obvious from the nature of the

case that for certain periods of life an art of overstrain, excitement,

antipathy to the orderly, monotonous, simple, logical, is an inevitable

need, to which artists must respond, lest the soul of such periods should

unburden itself in other ways, through all kinds of disorder and

impropriety. Hence youths as they generally are, full, fermenting,

tortured above all things by boredom, and women who lack work that fully

occupies their soul, require that art of delightful disorder. All the more

violently on that account are they inflamed with a desire for satisfaction

without change, happiness without stupor and intoxication.

174.

AGAINST THE ART OF WORKS OF ART.—Art is above all and first of all meant

to embellish life, to make us ourselves endurable and if possible

agreeable in the eyes of others. With this task in view, art moderates us

and holds us in restraint, creates forms of intercourse, binds over the

uneducated to laws of decency, cleanliness, politeness, well-timed speech

and silence. Hence art must conceal or transfigure everything that is

ugly—the painful, terrible, and disgusting elements which in spite of

every effort will always break out afresh in accordance with the very

origin of human nature. Art has to perform this duty especially in regard

to the passions and spiritual agonies and anxieties, and to cause the

significant factor to shine through unavoidable or unconquerable ugliness.

To this great, super-great task the so-called art proper, that of works of

art, is a mere accessary. A man who feels within himself a surplus of such

powers of embellishment, concealment, and transfiguration will finally

seek to unburden himself of this surplus in works of art. The same holds

good, under special circumstances, of a whole nation.—But as a rule we

nowadays begin art at the end, hang on to its tail, and think that works

of art constitute art proper, and that life should be improved and

transformed by this means—fools that we are! If we begin a dinner with

dessert, and try sweet after sweet, small wonder that we ruin our

digestions and even our appetites for the good, hearty, nourishing meal to

which art invites us!

175.

CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF ART.—Why, really, does a creative art nowadays

continue to exist? Because the majority who have hours of leisure (and

such an art is for them only) think that they cannot fill up their time

without music, theatres and picture-galleries, novels and poetry. Granted

that one could keep them from this indulgence, either they would strive

less eagerly for leisure, and the invidious sight of the rich would be

less common (a great gain for the stability of society), or they would

have leisure, but would learn to reflect on what can be learnt and

unlearnt: on their work, for instance, their associations, the pleasure

they could bestow. All the world, with the exception of the artist, would

in both cases reap the advantage.—Certainly, there are many vigorous,

sensible readers who could take objection to this. Still, it must be said

on behalf of the coarse and malignant that the author himself is concerned

with this protest, and that there is in his book much to be read that is

not actually written down therein.

176.

THE MOUTHPIECE OF THE GODS.—The poet expresses the universal higher

opinions of the nation, he is its mouthpiece and flute; but by virtue of

metre and all other artistic means he so expresses them that the nation

regards them as something quite new and wonderful, and believes in all

seriousness that he is the mouthpiece of the Gods. Yes, under the clouds

of creation the poet himself forgets whence he derives all his

intellectual wisdom—from father and mother, from teachers and books of all

kinds, from the street and particularly from the priest. He is deceived by

his own art, and really believes, in a naïve period, that a God is

speaking through him, that he is creating in a state of religious

inspiration. As a matter of fact, he is only saying what he has learnt, a

medley of popular wisdom and popular foolishness. Hence, so far as a poet

is really vox populi he is held to be vox dei.

177.

WHAT ALL ART WANTS TO DO AND CANNOT.—The last and hardest task of the

artist is the presentment of what remains the same, reposes in itself, is

lofty and simple and free from the bizarre. Hence the noblest forms of

moral perfection are rejected as inartistic by weaker artists, because the

sight of these fruits is too painful for their ambition. The fruit gleams

at them from the topmost branches of art, but they lack the ladder, the

courage, the grip to venture so high. In himself a Phidias is quite

possible as a poet, but, if modern strength be taken into consideration,

almost solely in the sense that to God nothing is impossible. The desire

for a poetical Claude Lorrain is already an immodesty at present, however

earnestly one man’s heart may yearn for such a consummation.—The

presentment of the highest man, the most simple and at the same time the

most complete, has hitherto been beyond the scope of all artists. Perhaps,

however, the Greeks, in the ideal of Athene, saw farther than any men did

before or after their time.

178.

ART AND RESTORATION.—The retrograde movements in history, the so-called

periods of restoration, which try to revive intellectual and social

conditions that existed before those immediately preceding,—and seem

really to succeed in giving them a brief resurrection,—have the charm of

sentimental recollection, ardent longing for what is almost lost, hasty

embracing of a transitory happiness. It is on account of this strange

trend towards seriousness that in such transient and almost dreamy periods

art and poetry find a natural soil, just as the tenderest and rarest

plants grow on mountain-slopes of steep declivity.—Thus many a good artist

is unwittingly impelled to a “restoration” way of thinking in politics and

society, for which, on his own account, he prepares a quiet little corner

and garden. Here he collects about himself the human remains of the

historical epoch that appeals to him, and plays his lyre to many who are

dead, half-dead, and weary to death, perhaps with the above-mentioned

result of a brief resurrection.

179.

HAPPINESS OF THE AGE.—In two respects our age is to be accounted happy.

With respect to the past, we enjoy all cultures and their productions,

and nurture ourselves on the noblest blood of all periods. We stand

sufficiently near to the magic of the forces from whose womb these periods

are born to be able in passing to submit to their spell with pleasure and

terror; whereas earlier cultures could only enjoy themselves, and never

looked beyond themselves, but were rather overarched by a bell of broader

or narrower dome, through which indeed light streamed down to them, but

which their gaze could not pierce. With respect to the future, there

opens out to us for the first time a mighty, comprehensive vista of human

and economic purposes engirdling the whole inhabited globe. At the same

time, we feel conscious of a power ourselves to take this new task in hand

without presumption, without requiring supernatural aids. Yes, whatever

the result of our enterprise, however much we may have overestimated our

strength, at any rate we need render account to no one but ourselves, and

mankind can henceforth begin to do with itself what it will.—There are, it

is true, peculiar human bees, who only know how to suck the bitterest and

worst elements from the chalice of every flower. It is true that all

flowers contain something that is not honey, but these bees may be allowed

to feel in their own way about the happiness of our time, and continue to

build up their hive of discomfort.

180.

A VISION.—Hours of instruction and meditation for adults, even the most

mature, and such institutions visited without compulsion but in accordance

with the moral injunction of the whole community; the churches as the

meeting-places most worthy and rich in memories for the purpose; at the

same time daily festivals in honour of the reason that is attained and

attainable by man; a newer and fuller budding and blooming of the ideal of

the teacher, in which the clergyman, the artist and the physician, the man

of science and the sage are blended, and their individual virtues should

come to the fore as a collective virtue in their teaching itself, in their

discourses, in their method—this is my ever-recurring vision, of which I

firmly believe that it has raised a corner of the veil of the future.

181.

EDUCATION A DISTORTION.—The extraordinary haphazardness of the whole

system of education, which leads every adult to say nowadays that his sole

educator was chance, and the weathercock-nature of educational methods and

aims, may be explained as follows. The oldest and the newest

culture-powers, as in a turbulent mass-meeting, would rather be heard than

understood, and wish to prove at all costs by their outcries and

clamourings that they still exist or already exist. The poor teachers and

educators are first dazed by this senseless noise, then become silent and

finally apathetic, allowing anything to be done to them just as they in

their turn allow anything to be done to their pupils. They are not trained

themselves, so how are they to train others? They are themselves no

straight-growing, vigorous, succulent trees, and he who wishes to attach

himself to them must wind and bend himself and finally become distorted

and deformed as they.

182.

PHILOSOPHERS AND ARTISTS OF THE AGE.—Rhapsody and frigidity, burning

desires and waning of the heart’s glow—this wretched medley is to be found

in the picture of the highest European society of the present day. There

the artist thinks that he is achieving a great deal when through his art

he lights the torch of the heart as well as the torch of desire. The

philosopher has the same notion, when in the chilliness of his heart,

which he has in common with his age, he cools hot desires in himself and

his following by his world-denying judgments.

183.

NOT TO BE A SOLDIER OF CULTURE WITHOUT NECESSITY.—At last people are

learning what it costs us so dear not to know in our youth—that we must

first do superior actions and secondly seek the superior wherever and

under whatever names it is to be found; that we must at once go out of the

way of all badness and mediocrity without fighting it; and that even

doubt as to the excellence of a thing (such as quickly arises in one of

practised taste) should rank as an argument against it and a reason for

completely avoiding it. We must not shrink from the danger of occasionally

making a mistake and confounding the less accessible good with the bad and

imperfect. Only he who can do nothing better should attack the world’s

evils as the soldier of culture. But those who should support culture and

spread its teachings ruin themselves if they go about armed, and by

precautions, night-watches, and bad dreams turn the peace of their

domestic and artistic life into sinister unrest.

184.

HOW NATURAL HISTORY SHOULD BE EXPOUNDED.—Natural history, like the history

of the war and victory of moral and intellectual forces in the campaign

against anxiety, self-delusion, laziness, superstition, folly, should be

so expounded that every reader or listener may be continually aroused to

strive after mental and physical health and soundness, after the feeling

of joy, and be awakened to the desire to be the heir and continuator of

mankind, to an ever nobler adventurous impulse. Hitherto natural history

has not found its true language, because the inventive and eloquent

artists—who are needed for this purpose—never rid themselves of a secret

mistrust of it, and above all never wish to learn from it a thorough

lesson. Nevertheless it must be conceded to the English that their

scientific manuals for the lower strata of the people have made admirable

strides towards that ideal. But then such books are written by their

foremost men of learning, full, complete, and inspiring natures, and not,

as among us, by mediocre investigators.

185.

GENIUS IN HUMANITY.—If genius, according to Schopenhauer’s observation,

lies in the coherent and vivid recollection of our own experience, a

striving towards genius in humanity collectively might be deduced from the

striving towards knowledge of the whole historic past—which is beginning

to mark off the modern age more and more as compared with earlier ages and

has for the first time broken down the barriers between nature and spirit,

men and animals, morality and physics. A perfectly conceived history would

be cosmic self-consciousness.

186.

THE CULT OF CULTURE.—On great minds is bestowed the terrifying

all-too-human of their natures, their blindnesses, deformities, and

extravagances, so that their more powerful, easily all-too-powerful

influence may be continually held within bounds through the distrust

aroused by such qualities. For the sum-total of all that humanity needs

for its continued existence is so comprehensive, and demands powers so

diverse and so numerous, that for every one-sided predilection, whether in

science or politics or art or commerce, to which such natures would

persuade us, mankind as a whole has to pay a heavy price. It has always

been a great disaster to culture when human beings are worshipped. In this

sense we may understand the precept of Mosaic law which forbids us to have

any other gods but God.—Side by side with the cult of genius and violence

we must always place, as its complement and remedy, the cult of culture.

This cult can find an intelligent appreciation even for the material, the

inferior, the mean, the misunderstood, the weak, the imperfect, the

one-sided, the incomplete, the untrue, the apparent, even the wicked and

horrible, and can grant them the concession that all this is necessary.

For the continued harmony of all things human, attained by amazing toil

and strokes of luck, and just as much the work of Cyclopes and ants as of

geniuses, shall never be lost. How, indeed, could we dispense with that

deep, universal, and often uncanny bass, without which, after all, melody

cannot be melody?

187.

THE ANTIQUE WORLD AND PLEASURE.—The man of the antique world understood

better how to rejoice, we understand better how to grieve less. They

continually found new motives for feeling happy, for celebrating

festivals, being inventive with all their wealth of shrewdness and

reflection. We, on the other hand, concentrate our intellect rather on the

solving of problems which have in view painlessness and the removal of

sources of discomfort. With regard to suffering existence, the ancients

sought to forget or in some way to convert the sensation into a pleasant

one, thus trying to supply palliatives. We attack the causes of suffering,

and on the whole prefer to use prophylactics.—Perhaps we are only building

upon a foundation whereon a later age will once more set up the temple of

joy.

188.

THE MUSES AS LIARS.—“We know how to tell many lies,” so sang the Muses

once, when they revealed themselves to Hesiod.—The conception of the

artist as deceiver, once grasped, leads to important discoveries.

189.

HOW PARADOXICAL HOMER CAN BE.—Is there anything more desperate, more

horrible, more incredible, shining over human destiny like a winter sun,

than that idea of Homer’s:

“So the decree of the Gods willed it, and doomed man to perish, that it

might be a matter for song even to distant generations”?

In other words, we suffer and perish so that poets may not lack material,

and this is the dispensation of those very Gods of Homer who seem much

concerned about the joyousness of generations to come, but very little

about us men of the present. To think that such ideas should ever have

entered the head of a Greek!

190.

SUPPLEMENTARY JUSTIFICATION OF EXISTENCE.—Many ideas have come into the

world as errors and fancies but have turned out truths, because men have

afterwards given them a genuine basis to rest upon.

191.

PRO AND CON NECESSARY.—He who has not realised that every great man must

not only be encouraged but also, for the sake of the common welfare,

opposed, is certainly still a great child—or himself a great man.

192.

INJUSTICE OF GENIUS.—Genius is most unjust towards geniuses, if they be

contemporary. Either it thinks it has no need of them and considers them

superfluous (for it can do without them), or their influence crosses the

path of its electric current, in which case it even calls them pernicious.

193.

THE SADDEST DESTINY OF A PROPHET.—He has worked twenty years to convince

his contemporaries, and succeeds at last, but in the meantime his

adversaries have also succeeded—he is no longer convinced of himself.

194.

THREE THINKERS LIKE ONE SPIDER.—In every philosophical school three

thinkers follow one another in this relation: the first produces from

himself sap and seed, the second draws it out in threads and spins a

cunning web, the third waits in this web for the victims who are caught in

it—and tries to live upon this philosophy.

195.

FROM ASSOCIATION WITH AUTHORS.—It is as bad a habit to go about with an

author grasping him by the nose as grasping him by the horn (and every

author has his horn).

196.

A TEAM OF TWO.—Vagueness of thought and outbursts of sentimentality are as

often wedded to the reckless desire to have one’s own way by hook or by

crook, to make oneself alone of any consequence, as a genuinely helpful,

gracious, and kindly spirit is wedded to the impulse towards clearness and

purity of thought and towards emotional moderation and self-restraint.

197.

BINDING AND SEPARATING FORCES.—Surely it is in the heads of men that there

arises the force that binds them—an understanding of their common interest

or the reverse; and in their hearts the force that separates them—a blind

choosing and groping in love and hate, a devotion to one at the expense of

all, and a consequent contempt for the common utility.

198.

MARKSMEN AND THINKERS.—There are curious marksmen who miss their mark, but

leave the shooting-gallery with secret pride in the fact that their bullet

at any rate flew very far (beyond the mark, it is true), or that it did

not hit the mark but hit something else. There are thinkers of the same

stamp.

199.

ATTACK FROM TWO SIDES.—We act as enemies towards an intellectual tendency

or movement when we are superior to it and disapprove of its aim, or when

its aim is too high and unrecognisable to our eye—in other words, when it

is superior to us. So the same party may be attacked from two sides, from

above and from below. Not infrequently the assailants, from common hatred,

form an alliance which is more repulsive than all that they hate.

200.

ORIGINAL.—Original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a

new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and

overlooked by every one, as something new. The first discoverer is usually

that quite ordinary and unintellectual visionary—chance.

201.

ERROR OF PHILOSOPHERS.—The philosopher believes that the value of his

philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure. Posterity finds it in the

stone with which he built and with which, from that time forth, men will

build oftener and better—in other words, in the fact that the structure

may be destroyed and yet have value as material.

202.

WIT.—Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

203.

THE MOMENT BEFORE SOLUTION.—In science it occurs every day and every hour

that a man, immediately before the solution, remains stuck, being

convinced that his efforts have been entirely in vain—like one who, in

untying a noose, hesitates at the moment when it is nearest to coming

loose, because at that very moment it looks most like a knot.

204.

AMONG THE VISIONARIES.—The thoughtful man, and he who is sure of his

intelligence, may profitably consort with visionaries for a decade and

abandon himself in their torrid zone to a moderate insanity. He will thus

have travelled a good part of the road towards that cosmopolitanism of the

intellect which can say without presumption, “Nothing intellectual is

alien to me.”

205.

KEEN AIR.—The best and healthiest element in science as amid the mountains

is the keen air that plays about it.—Intellectual molly-coddles (such as

artists) dread and abuse science on account of this atmosphere.

206.

WHY SAVANTS ARE NOBLER THAN ARTISTS.—Science requires nobler natures than

does poetry; natures that are more simple, less ambitious, more

restrained, calmer, that think less of posthumous fame and can bury

themselves in studies which, in the eye of the many, scarcely seem worthy

of such a sacrifice of personality. There is another loss of which they

are conscious. The nature of their occupation, its continual exaction of

the greatest sobriety, weakens their will; the fire is not kept up so

vigorously as on the hearths of poetic minds. As such, they often lose

their strength and prime earlier than artists do—and, as has been said,

they are aware of their danger. Under all circumstances they seem less

gifted because they shine less, and thus they will always be rated below

their value.

207.

HOW FAR PIETY OBSCURES.—In later centuries the great man is credited with

all the great qualities and virtues of his century. Thus all that is best

is continually obscured by piety, which treats the picture as a sacred

one, to be surrounded with all manner of votive offerings. In the end the

picture is completely veiled and covered by the offerings, and thenceforth

is more an object of faith than of contemplation.

208.

STANDING ON ONE’S HEAD.—If we make truth stand on its head, we generally

fail to notice that our own head, too, is not in its right position.

209.

ORIGIN AND UTILITY OF FASHION.—The obvious satisfaction of the individual

with his own form excites imitation and gradually creates the form of the

many—that is, fashion. The many desire, and indeed attain, that same

comforting satisfaction with their own form. Consider how many reasons

every man has for anxiety and shy self-concealment, and how, on this

account, three-fourths of his energy and goodwill is crippled and may

become unproductive! So we must be very grateful to fashion for

unfettering that three-fourths and communicating self-confidence and the

power of cheerful compromise to those who feel themselves bound to each

other by its law. Even foolish laws give freedom and calm of the spirit,

so long as many persons have submitted to their sway.

210.

LOOSENERS OF TONGUES.—The value of many men and books rests solely on

their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate

things. They are looseners of tongues and crowbars to open the most

stubborn teeth. Many events and misdeeds which are apparently only sent as

a curse to mankind possess this value and utility.

211.

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM OF DOMICILE.(12)—Who of us could dare to call himself

a “free spirit” if he could not render homage after his fashion, by taking

on his own shoulders a portion of that burden of public dislike and abuse,

to men to whom this name is attached as a reproach? We might as well call

ourselves in all seriousness “spirits free of domicile” (_Freizügig_) (and

without that arrogant or high-spirited defiance) because we feel the

impulse to freedom (Zug zur Freiheit) as the strongest instinct of our

minds and, in contrast to fixed and limited minds, practically see our

ideal in an intellectual nomadism—to use a modest and almost depreciatory

expression.

212.

YES, THE FAVOUR OF THE MUSES!—What Homer says on this point goes right to

our heart, so true, so terrible is it:

“The Muse loved him with all her heart and gave him good and evil, for she

took away his eyes and vouchsafed him sweet song.”

This is an endless text for thinking men: she gives good and evil, that is

her manner of loving with all her heart and soul! And each man will

interpret specially for himself why we poets and thinkers have to give up

our eyes in her service.(13)

213.

AGAINST THE CULTIVATION OF MUSIC.—The artistic training of the eye from

childhood upwards by means of drawing, painting, landscape-sketching,

figures, scenes, involves an estimable gain in life, making the eyesight

keen, calm, and enduring in the observation of men and circumstances. No

similar secondary advantage arises from the artistic cultivation of the

ear, whence public schools will generally do well to give the art of the

eye a preference over that of the ear.

214.

THE DISCOVERERS OF TRIVIALITIES.—Subtle minds, from which nothing is

farther than trivialities, often discover a triviality after taking all

manner of circuitous routes and mountain paths, and, to the astonishment

of the non-subtle, rejoice exceedingly.

215.

MORALS OF SAVANTS.—A regular and rapid advance in the sciences is only

possible when the individual is compelled to be not so distrustful as to

test every calculation and assertion of others, in fields which are remote

from his own. A necessary condition, however, is that every man should

have competitors in his own sphere, who are extremely distrustful and keep

a sharp eye upon him. From this juxtaposition of “not too distrustful” and

“extremely distrustful” arises sincerity in the republic of learning.

216.

REASONS FOR STERILITY.—There are highly gifted minds which are always

sterile only because, from temperamental weakness, they are too impatient

to wait for their pregnancy.

217.

THE PERVERTED WORLD OF TEARS.—The manifold discomforts which the demands

of higher culture cause to man finally pervert his nature to such an

extent that he usually keeps himself stoical and unbending. Thus he has

tears in reserve only for rare occasions of happiness, so that many must

weep even at the enjoyment of painlessness—only when happy does his heart

still beat.

218.

THE GREEKS AS INTERPRETERS.—When we speak of the Greeks we unwittingly

speak of to-day and yesterday; their universally known history is a blank

mirror, always reflecting something that is not in the mirror itself. We

enjoy the freedom of speaking about them in order to have the right of

being silent about others—so that these Greeks themselves may whisper

something in the ear of the reflective reader. Thus the Greeks facilitate

to modern men the communication of much that is debatable and hard to

communicate.

219.

OF THE ACQUIRED CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS.—We are easily led astray by the

renowned Greek clearness, transparency, simplicity, and order, by their

crystal-like naturalness and crystal-like art, into believing that all

these gifts were bestowed on the Greeks—for instance, that they could not

but write well, as Lichtenberg expressed it on one occasion. Yet no

statement could be more hasty and more untenable. The history of prose

from Gorgias to Demosthenes shows a course of toiling and wrestling

towards light from the obscure, overloaded, and tasteless, reminding one

of the labour of heroes who had to construct the first roads through

forest and bog. The dialogue of tragedy was the real achievement of the

dramatist, owing to its uncommon clearness and precision, whereas the

national tendency was to riot in symbolism and innuendo, a tendency

expressly fostered by the great choral lyric. Similarly it was the

achievement of Homer to liberate the Greeks from Asiatic pomp and gloom,

and to have attained the clearness of architecture in details great and

small. Nor was it by any means thought easy to say anything in a pure and

illuminating style. How else should we account for the great admiration

for the epigram of Simonides, which shows itself so simple, with no gilded

points or arabesques of wit, but says all that it has to say plainly and

with the calm of the sun, not with the straining after effect of the

lightning. Since the struggle towards light from an almost native twilight

is Greek, a thrill of jubilation runs through the people when they hear a

laconic sentence, the language of elegy or the maxims of the Seven Wise

Men. Hence they were so fond of giving precepts in verse, a practice that

we find objectionable. This was the true Apolline task of the Hellenic

spirit, with the aim of rising superior to the perils of metre and the

obscurity which is otherwise characteristic of poetry. Simplicity,

flexibility, and sobriety were wrestled for and not given by nature to

this people. The danger of a relapse into Asianism constantly hovered over

the Greeks, and really overtook them from time to time like a murky,

overflowing tide of mystical impulses, primitive savagery and darkness. We

see them plunge in; we see Europe, as it were, flooded, washed away—for

Europe was very small then; but they always emerge once more to the light,

good swimmers and divers that they are, those fellow-countrymen of

Odysseus.

220.

THE PAGAN CHARACTERISTIC.—Perhaps there is nothing more astonishing to the

observer of the Greek world than to discover that the Greeks from time to

time held festivals, as it were, for all their passions and evil

tendencies alike, and in fact even established a kind of series of

festivals, by order of the State, for their “all-too-human.” This is the

pagan characteristic of their world, which Christianity has never

understood and never can understand, and has always combated and

despised.—They accepted this all-too-human as unavoidable, and preferred,

instead of railing at it, to give it a kind of secondary right by grafting

it on to the usages of society and religion. All in man that has power

they called divine, and wrote it on the walls of their heaven. They do not

deny this natural instinct that expresses itself in evil characteristics,

but regulate and limit it to definite cults and days, so as to turn those

turbulent streams into as harmless a course as possible, after devising

sufficient precautionary measures. That is the root of all the moral

broad-mindedness of antiquity. To the wicked, the dubious, the backward,

the animal element, as to the barbaric, pre-Hellenic and Asiatic, which

still lived in the depths of Greek nature, they allowed a moderate

outflow, and did not strive to destroy it utterly. The whole system was

under the domain of the State, which was built up not on individuals or

castes, but on common human qualities. In the structure of the State the

Greeks show that wonderful sense for typical facts which later on enabled

them to become investigators of Nature, historians, geographers, and

philosophers. It was not a limited moral law of priests or castes, which

had to decide about the constitution of the State and State worship, but

the most comprehensive view of the reality of all that is human. Whence do

the Greeks derive this freedom, this sense of reality? Perhaps from Homer

and the poets who preceded him. For just those poets whose nature is

generally not the most wise or just possess, in compensation, that delight

in reality and activity of every kind, and prefer not to deny even evil.

It suffices for them if evil moderates itself, does not kill or inwardly

poison everything—in other words, they have similar ideas to those of the

founders of Greek constitutions, and were their teachers and forerunners.

221.

EXCEPTIONAL GREEKS.—In Greece, deep, thorough, serious minds were the

exception. The national instinct tended rather to regard the serious and

thorough as a kind of grimace. To borrow forms from a foreign source, not

to create but to transform into the fairest shapes—that is Greek. To

imitate, not for utility but for artistic illusion, ever and anon to gain

the mastery over forced seriousness, to arrange, beautify, simplify—that

is the continual task from Homer to the Sophists of the third and fourth

centuries of our era, who are all outward show, pompous speech,

declamatory gestures, and address themselves to shallow souls that care

only for appearance, sound, and effect. And now let us estimate the

greatness of those exceptional Greeks, who created science! Whoever tells

of them, tells the most heroic story of the human mind!

222.

SIMPLICITY NOT THE FIRST NOR THE LAST THING IN POINT OF TIME.—In the

history of religious ideas many errors about development and false

gradations are made in matters which in reality are not consecutive

outgrowths but contemporary yet separate phenomena. In particular,

simplicity has still far too much the reputation of being the oldest, the

initial thing. Much that is human arises by subtraction and division, and

not merely by doubling, addition, and unification.—For instance, men still

believe in a gradual development of the idea of God from those unwieldy

stones and blocks of wood up to the highest forms of anthropomorphism. Yet

the fact is that so long as divinity was attributed to and felt in trees,

logs of wood, stones, and beasts, people shrank from humanising their

forms as from an act of godlessness. First of all, poets, apart from all

considerations of cult and the ban of religious shame, have had to make

the inner imagination of man accustomed and compliant to this notion.

Wherever more pious periods and phases of thought gained the upper hand,

this liberating influence of poets fell into the background, and sanctity

remained, after as before, on the side of the monstrous, uncanny, quite

peculiarly inhuman. And then, much of what the inner imagination ventures

to picture to itself would exert a painful influence if externally and

corporeally represented. The inner eye is far bolder and more shameless

than the outer (whence the well-known difficulty and, to some extent,

impossibility, of working epic material into dramatic form). The religious

imagination for a long time entirely refuses to believe in the identity of

God with an image: the image is meant to fix the numen of the Deity,

actually and specifically, although in a mysterious and not altogether

intelligible way. The oldest image of the Gods is meant to shelter and at

the same time to hide(14) the God—to indicate him but not to expose him to

view. No Greek really looked upon his Apollo as a pointed pillar of wood,

his Eros as a lump of stone. These were symbols, which were intended to

inspire dread of the manifestation of the God. It was the same with those

blocks of wood out of which individual limbs, generally in excessive

number, were fashioned with the scantiest of carving—as, for instance, a

Laconian Apollo with four hands and four ears. In the incomplete,

symbolical, or excessive lies a terrible sanctity, which is meant to

prevent us from thinking of anything human or similar to humanity. It is

not an embryonic stage of art in which such things are made—as if they

were not able to speak more plainly and portray more sensibly in the age

when such images were honoured! Rather, men are afraid of just one

thing—direct speaking out. Just as the cella hides and conceals in a

mysterious twilight, yet not completely, the holy of holies, the real

numen of the Deity; just as, again, the peripteric temple hides the

cella, protecting it from indiscreet eyes as with a screen and a veil, yet

not completely—so it is with the image of the Deity, and at the same time

the concealment of the Deity.—Only when outside the cult, in the profane

world of athletic contest, the joy in the victor had risen so high that

the ripples thus started reacted upon the lake of religious emotion, was

the statue of the victor set up before the temple. Then the pious pilgrim

had to accustom his eye and his soul, whether he would or no, to the

inevitable sight of human beauty and super-strength, so that the worship

of men and Gods melted into each other from physical and spiritual

contact. Then too for the first time the fear of really humanising the

figures of the Gods is lost, and the mighty arena for great plastic art is

opened—even now with the limitation that wherever there is to be adoration

the primitive form and ugliness are carefully preserved and copied. But

the Hellene, as he dedicates and makes offerings, may now with religious

sanction indulge in his delight in making God become a man.

223.

WHITHER WE MUST TRAVEL.—Immediate self-observation is not enough, by a

long way, to enable us to learn to know ourselves. We need history, for

the past continues to flow through us in a hundred channels. We ourselves

are, after all, nothing but our own sensation at every moment of this

continued flow. Even here, when we wish to step down into the stream of

our apparently most peculiar and personal development, Heraclitus’

aphorism, “You cannot step twice into the same river,” holds good.—This is

a piece of wisdom which has, indeed, gradually become trite, but

nevertheless has remained as strong and true as it ever was. It is the

same with the saying that, in order to understand history, we must

scrutinise the living remains of historical periods; that we must travel,

as old Herodotus travelled, to other nations, especially to those

so-called savage or half-savage races in regions where man has doffed or

not yet donned European garb. For they are ancient and firmly established

steps of culture on which we can stand. There is, however, a more subtle

art and aim in travelling, which does not always necessitate our passing

from place to place and going thousands of miles away. Very probably the

last three centuries, in all their colourings and refractions of culture,

survive even in our vicinity, only they have to be discovered. In some

families, or even in individuals, the strata are still superimposed on

each other, beautifully and perceptibly; in other places there are

dispersions and displacements of the structure which are harder to

understand. Certainly in remote districts, in less known mountain valleys,

circumscribed communities have been able more easily to maintain an

admirable pattern of a far older sentiment, a pattern that must here be

investigated. On the other hand, it is improbable that such discoveries

will be made in Berlin, where man comes into the world washed-out and

sapless. He who after long practice of this art of travel has become a

hundred-eyed Argus will accompany his Io—I mean his ego—everywhere, and in

Egypt and Greece, Byzantium and Rome, France and Germany, in the age of

wandering or settled races, in Renaissance or Reformation, at home and

abroad, in sea, forest, plant, and mountain, will again light upon the

travel-adventure of this ever-growing, ever-altered ego.—Thus

self-knowledge becomes universal knowledge as regards the entire past,

and, by another chain of observation, which can only be indicated here,

self-direction and self-training in the freest and most far-seeing spirits

might become universal direction as regards all future humanity.

224.

BALM AND POISON.—We cannot ponder too deeply on this fact: Christianity is

the religion of antiquity grown old; it presupposes degenerate old

culture-stocks, and on them it had, and still has, power to work like

balm. There are periods when ears and eyes are full of slime, so that they

can no longer hear the voice of reason and philosophy or see the wisdom

that walks in bodily shape, whether it bears the name of Epictetus or of

Epicurus. Then, perhaps, the erection of the martyr’s cross and the

“trumpet of the last judgment” may have the effect of still inspiring such

races to end their lives decently. If we think of Juvenal’s Rome, of that

poisonous toad with the eyes of Venus, we understand what it means to make

the sign of the Cross before the world, we honour the silent Christian

community and are grateful for its having stifled the Greco-Roman Empire.

If, indeed, most men were then born in spiritual slavery, with the

sensuality of old men, what a pleasure to meet beings who were more soul

than body, and who seemed to realise the Greek idea of the shades of the

underworld—shy, scurrying, chirping, kindly creatures, with a reversion

on the “better life,” and therefore so unassuming, so secretly scornful,

so proudly patient!—This Christianity, as the evening chime of the good

antiquity, with cracked, weary and yet melodious bell, is balm in the ears

even to one who only now traverses those centuries historically. What must

it have been to those men themselves!—To young and fresh barbarian

nations, on the other hand, Christianity is a poison. For to implant the

teaching of sinfulness and damnation in the heroic, childlike, and animal

soul of the old Germans is nothing but poisoning. An enormous chemical

fermentation and decomposition, a medley of sentiments and judgments, a

rank growth of adventurous legend, and hence in the long run a fundamental

weakening of such barbarian peoples, was the inevitable result. True,

without this weakening what should we have left of Greek culture, of the

whole cultured past of the human race? For the barbarians untouched by

Christianity knew very well how to make a clean sweep of old cultures, as

was only too clearly shown by the heathen conquerors of Romanised Britain.

Thus Christianity, against its will, was compelled to aid in making “the

antique world” immortal.—There remains, however, a counter-question and

the possibility of a counter-reckoning. Without this weakening through the

poisoning referred to, would any of those fresh stocks—the Germans, for

instance—have been in a position gradually to find by themselves a higher,

a peculiar, a new culture, of which the most distant conception would

therefore have been lost to humanity?—In this, as in every case, we do not

know, Christianly speaking, whether God owes the devil or the devil God

more thanks for everything having turned out as it has.

225.

FAITH MAKES HOLY AND CONDEMNS.—A Christian who happened upon forbidden

paths of thought might well ask himself on some occasion whether it is

really necessary that there should be a God, side by side with a

representative Lamb, if faith in the existence of these beings suffices to

produce the same influences? If they do exist after all, are they not

superfluous beings? For all that is given by the Christian religion to the

human soul, all that is beneficent, consoling, and edifying, just as much

as all that depresses and crushes, emanates from that faith and not from

the objects of that faith. It is here as in another well-known case—there

were indeed no witches, but the terrible effects of the belief in witches

were the same as if they really had existed. For all occasions where the

Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a God, though in vain (for

there is no God), his religion is inventive enough to find subterfuges and

reasons for tranquillity. In so far Christianity is an ingenious

religion.—Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real

mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can

put mountains where there are none.

226.

THE TRAGI-COMEDY OF REGENSBURG.—Here and there we see with terrible

clearness the harlequinade of Fortune, how she fastens the rope, on which

she wills that succeeding centuries should dance, on to a few days, one

place, the condition and opinions of one brain. Thus the fate of modern

German history lies in the days of that disputation at Regensburg: the

peaceful settlement of ecclesiastical and moral affairs, without religious

wars or a counter-reformation, and also the unity of the German nation,

seemed assured: the deep, gentle spirit of Contarini hovered for one

moment over the theological squabble, victorious, as representative of the

riper Italian piety, reflecting the morning glory of intellectual freedom.

But Luther’s hard head, full of suspicions and strange misgivings, showed

resistance. Because justification by grace appeared to him his greatest

motto and discovery, he did not believe the phrase in the mouth of

Italians; whereas, in point of fact, as is well known, they had invented

it much earlier and spread it throughout Italy in deep silence. In this

apparent agreement Luther saw the tricks of the devil, and hindered the

work of peace as well as he could, thereby advancing to a great extent the

aims of the Empire’s foes.—And now, in order to have a still stronger idea

of the dreadful farcicality of it all, let us add that none of the

principles about which men then disputed in Regensburg—neither that of

original sin, nor that of redemption by proxy, nor that of justification

by faith—is in any way true or even has any connection with truth: that

they are now all recognised as incapable of being discussed. Yet on this

account the world was set on fire—that is to say, by opinions which

correspond to no things or realities; whereas as regards purely

philological questions—as, for instance, that of the sacramental words in

the Eucharist—discussion at any rate is permitted, because in this case

the truth can be said. But “where nothing is, even truth has lost her

right.”(15)—Lastly, it only remains to be said that it is true these

principles give rise to sources of power so mighty that without them all

the mills of the modern world could not be driven with such force. And it

is primarily a matter of force, only secondarily of truth (and perhaps not

even secondarily)—is it not so, my dear up-to-date friends?

227.

GOETHE’S ERRORS.—Goethe is a signal exception among great artists in that

he did not live within the limited confines of his real capacity, as if

that must be the essential, the distinctive, the unconditional, and the

last thing in him and for all the world. Twice he intended to possess

something higher than he really possessed—and went astray in the second

half of his life, where he seems quite convinced that he is one of the

great scientific discoverers and illuminators. So too in the first half of

his life he demanded of himself something higher than the poetic art

seemed to him—and here already he made a mistake. That nature wished to

make him a plastic artist,—this was his inwardly glowing and scorching

secret, which finally drove him to Italy, that he might give vent to his

mania in this direction and make to it every possible sacrifice. At last,

shrewd as he was, and honestly averse to any mental perversion in himself,

he discovered that a tricksy elf of desire had attracted him to the belief

in this calling, and that he must free himself of the greatest passion of

his heart and bid it farewell. The painful conviction, tearing and gnawing

at his vitals, that it was necessary to bid farewell, finds full

expression in the character of Tasso. Over Tasso, that Werther

intensified, hovers the premonition of something worse than death, as when

one says: “Now it is over, after this farewell: how shall I go on living

without going mad?” These two fundamental errors of his life gave Goethe,

in face of a purely literary attitude towards poetry (the only attitude

then known to the world), such an unembarrassed and apparently almost

arbitrary position. Not to speak of the period when Schiller (poor

Schiller, who had no time himself and left no time to others) drove away

his shy dread of poetry, his fear of all literary life and craftsmanship,

Goethe appears like a Greek who now and then visits his beloved, doubting

whether she be not a Goddess to whom he can give no proper name. In all

his poetry one notices the inspiring neighbourhood of plastic art and

Nature. The features of these figures that floated before him—and perhaps

he always thought he was on the track of the metamorphoses of one

Goddess—became, without his will or knowledge, the features of all the

children of his art. Without the extravagances of error he would not have

been Goethe—that is, the only German artist in writing who has not yet

become out of date—just because he desired as little to be a writer as a

German by vocation.

228.

TRAVELLERS AND THEIR GRADES.—Among travellers we may distinguish five

grades. The first and lowest grade is of those who travel and are

seen—they become really travelled and are, as it were, blind. Next come

those who really see the world. The third class experience the results of

their seeing. The fourth weave their experience into their life and carry

it with them henceforth. Lastly, there are some men of the highest

strength who, as soon as they have returned home, must finally and

necessarily work out in their lives and productions all the things seen

that they have experienced and incorporated in themselves.—Like these five

species of travellers, all mankind goes through the whole pilgrimage of

life, the lowest as purely passive, the highest as those who act and live

out their lives without keeping back any residue of inner experiences.

229.

IN CLIMBING HIGHER.—So soon as we climb higher than those who hitherto

admired us, we appear to them as sunken and fallen. For they imagined that

under all circumstances they were on the heights in our company (maybe

also through our agency).

230.

MEASURE AND MODERATION.—Of two quite lofty things, measure and moderation,

it is best never to speak. A few know their force and significance, from

the mysterious paths of inner experiences and conversions: they honour in

them something quite godlike, and are afraid to speak aloud. All the rest

hardly listen when they are spoken about, and think the subjects under

discussion are tedium and mediocrity. We must perhaps except those who

have once heard a warning note from that realm but have stopped their ears

against the sound. The recollection of it makes them angry and

exasperated.

231.

HUMANITY OF FRIENDSHIP AND COMRADESHIP.—“If thou wilt take the left hand,

then I will go to the right,”(16) that feeling is the hallmark of

humanity in intimate intercourse, and without that feeling every

friendship, every band of apostles or disciples, sooner or later becomes a

fraud.

232.

THE PROFOUND.—Men of profound thought appear to themselves in intercourse

with others like comedians, for in order to be understood they must always

simulate superficiality.

233.

FOR THE SCORNERS OF “HERD-HUMANITY.”—He who regards human beings as a

herd, and flies from them as fast as he can, will certainly be caught up

by them and gored upon their horns.

234.

THE MAIN TRANSGRESSION AGAINST THE VAIN.—In society, he who gives another

an opportunity of favourably setting forth his knowledge, sentiments, and

experience sets himself above him. Unless he is felt by the other to be a

superior being without limitation, he is guilty of an attack upon his

vanity, while what he aimed at was the gratification of the other man’s

vanity.

235.

DISAPPOINTMENT.—When a long life of action distinguished by speeches and

writings gives publicity to a man’s personality, personal intercourse with

him is generally disappointing on two grounds. Firstly, one expects too

much from a brief period of intercourse (namely, all that the thousand and

one opportunities of life can alone bring out). Secondly, no recognised

person gives himself the trouble to woo recognition in individual cases.

He is too careless, and we are at too high a tension.

236.

TWO SOURCES OF KINDNESS.—To treat all men with equal good-humour, and to

be kind without distinction of persons, may arise as much from a profound

contempt for mankind as from an ingrained love of humanity.

237.

THE WANDERER IN THE MOUNTAINS TO HIMSELF.—There are certain signs that you

have gone farther and higher. There is a freer, wider prospect before you,

the air blows cooler yet milder in your face (you have unlearned the folly

of confounding mildness with warmth), your gait is more firm and vigorous,

courage and discretion have waxed together. On all these grounds your

journey may now be more lonely and in any case more perilous than

heretofore, if indeed not to the extent believed by those who from the

misty valley see you, the roamer, striding on the mountains.

238.

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF OUR NEIGHBOUR.—I admit that my head is set wrong on

my neck only, for every other man, as is well known, knows better than I

what I should do or leave alone. The only one who cannot help me is

myself, poor beggar! Are we not all like statues on which false heads have

been placed? Eh, dear neighbour?—Ah no; you, just you, are the exception!

239.

CAUTION.—We must either not go about at all with people who are lacking in

the reverence for personalities, or inexorably fetter them beforehand with

the manacles of convention.

240.

THE WISH TO APPEAR VAIN.—In conversation with strangers or little-known

acquaintances, to express only selected thoughts, to speak of one’s famous

acquaintances, and important experiences and travels, is a sign that one

is not proud, or at least would not like to appear proud. Vanity is the

polite mask of pride.

241.

GOOD FRIENDSHIP.—A good friendship arises when the one man deeply respects

the other, more even than himself; loves him also, though not so much as

himself; and finally, to facilitate intercourse, knows how to add the

delicate bloom and veneer of intimacy, but at the same time wisely

refrains from a true, real intimacy, from the confounding of meum and

tuum.

242.

FRIENDS AS GHOSTS.—If we change ourselves vitally, our friends, who have

not changed, become ghosts of our own past: their voice sounds shadowy and

dreadful to us, as if we heard our own voice speaking, but younger,

harder, less mellow.

243.

ONE EYE AND TWO GLANCES.—The same people whose eyes naturally plead for

favours and indulgences are accustomed, from their frequent humiliations

and cravings for revenge, to assume a shameless glance as well.

244.

THE HAZE OF DISTANCE.—A child throughout life—that sounds very touching,

but is only the verdict from the distance. Seen and known close at hand,

he is always called “puerile throughout life.”

245.

ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE IN THE SAME MISUNDERSTANDING.—The mute

perplexity of the subtle brain is usually understood by the non-subtle as

a silent superiority, and is much dreaded whereas the perception of

perplexity would produce good will.

246.

THE SAGE GIVING HIMSELF OUT TO BE A FOOL.—The philanthropy of the sage

sometimes makes him decide to pretend to be excited, enraged, or

delighted, so that he may not hurt his surroundings by the coldness and

rationality of his true nature.

247.

FORCING ONESELF TO ATTENTION.—So soon as we note that any one in

intercourse and conversation with us has to force himself to attention, we

have adequate evidence that he loves us not, or loves us no longer.

248.

THE WAY TO A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE.—Learning from one’s enemies is the best way

to love them, for it inspires us with a grateful mood towards them.

249.

STRATAGEM OF THE IMPORTUNATE.—The importunate man gives us gold coins as

change for our convention coins, and thereby tries to force us afterwards

to treat our convention as an oversight and him as an exception.

250.

REASON FOR DISLIKE.—We become hostile to many an artist or writer, not

because we notice in the end that he has duped us, but because he did not

find more subtle means necessary to entrap us.

251.

IN PARTING.—Not by the way one soul approaches another, but by the way it

separates, do I recognise its relationship and homogeneity with the other.

252.

SILENTIUM.—We must not speak about our friends, or we renounce the

sentiment of friendship.

253.

IMPOLITENESS.—Impoliteness is often the sign of a clumsy modesty, which

when taken by surprise loses its head and would fain hide the fact by

means of rudeness.

254.

HONESTY’S MISCALCULATION.—Our newest acquaintances are sometimes the first

to learn what we have hitherto kept dark. We have the foolish notion that

our proof of confidence is the strongest fetter wherewith to hold them

fast. But they do not know enough about us to feel so strongly the

sacrifice involved in our speaking out, and betray our secrets to others

without any idea of betrayal. Hereby we possibly lose our old friends.

255.

IN THE ANTE-CHAMBER OF FAVOUR.—All men whom we let stand long in the

ante-chamber of our favour get into a state of fermentation or become

bitter.

256.

WARNING TO THE DESPISED.—When we have sunk unmistakably in the estimation

of mankind we should cling tooth and nail to modesty in intercourse, or we

shall betray to others that we have sunk in our own estimation as well.

Cynicism in intercourse is a sign that a man, when alone, treats himself

too as a dog.

257.

IGNORANCE OFTEN ENNOBLES.—With regard to the respect of those who pay

respect, it is an advantage ostensibly not to understand certain things.

Ignorance, too, confers privileges.

258.

THE OPPONENT OF GRACE.—The impatient and arrogant man does not care for

grace, feeling it to be a corporeal, visible reproach against himself. For

grace is heartfelt toleration in movement and gesture.

259.

ON SEEING AGAIN.—When old friends see each other again after a long

separation, it often happens that they affect an interest in matters to

which they have long since become indifferent. Sometimes both remark this,

but dare not raise the veil—from a mournful doubt. Hence arise

conversations as in the realm of the dead.

260.

MAKING FRIENDS ONLY WITH THE INDUSTRIOUS.—The man of leisure is dangerous

to his friends, for, having nothing to do, he talks of what his friends

are doing or not doing, interferes, and finally makes himself a nuisance.

The clever man will only make friends with the industrious.

261.

ONE WEAPON TWICE AS MUCH AS TWO.—It is an unequal combat when one man

defends his cause with head and heart, the other with head alone. The

first has sun and wind against him, as it were, and his two weapons

interfere with each other: he loses the prize—in the eyes of truth. True,

the victory of the second, with his one weapon, is seldom a victory after

the hearts of all the other spectators, and makes him unpopular.

262.

DEPTH AND TROUBLED WATERS.—The public easily confounds him who fishes in

troubled waters with him who pumps up from the depths.

263.

DEMONSTRATING ONE’S VANITY TO FRIEND AND FOE.—Many a man, from vanity,

maltreats even his friends, when in the presence of witnesses to whom he

wishes to make his own preponderance clear. Others exaggerate the merits

of their enemies, in order to point proudly to the fact that they are

worthy of such foes.

264.

COOLING OFF.—The over-heating of the heart is generally allied with

illness of the head and judgment. He who is concerned for a time with the

health of his head must know what he has to cool, careless of the future

of his heart. For if we are capable at all of giving warmth, we are sure

to become warm again and then have our summer.

265.

MINGLED FEELINGS.—Towards science women and self-seeking artists entertain

a feeling that is composed of envy and sentimentality.

266.

WHERE DANGER IS GREATEST.—We seldom break our leg so long as life

continues a toilsome upward climb. The danger comes when we begin to take

things easily and choose the convenient paths.

267.

NOT TOO EARLY.—We must beware of becoming sharp too early, or we shall

also become thin too early.

268.

JOY IN REFRACTORINESS.—The good teacher knows cases where he is proud that

his pupil remains true to himself in opposition to him—at times when the

youth must not understand the man or would be harmed by understanding him.

269.

THE EXPERIMENT OF HONESTY.—Young men, who wish to be more honest than they

have been, seek as victim some one acknowledged to be honest, attacking

him first with an attempt to reach his height by abuse—with the underlying

notion that this first experiment at any rate is void of danger. For just

such a one has no right to chastise the impudence of the honest man.

270.

THE ETERNAL CHILD.—We think, shortsighted that we are, that fairy-tales

and games belong to childhood. As if at any age we should care to live

without fairy-tales and games! Our words and sentiments are indeed

different, but the essential fact remains the same, as is proved by the

child himself looking on games as his work and fairy-tales as his truth.

The shortness of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic distinction

between the different ages—as if every age brought something new—and a

poet ought one day to portray a man of two hundred, who really lives

without fairy-tales and games.

271.

EVERY PHILOSOPHY IS THE PHILOSOPHY OF A PERIOD OF LIFE.—The period of life

in which a philosopher finds his teaching is manifested by his teaching;

he cannot avoid that, however elevated above time and hour he may feel

himself. Thus, Schopenhauer’s philosophy remains a mirror of his hot and

melancholy youth—it is no mode of thought for older men. Plato’s

philosophy reminds one of the middle thirties, when a warm and a cold

current generally rush together, so that spray and delicate clouds and,

under favourable circumstances and glimpses of sunshine, enchanting

rainbow-pictures result.

272.

OF THE INTELLECT OF WOMEN.—The intellectual strength of a woman is best

proved by the fact that she offers her own intellect as a sacrifice out of

love for a man and his intellect, and that nevertheless in the new domain,

which was previously foreign to her nature, a second intellect at once

arises as an aftergrowth, to which the man’s mind impels her.

273.

RAISING AND LOWERING IN THE SEXUAL DOMAIN.—The storm of desire will

sometimes carry a man up to a height where all desire is silenced, where

he really loves and lives in a better state of being rather than in a

better state of choice. On the other hand, a good woman, from true love,

often climbs down to desire, and lowers herself in her own eyes. The

latter action in particular is one of the most pathetic sensations which

the idea of a good marriage can involve.

274.

MAN PROMISES, WOMAN FULFILS.—By woman Nature shows how far she has

hitherto achieved her task of fashioning humanity, by man she shows what

she has had to overcome and what she still proposes to do for

humanity.—The most perfect woman of every age is the holiday-task of the

Creator on every seventh day of culture, the recreation of the artist from

his work.

275.

TRANSPLANTING.—If we have spent our intellect in order to gain mastery

over the intemperance of the passions, the sad result often follows that

we transfer the intemperance to the intellect, and from that time forth

are extravagant in thought and desire of knowledge.

276.

LAUGHTER AS TREACHERY.—How and when a woman laughs is a sign of her

culture, but in the ring of laughter her nature reveals itself, and in

highly cultured women perhaps even the last insoluble residue of their

nature. Hence the psychologist will say with Horace, though from different

reasons: “Ridete puellae.”

277.

FROM THE YOUTHFUL SOUL.—Youths varyingly show devotion and impudence

towards the same person, because at bottom they only despise or admire

themselves in that other person, and between the two feelings but stagger

to and fro in themselves, so long as they have not found in experience the

measure of their will and ability.

278.

FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE WORLD.—If we forbade the discontented, the

sullen, and the atrabilious to propagate, we might transform the world

into a garden of happiness.—This aphorism belongs to a practical

philosophy for the female sex.

279.

NOT TO DISTRUST YOUR EMOTIONS.—The feminine phrase “Do not distrust your

emotions” does not mean much more than “Eat what tastes good to you.” This

may also, especially for moderate natures, be a good everyday rule. But

other natures must live according to another maxim: “You must eat not only

with your mouth but also with your brain, in order that the greediness of

your mouth may not prove your undoing.”

280.

A CRUEL FANCY OF LOVE.—Every great love involves the cruel thought of

killing the object of love, so that it may be removed once for all from

the mischievous play of change. For love is more afraid of change than of

destruction.

281.

DOORS.—In everything that is learnt or experienced, the child, just like

the man, sees doors; but for the former they are places to go to, for

the latter to go through.

282.

SYMPATHETIC WOMEN.—The sympathy of women, which is talkative, takes the

sick-bed to market.

283.

EARLY MERIT.—He who acquires merit early in life tends to forget all

reverence for age and old people, and accordingly, greatly to his

disadvantage, excludes himself from the society of the mature, those who

confer maturity. Thus in spite of his early merit he remains green,

importunate, and boyish longer than others.

284.

SOULS ALL OF A PIECE.—Women and artists think that where we do not

contradict them we cannot. Reverence on ten counts and silent disapproval

on ten others appears to them an impossible combination, because their

souls are all of a piece.

285.

YOUNG TALENTS.—With respect to young talents we must strictly follow

Goethe’s maxim, that we should often avoid harming error in order to avoid

harming truth. Their condition is like the diseases of pregnancy, and

involves strange appetites. These appetites should be satisfied and

humoured as far as possible, for the sake of the fruit they may be

expected to produce. It is true that, as nurse of these remarkable

invalids, one must learn the difficult art of voluntary self-abasement.

286.

DISGUST WITH TRUTH.—Women are so constituted that all truth (in relation

to men, love, children, society, aim of life) disgusts them—and that they

try to be revenged on every one who opens their eyes.

287.

THE SOURCE OF GREAT LOVE.—Whence arises the sudden passion of a man for a

woman, a passion so deep, so vital? Least of all from sensuality only: but

when a man finds weakness, need of help, and high spirits united in the

same creature, he suffers a sort of overflowing of soul, and is touched

and offended at the same moment. At this point arises the source of great

love.

288.

CLEANLINESS.—In the child, the sense for cleanliness should be fanned into

a passion, and then later on he will raise himself, in ever new phases, to

almost every virtue, and will finally appear, in compensation for all

talent, as a shining cloud of purity, temperance, gentleness, and

character, happy in himself and spreading happiness around.

289.

OF VAIN OLD MEN.—Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of

thought to old age. When, in spite of this, old men sometimes speak and

write in the manner of the profound, they do so from vanity, imagining

that they thereby assume the charm of juvenility, enthusiasm, growth,

apprehensiveness, hopefulness.

290.

ENJOYMENT OF NOVELTY.—Men use a new lesson or experience later on as a

ploughshare or perhaps also as a weapon, women at once make it into an

ornament.

291.

HOW BOTH SEXES BEHAVE WHEN IN THE RIGHT.—If it is conceded to a woman that

she is right, she cannot deny herself the triumph of setting her heel on

the neck of the vanquished; she must taste her victory to the full. On the

other hand, man towards man in such a case is ashamed of being right. But

then man is accustomed to victory; with woman it is an exception.

292.

ABNEGATION IN THE WILL TO BEAUTY.—In order to become beautiful, a woman

must not desire to be considered pretty. That is to say, in ninety-nine

out of a hundred cases where she could please she must scorn and put aside

all thoughts of pleasing. Only then can she ever reap the delight of him

whose soul’s portal is wide enough to admit the great.

293.

UNINTELLIGIBLE, UNENDURABLE.—A youth cannot understand that an old man has

also had his delights, his dawns of feeling, his changings and soarings of

thought. It offends him to think that such things have existed before. But

it makes him very bitter to hear that, to become fruitful, he must lose

those buds and dispense with their fragrance.

294.

THE PARTY WITH THE AIR OF MARTYRDOM.—Every party that can assume an air of

martyrdom wins good-natured souls over to its side and thereby itself

acquires an air of good nature—greatly to its advantage.

295.

ASSERTIONS SURER THAN ARGUMENTS.—An assertion has, with the majority of

men at any rate, more effect than an argument, for arguments provoke

mistrust. Hence demagogues seek to strengthen the arguments of their party

by assertions.

296.

THE BEST CONCEALERS.—All regularly successful men are profoundly cunning

in making their faults and weaknesses look like manifestations of

strength. This proves that they must know their defects uncommonly well.

297.

FROM TIME TO TIME.—He sat in the city gateway and said to one who passed

through that this was the city gate. The latter replied that this was

true, but that one must not be too much in the right if one expected to be

thanked for it. “Oh,” answered the other, “I don’t want thanks, but from

time to time it is very pleasant not merely to be in the right but to

remain in the right.”

298.

VIRTUE WAS NOT INVENTED BY THE GERMANS.—Goethe’s nobleness and freedom

from envy, Beethoven’s fine hermitical resignation, Mozart’s cheerfulness

and grace of heart, Handel’s unbending manliness and freedom under the

law, Bach’s confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need

to renounce glamour and success—are these qualities peculiarly German?—If

they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and

to what they can attain.

299.

PIA FRAUS OR SOMETHING ELSE.—I hope I am mistaken, but I think that in

Germany of to-day a twofold sort of hypocrisy is set up as the duty of the

moment for every one. From imperial-political misgivings Germanism is

demanded, and from social apprehensions Christianity—but both only in

words and gestures, and particularly in ability to keep silent. It is the

veneer that nowadays costs so much and is paid for so highly; and for the

benefit of the spectators the face of the nation assumes German and

Christian wrinkles.

300.

HOW FAR EVEN IN THE GOOD THE HALF MAY BE MORE THAN THE WHOLE.—In all

things that are constructed to last and demand the service of many hands,

much that is less good must be made a rule, although the organiser knows

what is better and harder very well. He will calculate that there will

never be a lack of persons who can correspond to the rule, and he knows

that the middling good is the rule.—The youth seldom sees this point, and

as an innovator thinks how marvellously he is in the right and how strange

is the blindness of others.

301.

THE PARTISAN.—The true partisan learns nothing more, he only experiences

and judges. It is significant that Solon, who was never a partisan but

pursued his aims above and apart from parties or even against them, was

the father of that simple phrase wherein lies the secret of the health and

vitality of Athens: “I grow old, but I am always learning.”

302.

WHAT IS GERMAN ACCORDING TO GOETHE.—They are really intolerable people of

whom one cannot even accept the good, who have freedom of disposition but

do not remark that they are lacking in freedom of taste and spirit. Yet

just this, according to Goethe’s well-weighed judgment, is German.—His

voice and his example indicate that the German should be more than a

German if he wishes to be useful or even endurable to other nations—and

which direction his striving should take, in order that he may rise above

and beyond himself.

303.

WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO REMAIN STATIONARY.—When the masses begin to rage,

and reason is under a cloud, it is a good thing, if the health of one’s

soul is not quite assured, to go under a doorway and look out to see what

the weather is like.

304.

THE REVOLUTION-SPIRIT AND THE POSSESSION-SPIRIT.—The only remedy against

Socialism that still lies in your power is to avoid provoking Socialism—in

other words, to live in moderation and contentment, to prevent as far as

possible all lavish display, and to aid the State as far as possible in

its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries. You do not like this remedy?

Then, you rich bourgeois who call yourselves “Liberals,” confess that it

is your own inclination that you find so terrible and menacing in

Socialists, but allow to prevail in yourselves as unavoidable, as if with

you it were something different. As you are constituted, if you had not

your fortune and the cares of maintaining it, this bent of yours would

make Socialists of you. Possession alone differentiates you from them. If

you wish to conquer the assailants of your prosperity, you must first

conquer yourselves.—And if that prosperity only meant well-being, it would

not be so external and provocative of envy; it would be more generous,

more benevolent, more compensatory, more helpful. But the spurious,

histrionic element in your pleasures, which lie more in the feeling of

contrast (because others have them not, and feel envious) than in feelings

of realised and heightened power—your houses, dresses, carriages, shops,

the demands of your palates and your tables, your noisy operatic and

musical enthusiasm; lastly your women, formed and fashioned but of base

metal, gilded but without the ring of gold, chosen by you for show and

considering themselves meant for show—these are the things that spread the

poison of that national disease, which seizes the masses ever more and

more as a Socialistic heart-itch, but has its origin and breeding-place in

you. Who shall now arrest this epidemic?

305.

PARTY TACTICS.—When a party observes that a previous member has changed

from an unqualified to a qualified adherent, it endures it so ill that it

irritates and mortifies him in every possible way with the object of

forcing him to a decisive break and making him an opponent. For the party

suspects that the intention of finding a relative value in its faith, a

value which admits of pro and con, of weighing and discarding, is more

dangerous than downright opposition.

306.

FOR THE STRENGTHENING OF PARTIES.—Whoever wishes to strengthen a party

internally should give it an opportunity of being forcibly treated with

obvious injustice. The party thus acquires a capital of good conscience,

which hitherto it perhaps lacked.

307.

TO PROVIDE FOR ONE’S PAST.—As men after all only respect the

old-established and slowly developed, he who would survive after his death

must not only provide for posterity but still more for the past. Hence

tyrants of every sort (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like

to do violence to history, so that history may seem a preparation and a

ladder up to them.

308.

PARTY WRITERS.—The beating of drums, which delights young writers who

serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party like a

rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration.

309.

TAKING SIDES AGAINST OURSELVES.—Our followers never forgive us for taking

sides against ourselves, for we seem in their eyes not only to be spurning

their love but to be exposing them to the charge of lack of intelligence.

310.

DANGER IN WEALTH.—Only a man of intellect should hold property: otherwise

property is dangerous to the community. For the owner, not knowing how to

make use of the leisure which his possessions might secure to him, will

continue to strive after more property. This strife will be his

occupation, his strategy in the war with ennui. So in the end real wealth

is produced from the moderate property that would be enough for an

intellectual man. Such wealth, then, is the glittering outcrop of

intellectual dependence and poverty, but it looks quite different from

what its humble origin might lead one to expect, because it can mask

itself with culture and art—it can, in fact, purchase the mask. Hence it

excites envy in the poor and uncultured—who at bottom always envy culture

and see no mask in the mask—and gradually paves the way for a social

revolution. For a gilded coarseness and a histrionic blowing of trumpets

in the pretended enjoyment of culture inspires that class with the

thought, “It is only a matter of money,” whereas it is indeed to some

extent a matter of money, but far more of intellect.

311.

JOY IN COMMANDING AND OBEYING.—Commanding is a joy, like obeying; the

former when it has not yet become a habit, the latter just when it has

become a habit. Old servants under new masters advance each other mutually

in giving pleasure.

312.

AMBITION FOR A FORLORN HOPE.—There is an ambition for a forlorn hope which

forces a party to place itself at the post of extreme danger.

313.

WHEN ASSES ARE NEEDED.—We shall not move the crowd to cry “Hosanna!” until

we have ridden into the city upon an ass.

314.

PARTY USAGE.—Every party attempts to represent the important elements that

have sprung up outside it as unimportant, and if it does not succeed, it

attacks those elements the more bitterly, the more excellent they are.

315.

BECOMING EMPTY.—Of him who abandons himself to the course of events, a

smaller and smaller residue is continually left. Great politicians may

therefore become quite empty men, although they were once full and rich.

316.

WELCOME ENEMIES.—The Socialistic movements are nowadays becoming more and

more agreeable rather than terrifying to the dynastic governments, because

by these movements they are provided with a right and a weapon for making

exceptional rules, and can thus attack their real bogies, democrats and

anti-dynasts.—Towards all that such governments professedly detest they

feel a secret cordiality and inclination. But they are compelled to draw

the veil over their soul.

317.

POSSESSION POSSESSES.—Only up to a certain point does possession make men

feel freer and more independent; one step farther, and possession becomes

lord, the possessor a slave. The latter must sacrifice his time, his

thoughts to the former, and feels himself compelled to an intercourse,

nailed to a spot, incorporated with the State—perhaps quite in conflict

with his real and essential needs.

318.

OF THE MASTERY OF THEM THAT KNOW.—It is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up

a model for the choice of a legislative body. First of all the honest and

reliable men of the nation, who at the same time are masters and experts

in some one branch, have to become prominent by mutual scenting-out and

recognition. From these, by a narrower process of selection, the learned

and expert of the first rank in each individual branch must again be

chosen, also by mutual recognition and guarantee. If the legislative body

be composed of these, it will finally be necessary, in each individual

case, that only the voices and judgments of the most specialised experts

should decide; the honesty of all the rest should have become so great

that it is simply a matter of decency to leave the voting also in the

hands of these men. The result would be that the law, in the strictest

sense, would emanate from the intelligence of the most intelligent.—As

things now are, voting is done by parties, and at every division there

must be hundreds of uneasy consciences among the ill-taught, the incapable

of judgment, among those who merely repeat, imitate, and go with the tide.

Nothing lowers the dignity of a new law so much as this inherent

shamefaced feeling of insincerity that necessarily results at every party

division. But, as has been said, it is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up

such a model: no power on earth is at present strong enough to realise

such an ideal—unless the belief in the highest utility of knowledge, and

of those that know, at last dawns even upon the most hostile minds and is

preferred to the prevalent belief in majorities. In the sense of such a

future may our watchword be: “More reverence for them that know, and down

with all parties!”

319.

OF THE “NATION OF THINKERS” (OR OF BAD THINKING).—The vague, vacillating,

premonitory, elementary, intuitive elements—to choose obscure names for

obscure things—that are attributed to the German nature would be, if they

really still existed, a proof that our culture has remained several stages

behind and is still surrounded by the spell and atmosphere of the Middle

Ages.—It is true that in this backwardness there are certain advantages:

by these qualities the Germans (if, as has been said before, they still

possess them) would possess the capacity, which other nations have now

lost, for doing certain things and particularly for understanding certain

things. Much undoubtedly is lost if the lack of sense—which is just the

common factor in all those qualities—is lost. Here too, however, there are

no losses without the highest compensatory gains, so that no reason is

left for lamenting, granting that we do not, like children, and gourmands,

wish to enjoy at once the fruits of all seasons of the year.

320.

CARRYING COALS TO NEWCASTLE.—The governments of the great States have two

instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a

coarser, the army, and a more refined, the school. With the aid of the

former they win over to their side the ambition of the higher strata and

the strength of the lower, so far as both are characteristic of active and

energetic men of moderate or inferior gifts. With the aid of the latter

they win over gifted poverty, especially the intellectually pretentious

semi-poverty of the middle classes. Above all, they make teachers of all

grades into an intellectual court looking unconsciously “towards the

heights.” By putting obstacle after obstacle in the way of private schools

and the wholly distasteful individual tuition they secure the disposal of

a considerable number of educational posts, towards which numerous hungry

and submissive eyes are turned to an extent five times as great as can

ever be satisfied. These posts, however, must support the holder but

meagrely, so that he maintains a feverish thirst for promotion and becomes

still more closely attached to the views of the government. For it is

always more advantageous to foster moderate discontent than contentment,

the mother of courage, the grandmother of free thought and exuberance. By

means of this physically and mentally bridled body of teachers, the youth

of the country is as far as possible raised to a certain level of culture

that is useful to the State and arranged on a suitable sliding-scale.

Above all, the immature and ambitious minds of all classes are almost

imperceptibly imbued with the idea that only a career which is recognised

and hallmarked by the State can lead immediately to social distinction.

The effect of this belief in government examinations and titles goes so

far that even men who have remained independent and have risen by trade or

handicraft still feel a pang of discontent in their hearts until their

position too is marked and acknowledged by a gracious bestowal of rank and

orders from above—until one becomes a “somebody.” Finally the State

connects all these hundreds of offices and posts in its hands with the

obligation of being trained and hallmarked in these State schools if one

ever wishes to enter this charmed circle. Honour in society, daily bread,

the possibility of a family, protection from above, the feeling of

community in a common culture—all this forms a network of hopes into which

every young man walks: how should he feel the slightest breath of

mistrust? In the end, perhaps, the obligation of being a soldier for one

year has become with every one, after the lapse of a few generations, an

unreflecting habit, an understood thing, with an eye to which we construct

the plan of our lives quite early. Then the State can venture on the

master-stroke of weaving together school and army, talent, ambition and

strength by means of common advantages—that is, by attracting the more

highly gifted on favourable terms to the army and inspiring them with the

military spirit of joyful obedience; so that finally, perhaps, they become

attached permanently to the flag and endow it by their talents with an

ever new and more brilliant lustre. Then nothing more is wanted but an

opportunity for great wars. These are provided from professional reasons

(and so in all innocence) by diplomats, aided by newspapers and Stock

Exchanges. For “the nation,” as a nation of soldiers, need never be

supplied with a good conscience in war—it has one already.

321.

THE PRESS.—If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions

glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by

unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show

their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after

they have taken place;—what significance can we attach to the Press in its

present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to

bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an

everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a

false direction?

322.

AFTER A GREAT EVENT.—A nation and a man whose soul has come to light

through some great event generally feel the immediate need of some act of

childishness or coarseness, as much from shame as for purposes of

recreation.

323.

TO BE A GOOD GERMAN MEANS TO DE-GERMANISE ONESELF.—National differences

consist, far more than has hitherto been observed, only in the differences

of various grades of culture, and are only to a very small extent

permanent (nor even that in a strict sense). For this reason all arguments

based on national character are so little binding on one who aims at the

alteration of convictions—in other words, at culture. If, for instance, we

consider all that has already been German, we shall improve upon the

hypothetical question, “What is German?” by the counter-question, “What is

now German?” and every good German will answer it practically, by

overcoming his German characteristics. For when a nation advances and

grows, it bursts the girdle previously given to it by its national

outlook. When it remains stationary or declines, its soul is surrounded by

a fresh girdle, and the crust, as it becomes harder and harder, builds a

prison around, with walls growing ever higher. Hence if a nation has much

that is firmly established, this is a sign that it wishes to petrify and

would like to become nothing but a monument. This happened, from a

definite date, in the case of Egypt. So he who is well-disposed towards

the Germans may for his part consider how he may more and more grow out of

what is German. The tendency to be un-German has therefore always been a

mark of efficient members of our nation.

324.

FOREIGNISMS.—A foreigner who travelled in Germany found favour or the

reverse by certain assertions of his, according to the districts in which

he stayed. All intelligent Suabians, he used to say, are coquettish.—The

other Suabians still believed that Uhland was a poet and Goethe

immoral.—The best about German novels now in vogue was that one need not

read them, for one knew already what they contained.—The native of Berlin

seemed more good-humoured than the South German, for he was all too fond

of mocking, and so could endure mockery himself, which the South German

could not.—The intellect of the Germans was kept down by their beer and

their newspapers: he recommended them tea and pamphlets, of course as a

cure.—He advised us to contemplate the different nations of worn-out

Europe and see how well each displayed some particular quality of old age,

to the delight of those who sit before the great spectacle: how the French

successfully represent the cleverness and amiability of old age, the

English the experience and reserve, the Italians the innocence and

candour. Can the other masks of old age be wanting? Where is the proud old

man, the domineering old man, the covetous old man?—The most dangerous

region in Germany was Saxony and Thuringia: nowhere else was there more

mental nimbleness, more knowledge of men, side by side with freedom of

thought; and all this was so modestly veiled by the ugly dialect and the

zealous officiousness of the inhabitants that one hardly noticed that one

here had to deal with the intellectual drill-sergeants of Germany, her

teachers for good or evil.—The arrogance of the North Germans was kept in

check by their tendency to obey, that of the South Germans by their

tendency—to make themselves comfortable.—It appeared to him that in their

women German men possessed awkward but self-opinionated housewives, who

belauded themselves so perseveringly that they had almost persuaded the

world, and at any rate their husbands, of their peculiarly German

housewifely virtue.—When the conversation turned on Germany’s home and

foreign policy, he used to say (he called it “betray the secret”) that

Germany’s greatest statesman did not believe in great statesmen.—The

future of Germany he found menaced and menacing, for Germans had forgotten

how to enjoy themselves (an art that the Italians understood so well),

but, by the great games of chance called wars and dynastic revolutions,

had accustomed themselves to emotionalism, and consequently would one day

have an _émeute_. For that is the strongest emotion that a nation can

procure for itself.—The German Socialist was all the more dangerous

because impelled by no definite necessity: his trouble lay in not knowing

what he wanted; so, even if he attained many of his objects, he would

still pine away from desire in the midst of delights, just like Faust, but

presumably like a very vulgar Faust. “For the Faust-Devil,” he finally

exclaimed, “by whom cultured Germans were so much plagued, was exorcised

by Bismarck; but now the Devil has entered into the swine,(17) and is

worse than ever!”

325.

OPINIONS.—Most men are nothing and count for nothing until they have

arrayed themselves in universal convictions and public opinions. This is

in accordance with the tailors’ philosophy, “The apparel makes the man.”

Of exceptional men, however, it must be said, “The wearer primarily makes

the apparel.” Here opinions cease to be public, and become something else

than masks, ornament, and disguise.

326.

TWO KINDS OF SOBRIETY.—In order not to confound the sobriety arising from

mental exhaustion with that arising from moderation, one must remark that

the former is peevish, the latter cheerful.

327.

DEBASEMENT OF JOY.—To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears

to us good, and above all not a day earlier—that is the only way to keep

joy pure. Otherwise, joy all too easily becomes insipid and rotten to the

taste, and counts, for whole strata of the people, among the adulterated

foodstuffs.

328.

THE SCAPEGOAT OF VIRTUE.—When a man does his very best, those who mean

well towards him, but are not capable of appreciating him, speedily seek a

scapegoat to immolate, thinking it is the scapegoat of sin—but it is the

scapegoat of virtue.

329.

SOVEREIGNTY.—To honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it pleases

one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being

pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small.

330.

INFLUENCE A PHANTOM, NOT A REALITY.—The man of mark gradually learns that

so far as he has influence he is a phantom in other brains, and perhaps he

falls into a state of subtle vexation of soul, in which he asks himself

whether he must not maintain this phantom of himself for the benefit of

his fellow-men.

331.

GIVING AND TAKING.—When one takes away (or anticipates) the smallest thing

that another possesses, the latter is blind to the fact that he has been

given something greater, nay, even the greatest thing.

332.

GOOD PLOUGHLAND.—All rejection and negation betoken a deficiency in

fertility. If we were good ploughland, we should allow nothing to be

unused or lost, and in every thing, event, or person we should welcome

manure, rain, or sunshine.

333.

INTERCOURSE AS AN ENJOYMENT.—If a man renounces the world and

intentionally lives in solitude, he may come to regard intercourse with

others, which he enjoys but seldom, as a special delicacy.

334.

TO KNOW HOW TO SUFFER IN PUBLIC.—We must advertise our misfortunes and

from time to time heave audible sighs and show visible marks of

impatience. For if we could let others see how assured and happy we are in

spite of pain and privation, how envious and ill-tempered they would

become at the sight!—But we must take care not to corrupt our fellow-men;

besides, if they knew the truth, they would levy a heavy toll upon us. At

any rate our public misfortune is our private advantage.

335.

WARMTH ON THE HEIGHTS.—On the heights it is warmer than people in the

valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognises the full

import of this simile.

336.

TO WILL THE GOOD AND BE CAPABLE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.—It is not enough to

practise the good one must have willed it, and, as the poet says, include

the Godhead in our will. But the beautiful we must not will, we must be

capable of it, in innocence and blindness, without any psychical

curiosity. He that lights his lantern to find perfect men should remember

the token by which to know them. They are the men who always act for the

sake of the good and in so doing always attain to the beautiful without

thinking of the beautiful. Many better and nobler men, from impotence or

from want of beauty in their souls, remain unrefreshing and ugly to

behold, with all their good will and good works. They rebuff and injure

even virtue through the repulsive garb in which their bad taste arrays

her.

337.

DANGER OF RENUNCIATION.—We must beware of basing our lives on too narrow a

foundation of appetite. For if we renounce all the joys involved in

positions, honours, associations, revels, creature comforts, and arts, a

day may come when we perceive that this repudiation has led us not to

wisdom but to satiety of life.

338.

FINAL OPINION ON OPINIONS.—Either we should hide our opinions or hide

ourselves behind our opinions. Whoever does otherwise, does not know the

way of the world, or belongs to the order of pious fire-eaters.

339.

“GAUDEAMUS IGITUR.”—Joy must contain edifying and healing forces for the

moral nature of man. Otherwise, how comes it that our soul, as soon as it

basks in the sunshine of joy, unconsciously vows to itself, “I will be

good!” “I will become perfect!” and is at once seized by a premonition of

perfection that is like a shudder of religious awe?

340.

TO ONE WHO IS PRAISED.—So long as you are praised, believe that you are

not yet on your own course but on that of another.

341.

LOVING THE MASTER.—The apprentice and the master love the master in

different ways.

342.

ALL-TOO-BEAUTIFUL AND HUMAN.—“Nature is too beautiful for thee, poor

mortal,” one often feels. But now and then, at a profound contemplation of

all that is human, in its fulness, vigour, tenderness, and complexity, I

have felt as if I must say, in all humility, “Man also is too beautiful

for the contemplation of man!” Nor did I mean the moral man alone, but

every one.

343.

REAL AND PERSONAL ESTATE.—When life has treated us in true robber fashion,

and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health,

and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the

first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first

time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and

perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the

airs of a mighty real estate owner.

344.

INVOLUNTARILY IDEALISED.—The most painful feeling that exists is finding

out that we are always taken for something higher than we really are. For

we must thereby confess to ourselves, “There is in you some element of

fraud—your speech, your expression, your bearing, your eye, your dealings;

and this deceitful something is as necessary as your usual honesty, but

constantly destroys its effect and its value.”

345.

IDEALIST AND LIAR.—We must not let ourselves be tyrannised even by that

finest faculty of idealising things: otherwise, truth will one day part

company from us with the insulting remark: “Thou arch-liar, what have I to

do with thee?”

346.

BEING MISUNDERSTOOD.—When one is misunderstood generally, it is impossible

to remove a particular misunderstanding. This point must be recognised, to

save superfluous expenditure of energy in self-defence.

347.

THE WATER-DRINKER SPEAKS.—Go on drinking your wine, which has refreshed

you all your life—what affair is it of yours if I have to be a

water-drinker? Are not wine and water peaceable, brotherly elements, that

can live side by side without mutual recriminations?

348.

FROM CANNIBAL COUNTRY.—In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself,

among crowds by the many. Choose which you prefer.

349.

THE FREEZING-POINT OF THE WILL.—“Some time the hour will come at last, the

hour that will envelop you in the golden cloud of painlessness; when the

soul enjoys its own weariness and, happy in patient playing with patience,

resembles the waves of a lake, which on a quiet summer day, in the

reflection of a many-hued evening sky, sip and sip at the shore and again

are hushed—without end, without purpose, without satiety, without need—all

calm rejoicing in change, all ebb and flow of Nature’s pulse.” Such is the

feeling and talk of all invalids, but if they attain that hour, a brief

period of enjoyment is followed by ennui. But this is the thawing-wind of

the frozen will, which awakes, stirs, and once more begets desire upon

desire.—Desire is a sign of convalescence or recovery.

350.

THE DISCLAIMED IDEAL.—It happens sometimes by an exception that a man only

reaches the highest when he disclaims his ideal. For this ideal previously

drove him onward too violently, so that in the middle of the track he

regularly got out of breath and had to rest.

351.

A TREACHEROUS INCLINATION.—It should be regarded as a sign of an envious

but aspiring man, when he feels himself attracted by the thought that with

regard to the eminent there is but one salvation—love.

352.

STAIRCASE HAPPINESS.—Just as the wit of many men does not keep pace with

opportunity (so that opportunity has already passed through the door while

wit still waits on the staircase outside), so others have a kind of

staircase happiness, which walks too slowly to keep pace with swift-footed

Time. The best that it can enjoy of an experience, of a whole span of

life, falls to its share long afterwards, often only as a weak, spicy

fragrance, giving rise to longing and sadness—as if “it might have been

possible”—some time or other—to drink one’s fill of this element: but now

it is too late.

353.

WORMS.—The fact that an intellect contains a few worms does not detract

from its ripeness.

354.

THE SEAT OF VICTORY.—A good seat on horseback robs an opponent of his

courage, the spectator of his heart—why attack such a man? Sit like one

who has been victorious!

355.

DANGER IN ADMIRATION.—From excessive admiration for the virtues of others

one can lose the sense of one’s own, and finally, through lack of

practice, lose these virtues themselves, without retaining the alien

virtues as compensation.

356.

USES OF SICKLINESS.—He who is often ill not only has a far greater

pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires

a very keen sense of what is healthy or sickly in actions and

achievements, both his own and others’. Thus, for example, it is just the

writers of uncertain health—among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great

writers must be classed—who are wont to have a far more even and assured

tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are

the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and

convalescence and in their teachers—morning, sunshine, forest, and

fountain.

357.

DISLOYALTY A CONDITION OF MASTERY.—It cannot be helped—every master has

but one pupil, and he becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined

for mastery.

358.

NEVER IN VAIN.—In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either

you already reach a higher point to-day, or you exercise your strength in

order to be able to climb higher to-morrow.

359.

THROUGH GREY WINDOW-PANES.—Is what you see through this window of the

world so beautiful that you do not wish to look through any other

window—ay, and even try to prevent others from so doing?

360.

A SIGN OF RADICAL CHANGES.—When we dream of persons long forgotten or

dead, it is a sign that we have suffered radical changes, and that the

soil on which we live has been completely undermined. The dead rise again,

and our antiquity becomes modernity.

361.

MEDICINE OF THE SOUL.—To lie still and think little is the cheapest

medicine for all diseases of the soul, and, with the aid of goodwill,

becomes pleasanter every hour that it is used.

362.

INTELLECTUAL ORDER OF PRECEDENCE.—You rank far below others when you try

to establish the exception and they the rule.

363.

THE FATALIST.—You must believe in fate—science can compel you thereto. All

that develops in you out of that belief—cowardice, devotion or loftiness,

and uprightness—bears witness to the soil in which the grain was sown, but

not to the grain itself, for from that seed anything and everything can

grow.

364.

THE REASON FOR MUCH FRETFULNESS.—He that prefers the beautiful to the

useful in life will undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to

bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the

world.

365.

EXCESS AS A REMEDY.—We can make our own talent once more acceptable to

ourselves by honouring and enjoying the opposite talent for some time to

excess.—Using excess as a remedy is one of the more refined devices in the

art of life.

366.

“WILL A SELF.”—Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim,

“Know thyself,” but as if always confronted with the command, “Will a

self, so you will become a self.”—Fate seems always to have left them a

choice. Inactive, contemplative natures, on the other hand, reflect on how

they have chosen their self “once for all” at their entry into life.

367.

TO LIVE AS FAR AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT A FOLLOWING.—How small is the

importance of followers we first grasp when we have ceased to be the

followers of our followers.

368.

OBSCURING ONESELF.—We must understand how to obscure ourselves in order to

get rid of the gnat-swarms of pestering admirers.

369.

ENNUI.—There is an ennui of the most subtle and cultured brains, to which

the best that the world can offer has become stale. Accustomed to eat ever

more and more recherché fare and to feel disgust at coarser diet, they are

in danger of dying of hunger. For the very best exists but in small

quantities, and has sometimes become inaccessible or hard as stone, so

that even good teeth can no longer bite it.

370.

THE DANGER IN ADMIRATION.—The admiration of a quality or of an art may be

so strong as to deter us from aspiring to possess that quality or art.

371.

WHAT IS REQUIRED OF ART.—One man wants to enjoy himself by means of art,

another for a time to get out of or above himself.—To meet both

requirements there exists a twofold species of artists.

372.

SECESSIONS.—Whoever secedes from us offends not us, perhaps, but certainly

our adherents.

373.

AFTER DEATH.—It is only long after the death of a man that we find it

inconceivable that he should be missed—in the case of really great men,

only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when any one dies

that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a

piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an

individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh.

374.

LEAVING IN HADES.—We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious

feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else

they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with

cruel lust after our blood.

375.

NEAR TO BEGGARY.—Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to

the room in which his hoarded treasures repose. He is then like the

poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living.

376.

CHAIN-THINKERS.—To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought

that he hears or reads at once assumes the form of a chain.

377.

PITY.—In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy.

378.

WHAT IS GENIUS?—To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that

aim.

379.

VANITY OF COMBATANTS.—He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is

obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting

should be admired.

380.

THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE MISINTERPRETED.—At the moment when one is beginning

to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing

the reverse.

381.

IMITATION.—By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit—especially

in art.

382.

FINAL TEACHING OF HISTORY.—“Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is

the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history

that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past,

we shall rather cry out at the end, “Anything but a return to that! The

spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred

atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil

you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pass the same

verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under

such conditions was intolerable. “And yet every one can endure his own

times?” Yes, because the spirit of his age not only lies upon him but is

in him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear

itself.

383.

GREATNESS AS A MASK.—By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes;

by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us. For envy

levels and makes equal; it is an unconscious, plaintive variety of

modesty.—It may be indeed that here and there, for the sake of the

above-named advantage, envy has been assumed as a mask by those who are

not envious. Certainly, however, greatness in comportment is often used as

the mask of envy by ambitious men who would rather suffer drawbacks and

embitter their foes than let it be seen that they place them on an equal

footing with themselves.

384.

UNPARDONABLE.—You gave him an opportunity of displaying the greatness of

his character, and he did not make use of the opportunity. He will never

forgive you for that.

385.

CONTRASTS.—The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the

famous saying, “The ego is always hateful,” the most childish in the still

more famous saying, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”—With the one

knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun.

386.

A DEFECTIVE EAR.—“We still belong to the mob so long as we always shift

the blame on to others; we are on the track of wisdom when we always make

ourselves alone responsible; but the wise man finds no one to blame,

neither himself nor others.”—Who said that? Epictetus, eighteen hundred

years ago.—The world has heard but forgotten the saying.—No, the world has

not heard and not forgotten it: everything is not forgotten. But we had

not the necessary ear, the ear of Epictetus.—So he whispered it into his

own ear?—Even so: wisdom is the whispering of the sage to himself in the

crowded market-place.

387.

A DEFECT OF STANDPOINT, NOT OF VISION.—We always stand a few paces too

near ourselves and a few paces too far from our neighbour. Hence we judge

him too much in the lump, and ourselves too much by individual,

occasional, insignificant features and circumstances.

388.

IGNORANCE ABOUT WEAPONS.—How little we care whether another knows a

subject or not!—whereas he perhaps sweats blood at the bare idea that he

may be considered ignorant on the point. Yes, there are exquisite fools,

who always go about with a quiverful of mighty, excommunicatory

utterances, ready to shoot down any one who shows freely that there are

matters in which their judgment is not taken into account.

389.

AT THE DRINKING-TABLE OF EXPERIENCE.—People whose innate moderation leads

them to drink but the half of every glass, will not admit that everything

in the world has its lees and sediment.

390.

SINGING-BIRDS.—The followers of a great man often put their own eyes out,

so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.

391.

BEYOND OUR KEN.—The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our

ken.

392.

RULE AS MOTHER OR AS CHILD.—There is one condition that gives birth to

rules, another to which rules give birth.

393.

COMEDY.—We sometimes earn honour or love for actions and achievements

which we have long since sloughed as the snake sloughs his skin. We are

hereby easily seduced into becoming the comic actors of our own past, and

into throwing the old skin once more about our shoulders—and that not

merely from vanity, but from goodwill towards our admirers.

394.

A MISTAKE OF BIOGRAPHERS.—The small force that is required to launch a

boat into the stream must not be confounded with the force of the stream

that carries the boat along. Yet this mistake is made in nearly all

biographies.

395.

NOT BUYING TOO DEAR.—The things that we buy too dear we generally turn to

bad use, because we have no love for them but only a painful recollection.

Thus they involve a twofold drawback.

396.

THE PHILOSOPHY THAT SOCIETY ALWAYS NEEDS.—The pillars of the social

structure rest upon the fundamental fact that every one cheerfully

contemplates all that he is, does, and attempts, his sickness or health,

his poverty or affluence, his honour or insignificance, and says to

himself, “After all, I would not change places with any one!”—Whoever

wishes to add a stone to the social structure should always try to implant

in mankind this cheerful philosophy of contentment and refusal to change

places.

397.

THE MARK OF A NOBLE SOUL.—A noble soul is not that which is capable of the

highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living

always in a free and bright atmosphere and altitude.

398.

GREATNESS AND ITS CONTEMPLATOR.—The noblest effect of greatness is that it

gives the contemplator a power of vision that magnifies and embellishes.

399.

BEING SATISFIED.—We show that we have attained maturity of understanding

when we no longer go where rare flowers lurk under the thorniest hedges of

knowledge, but are satisfied with gardens, forests, meadows, and

ploughlands, remembering that life is too short for the rare and uncommon.

400.

ADVANTAGE IN PRIVATION.—He who always lives in the warmth and fulness of

the heart, and, as it were, in the summer air of the soul, cannot form an

idea of that fearful delight which seizes more wintry natures, who for

once in a way are kissed by the rays of love and the milder breath of a

sunny February day.

401.

RECIPE FOR THE SUFFERER.—You find the burden of life too heavy? Then you

must increase the burden of your life. When the sufferer finally thirsts

after and seeks the river of Lethe, then he must become a hero to be

certain of finding it.

402.

THE JUDGE.—He who has seen another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge,

and as it were his evil conscience.

403.

THE UTILITY OF GREAT RENUNCIATION.—The useful thing about great

renunciation is that it invests us with that youthful pride through which

we can thenceforth easily demand of ourselves small renunciations.

404.

HOW DUTY ACQUIRES A GLAMOUR.—You can change a brazen duty into gold in the

eyes of all by always performing something more than you have promised.

405.

PRAYER TO MANKIND.—“Forgive us our virtues”—so should we pray to mankind.

406.

THEY THAT CREATE AND THEY THAT ENJOY.—Every one who enjoys thinks that the

principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the

principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them

that create and them that enjoy.

407.

THE GLORY OF ALL GREAT MEN.—What is the use of genius if it does not

invest him who contemplates and reveres it with such freedom and loftiness

of feeling that he no longer has need of genius?—To make themselves

superfluous is the glory of all great men.

408.

THE JOURNEY TO HADES.—I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus,

and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that

I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own

blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my

sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau,

Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have

long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will

I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say,

conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those

eight and see their eyes fastened on mine.—May the living forgive me if I

look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and,

alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so

living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never

become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point:

what matters “eternal life,” or indeed life at all?

PART II. THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW.

The Shadow: It is so long since I heard you speak that I should like to

give you an opportunity of talking.

The Wanderer: I hear a voice—where? whose? I almost fancied that I heard

myself speaking, but with a voice yet weaker than my own.

The Shadow (after a pause): Are you not glad to have an opportunity of

speaking?

The Wanderer: By God and everything else in which I disbelieve, it is my

shadow that speaks. I hear it, but I do not believe it.

The Shadow: Let us assume that it exists, and think no more about it. In

another hour all will be over.

The Wanderer: That is just what I thought when in a forest near Pisa I

saw first two and then five camels.

The Shadow: It is all the better if we are both equally forbearing

towards each other when for once our reason is silent. Thus we shall avoid

losing our tempers in conversation, and shall not at once apply mutual

thumb-screws in the event of any word sounding for once unintelligible to

us. If one does not know exactly how to answer, it is enough to say

something. Those are the reasonable terms on which I hold conversation

with any person. During a long talk the wisest of men becomes a fool once

and a simpleton thrice.

The Wanderer: Your moderation is not flattering to those to whom you

confess it.

The Shadow: Am I, then, to flatter?

The Wanderer: I thought a man’s shadow was his vanity. Surely vanity

would never say, “Am I, then, to flatter?”

The Shadow: Nor does human vanity, so far as I am acquainted with it,

ask, as I have done twice, whether it may speak. It simply speaks.

The Wanderer: Now I see for the first time how rude I am to you, my

beloved shadow. I have not said a word of my supreme delight in hearing

and not merely seeing you. You must know that I love shadows even as I

love light. For the existence of beauty of face, clearness of speech,

kindliness and firmness of character, the shadow is as necessary as the

light. They are not opponents—rather do they hold each other’s hands like

good friends; and when the light vanishes, the shadow glides after it.

The Shadow: Yes, and I hate the same thing that you hate—night. I love

men because they are votaries of life. I rejoice in the gleam of their

eyes when they recognise and discover, they who never weary of recognising

and discovering. That shadow which all things cast when the sunshine of

knowledge falls upon them—that shadow too am I.

The Wanderer: I think I understand you, although you have expressed

yourself in somewhat shadowy terms. You are right. Good friends give to

each other here and there, as a sign of mutual understanding, an obscure

phrase which to any third party is meant to be a riddle. And we are good

friends, you and I. So enough of preambles! Some few hundred questions

oppress my soul, and the time for you to answer them is perchance but

short. Let us see how we may come to an understanding as quickly and

peaceably as possible.

The Shadow: But shadows are more shy than men. You will not reveal to

any man the manner of our conversation?

The Wanderer: The manner of our conversation? Heaven preserve me from

wire-drawn, literary dialogues! If Plato had found less pleasure in

spinning them out, his readers would have found more pleasure in Plato. A

dialogue that in real life is a source of delight, when turned into

writing and read, is a picture with nothing but false perspectives.

Everything is too long or too short.—Yet perhaps I may reveal the _points

on which_ we have come to an understanding?

The Shadow: With that I am content. For every one will only recognise

your views once more, and no one will think of the shadow.

The Wanderer: Perhaps you are wrong, my friend! Hitherto they have

observed in my views more of the shadow than of me.

The Shadow: More of the shadow than of the light? Is that possible?

The Wanderer: Be serious, dear fool! My very first question demands

seriousness.

1.

OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.—Probability, but no truth; the semblance of

freedom, but no freedom—these are the two fruits by virtue of which the

tree of knowledge cannot be confounded with the tree of life.

2.

THE WORLD’S REASON.—That the world is not the abstract essence of an

eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that _bit

of the world_ which we know—I mean our human reason—is none too

reasonable. And if this is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable,

the rest of the world will not be so either. Here the conclusion _a minori

ad majus, a parte ad totum_ holds good, and that with decisive force.

3.

“IN THE BEGINNING WAS.”—To glorify the origin—that is the metaphysical

after-shoot which sprouts again at the contemplation of history, and

absolutely makes us imagine that in the beginning of things lies all

that is most valuable and essential.

4.

STANDARD FOR THE VALUE OF TRUTH.—The difficulty of climbing mountains is

no gauge of their height. Yet in the case of science it is different!—we

are told by certain persons who wish to be considered “the initiated,”—the

difficulty in finding truth is to determine the value of truth! This

insane morality originates in the idea that “truths” are really nothing

more than gymnastic appliances, with which we have to exercise ourselves

until we are thoroughly tired. It is a morality for the athletes and

gymnasts of the intellect.

5.

USE OF WORDS AND REALITY.—There exists a simulated contempt for all the

things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday

matters. For instance, we say “we only eat to live”—an abominable lie,

like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose

of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for “the most important

things” is hardly ever quite genuine. The priests and metaphysicians have

indeed accustomed us to a hypocritically exaggerated use of words

regarding these matters, but they have not altered the feeling that these

most important things are not so important as those despised “everyday

matters.” A fatal consequence of this twofold hypocrisy is that we never

make these everyday matters (such as eating, housing, clothes, and

intercourse) the object of a constant unprejudiced and universal

reflection and revision, but, as such a process appears degrading, we

divert from them our serious intellectual and artistic side. Hence in such

matters habit and frivolity win an easy victory over the thoughtless,

especially over inexperienced youth. On the other hand, our continual

transgressions of the simplest laws of body and mind reduce us all, young

and old, to a disgraceful state of dependence and servitude—I mean to that

fundamentally superfluous dependence upon physicians, teachers and

clergymen, whose dead-weight still lies heavy upon the whole of society.

6.

EARTHLY INFIRMITIES AND THEIR MAIN CAUSE.—If we look about us, we are

always coming across men who have eaten eggs all their lives without

observing that the oblong-shaped taste the best; who do not know that a

thunder-storm is beneficial to the stomach; that perfumes are most

fragrant in cold, clear air; that our sense of taste varies in different

parts of our mouths; that every meal at which we talk well or listen well

does harm to the digestion. If we are not satisfied with these examples of

defective powers of observation, we shall concede all the more readily

that the everyday matters are very imperfectly seen and rarely observed by

the majority. Is this a matter of indifference?—Let us remember, after

all, that from this defect are derived _nearly all the bodily and

spiritual infirmities_ of the individual. Ignorance of what is good and

bad for us, in the arrangement of our mode of life, the division of our

day, the selection of our friends and the time we devote to them, in

business and leisure, commanding and obeying, our feeling for nature and

for art, our eating, sleeping, and meditation; ignorance and lack of keen

perceptions in the smallest and most ordinary details—this it is that

makes the world “a vale of tears” for so many. Let us not say that here as

everywhere the fault lies with human unreason. Of reason there is enough

and to spare, but it is wrongly directed and artificially diverted

from these little intimate things. Priests and teachers, and the sublime

ambition of all idealists, coarser and subtler, din it even into the

child’s ears that the means of serving mankind at large depend upon

altogether different things—upon the salvation of the soul, the service

of the State, the advancement of science, or even upon social position and

property; whereas the needs of the individual, his requirements great and

small during the twenty-four hours of the day, are quite paltry or

indifferent.—Even Socrates attacked with all his might this arrogant

neglect of the human for the benefit of humanity, and loved to indicate by

a quotation from Homer the true sphere and conception of all anxiety and

reflection: “All that really matters,” he said, “is the good and evil hap

I find at home.”

7.

TWO MEANS OF CONSOLATION.—Epicurus, the soul-comforter of later antiquity,

said, with that marvellous insight which to this very day is so rarely to

be found, that for the calming of the spirit the solution of the final and

ultimate theoretical problems is by no means necessary. Hence, instead of

raising a barren and remote discussion of the final question, whether the

Gods existed, it sufficed him to say to those who were tormented by “fear

of the Gods”: “If there are Gods, they do not concern themselves with us.”

The latter position is far stronger and more favourable, for, by conceding

a few points to the other, one makes him readier to listen and to take to

heart. But as soon as he sets about proving the opposite (that the Gods do

concern themselves with us), into what thorny jungles of error must the

poor man fall, quite of his own accord, and without any cunning on the

part of his interlocutor! The latter must only have enough subtlety and

humanity to conceal his sympathy with this tragedy. Finally, the other

comes to feel disgust—the strongest argument against any

proposition—disgust with his own hypothesis. He becomes cold, and goes

away in the same frame of mind as the pure atheist who says, “What do the

Gods matter to me? The devil take them!”—In other cases, especially when a

half-physical, half-moral assumption had cast a gloom over his spirit,

Epicurus did not refute the assumption. He agreed that it might be true,

but that there was a second assumption to explain the same phenomenon,

and that it could perhaps be maintained in other ways. The plurality of

hypotheses (for example, that concerning the origin of conscientious

scruples) suffices even in our time to remove from the soul the shadows

that arise so easily from pondering over a hypothesis which is isolated,

merely visible, and hence overvalued a hundredfold.—Thus whoever wishes to

console the unfortunate, the criminal, the hypochondriac, the dying, may

call to mind the two soothing suggestions of Epicurus, which can be

applied to a great number of problems. In their simplest form they would

run: firstly, granted the thing is so, it does not concern us; secondly,

the thing may be so, but it may also be otherwise.

8.

IN THE NIGHT.—So soon as night begins to fall our sensations concerning

everyday matters are altered. There is the wind, prowling as if on

forbidden paths, whispering as if in search of something, fretting because

he cannot find it. There is the lamplight, with its dim red glow, its

weary look, unwillingly fighting against night, a sullen slave to wakeful

man. There are the breathings of the sleeper, with their terrible rhythm,

to which an ever-recurring care seems to blow the trumpet-melody—we do not

hear it, but when the sleeper’s bosom heaves we feel our heart-strings

tighten; and when the breath sinks and almost dies away into a deathly

stillness, we say to ourselves, “Rest awhile, poor troubled spirit!” All

living creatures bear so great a burden that we wish them an eternal rest;

night invites to death.—If human beings were deprived of the sun and

resisted night by means of moonlight and oil-lamps, what a philosophy

would cast its veil over them! We already see only too plainly how a

shadow is thrown over the spiritual and intellectual nature of man by that

moiety of darkness and sunlessness that envelops life.

9.

ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF FREE WILL.—Necessity sways one man in the shape

of his passions, another as a habit of hearing and obeying, a third as a

logical conscience, a fourth as a caprice and a mischievous delight in

evasions. These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very

point where they are most securely fettered. It is as if the silkworm

sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason? Clearly this, that

every one thinks himself most free where his vitality is strongest; hence,

as I have said, now in passion, now in duty, now in knowledge, now in

caprice. A man unconsciously imagines that where he is strong, where he

feels most thoroughly alive, the element of his freedom must lie. He

thinks of dependence and apathy, independence and vivacity as forming

inevitable pairs.—Thus an experience that a man has undergone in the

social and political sphere is wrongly transferred to the ultimate

metaphysical sphere. There the strong man is also the free man, there the

vivid feeling of joy and sorrow, the high hopes, the keen desires, the

powerful hates are the attributes of the ruling, independent natures,

while the thrall and the slave live in a state of dazed oppression.—The

doctrine of free will is an invention of the ruling classes.

10.

ABSENCE OF FEELING OF NEW CHAINS.—So long as we do not feel that we are in

some way dependent, we consider ourselves independent—a false conclusion

that shows how proud man is, how eager for dominion. For he hereby assumes

that he would always be sure to observe and recognise dependence so soon

as he suffered it, the preliminary hypothesis being that he generally

lives in independence, and that, should he lose that independence for once

in a way, he would immediately detect a contrary sensation.—Suppose,

however, the reverse to be true—that he is always living in a complex

state of dependence, but thinks himself free where, through long habit, he

no longer feels the weight of the chain? He only suffers from new chains,

and “free will” really means nothing more than an absence of feeling of

new chains.

11.

FREEDOM OF THE WILL AND THE ISOLATION OF FACTS.—Our ordinary inaccurate

observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls them a fact.

Between this fact and another we imagine a vacuum, we isolate each fact.

In reality, however, the sum of our actions and cognitions is no series of

facts and intervening vacua, but a continuous stream. Now the belief in

free will is incompatible with the idea of a continuous, uniform,

undivided, indivisible flow. This belief presupposes that every single

action is isolated and indivisible; it is an atomic theory as regards

volition and cognition.—We misunderstand facts as we misunderstand

characters, speaking of similar characters and similar facts, whereas both

are non-existent. Further, we bestow praise and blame only on this false

hypothesis, that there are similar facts, that a graduated order of

species of facts exists, corresponding to a graduated order of values.

Thus we isolate not only the single fact, but the groups of apparently

equal facts (good, evil, compassionate, envious actions, and so forth). In

both cases we are wrong.—The word and the concept are the most obvious

reason for our belief in this isolation of groups of actions. We do not

merely thereby designate the things; the thought at the back of our minds

is that by the word and the concept we can grasp the essence of the

actions. We are still constantly led astray by words and actions, and are

induced to think of things as simpler than they are, as separate,

indivisible, existing in the absolute. Language contains a hidden

philosophical mythology, which, however careful we may be, breaks out

afresh at every moment. The belief in free will—that is to say, in similar

facts and isolated facts—finds in language its continual apostle and

advocate.

12.

THE FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS.—A man cannot feel any psychical pleasure or pain

unless he is swayed by one of two illusions. Either he believes in the

identity of certain facts, certain sensations, and in that case finds

spiritual pleasure and pain in comparing present with past conditions and

in noting their similarity or difference (as is invariably the case with

recollection); or he believes in the freedom of the will, perhaps when he

reflects, “I ought not to have done this,” “This might have turned out

differently,” and from these reflections likewise he derives pleasure and

pain. Without the errors that are rife in every psychical pain and

pleasure, humanity would never have developed. For the root idea of

humanity is that man is free in a world of bondage—man, the eternal

wonder-worker, whether his deeds be good or evil—man, the amazing

exception, the super-beast, the quasi-God, the mind of creation, the

indispensable, the key-word to the cosmic riddle, the mighty lord of

nature and despiser of nature, the creature that calls its history “the

history of the world”! Vanitas vanitatum homo.

13.

REPETITION.—It is an excellent thing to express a thing consecutively in

two ways, and thus provide it with a right and a left foot. Truth can

stand indeed on one leg, but with two she will walk and complete her

journey.

14.

MAN AS THE COMIC ACTOR OF THE WORLD.—It would require beings more

intellectual than men to relish to the full the humorous side of man’s

view of himself as the goal of all existence and of his serious

pronouncement that he is satisfied only with the prospect of fulfilling a

world-mission. If a God created the world, he created man to be his ape,

as a perpetual source of amusement in the midst of his rather tedious

eternities. The music of the spheres surrounding the world would then

presumably be the mocking laughter of all the other creatures around

mankind. God in his boredom uses pain for the tickling of his favourite

animal, in order to enjoy his proudly tragic gestures and expressions of

suffering, and, in general, the intellectual inventiveness of the vainest

of his creatures—as inventor of this inventor. For he who invented man as

a joke had more intellect and more joy in intellect than has man.—Even

here, where our human nature is willing to humble itself, our vanity again

plays us a trick, in that we men should like in this vanity at least to be

quite marvellous and incomparable. Our uniqueness in the world! Oh, what

an improbable thing it is! Astronomers, who occasionally acquire a horizon

outside our world, give us to understand that the drop of life on the

earth is without significance for the total character of the mighty ocean

of birth and decay; that countless stars present conditions for the

generation of life similar to those of the earth—and yet these are but a

handful in comparison with the endless number that have never known, or

have long been cured, of the eruption of life; that life on each of these

stars, measured by the period of its existence, has been but an instant, a

flicker, with long, long intervals afterwards—and thus in no way the aim

and final purpose of their existence. Possibly the ant in the forest is

quite as firmly convinced that it is the aim and purpose of the existence

of the forest, as we are convinced in our imaginations (almost

unconsciously) that the destruction of mankind involves the destruction of

the world. It is even modesty on our part to go no farther than this, and

not to arrange a universal twilight of the world and the Gods as the

funeral ceremony of the last man. Even to the eye of the most unbiassed

astronomer a lifeless world can scarcely appear otherwise than as a

shining and swinging star wherein man lies buried.

15.

THE MODESTY OF MAN.—How little pleasure is enough for the majority to make

them feel that life is good! How modest is man!

16.

WHERE INDIFFERENCE IS NECESSARY.—Nothing would be more perverse than to

wait for the truths that science will finally establish concerning the

first and last things, and until then to think (and especially to believe)

in the traditional way, as one is so often advised to do. The impulse that

bids us seek nothing but certainties in this domain is a religious

offshoot, nothing better—a hidden and only apparently sceptical variety of

the “metaphysical need,” the underlying idea being that for a long time no

view of these ultimate certainties will be obtainable, and that until then

the “believer” has the right not to trouble himself about the whole

subject. We have no need of these certainties about the farthermost

horizons in order to live a full and efficient human life, any more than

the ant needs them in order to be a good ant. Rather must we ascertain the

origin of that troublesome significance that we have attached to these

things for so long. For this we require the history of ethical and

religious sentiments, since it is only under the influence of such

sentiments that these most acute problems of knowledge have become so

weighty and terrifying. Into the outermost regions to which the mental eye

can penetrate (without ever penetrating into them), we have smuggled

such concepts as guilt and punishment (everlasting punishment, too!). The

darker those regions, the more careless we have been. For ages men have

let their imaginations run riot where they could establish nothing, and

have induced posterity to accept these fantasies as something serious and

true, with this abominable lie as their final trump-card: that faith is

worth more than knowledge. What we need now in regard to these ultimate

things is not knowledge as against faith, but indifference as against

faith and pretended knowledge in these matters!—Everything must lie nearer

to us than what has hitherto been preached to us as the most important

thing, I mean the questions: “What end does man serve?” “What is his fate

after death?” “How does he make his peace with God?” and all the rest of

that bag of tricks. The problems of the dogmatic philosophers, be they

idealists, materialists, or realists, concern us as little as do these

religious questions. They all have the same object in view—to force us to

a decision in matters where neither faith nor knowledge is needed. It is

better even for the most ardent lover of knowledge that the territory open

to investigation and to reason should be encircled by a belt of fog-laden,

treacherous marshland, a strip of ever watery, impenetrable, and

indeterminable country. It is just by the comparison with the realm of

darkness on the edge of the world of knowledge that the bright, accessible

region of that world rises in value.—We must once more become good friends

of the “everyday matters,” and not, as hitherto, despise them and look

beyond them at clouds and monsters of the night. In forests and caverns,

in marshy tracts and under dull skies, on the lowest rungs of the ladder

of culture, man has lived for æons, and lived in poverty. There he has

learnt to despise the present, his neighbours, his life, and himself, and

we, the inhabitants of the brighter fields of Nature and mind, still

inherit in our blood some taint of this contempt for everyday matters.

17.

PROFOUND INTERPRETATIONS.—He who has interpreted a passage in an author

“more profoundly” than was intended, has not interpreted the author but

has obscured him. Our metaphysicians are in the same relation, or even in

a worse relation, to the text of Nature. For, to apply their profound

interpretations, they often alter the text to suit their purpose—or, in

other words, corrupt the text. A curious example of the corruption and

obscuration of an author’s text is furnished by the ideas of Schopenhauer

on the pregnancy of women. “The sign of a continuous will to life in

time,” he says, “is copulation; the sign of the light of knowledge which

is associated anew with this will and holds the possibility of a

deliverance, and that too in the highest degree of clearness, is the

renewed incarnation of the will to life. This incarnation is betokened by

pregnancy, which is therefore frank and open, and even proud, whereas

copulation hides itself like a criminal.” He declares that every woman, if

surprised in the sexual act, would be likely to die of shame, but

“displays her pregnancy without a trace of shame, nay even with a sort of

pride.” Now, firstly, this condition cannot easily be displayed more

aggressively than it displays itself, and when Schopenhauer gives

prominence only to the intentional character of the display, he is

fashioning his text to suit the interpretation. Moreover, his statement of

the universality of the phenomenon is not true. He speaks of “every

woman.” Many women, especially the younger, often appear painfully ashamed

of their condition, even in the presence of their nearest kinsfolk. And

when women of riper years, especially in the humbler classes, do actually

appear proud of their condition, it is because they would give us to

understand that they are still desirable to their husbands. That a

neighbour on seeing them or a passing stranger should say or think “Can it

be possible?”—that is an alms always acceptable to the vanity of women of

low mental capacity. In the reverse instance, to conclude from

Schopenhauer’s proposition, the cleverest and most intelligent women would

tend more than any to exult openly in their condition. For they have the

best prospect of giving birth to an intellectual prodigy, in whom “the

will” can once more “negative” itself for the universal good. Stupid

women, on the other hand, would have every reason to hide their pregnancy

more modestly than anything they hide.—It cannot be said that this view

corresponds to reality. Granted, however, that Schopenhauer was right on

the general principle that women show more self-satisfaction when pregnant

than at any other time, a better explanation than this lies to hand. One

might imagine the clucking of a hen even before she lays an egg, saying,

“Look! look! I shall lay an egg! I shall lay an egg!”

18.

THE MODERN DIOGENES.—Before we look for man, we must have found the

lantern.—Will it have to be the Cynic’s lantern?

19.

IMMORALISTS.—Moralists must now put up with being rated as immoralists,

because they dissect morals. He, however, who would dissect must kill, but

only in order that we may know more, judge better, live better, not in

order that all the world may dissect. Unfortunately, men still think that

every moralist in his every action must be a pattern for others to

imitate. They confound him with the preacher of morality. The older

moralists did not dissect enough and preached too often, whence that

confusion and the unpleasant consequences for our latter-day moralists are

derived.

20.

A CAUTION AGAINST CONFUSION.—There are moralists who treat the strong,

noble, self-denying attitude of such beings as the heroes of Plutarch, or

the pure, enlightened, warmth-giving state of soul peculiar to truly good

men and women, as difficult scientific problems. They investigate the

origin of such phenomena, indicating the complex element in the apparent

simplicity, and directing their gaze to the tangled skein of motives, the

delicate web of conceptual illusions, and the sentiments of individuals or

of groups, that are a legacy of ancient days gradually increased. Such

moralists are very different from those with whom they are most commonly

confounded, from those petty minds that do not believe at all in these

modes of thought and states of soul, and imagine their own poverty to be

hidden somewhere behind the glamour of greatness and purity. The moralists

say, “Here are problems,” and these pitiable creatures say, “Here are

impostors and deceptions.” Thus the latter deny the existence of the very

things which the former are at pains to explain.

21.

Man as the Measurer.—Perhaps all human morality had its origin in the

tremendous excitement that seized primitive man when he discovered measure

and measuring, scales and weighing (for the word Mensch [man] means “the

measurer”—he wished to name himself after his greatest discovery!). With

these ideas they mounted into regions that are quite beyond all measuring

and weighing, but did not appear to be so in the beginning.

22.

The Principle of Equilibrium.—The robber and the man of power who

promises to protect a community from robbers are perhaps at bottom beings

of the same mould, save that the latter attains his ends by other means

than the former—that is to say, through regular imposts paid to him by the

community, and no longer through forced contributions. (The same relation

exists between merchant and pirate, who for a long period are one and the

same person: where the one function appears to them inadvisable, they

exercise the other. Even to-day mercantile morality is really nothing but

a refinement on piratical morality—buying in the cheapest market, at prime

cost if possible, and selling in the dearest.) The essential point is that

the man of power promises to maintain the equilibrium against the robber,

and herein the weak find a possibility of living. For either they must

group themselves into an equivalent power, or they must subject themselves

to some one of equivalent power (i.e. render service in return for his

efforts). The latter course is generally preferred, because it really

keeps two dangerous beings in check—the robber through the man of power,

and the man of power through the standpoint of advantage; for the latter

profits by treating his subjects with graciousness and tolerance, in order

that they may support not only themselves but their ruler. As a matter of

fact, conditions may still be hard and cruel enough, yet in comparison

with the complete annihilation that was formerly always a possibility, men

breathe freely.—The community is at first the organisation of the weak to

counterbalance menacing forces. An organisation to outweigh those forces

would be more advisable, if its members grew strong enough to destroy the

adverse power: and when it is a question of one mighty oppressor, the

attempt will certainly be made. But if the one man is the head of a

clan, or if he has a large following, a rapid and decisive annihilation is

improbable, and a long or permanent feud is only to be expected. This

feud, however, involves the least desirable condition for the community,

for it thereby loses the time to provide for its means of subsistence with

the necessary regularity, and sees the product of all work hourly

threatened. Hence the community prefers to raise its power of attack and

defence to the exact plane on which the power of its dangerous neighbour

stands, and to give him to understand that an equal weight now lies in its

own side of the scales—so why not be good friends?—Thus equilibrium is a

most important conception for the understanding of the ancient doctrines

of law and morals. Equilibrium is, in fact, the basis of justice. When

justice in ruder ages says, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” it

presupposes the attainment of this equilibrium and tries to maintain it by

means of this compensation; so that, when crime is committed, the injured

party will not take the revenge of blind anger. By means of the _jus

talionis_ the equilibrium of the disturbed relations of power is restored,

for in such primitive times an eye or an arm more means a bit more power,

more weight.—In a community where all consider themselves equal, disgrace

and punishment await crime—that is, violations of the principle of

equilibrium. Disgrace is thrown into the scale as a counter-weight against

the encroaching individual, who has gained profit by his encroachment, and

now suffers losses (through disgrace) which annul and outweigh the

previous profits. Punishment, in the same way, sets up a far greater

counter-weight against the preponderance which every criminal hopes to

obtain—imprisonment as against a deed of violence, restitution and fines

as against theft. Thus the sinner is reminded that his action has excluded

him from the community and from its moral advantages, since the community

treats him as an inferior, a weaker brother, an outsider. For this reason

punishment is not merely retaliation, but has something more, something of

the cruelty of the state of nature, and of this it would serve as a

reminder.

23.

WHETHER THE ADHERENTS OF THE DOCTRINE OF FREE WILL HAVE A RIGHT TO

PUNISH?—Men whose vocation it is to judge and punish try to establish in

every case whether an evil-doer is really responsible for his act, whether

he was able to apply his reasoning powers, whether he acted with motives

and not unconsciously or under constraint. If he is punished, it is

because he preferred the worse to the better motives, which he must

consequently have known. Where this knowledge is wanting, man is,

according to the prevailing view, not responsible—unless his ignorance,

e.g. his ignorantia legis, be the consequence of an intentional

neglect to learn what he ought: in that case he already preferred the

worse to the better motives at the time when he refused to learn, and must

now pay the penalty of his unwise choice. If, on the other hand, perhaps

through stupidity or shortsightedness, he has never seen the better

motives, he is generally not punished, for people say that he made a wrong

choice, he acted like a brute beast. The intentional rejection of the

better reason is now needed before we treat the offender as fit to be

punished. But how can any one be intentionally more unreasonable than he

ought to be? Whence comes the decision, if the scales are loaded with good

and bad motives? So the origin is not error or blindness, not an internal

or external constraint? (It should furthermore be remembered that every

so-called “external constraint” is nothing more than the internal

constraint of fear and pain.) Whence? is the repeated question. So reason

is not to be the cause of action, because reason cannot decide against the

better motives? Thus we call “free will” to our aid. Absolute discretion

is to decide, and a moment is to intervene when no motive exercises an

influence, when the deed is done as a miracle, resulting from nothing.

This assumed discretion is punished in a case where no discretion should

rule. Reason, which knows law, prohibition, and command, should have left

no choice, they say, and should have acted as a constraint and a higher

power. Hence the offender is punished because he makes use of “free

will”—in other words, has acted without motive where he should have been

guided by motives. But why did he do it? This question must not even be

asked; the deed was done without a “Why?” without motive, without origin,

being a thing purposeless, unreasoned.—However, according to the

above-named preliminary condition of punishability, such a deed should not

be punished at all! Moreover, even this reason for punishing should not

hold good, that in this case something had not been done, had been

omitted, that reason had not been used at all: for at any rate the

omission was unintentional, and only intentional omission is considered

punishable. The offender has indeed preferred the worse to the better

motives, but without motive and purpose: he has indeed failed to apply his

reason, but not exactly with the object of not applying it. The very

assumption made in the case of punishable crime, that the criminal

intentionally renounced his reason, is removed by the hypothesis of “free

will.” According to your own principles, you must not punish, you

adherents of the doctrine of free will!—These principles are, however,

nothing but a very marvellous conceptual mythology, and the hen that

hatched them has brooded on her eggs far away from all reality.

24.

JUDGING THE CRIMINAL AND HIS JUDGE.—The criminal, who knows the whole

concatenation of circumstances, does not consider his act so far beyond

the bounds of order and comprehension as does his judge. His punishment,

however, is measured by the degree of astonishment that seizes the judge

when he finds the crime incomprehensible.—If the defending counsel’s

knowledge of the case and its previous history extends far enough, the

so-called extenuating circumstances which he duly pleads must end by

absolving his client from all guilt. Or, to put it more plainly, the

advocate will, step by step, tone down and finally remove the astonishment

of the judge, by forcing every honest listener to the tacit avowal, “He

was bound to act as he did, and if we punished, we should be punishing

eternal Necessity.”—Measuring the punishment by the degree of knowledge we

possess or can obtain of the previous history of the crime—is that not in

conflict with all equity?

25.

EXCHANGE AND EQUITY.—In an exchange, the only just and honest course would

be for either party to demand only so much as he considers his commodity

to be worth, allowance being made for trouble in acquisition, scarcity,

time spent and so forth, besides the subjective value. As soon as you make

your price bear a relation to the other’s need, you become a refined sort

of robber and extortioner.—If money is the sole medium of exchange, we

must remember that a shilling is by no means the same thing in the hands

of a rich heir, a farm labourer, a merchant, and a university student. It

would be equitable for every one to receive much or little for his money,

according as he has done much or little to earn it. In practice, as we all

know, the reverse is the case. In the world of high finance the shilling

of the idle rich man can buy more than that of the poor, industrious man.

26.

LEGAL CONDITIONS AS MEANS.—Law, where it rests upon contracts between

equals, holds good so long as the power of the parties to the contract

remains equal or similar. Wisdom created law to end all feuds and useless

expenditure among men on an equal footing. Quite as definite an end is put

to this waste, however, when one party has become decidedly weaker than

the other. Subjection enters and law ceases, but the result is the same as

that attained by law. For now it is the wisdom of the superior which

advises to spare the inferior and not uselessly to squander his strength.

Thus the position of the inferior is often more favourable than that of

the equal.—Hence legal conditions are temporary means counselled by

wisdom, and not ends.

27.

EXPLANATION OF MALICIOUS JOY.—Malicious joy arises when a man consciously

finds himself in evil plight and feels anxiety or remorse or pain. The

misfortune that overtakes B. makes him equal to A., and A. is reconciled

and no longer envious.—If A. is prosperous, he still hoards up in his

memory B.’s misfortune as a capital, so as to throw it in the scale as a

counter-weight when he himself suffers adversity. In this case too he

feels “malicious joy” (_Schadenfreude_). The sentiment of equality thus

applies its standard to the domain of luck and chance. Malicious joy is

the commonest expression of victory and restoration of equality, even in a

higher state of civilisation. This emotion has only been in existence

since the time when man learnt to look upon another as his equal—in other

words, since the foundation of society.

28.

THE ARBITRARY ELEMENT IN THE AWARD OF PUNISHMENT.—To most criminals

punishment comes just as illegitimate children come to women. They have

done the same thing a hundred times without any bad consequences. Suddenly

comes discovery, and with discovery punishment. Yet habit should make the

deed for which the criminal is punished appear more excusable, for he has

developed a propensity that is hard to resist. Instead of this, the

criminal is punished more severely if the suspicion of habitual crime

rests on him, and habit is made a valid reason against all extenuation. On

the other hand, a model life, wherein crime shows up in more terrible

contrast, should make the guilt appear more heavy! But here the custom is

to soften the punishment. Everything is measured not from the standpoint

of the criminal but from that of society and its losses and dangers. The

previous utility of an individual is weighed against his one nefarious

action, his previous criminality is added to that recently discovered, and

punishment is thus meted out as highly as possible. But if we thus punish

or reward a man’s past (for in the former case the diminution of

punishment is a reward) we ought to go farther back and punish and reward

the cause of his past—I mean parents, teachers, society. In many instances

we shall then find the judges somehow or other sharing in the guilt. It

is arbitrary to stop at the criminal himself when we punish his past: if

we will not grant the absolute excusability of every crime, we should stop

at each individual case and probe no farther into the past—in other words,

isolate guilt and not connect it with previous actions. Otherwise we sin

against logic. The teachers of free will should draw the inevitable

conclusion from their doctrine of “free will” and boldly decree: “No

action has a past.”

29.

ENVY AND HER NOBLER SISTER.—Where equality is really recognised and

permanently established, we see the rise of that propensity that is

generally considered immoral, and would scarcely be conceivable in a state

of nature—envy. The envious man is susceptible to every sign of individual

superiority to the common herd, and wishes to depress every one once more

to the level—or raise himself to the superior plane. Hence arise two

different modes of action, which Hesiod designated good and bad Eris. In

the same way, in a condition of equality there arises indignation if A. is

prosperous above and B. unfortunate beneath their deserts and equality.

These latter, however, are emotions of nobler natures. They feel the want

of justice and equity in things that are independent of the arbitrary

choice of men—or, in other words, they desire the equality recognised by

man to be recognised as well by Nature and chance. They are angry that men

of equal merits should not have equal fortune.

30.

THE ENVY OF THE GODS.—“The envy of the Gods” arises when a despised person

sets himself on an equality with his superior (like Ajax), or is made

equal with him by the favour of fortune (like Niobe, the too favoured

mother). In the social class system this envy demands that no one shall

have merits above his station, that his prosperity shall be on a level

with his position, and especially that his self-consciousness shall not

outgrow the limits of his rank. Often the victorious general, or the pupil

who achieves a masterpiece, has experienced “the envy of the gods.”

31.

VANITY AS AN ANTI-SOCIAL AFTERGROWTH.—As men, for the sake of security,

have made themselves equal in order to found communities, but as also this

conception is imposed by a sort of constraint and is entirely opposed to

the instincts of the individual, so, the more universal security is

guaranteed, the more do new offshoots of the old instinct for predominance

appear. Such offshoots appear in the setting-up of class distinctions, in

the demand for professional dignities and privileges, and, generally

speaking, in vanity (manners, dress, speech, and so forth). So soon as

danger to the community is apparent, the majority, who were unable to

assert their preponderance in a time of universal peace, once more bring

about the condition of equality, and for the time being the absurd

privileges and vanities disappear. If the community, however, collapses

utterly and anarchy reigns supreme, there arises the state of nature: an

absolutely ruthless inequality as recounted by Thucydides in the case of

Corcyra. Neither a natural justice nor a natural injustice exists.

32.

EQUITY.—Equity is a development of justice, and arises among such as do

not come into conflict with the communal equality. This more subtle

recognition of the principle of equilibrium is applied to cases where

nothing is prescribed by law. Equity looks forwards and backwards, its

maxim being, “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.”

Aequum means: “This principle is conformable to our equality; it tones

down even our small differences to an appearance of equality, and expects

us to be indulgent in cases where we are not compelled to pardon.”

33.

ELEMENTS OF REVENGE.—The word “revenge” is spoken so quickly that it

almost seems as if it could not contain more than one conceptual and

emotional root. Hence we are still at pains to find this root. Our

economists, in the same way, have never wearied of scenting a similar

unity in the word “value,” and of hunting after the primitive root idea of

value. As if all words were not pockets, into which this or that or

several things have been stuffed at once! So “revenge” is now one thing,

now another, and sometimes more composite. Let us first distinguish that

defensive counterblow, which we strike, almost unconsciously, even at

inanimate objects (such as machinery in motion) that have hurt us. The

notion is to set a check to the object that has hurt us, by bringing the

machine to a stop. Sometimes the force of this counterblow, in order to

attain its object, will have to be strong enough to shatter the machine.

If the machine be too strong to be disorganised by one man, the latter

will all the same strike the most violent blow he can—as a sort of last

attempt. We behave similarly towards persons who hurt us, at the immediate

sensation of the hurt. If we like to call this an act of revenge, well and

good: but we must remember that here self-preservation alone has set its

cog-wheels of reason in motion, and that after all we do not think of the

doer of the injury but only of ourselves. We act without any idea of doing

injury in return, only with a view to getting away safe and sound.—It

needs time to pass in thought from oneself to one’s adversary and ask

oneself at what point he is most vulnerable. This is done in the second

variety of revenge, the preliminary idea of which is to consider the

vulnerability and susceptibility of the other. The intention then is to

give pain. On the other hand, the idea of securing himself against further

injury is in this case so entirely outside the avenger’s horizon, that he

almost regularly brings about his own further injury and often foresees it

in cold blood. If in the first sort of revenge it was the fear of a second

blow that made the counterblow as strong as possible, in this case there

is an almost complete indifference to what one’s adversary will do: the

strength of the counterblow is only determined by what he has already

done to us. Then what has he done? What profit is it to us if he is now

suffering, after we have suffered through him? This is a case of

readjustment, whereas the first act of revenge only serves the purpose of

self-preservation. It may be that through our adversary we have lost

property, rank, friends, children—these losses are not recovered by

revenge, the readjustment only concerns a subsidiary loss which is added

to all the other losses. The revenge of readjustment does not preserve one

from further injury, it does not make good the injury already

suffered—except in one case. If our honour has suffered through our

adversary, revenge can restore it. But in any case honour has suffered

an injury if intentional harm has been done us, because our adversary

proved thereby that he was not afraid of us. By revenge we prove that we

are not afraid of him either, and herein lies the settlement, the

readjustment. (The intention of showing their complete lack of fear goes

so far in some people that the dangers of revenge—loss of health or life

or other losses—are in their eyes an indispensable condition of every

vengeful act. Hence they practise the duel, although the law also offers

them aid in obtaining satisfaction for what they have suffered. They are

not satisfied with a safe means of recovering their honour, because this

would not prove their fearlessness.)—In the first-named variety of revenge

it is just fear that strikes the counterblow; in the second case it is

the absence of fear, which, as has been said, wishes to manifest itself in

the counterblow.—Thus nothing appears more different than the motives of

the two courses of action which are designated by the one word “revenge.”

Yet it often happens that the avenger is not precisely certain as to what

really prompted his deed: perhaps he struck the counterblow from fear and

the instinct of self-preservation, but in the background, when he has time

to reflect upon the standpoint of wounded honour, he imagines that he has

avenged himself for the sake of his honour—this motive is in any case more

reputable than the other. An essential point is whether he sees his

honour injured in the eyes of others (the world) or only in the eyes of

his offenders: in the latter case he will prefer secret, in the former

open revenge. Accordingly, as he enters strongly or feebly into the soul

of the doer and the spectator, his revenge will be more bitter or more

tame. If he is entirely lacking in this sort of imagination, he will not

think at all of revenge, as the feeling of “honour” is not present in him,

and accordingly cannot be wounded. In the same way, he will not think of

revenge if he despises the offender and the spectator; because as objects

of his contempt they cannot give him honour, and accordingly cannot rob

him of honour. Finally, he will forego revenge in the not uncommon case of

his loving the offender. It is true that he then suffers loss of honour in

the other’s eyes, and will perhaps become less worthy of having his love

returned. But even to renounce all requital of love is a sacrifice that

love is ready to make when its only object is to avoid hurting the beloved

object: this would mean hurting oneself more than one is hurt by the

sacrifice.—Accordingly, every one will avenge himself, unless he be bereft

of honour or inspired by contempt or by love for the offender. Even if he

turns to the law-courts, he desires revenge as a private individual; but

also, as a thoughtful, prudent man of society, he desires the revenge of

society upon one who does not respect it. Thus by legal punishment private

honour as well as that of society is restored—that is to say, punishment

is revenge. Punishment undoubtedly contains the first-mentioned element of

revenge, in as far as by its means society helps to preserve itself, and

strikes a counterblow in self-defence. Punishment desires to prevent

further injury, to scare other offenders. In this way the two elements of

revenge, different as they are, are united in punishment, and this may

perhaps tend most of all to maintain the above-mentioned confusion of

ideas, thanks to which the individual avenger generally does not know what

he really wants.

34.

THE VIRTUES THAT DAMAGE US.—As members of communities we think we have no

right to exercise certain virtues which afford us great honour and some

pleasure as private individuals (for example, indulgence and favour

towards miscreants of all kinds)—in short, every mode of action whereby

the advantage of society would suffer through our virtue. No bench of

judges, face to face with its conscience, may permit itself to be

gracious. This privilege is reserved for the king as an individual, and we

are glad when he makes use of it, proving that we should like to be

gracious individually, but not collectively. Society recognises only the

virtues profitable to her, or at least not injurious to her—virtues like

justice, which are exercised without loss, or, in fact, at compound

interest. The virtues that damage us cannot have originated in society,

because even now opposition to them arises in every small society that is

in the making. Such virtues are therefore those of men of unequal

standing, invented by the superior individuals; they are the virtues of

rulers, and the idea underlying them is: “I am mighty enough to put up

with an obvious loss; that is a proof of my power.” Thus they are virtues

closely akin to pride.

35.

THE CASUISTRY OF ADVANTAGE.—There would be no moral casuistry if there

were no casuistry of advantage. The most free and refined intelligence is

often incapable of choosing between two alternatives in such a way that

his choice necessarily involves the greater advantage. In such cases we

choose because we must, and afterwards often feel a kind of emotional

sea-sickness.

36.

TURNING HYPOCRITE.—Every beggar turns hypocrite, like every one who makes

his living out of indigence, be it personal or public.—The beggar does not

feel want nearly so keenly as he must make others feel it, if he wishes to

make a living by mendicancy.

37.

A SORT OF CULT OF THE PASSIONS.—You hypochondriacs, you philosophic

blind-worms talk of the formidable nature of human passions, in order to

inveigh against the dreadsomeness of the whole world-structure. As if the

passions were always and everywhere formidable! As if this sort of terror

must always exist in the world!—Through a carelessness in small matters,

through a deficiency in observation of self and of the rising generation,

you have yourselves allowed your passions to develop into such unruly

monsters that you are frightened now at the mere mention of the word

“passion”! It rests with you and it rests with us to divest the passions

of their formidable features and so to dam them that they do not become

devastating floods.—We must not exalt our errors into eternal fatalities.

Rather shall we honestly endeavour to convert all the passions of humanity

into sources of joy.(18)

38.

THE STING OF CONSCIENCE.—The sting of conscience, like the gnawing of a

dog at a stone, is mere foolishness.

39.

ORIGIN OF RIGHTS.—Rights may be traced to traditions, traditions to

momentary agreements. At some time or other men were mutually content with

the consequences of making an agreement, and, again, too indolent formally

to renew it. Thus they went on living as if it had constantly been

renewed, and gradually, when oblivion cast its veil over the origin, they

thought they possessed a sacred, unalterable foundation on which every

generation would be compelled to build. Tradition was now a constraint,

even if it no more involved the profit originally derived from making the

agreement.—Here the weak have always found their strong fortress. They are

inclined to immortalise the momentary agreement, the single act of favour

shown towards them.

40.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OBLIVION IN MORAL SENTIMENT.—The same actions that in

primitive society first aimed at the common advantage were later on

performed from other motives: from fear or reverence of those who demanded

and recommended them; or from habit, because men had seen them done about

them from childhood upwards; or from kindness, because the practising of

them caused delight and approving looks on all sides; or from vanity,

because they were praised. Such actions, in which the fundamental motive,

that of utility, has been forgotten, are then called moral; not, indeed,

because they are done from those other motives, but because they are not

done with a conscious purpose of utility.—Whence the hatred of utility

that suddenly manifests itself here, and by which all praiseworthy actions

formally exclude all actions for the sake of utility?—Clearly society, the

rallying-point of all morality and of all maxims in praise of moral

action, has had to battle too long and too fiercely with the selfishness

and obstinacy of the individual not to rate every motive morally higher

than utility. Hence it looks as if morals had not sprung from utility,

whereas in fact morals are originally the public utility, which had great

difficulty in prevailing over the interests of the unit and securing a

loftier reputation.

41.

THE HEIRS TO THE WEALTH OF MORALITY.—Even in the domain of morals there is

an inherited wealth, which is owned by the gentle, the good-tempered, the

compassionate, the indulgent. They have inherited from their forefathers

their gentle mode of action, but not common sense (the source of that mode

of action). The pleasant thing about this wealth is that one must always

bestow and communicate a portion of it, if its presence is to be felt at

all. Thus this wealth unconsciously aims at bridging the gulf between the

morally rich and the morally poor, and, what is its best and most

remarkable feature, not for the sake of a future mean between rich and

poor, but for the sake of a universal prosperity and superfluity.—Such may

be the prevailing view of inherited moral wealth, but it seems to me that

this view is maintained more in majorem gloriam of morality than in

honour of truth. Experience at least establishes a maxim which must serve,

if not as a refutation, at any rate as an important check upon that

generalisation. Without the most exquisite intelligence, says experience,

without the most refined capacity for choice and a strong propensity to

observe the mean, the morally rich will become spendthrifts of morality.

For by abandoning themselves without restraint to their compassionate,

gentle, conciliatory, harmonising instincts, they make all about them more

careless, more covetous, and more sentimental. The children of these

highly moral spendthrifts easily and (sad to relate) at best become

pleasant but futile wasters.

42.

THE JUDGE AND EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES.—“One should behave as a man of

honour even towards the devil and pay his debts,” said an old soldier,

when the story of Faust had been related to him in rather fuller detail.

“Hell is the right place for Faust!” “You are terrible, you men!” cried

his wife; “how can that be? After all, his only fault was having no ink in

his ink-stand! It is indeed a sin to write with blood, but surely for that

such a handsome man ought not to burn in Hell-fire?”

43.

PROBLEM OF THE DUTY OF TRUTH.—Duty is an imperious sentiment that forces

us to action. We call it good, and consider it outside the pale of

discussion. The origin, limits, and justification of duty we will not

debate or allow to be debated. But the thinker considers everything an

evolution and every evolution a subject for discussion, and is accordingly

without duty so long as he is merely a thinker. As such, he would not

recognise the duty of seeing and speaking the truth; he would not feel

the sentiment at all. He asks, whence comes it and whither will it go? But

even this questioning appears to him questionable. Surely, however, the

consequence would be that the thinker’s machinery would no longer work

properly if he could really feel himself unencumbered by duty in the

search for knowledge? It would appear, then, that for fuel the same

element is necessary as must be investigated by means of the

machine.—Perhaps the formula will be: granted there were a duty of

recognising truth, what is then the truth in regard to every other kind of

duty?—But is not a hypothetical sense of duty a contradiction in terms?

44.

GRADES OF MORALS.—Morality is primarily a means of preserving the

community and saving it from destruction. Next it is a means of

maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of

benevolence. Its motives are fear and hope, and these in a more coarse,

rough, and powerful form, the more the propensity towards the perverse,

one-sided, and personal still persists. The most terrible means of

intimidation must be brought into play so long as milder forms have no

effect and that twofold species of preservation cannot be attained. (The

strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a

hell everlasting.) For this purpose we must have racks and torturers of

the soul. Further grades of morality, and accordingly means to the end

referred to, are the commandments of a God (as in the Mosaic law). Still

further and higher are the commandments of an absolute sense of duty with

a “Thou shalt”—all rather roughly hewn yet broad steps, because on the

finer, narrower steps men cannot yet set their feet. Then comes a morality

of inclination, of taste, finally of insight—which is beyond all the

illusory motives of morality, but has convinced itself that humanity for

long periods could be allowed no other.

45.

THE MORALITY OF PITY IN THE MOUTHS OF THE INTEMPERATE.—All those who are

not sufficiently masters of themselves and do not know morality as a

self-control and self-conquest continuously exercised in things great and

small, unconsciously come to glorify the good, compassionate, benevolent

impulses of that instinctive morality which has no head, but seems merely

to consist of a heart and helpful hands. It is to their interest even to

cast suspicion upon a morality of reason and to set up the other as the

sole morality.

46.

SEWERS OF THE SOUL.—Even the soul must have its definite sewers, through

which it can allow its filth to flow off: for this purpose it may use

persons, relations, social classes, its native country, or the world, or

finally—for the wholly arrogant (I mean our modern “pessimists”)—_le bon

Dieu_.

47.

A KIND OF REST AND CONTEMPLATION.—Beware lest your rest and contemplation

resemble that of a dog before a butcher’s stall, prevented by fear from

advancing and by greed from retiring, and opening its eyes wide as though

they were mouths.

48.

PROHIBITIONS WITHOUT REASONS.—A prohibition, the reason of which we do not

understand or admit, is almost a command, not only for the stiff-necked

but for the thirster after knowledge. We at once make an experiment in

order to learn why the prohibition was made. Moral prohibitions, like

those of the Decalogue, are only suited to ages when reason lies

vanquished. Nowadays a prohibition like “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt

not commit adultery,” laid down without reasons, would have an injurious

rather than a beneficial effect.

49.

CHARACTER PORTRAIT.—What sort of a man is it that can say of himself: “I

despise very easily, but never hate. I at once find out in every man

something which can be honoured and for which I honour him: the so-called

amiable qualities attract me but little”?

50.

PITY AND CONTEMPT.—The expression of pity is regarded as a sign of

contempt, because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon

as one becomes an object of pity. One has sunk below the level of the

equilibrium. For this equilibrium does not satisfy human vanity, which is

only satisfied by the feeling that one is imposing respect and awe. Hence

it is difficult to explain why pity is so highly prized, just as we need

to explain why the unselfish man, who is originally despised or feared as

being artful, is praised.

51.

THE CAPACITY OF BEING SMALL.—We must be as near to flowers, grasses, and

butterflies as a child, that is, not much bigger than they. We adults have

grown up beyond them and have to stoop to them. I think the grasses hate

us when we confess our love for them.—He who would have a share in all

good things must understand at times how to be small.

52.

THE SUM-TOTAL OF CONSCIENCE.—The sum-total of our conscience is all that

has regularly been demanded of us, without reason, in the days of our

childhood, by people whom we respected or feared. From conscience comes

that feeling of obligation (“This I must do, this omit”) which does not

ask, Why must I?—In all cases where a thing is done with “because” and

“why,” man acts without conscience, but not necessarily on that account

against conscience.—The belief in authority is the source of conscience;

which is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man, but the voice

of some men in man.

53.

CONQUEST OF THE PASSIONS.—The man who has overcome his passions has

entered into possession of the most fruitful soil, like the colonist who

has become lord over bogs and forests. To sow the seed of spiritual good

works on the soil of the vanquished passions is the next and most urgent

task. The conquest itself is a means, not an end: if it be not so

regarded, all kind of weeds and devil’s crop quickly spring up upon the

fertile soil that has been cleared, and soon the growth is all wilder and

more luxuriant than before.

54.

SKILL IN SERVICE.—All so-called practical men have skill in service,

whether it be serving others or themselves; this is what makes them

practical. Robinson owned a servant even better than Friday—his name was

Crusoe.

55.

DANGER IN SPEECH TO INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM.—Every word is a preconceived

judgment.

56.

INTELLECT AND BOREDOM.—The proverb, “The Hungarian is far too lazy to feel

bored,” gives food for thought. Only the highest and most active animals

are capable of being bored.—The boredom of God on the seventh day of

Creation would be a subject for a great poet.

57.

INTERCOURSE WITH ANIMALS.—The origin of our morality may still be observed

in our relations with animals. Where advantage or the reverse do not come

into play, we have a feeling of complete irresponsibility. For example, we

kill or wound insects or let them live, and as a rule think no more about

it. We are so clumsy that even our gracious acts towards flowers and small

animals are almost always murderous: this does not in the least detract

from our pleasure in them.—To-day is the festival of the small animals,

the most sultry day of the year. There is a swarming and crawling around

us, and we, without intention, but also without reflection, crush here and

there a little fly or winged beetle.—If animals do us harm, we strive to

annihilate them in every possible way. The means are often cruel enough,

even without our really intending them to be so—it is the cruelty of

thoughtlessness. If they are useful, we turn them to advantage, until a

more refined wisdom teaches us that certain animals amply reward a

different mode of treatment, that of tending and breeding. Here

responsibility first arises. Torturing is avoided in the case of the

domestic animal. One man is indignant if another is cruel to his cow,

quite in accordance with the primitive communal morality, which sees the

commonwealth in danger whenever an individual does wrong. He who perceives

any transgression in the community fears indirect harm to himself. Thus we

fear in this case for the quality of meat, agriculture, and means of

communication if we see the domestic animals ill-treated. Moreover, he who

is harsh to animals awakens a suspicion that he is also harsh to men who

are weak, inferior, and incapable of revenge. He is held to be ignoble and

deficient in the finer form of pride. Thus arises a foundation of moral

judgments and sentiments, but the greatest contribution is made by

superstition. Many animals incite men by glances, tones, and gestures to

transfer themselves into them in imagination, and some religions teach us,

under certain circumstances, to see in animals the dwelling-place of human

and divine souls: whence they recommend a nobler caution or even a

reverential awe in intercourse with animals. Even after the disappearance

of this superstition the sentiments awakened by it continue to exercise

their influence, to ripen and to blossom.—Christianity, as is well known,

has shown itself in this respect a poor and retrograde religion.

58.

NEW ACTORS.—Among human beings there is no greater banality than death.

Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes

birth, and next comes marriage. But these hackneyed little tragi-comedies

are always presented, at each of their unnumbered and innumerable

performances, by new actors, and accordingly do not cease to find

interested spectators: whereas we might well believe that the whole

audience of the world-theatre had long since hanged themselves to every

tree from sheer boredom at these performances. So much depends on new

actors, so little on the piece.

59.

WHAT IS “BEING OBSTINATE”?—The shortest way is not the straightest

possible, but that wherein favourable winds swell our sails. So says the

wisdom of seamen. Not to follow his course is obstinate, firmness of

character being then adulterated by stupidity.

60.

THE WORD “VANITY.”—It is annoying that certain words, with which we

moralists positively cannot dispense, involve in themselves a kind of

censorship of morals, dating from the times when the most ordinary and

natural impulses were denounced. Thus that fundamental conviction that on

the waves of society we either find navigable waters or suffer shipwreck

far more through what we appear than through what we are (a conviction

that must act as guiding principle of all action in relation to society)

is branded with the general word “vanity.” In other words, one of the most

weighty and significant of qualities is branded with an expression which

denotes it as essentially empty and negative: a great thing is designated

by a diminutive, ay, even slandered by the strokes of caricature. There is

no help for it; we must use such words, but then we must shut our ears to

the insinuations of ancient habits.

61.

THE FATALISM OF THE TURK.—The fatalism of the Turk has this fundamental

defect, that it contrasts man and fate as two distinct things. Man, says

this doctrine, may struggle against fate and try to baffle it, but in the

end fate will always gain the victory. Hence the most rational course is

to resign oneself or to live as one pleases. As a matter of fact, every

man is himself a piece of fate. When he thinks that he is struggling

against fate in this way, fate is accomplishing its ends even in that

struggle. The combat is a fantasy, but so is the resignation in fate—all

these fantasies are included in fate.—The fear felt by most people of the

doctrine that denies the freedom of the will is a fear of the fatalism of

the Turk. They imagine that man will become weakly resigned and will stand

before the future with folded hands, because he cannot alter anything of

the future. Or that he will give a free rein to his caprices, because the

predestined cannot be made worse by that course. The follies of men are as

much a piece of fate as are his wise actions, and even that fear of belief

in fate is a fatality. You yourself, you poor timid creature, are that

indomitable Moira, which rules even the Gods; whatever may happen, you

are a curse or a blessing, and in any case the fetters wherein the

strongest lies bound: in you the whole future of the human world is

predestined, and it is no use for you to be frightened of yourself.

62.

THE ADVOCATE OF THE DEVIL.—“Only by our own suffering do we become wise,

only by others’ suffering do we become good”—so runs that strange

philosophy which derives all morality from pity and all intellectuality

from the isolation of the individual. Herein this philosophy is the

unconscious pleader for all human deterioration. For pity needs suffering,

and isolation contempt of others.

63.

THE MORAL CHARACTER-MASKS.—In ages when the character-masks of different

classes are definitely fixed, like the classes themselves, moralists will

be seduced into holding the moral character-masks, too, as absolute, and

in delineating them accordingly. Thus Molière is intelligible as the

contemporary of the society of Louis XIV.: in our society of transitions

and intermediate stages he would seem an inspired pedant.

64.

THE MOST NOBLE VIRTUE.—In the first era of the higher humanity courage is

accounted the most noble virtue, in the next justice, in the third

temperance, in the fourth wisdom. In which era do we live? In which do

you live?

65.

A NECESSARY PRELIMINARY.—A man who will not become master of his

irritability, his venomous and vengeful feelings, and his lust, and

attempts to become master in anything else, is as stupid as the farmer who

lays out his field beside a torrent without guarding against that torrent.

66.

WHAT IS TRUTH?—Schwarzert (Melanchthon): We often preach our faith when

we have lost it, and leave not a stone unturned to find it—and then we

often do not preach worst!

Luther: Brother, you are really speaking like an angel to-day.

Schwarzert: But that is the idea of your enemies, and they apply it to

you.

Luther: Then it would be a lie from the devil’s hind-quarters.

67.

THE HABIT OF CONTRASTS.—Superficial, inexact observation sees contrasts

everywhere in nature (for instance, “hot and cold”), where there are no

contrasts, only differences of degree. This bad habit has induced us to

try to understand and interpret even the inner nature, the intellectual

and moral world, in accordance with such contrasts. An infinite amount of

cruelty, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, and coldness has entered into

human emotion, because men imagined they saw contrasts where there were

only transitions.

68.

CAN WE FORGIVE?—How can we forgive them at all, if they know not what they

do? We have nothing to forgive. But does a man ever fully know what he is

doing? And if this point at least remains always debatable, men never have

anything to forgive each other, and indulgence is for the reasonable man

an impossible thing. Finally, if the evil-doers had really known what they

did, we should still only have a right to forgive if we had a right to

accuse and to punish. But we have not that right.

69.

HABITUAL SHAME.—Why do we feel shame when some virtue or merit is

attributed to us which, as the saying goes, “we have not deserved”?

Because we appear to have intruded upon a territory to which we do not

belong, from which we should be excluded, as from a holy place or holy of

holies, which ought not to be trodden by our foot. Through the errors of

others we have, nevertheless, penetrated to it, and we are now swayed

partly by fear, partly by reverence, partly by surprise; we do not know

whether we ought to fly or to enjoy the blissful moment with all its

gracious advantages. In all shame there is a mystery, which seems

desecrated or in danger of desecration through us. All favour begets

shame.—But if it be remembered that we have never really “deserved”

anything, this feeling of shame, provided that we surrender ourselves to

this point of view in a spirit of Christian contemplation, becomes

habitual, because upon such a one God seems continually to be conferring

his blessing and his favours. Apart from this Christian interpretation,

the state of habitual shame will be possible even to the entirely godless

sage, who clings firmly to the basic non-responsibility and

non-meritoriousness of all action and being. If he be treated as if he had

deserved this or that, he will seem to have won his way into a higher

order of beings, who do actually deserve something, who are free and can

really bear the burden of responsibility for their own volition and

capacity. Whoever says to him, “You have deserved it,” appears to cry out

to him, “You are not a human being, but a God.”

70.

THE MOST UNSKILFUL TEACHER.—In one man all his real virtues are implanted

on the soil of his spirit of contradiction, in another on his incapacity

to say “no”—in other words, on his spirit of acquiescence. A third has

made all his morality grow out of his pride as a solitary, a fourth from

his strong social instinct. Now, supposing that the seeds of the virtues

in these four cases, owing to mischance or unskilful teachers, were not

sown on the soil of their nature, which provides them with the richest and

most abundant mould, they would become weak, unsatisfactory men (devoid of

morality). And who would have been the most unskilful of teachers, the

evil genius of these men? The moral fanatic, who thinks that the good can

only grow out of the good and on the soil of the good.

71.

THE CAUTIOUS STYLE.—A. But if this were known to all, it would be

injurious to the majority. You yourself call your opinions dangerous to

those in danger, and yet you make them public?

B. I write so that neither the mob, nor the populi, nor the parties of

all kinds can read me. So my opinions will never be “public opinions.”

A. How do you write, then?

B. Neither usefully nor pleasantly—for the three classes I have

mentioned.

72.

DIVINE MISSIONARIES.—Even Socrates feels himself to be a divine

missionary, but I am not sure whether we should not here detect a tincture

of that Attic irony and fondness for jesting whereby this odious, arrogant

conception would be toned down. He talks of the fact without unction—his

images of the gadfly and the horse are simple and not sacerdotal. The real

religious task which he has set himself—to test God in a hundred ways

and see whether he spoke the truth—betrays a bold and free attitude, in

which the missionary walked by the side of his God. This testing of God is

one of the most subtle compromises between piety and freethinking that

has ever been devised.—Nowadays we do not even need this compromise any

longer.

73.

HONESTY IN PAINTING.—Raphael, who cared a great deal for the Church (so

far as she could pay him), but, like the best men of his time, cared

little for the objects of the Church’s belief, did not advance one step to

meet the exacting, ecstatic piety of many of his patrons. He remained

honest even in that exceptional picture which was originally intended for

a banner in a procession—the Sistine Madonna. Here for once he wished to

paint a vision, but such a vision as even noble youths without “faith” may

and will have—the vision of the future wife, a wise, high-souled, silent,

and very beautiful woman, carrying her first-born in her arms. Let men of

an older generation, accustomed to prayer and devotion, find here, like

the worthy elder on the left, something superhuman to revere. We younger

men (so Raphael seems to call to us) are occupied with the beautiful

maiden on the right, who says to the spectator of the picture, with her

challenging and by no means devout look, “The mother and her child—is not

that a pleasant, inviting sight?” The face and the look are reflected in

the joy in the faces of the beholders. The artist who devised all this

enjoys himself in this way, and adds his own delight to the delight of the

art-lover. As regards the “messianic” expression in the face of the child,

Raphael, honest man, who would not paint any state of soul in which he did

not believe, has amiably cheated his religious admirers. He painted that

freak of nature which is very often found, the man’s eye in the child’s

face, and that, too, the eye of a brave, helpful man who sees distress.

This eye should be accompanied by a beard. The fact that a beard is

wanting, and that two different ages are seen in one countenance, is the

pleasing paradox which believers have interpreted in accordance with their

faith in miracles. The artist could only expect as much from their art of

exposition and interpretation.

74.

PRAYER.—On two hypotheses alone is there any sense in prayer, that not

quite extinct custom of olden times. It would have to be possible either

to fix or alter the will of the godhead, and the devotee would have to

know best himself what he needs and should really desire. Both hypotheses,

axiomatic and traditional in all other religions, are denied by

Christianity. If Christianity nevertheless maintained prayer side by side

with its belief in the all-wise and all-provident divine reason (a belief

that makes prayer really senseless and even blasphemous), it showed here

once more its admirable “wisdom of the serpent.” For an outspoken command,

“Thou shalt not pray,” would have led Christians by way of boredom to the

denial of Christianity. In the Christian ora et labora ora plays the

rôle of pleasure. Without ora what could those unlucky saints who

renounced labora have done? But to have a chat with God, to ask him for

all kinds of pleasant things, to feel a slight amusement at one’s own

folly in still having any wishes at all, in spite of so excellent a

father—all that was an admirable invention for saints.

75.

A HOLY LIE.—The lie that was on Arria’s lips when she died (_Paete, non

dolet_(19)) obscures all the truths that have ever been uttered by the

dying. It is the only holy lie that has become famous, whereas elsewhere

the odour of sanctity has clung only to errors.

76.

THE MOST NECESSARY APOSTLE.—Among twelve apostles one must always be hard

as stone, in order that upon him the new church may be built.

77.

WHICH IS MORE TRANSITORY, THE BODY OR THE SPIRIT?—In legal, moral, and

religious institutions the external and concrete elements—in other words,

rites, gestures, and ceremonies—are the most permanent. They are the body

to which a new spirit is constantly being superadded. The cult, like an

unchangeable text, is ever interpreted anew. Concepts and emotions are

fluid, customs are solid.

78.

THE BELIEF IN DISEASE QUA DISEASE.—Christianity first painted the devil

on the wall of the world. Christianity first brought the idea of sin into

the world. The belief in the remedies, which is offered as an antidote,

has gradually been shaken to its very foundations. But the belief in the

disease, which Christianity has taught and propagated, still exists.

79.

SPEECH AND WRITINGS OF RELIGIOUS MEN.—If the priest’s style and general

expression, both in speaking and writing, do not clearly betray the

religious man, we need no longer take his views upon religion and his

pleading for religion seriously. These opinions have become powerless for

him if, judging by his style, he has at command irony, arrogance, malice,

hatred, and all the changing eddies of mood, just like the most

irreligious of men—how far more powerless will they be for his hearers and

readers! In short, he will serve to make the latter still more

irreligious.

80.

THE DANGER IN PERSONALITY.—The more God has been regarded as a personality

in himself, the less loyal have we been to him. Men are far more attached

to their thought-images than to their best beloved. That is why they

sacrifice themselves for State, Church, and even for God—so far as he

remains their creation, their thought, and is not too much looked upon

as a personality. In the latter case they almost always quarrel with him.

After all, it was the most pious of men who let slip that bitter cry: “My

God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

81.

WORLDLY JUSTICE.—It is possible to unhinge worldly justice with the

doctrine of the complete non-responsibility and innocence of every man. An

attempt has been made in the same direction on the basis of the opposite

doctrine of the full responsibility and guilt of every man. It was the

founder of Christianity who wished to abolish worldly justice and banish

judgment and punishment from the world. For he understood all guilt as

“sin”—that is, an outrage against God and not against the world. On the

other hand, he considered every man in a broad sense, and almost in every

sense, a sinner. The guilty, however, are not to be the judges of their

peers—so his rules of equity decided. Thus all dispensers of worldly

justice were in his eyes as culpable as those they condemned, and their

air of guiltlessness appeared to him hypocritical and pharisaical.

Moreover, he looked to the motives and not to the results of actions, and

thought that only one was keen-sighted enough to give a verdict on

motives—himself or, as he expressed it, God.

82.

AN AFFECTATION IN PARTING.—He who wishes to sever his connection with a

party or a creed thinks it necessary for him to refute it. This is a most

arrogant notion. The only thing necessary is that he should clearly see

what tentacles hitherto held him to this party or creed and no longer hold

him, what views impelled him to it and now impel him in some other

directions. We have not joined the party or creed on strict grounds of

knowledge. We should not affect this attitude on parting from it either.

83.

SAVIOUR AND PHYSICIAN.—In his knowledge of the human soul the founder of

Christianity was, as is natural, not without many great deficiencies and

prejudices, and, as physician of the soul, was addicted to that

disreputable, laical belief in a universal medicine. In his methods he

sometimes resembles that dentist who wishes to heal all pain by extracting

the tooth. Thus, for example, he assails sensuality with the advice: “If

thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.”—Yet there still remains the

distinction that the dentist at least attains his object—painlessness for

the patient—although in so clumsy a fashion that he becomes ridiculous;

whereas the Christian who follows that advice and thinks he has killed his

sensuality, is wrong, for his sensuality still lives in an uncanny,

vampire form, and torments him in hideous disguises.

84.

PRISONERS.—One morning the prisoners entered the yard for work, but the

warder was not there. Some, as their manner was, set to work at once;

others stood idle and gazed defiantly around. Then one of them strode

forward and cried, “Work as much as you will or do nothing, it all comes

to the same. Your secret machinations have come to light; the warder has

been keeping his eye on you of late, and will cause a terrible judgment to

be passed upon you in a few days’ time. You know him—he is of a cruel and

resentful disposition. But now, listen: you have mistaken me hitherto. I

am not what I seem, but far more—I am the son of the warder, and can get

anything I like out of him. I can save you—nay, I will save you. But

remember this: I will only save those of you who believe that I am the

son of the prison warder. The rest may reap the fruits of their unbelief.”

“Well,” said an old prisoner after an interval of silence, “what can it

matter to you whether we believe you or not? If you are really the son,

and can do what you say, then put in a good word for us all. That would be

a real kindness on your part. But have done with all talk of belief and

unbelief!” “What is more,” cried a younger man, “I don’t believe him: he

has only got a bee in his bonnet. I’ll wager that in a week’s time we

shall find ourselves in the same place as we are to-day, and the warder

will know nothing.” “And if the warder ever knew anything, he knows it no

longer,” said the last of the prisoners, coming down into the yard at that

moment, “for he has just died suddenly.” “Ah ha!” cried several in

confusion, “ah ha! Sir Son, Sir Son, how stands it now with your title?

Are we by any chance your prisoners now?” “I told you,” answered the man

gently, “I will set free all who believe in me, as surely as my father

still lives.”—The prisoners did not laugh, but shrugged their shoulders

and left him to himself.

85.

THE PERSECUTORS OF GOD.—Paul conceived and Calvin followed up the idea

that countless creatures have been predestined to damnation from time

immemorial, and that this fair world was made in order that the glory of

God might be manifested therein. So heaven and hell and mankind merely

exist to satisfy the vanity of God! What a cruel, insatiable vanity must

have smouldered in the soul of the first or second thinker of such a

thought!—Paul, then, after all, remained Saul—the persecutor of God.

86.

SOCRATES.—If all goes well, the time will come when, in order to advance

themselves on the path of moral reason, men will rather take up the

Memorabilia of Socrates than the Bible, and when Montaigne and Horace

will be used as pioneers and guides for the understanding of Socrates, the

simplest and most enduring of interpretative sages. In him converge the

roads of the most different philosophic modes of life, which are in truth

the modes of the different temperaments, crystallised by reason and habit

and all ultimately directed towards the delight in life and in self. The

apparent conclusion is that the most peculiar thing about Socrates was his

share in all the temperaments. Socrates excels the founder of Christianity

by virtue of his merry style of seriousness and by that wisdom of sheer

roguish pranks which constitutes the best state of soul in a man.

Moreover, he had a superior intelligence.

87.

LEARNING TO WRITE WELL.—The age of good speaking is over, because the age

of city-state culture is over. The limit allowed by Aristotle to the great

city—in which the town-crier must be able to make himself heard by the

whole assembled community—troubles us as little as do any

city-communities, us who even wish to be understood beyond the boundaries

of nations. Therefore every one who is of a good European turn of mind

must learn to write well, and to write better and better. He cannot help

himself, he must learn that: even if he was born in Germany, where bad

writing is looked upon as a national privilege. Better writing means

better thinking; always to discover matter more worthy of communication;

to be able to communicate it properly; to be translateable into the

tongues of neighbouring nations; to make oneself comprehensible to

foreigners who learn our language; to work with the view of making all

that is good common property, and of giving free access everywhere to the

free; finally, to pave the way for that still remote state of things, when

the great task shall come for good Europeans—guidance and guardianship of

the universal world-culture.—Whoever preaches the opposite doctrine of not

troubling about good writing and good reading (both virtues grow together

and decline together) is really showing the peoples a way of becoming more

and more national. He is intensifying the malady of this century, and is

a foe to good Europeans, a foe to free spirits.

88.

THE THEORY OF THE BEST STYLE.—The theory of the best style may at one time

be the theory of finding the expression by which we transfer every mood of

ours to the reader and the listener. At another, it may be the theory of

finding expressions for the more desirable human moods, the communication

and transference of which one desires most—for the mood of a man moved

from the depth of his heart, intellectually cheerful, bright, and sincere,

who has conquered his passions. This will be the theory of the best style,

a theory that corresponds to the good man.

89.

PAYING ATTENTION TO MOVEMENT.—The movement of the sentences shows whether

the author be tired. Individual expressions may nevertheless be still

strong and good, because they were invented earlier and for their own

sake, when the thought first flashed across the author’s mind. This is

frequently the case with Goethe, who too often dictated when he was tired.

90.

“ALREADY” AND “STILL.”—A. German prose is still very young. Goethe

declares that Wieland is its father.

B. So young and already so ugly!

C. But, so far as I am aware, Bishop Ulfilas already wrote German prose,

which must therefore be fifteen hundred years old.

B. So old and still so ugly!

91.

ORIGINAL GERMAN.—German prose, which is really not fashioned on any

pattern and must be considered an original creation of German taste,

should give the eager advocate of a future original German culture an

indication of how real German dress, German society, German furniture,

German meals would look without the imitation of models.—Some one who had

long reflected on these vistas finally cried in great horror, “But, Heaven

help us, perhaps we already have that original culture—only we don’t like

to talk about it!”

92.

FORBIDDEN BOOKS.—One should never read anything written by those arrogant

wiseacres and puzzle-brains who have the detestable vice of logical

paradox. They apply logical formulæ just where everything is really

improvised at random and built in the air. (“Therefore” with them means,

“You idiot of a reader, this ‘therefore’ does not exist for you, but only

for me.” The answer to this is: “You idiot of a writer, then why do you

write?”)

93.

DISPLAYING ONE’S WIT.—Every one who wishes to display his wit thereby

proclaims that he has also a plentiful lack of wit. That vice which clever

Frenchmen have of adding a touch of _dédain_ to their best ideas arises

from a desire to be considered richer than they really are. They wish to

be carelessly generous, as if weary of continual spending from overfull

treasuries.

94.

FRENCH AND GERMAN LITERATURE.—The misfortune of the French and German

literature of the last hundred years is that the Germans ran away too

early from the French school, and the French, later on, went too early to

the German school.

95.

OUR PROSE.—None of the present-day cultured nations has so bad a prose as

the German. When clever, _blasé_ Frenchmen say, “There is no German

prose,” we ought really not to be angry, for this criticism is more polite

than we deserve. If we look for reasons, we come at last to the strange

phenomenon that the German knows only improvised prose and has no

conception of any other. He simply cannot understand the Italian, who says

that prose is as much harder than poetry as the representation of naked

beauty is harder to the sculptor than that of draped beauty. Verse,

images, rhythm, and rhyme need honest effort—that even the German

realises, and he is not inclined to set a very high value on extempore

poetry. But the notion of working at a page of prose as at a statue sounds

to him like a tale from fairyland.

96.

THE GRAND STYLE.—The grand style comes into being when the beautiful wins

a victory over the monstrous.

97.

DODGING.—We do not realise, in the case of distinguished minds, wherein

lies the excellence of their expression, their turn of phrase, until we

can say what word every mediocre writer would inevitably have hit upon in

expressing the same idea. All great artists, in steering their car, show

themselves prone to dodge and leave the track, but never to fall over.

98.

SOMETHING LIKE BREAD.—Bread neutralises and takes out the taste of other

food, and is therefore necessary to every long meal. In all works of art

there must be something like bread, in order that they may produce divers

effects. If these effects followed one another without occasional pauses

and intervals, they would soon make us weary and provoke disgust—in fact,

a long meal of art would then be impossible.

99.

JEAN PAUL.—Jean Paul knew a great deal, but had no science; understood all

manner of tricks of art, but had no art; found almost everything

enjoyable, but had no taste; possessed feeling and seriousness, but in

dispensing them poured over them a nauseous sauce of tears; had even wit,

but, unfortunately for his ardent desire for it, far too little—whence he

drives the reader to despair by his very lack of wit. In short, he was the

bright, rank-smelling weed that shot up overnight in the fair pleasaunces

of Schiller and Goethe. He was a good, comfortable man, and yet a destiny,

a destiny in a dressing-gown.(20)

100.

PALATE FOR OPPOSITES.—In order to enjoy a work of the past as its

contemporaries enjoyed it, one must have a palate for the prevailing taste

of the age which it attacked.

101.

SPIRITS-OF-WINE AUTHORS.—Many writers are neither spirit nor wine, but

spirits of wine. They can flare up, and then they give warmth.

102.

THE INTERPRETATIVE SENSE.—The sense of taste, as the true interpretative

sense, often talks the other senses over to its point of view and imposes

upon them its laws and customs. At table one can receive disclosures about

the most subtle secrets of the arts; it suffices to observe what tastes

good and when and after what and how long it tastes good.

103.

LESSING.—Lessing had a genuine French talent, and, as writer, went most

assiduously to the French school. He knows well how to arrange and display

his wares in his shop-window. Without this true art his thoughts, like the

objects of them, would have remained rather in the dark, nor would the

general loss be great. His art, however, has taught many (especially the

last generation of German scholars) and has given enjoyment to a countless

number. It is true his disciples had no need to learn from him, as they

often did, his unpleasant tone with its mingling of petulance and

candour.—Opinion is now unanimous on Lessing as “lyric poet,” and will

some day be unanimous on Lessing as “dramatic poet.”

104.

UNDESIRABLE READERS.—How an author is vexed by those stolid, awkward

readers who always fall at every place where they stumble, and always hurt

themselves when they fall!

105.

POETS’ THOUGHTS.—Real thoughts of real poets always go about with a veil

on, like Egyptian women; only the deep eye of thought looks out freely

through the veil.—Poets’ thoughts are as a rule not of such value as is

supposed. We have to pay for the veil and for our own curiosity into the

bargain.

106.

WRITE SIMPLY AND USEFULLY.—Transitions, details, colour in depicting the

passions—we make a present of all these to the author because we bring

them with us and set them down to the credit of his book, provided he

makes us some compensation.

107.

WIELAND.—Wieland wrote German better than any one else, and had the

genuine adequacies and inadequacies of the master. His translations of the

letters of Cicero and Lucian are the best in the language. His ideas,

however, add nothing to our store of thought. We can endure his cheerful

moralities as little as his cheerful immoralities, for both are very

closely connected. The men who enjoyed them were at bottom better men than

we are, but also a good deal heavier. They needed an author of this

sort. The Germans did not need Goethe, and therefore cannot make proper

use of him. We have only to consider the best of our statesmen and artists

in this light. None of them had or could have had Goethe as their

teacher.

108.

RARE FESTIVALS.—Pithy conciseness, repose, and maturity—where you find

these qualities in an author, cry halt and celebrate a great festival in

the desert. It will be long before you have such a treat again.

109.

THE TREASURE OF GERMAN PROSE.—Apart from Goethe’s writings and especially

Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann (the best German book in existence),

what German prose literature remains that is worth reading over and over

again? Lichtenberg’s Aphorisms, the first book of Jung-Stilling’s _Story

of My Life_, Adalbert Stifter’s _St. Martin’s Summer_ and Gottfried

Keller’s People of Seldwyla—and there, for the time being, it comes to

an end.

110.

LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL STYLE.—The art of writing demands, first and

foremost, substitutions for the means of expression which speech alone

possesses—in other words, for gestures, accent, intonation, and look.

Hence literary style is quite different from colloquial style, and far

more difficult, because it has to make itself as intelligible as the

latter with fewer accessaries. Demosthenes delivered his speeches

differently from what we read; he worked them up for reading

purposes.—Cicero’s speeches ought to be “demosthenised” with the same

object, for at present they contain more of the Roman Forum than we can

endure.

111.

CAUTION IN QUOTATION.—Young authors do not know that a good expression or

idea only looks well among its peers; that an excellent quotation may

spoil whole pages, nay the whole book; for it seems to cry warningly to

the reader, “Mark you, I am the precious stone, and round about me is

lead—pale, worthless lead!” Every word, every idea only desires to live in

its own company—that is the moral of a choice style.

112.

HOW SHOULD ERRORS BE ENUNCIATED?—We may dispute whether it be more

injurious for errors to be enunciated badly or as well as the best truths.

It is certain that in the former case they are doubly harmful to the brain

and are less easily removed from it. But, on the other hand, they are not

so certain of effect as in the latter case. They are, in fact, less

contagious.

113.

LIMITING AND WIDENING.—Homer limited and diminished the horizon of his

subject, but allowed individual scenes to expand and blossom out. Later,

the tragedians are constantly renewing this process. Each takes his

material in ever smaller and smaller fragments than his predecessor did,

but each attains a greater wealth of blooms within the narrow hedges of

these sequestered garden enclosures.

114.

LITERATURE AND MORALITY MUTUALLY EXPLANATORY.—We can show from Greek

literature by what forces the Greek spirit developed, how it entered upon

different channels, and where it became enfeebled. All this also depicts

to us how Greek morality proceeded, and how all morality will proceed: how

it was at first a constraint and displayed cruelty, then became gradually

milder; how a pleasure in certain actions, in certain forms and

conventions arose, and from this again a propensity for solitary exercise,

for solitary possession; how the track becomes crowded and overcrowded

with competitors; how satiety enters in, new objects of struggle and

ambition are sought, and forgotten aims are awakened to life; how the

drama is repeated, and the spectators become altogether weary of looking

on, because the whole gamut seems to have been run through—and then comes

a stoppage, an expiration, and the rivulets are lost in the sand. The end,

or at any rate an end, has come.

115.

WHAT LANDSCAPES GIVE PERMANENT DELIGHT.—Such and such a landscape has

features eminently suited for painting, but I cannot find the formula for

it; it remains beyond my grasp as a whole. I notice that all landscapes

which please me permanently have a simple geometrical scheme of lines

underneath all their complexity. Without such a mathematical substratum no

scenery becomes artistically pleasing. Perhaps this rule may be applied

symbolically to human beings.

116.

READING ALOUD.—The ability to read aloud involves of necessity the ability

to declaim. Everywhere we must apply pale tints, but we must determine the

degree of pallor in close relation to the richly and deeply coloured

background, that always hovers before our eyes and acts as our guide—in

other words, in accordance with the way in which we should declaim the

same passages. That is why we must be able to declaim.

117.

THE DRAMATIC SENSE.—He who has not the four subtler senses of art tries to

understand everything with the fifth sense, which is the coarsest of

all—the dramatic sense.

118.

HERDER.—Herder fails to be all that he made people think he was and

himself wished to think he was. He was no great thinker or discoverer, no

newly fertile soil with the unexhausted strength of a virgin forest. But

he possessed in the highest degree the power of scenting the future, he

saw and picked the first-fruits of the seasons earlier than all others,

and they then believed that he had made them grow. Between darkness and

light, youth and age, his mind was like a hunter on the watch, looking

everywhere for transitions, depressions, convulsions, the outward and

visible signs of internal growth. The unrest of spring drove him to and

fro, but he was himself not the spring.—At times, indeed, he had some

inkling of this, and yet would fain not have believed it—he, the ambitious

priest, who would have so gladly been the intellectual pope of his epoch!

This is his despair. He seems to have lived long as a pretender to several

kingdoms or even to a universal monarchy. He had his following which

believed in him, among others the young Goethe. But whenever crowns were

really distributed, he was passed over. Kant, Goethe, and then the first

true German historians and scholars robbed him of what he thought he had

reserved for himself (although in silence and secret he often thought the

reverse). Just when he doubted in himself, he gladly clothed himself in

dignity and enthusiasm: these were often in him mere garments, which had

to hide a great deal and also to deceive and comfort him. He really had

fire and enthusiasm, but his ambition was far greater! It blew impatiently

at the fire, which flickered, crackled, and smoked—his style flickers,

crackles, and smokes—but he yearned for the great flame which never broke

out. He did not sit at the table of the genuine creators, and his ambition

did not admit of his sitting modestly among those who simply enjoy. Thus

he was a restless spirit, the taster of all intellectual dishes, which

were collected by the Germans from every quarter and every age in the

course of half a century. Never really happy and satisfied, Herder was

also too often ill, and then at times envy sat by his bed, and hypocrisy

paid her visit as well. He always had an air of being scarred and

crippled, and he lacked simple, stalwart manliness more completely than

any of the so-called “classical writers.”

119.

SCENT OF WORDS.—Every word has its scent; there is a harmony and discord

of scents, and so too of words.

120.

THE FAR-FETCHED STYLE.—The natural style is an offence to the lover of the

far-fetched style.

121.

A VOW.—I will never again read an author of whom one can suspect that he

wanted to make a book, but only those writers whose thoughts

unexpectedly became a book.

122.

THE ARTISTIC CONVENTION.—Three-fourths of Homer is convention, and the

same is the case with all the Greek artists, who had no reason for falling

into the modern craze for originality. They had no fear of convention, for

after all convention was a link between them and their public. Conventions

are the artistic means acquired for the understanding of the hearer; the

common speech, learnt with much toil, whereby the artist can really

communicate his ideas. All the more when he wishes, like the Greek poets

and musicians, to conquer at once with each of his works (since he is

accustomed to compete publicly with one or two rivals), the first

condition is that he must be understood at once, and this is only possible

by means of convention. What the artist devises beyond convention he

offers of his own free will and takes a risk, his success at best

resulting in the setting-up of a new convention. As a rule originality is

marvelled at, sometimes even worshipped, but seldom understood. A stubborn

avoidance of convention means a desire not to be understood. What, then,

is the object of the modern craze for originality?

123.

ARTISTS’ AFFECTATION OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD.—Schiller, like other German

artists, fancied that if a man had intellect he was entitled to improvise

even with the pen on all difficult subjects. So there we see his prose

essays—in every way a model of how not to attack scientific questions of

æsthetics and ethics, and a danger for young readers who, in their

admiration for Schiller the poet, have not the courage to think meanly of

Schiller the thinker and author.—The temptation to traverse for once the

forbidden paths, and to have his say in science as well, is easy and

pardonable in the artist. For even the ablest artist from time to time

finds his handicraft and his workshop unendurable. This temptation is so

strong that it makes the artist show all the world what no one wishes to

see, that his little chamber of thought is cramped and untidy. Why not,

indeed? He does not live there. He proceeds to show that the storeroom of

his knowledge is partly empty, partly filled with lumber. Why not, indeed?

This condition does not really become the artist-child badly. In

particular, the artist shows that for the very easiest exercises of

scientific method, which are accessible even to beginners, his joints are

too stiff and untrained. Even of that he need not really be ashamed! On

the other hand, he often develops no mean art in imitating all the

mistakes, vices, and base pedantries that are practised in the scientific

community, in the belief that these belong to the appearance of the thing,

if not to the thing itself. This is the very point that is so amusing in

artists’ writing, that the artist involuntarily acts as his vocation

demands: he parodies the scientific and inartistic natures. Towards

science he should show no attitude but that of parody, in so far as he is

an artist and only an artist.

124.

THE FAUST-IDEA.—A little sempstress is seduced and plunged into despair: a

great scholar of all the four Faculties is the evil-doer. That cannot have

happened in the ordinary course, surely? No, certainly not! Without the

aid of the devil incarnate, the great scholar would never have achieved

the deed.—Is this really destined to be the greatest German “tragic idea,”

as one hears it said among Germans?—But for Goethe even this idea was too

terrible. His kind heart could not avoid placing the little sempstress,

“the good soul that forgot itself but once,” near to the saints, after her

involuntary death. Even the great scholar, “the good man” with “the dark

impulse,” is brought into heaven in the nick of time, by a trick which is

played upon the devil at the decisive moment. In heaven the lovers find

themselves again. Goethe once said that his nature was too conciliatory

for really tragic subjects.

125.

ARE THERE “GERMAN CLASSICS”?—Sainte-Beuve observes somewhere that the word

“classic” does not suit the genius of certain literatures. For instance,

nobody could talk seriously of “German classics.”—What do our German

publishers, who are about to add fifty more to the fifty German classics

we are told to accept, say to that? Does it not almost seem as if one need

only have been dead for the last thirty years, and lie a lawful prey to

the public,(21) in order to hear suddenly and unexpectedly the trumpet of

resurrection as a “Classic”? And this in an age and a nation where at

least five out of the six great fathers of its literature are undoubtedly

antiquated or becoming antiquated—without there being any need for the age

or the nation to be ashamed of this. For those writers have given way

before the strength of our time—let that be considered in all

fairness!—Goethe, as I have indicated, I do not include. He belongs to a

higher species than “national literatures”: hence life, revival, and decay

do not enter into the reckoning in his relations with his countrymen. He

lived and now lives but for the few; for the majority he is nothing but a

flourish of vanity which is trumpeted from time to time across the border

into foreign ears. Goethe, not merely a great and good man, but a

culture, is in German history an interlude without a sequel. Who, for

instance, would be able to point to any trace of Goethe’s influence in

German politics of the last seventy years (whereas the influence,

certainly of Schiller, and perhaps of Lessing, can be traced in the

political world)? But what of those five others? Klopstock, in a most

honourable way, became out of date even in his own lifetime, and so

completely that the meditative book of his later years, _The Republic of

Learning_, has never been taken seriously from that day to this. Herder’s

misfortune was that his writings were always either new or antiquated.

Thus for stronger and more subtle minds (like Lichtenberg) even Herder’s

masterpiece, his Ideas for the History of Mankind, was in a way

antiquated at the very moment of its appearance. Wieland, who lived to the

full and made others live likewise, was clever enough to anticipate by

death the waning of his influence. Lessing, perhaps, still lives

to-day—but among a young and ever younger band of scholars. Schiller has

fallen from the hands of young men into those of boys, of all German boys.

It is a well-known sign of obsolescence when a book descends to people of

less and less mature age.—Well, what is it that has thrust these five into

the background, so that well-educated men of affairs no longer read them?

A better taste, a riper knowledge, a higher reverence for the real and the

true: in other words, the very virtues which these five (and ten or twenty

others of lesser repute) first re-planted in Germany, and which now, like

a mighty forest, cast over their graves not only the shadow of awe, but

something of the shadow of oblivion.—But classical writers are not

planters of intellectual and literary virtues. They bring those virtues to

perfection and are their highest luminous peaks, and being brighter,

freer, and purer than all that surrounds them, they remain shining above

the nations when the nations themselves perish. There may come an elevated

stage of humanity, in which the Europe of the peoples is a dark, forgotten

thing, but Europe lives on in thirty books, very old but never

antiquated—in the classics.

126.

INTERESTING, BUT NOT BEAUTIFUL.—This countryside conceals its meaning, but

it has one that we should like to guess. Everywhere that I look, I read

words and hints of words, but I do not know where begins the sentence that

solves the riddle of all these hints. So I get a stiff neck in trying to

discover whether I should start reading from this or that point.

127.

AGAINST INNOVATORS IN LANGUAGE.—The use of neologisms or archaisms, the

preference for the rare and the bizarre, the attempt to enrich rather than

to limit the vocabulary, are always signs either of an immature or of a

corrupted taste. A noble poverty but a masterly freedom within the limits

of that modest wealth distinguishes the Greek artists in oratory. They

wish to have less than the people has—for the people is richest in old and

new—but they wish to have that little better. The reckoning up of their

archaic and exotic forms is soon done, but we never cease marvelling if we

have an eye for their light and delicate manner in handling the

commonplace and apparently long outworn elements in word and phrase.

128.

GLOOMY AND SERIOUS AUTHORS.—He who commits his sufferings to paper becomes

a gloomy author, but he becomes a serious one if he tells us what he has

suffered and why he is now enjoying a pleasurable repose.

129.

HEALTHINESS OF TASTE.—How is it that health is less contagious than

disease—generally, and particularly in matters of taste? Or are there

epidemics of health?

130.

A RESOLUTION.—Never again to read a book that is born and christened (with

ink) at the same moment.

131.

IMPROVING OUR IDEAS.—Improving our style means improving our ideas, and

nothing else. He who does not at once concede this can never be convinced

of the point.

132.

CLASSICAL BOOKS.—The weakest point in every classical book is that it is

written too much in the mother tongue of its author.

133.

BAD BOOKS.—The book should demand pen, ink, and desk, but usually it is

pen, ink, and desk that demand the book. That is why books are of so

little account at present.

134.

PRESENCE OF SENSE.—When the public reflects on paintings, it becomes a

poet; when on poems, an investigator. At the moment when the artist

summons it it is always lacking in the right sense, and accordingly in

presence of sense, not in presence of mind.

135.

CHOICE IDEAS.—The choice style of a momentous period does not only select

its words but its ideas—and both from the customary and prevailing usage.

Venturesome ideas, that smell too fresh, are to the maturer taste no less

repugnant than new and reckless images and phrases. Later on both choice

ideas and choice words soon smack of mediocrity, because the scent of the

choice vanishes quickly, and then nothing but the customary and

commonplace element is tasted.

136.

MAIN REASON FOR CORRUPTION OF STYLE.—The desire to display more sentiment

than one really feels for a thing corrupts style, in language and in all

art. All great art shows rather the opposite tendency. Like every man of

moral significance, it loves to check emotion on its way and not let it

run its course to the very end. This modesty of letting emotion but half

appear is most clearly to be observed, for example, in Sophocles. The

features of sentiment seem to become beautified when sentiment feigns to

be more shy than it really is.

137.

AN EXCUSE FOR THE HEAVY STYLE.—The lightly uttered phrase seldom falls on

the ear with the full weight of the subject. This is, however, due to the

bad training of the ear, which by education must pass from what has

hitherto been called music to the school of the higher harmony—in other

words, to conversation.

138.

BIRD’S-EYE VIEWS.—Here torrents rush from every side into a ravine: their

movement is so swift and stormy, and carries the eye along so quickly,

that the bare or wooded mountain slopes around seem not to sink down but

to fly down. We are in an agonised tension at the sight, as if behind all

this were hidden some hostile element, before which all must fly, and

against which the abyss alone gave protection. This landscape cannot be

painted, unless we hover above it like a bird in the open air. Here for

once the so-called bird’s-eye view is not an artistic caprice, but the

sole possibility.

139.

RASH COMPARISONS.—If rash comparisons are not proofs of the wantonness of

the writer, they are proofs of the exhaustion of his imagination. In any

case they bear witness to his bad taste.

140.

DANCING IN CHAINS.—In the case of every Greek artist, poet, or writer we

must ask: What is the new constraint which he imposes upon himself and

makes attractive to his contemporaries, so as to find imitators? For the

thing called “invention” (in metre, for example) is always a self-imposed

fetter of this kind. “Dancing in chains”—to make that hard for themselves

and then to spread a false notion that it is easy—that is the trick that

they wish to show us. Even in Homer we may perceive a wealth of inherited

formulæ and laws of epic narration, within the circle of which he had to

dance, and he himself created new conventions for them that came after.

This was the discipline of the Greek poets: first to impose upon

themselves a manifold constraint by means of the earlier poets; then to

invent in addition a new constraint, to impose it upon themselves and

cheerfully to overcome it, so that constraint and victory are perceived

and admired.

141.

AUTHORS’ COPIOUSNESS.—The last quality that a good author acquires is

copiousness: whoever has it to begin with will never become a good author.

The noblest racehorses are lean until they are permitted to rest from

their victories.

142.

WHEEZING HEROES.—Poets and artists who suffer from a narrow chest of the

emotions generally make their heroes wheeze. They do not know what easy

breathing means.

143.

THE SHORTSIGHTED.(22)—The shortsighted are the deadly foes of all

authors who let themselves go. These authors should know the wrath with

which these people shut the book in which they observe that its creator

needs fifty pages to express five ideas. And the cause of their wrath is

that they have endangered what remains of their vision almost without

compensation. A shortsighted person said, “All authors let themselves

go.” “Even the Holy Ghost?” “Even the Holy Ghost.” But he had a right to,

for he wrote for those who had lost their sight altogether.

144.

THE STYLE OF IMMORTALITY.—Thucydides and Tacitus both imagined immortal

life for their works when they executed them. That might be guessed (if

not known otherwise) from their style. The one thought to give permanence

to his ideas by salting them, the other by boiling them down; and neither,

it seems, made a miscalculation.

145.

AGAINST IMAGES AND SIMILES.—By images and similes we convince, but we do

not prove. That is why science has such a horror of images and similes.

Science does not want to convince or make plausible, and rather seeks to

provoke cold distrust by its mode of expression, by the bareness of its

walls. For distrust is the touchstone for the gold of certainty.

146.

CAUTION.—In Germany, he who lacks thorough knowledge should beware of

writing. The good German does not say in that case “he is ignorant,” but

“he is of doubtful character.”—This hasty conclusion, by the way, does

great credit to the Germans.

147.

PAINTED SKELETONS.—Painted skeletons are those authors who try to make up

for their want of flesh by artistic colourings.

148.

THE GRAND STYLE AND SOMETHING BETTER.—It is easier to learn how to write

the grand style than how to write easily and simply. The reasons for this

are inextricably bound up with morality.

149.

SEBASTIAN BACH.—In so far as we do not hear Bach’s music as perfect and

experienced connoisseurs of counterpoint and all the varieties of the

fugal style (and accordingly must dispense with real artistic enjoyment),

we shall feel in listening to his music—in Goethe’s magnificent phrase—as

if “we were present at God’s creation of the world.” In other words, we

feel here that something great is in the making but not yet made—our

mighty modern music, which by conquering nationalities, the Church, and

counterpoint has conquered the world. In Bach there is still too much

crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism. He stands on the

threshold of modern European music, but turns from thence to look at the

Middle Ages.

150.

HÄNDEL.—Händel, who in the invention of his music was bold, original,

truthful, powerful, inclined to and akin to all the heroism of which a

nation is capable, often proved stiff, cold, nay even weary of himself

in composition. He applied a few well-tried methods of execution, wrote

copiously and quickly, and was glad when he had finished—but that joy was

not the joy of God and other creators in the eventide of their working

day.

151.

HAYDN.—So far as genius can exist in a man who is merely good, Haydn had

genius. He went just as far as the limit which morality sets to intellect,

and only wrote music that has “no past.”

152.

BEETHOVEN AND MOZART.—Beethoven’s music often appears like a deeply

emotional meditation on unexpectedly hearing once more a piece long

thought to be forgotten, “Tonal Innocence”: it is music about music. In

the song of the beggar and child in the street, in the monotonous airs of

vagrant Italians, in the dance of the village inn or in carnival nights he

discovers his melodies. He stores them together like a bee, snatching here

and there some notes or a short phrase. To him these are hallowed memories

of “the better world,” like the ideas of Plato.—Mozart stands in quite a

different relation to his melodies. He finds his inspiration not in

hearing music but in gazing at life, at the most stirring life of southern

lands. He was always dreaming of Italy, when he was not there.

153.

RECITATIVE.—Formerly recitative was dry, but now we live in the age of

moist recitative. It has fallen into the water, and the waves carry it

whithersoever they list.

154.

“CHEERFUL” MUSIC.—If for a long time we have heard no music, it then goes

like a heavy southern wine all too quickly into the blood and leaves

behind it a soul dazed with narcotics, half-awake, longing for sleep. This

is particularly the case with cheerful music, which inspires in us

bitterness and pain, satiety and home-sickness together, and forces us to

sip again and again as at a sweetened draught of poison. The hall of gay,

noisy merriment then seems to grow narrow, the light to lose its

brightness and become browner. At last we feel as if this music were

penetrating to a prison where a poor wretch cannot sleep for

home-sickness.

155.

FRANZ SCHUBERT.—Franz Schubert, inferior as an artist to the other great

musicians, had nevertheless the largest share of inherited musical wealth.

He spent it with a free hand and a kind heart, so that for a few centuries

musicians will continue to nibble at his ideas and inspirations. In his

works we find a store of unused inventions; the greatness of others will

lie in making use of those inventions. If Beethoven may be called the

ideal listener for a troubadour, Schubert has a right to be called the

ideal troubadour.

156.

MODERN MUSICAL EXECUTION.—Great tragic or dramatic execution of music

acquires its character by imitating the gesture of the great sinner, such

as Christianity conceives and desires him: the slow-stepping, passionately

brooding man, distracted by the agonies of conscience, now flying in

terror, now clutching with delight, now standing still in despair—and all

the other marks of great sinfulness. Only on the Christian assumption that

all men are great sinners and do nothing but sin could we justify the

application of this style of execution to all music. So far, music would

be the reflection of all the actions and impulses of man, and would

continually have to express by gestures the language of the great sinner.

At such a performance, a listener who was not enough of a Christian to

understand this logic might indeed cry out in horror, “For the love of

Heaven, how did sin find its way into music?”

157.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN.—Felix Mendelssohn’s music is the music of the good

taste that enjoys all the good things that have ever existed. It always

points behind. How could it have much “in front,” much of a future?—But

did he want it to have a future? He possessed a virtue rare among artists,

that of gratitude without _arrière-pensée_. This virtue, too, always

points behind.

158.

A MOTHER OF ARTS.—In our sceptical age, real devotion requires almost a

brutal heroism of ambition. Fanatical shutting of the eyes and bending of

the knee no longer suffice. Would it not be possible for ambition—in its

eagerness to be the last devotee of all the ages—to become the begetter of

a final church music, as it has been the begetter of the final church

architecture? (They call it the Jesuit style.)

159.

FREEDOM IN FETTERS—A PRINCELY FREEDOM.—Chopin, the last of the modern

musicians, who gazed at and worshipped beauty, like Leopardi; Chopin, the

Pole, the inimitable (none that came before or after him has a right to

this name)—Chopin had the same princely punctilio in convention that

Raphael shows in the use of the simplest traditional colours. The only

difference is that Chopin applies them not to colour but to melodic and

rhythmic traditions. He admitted the validity of these traditions because

he was born under the sway of etiquette. But in these fetters he plays and

dances as the freest and daintiest of spirits, and, be it observed, he

does not spurn the chain.

160.

CHOPIN’S BARCAROLLE.—Almost all states and modes of life have a moment of

rapture, and good artists know how to discover that moment. Such a moment

there is even in life by the seashore—that dreary, sordid, unhealthy

existence, dragged out in the neighbourhood of a noisy and covetous

rabble. This moment of rapture Chopin in his Barcarolle expressed in sound

so supremely that Gods themselves, when they heard it, might yearn to lie

long summer evenings in a boat.

161.

ROBERT SCHUMANN.—“The Stripling,” as the romantic songsters of Germany and

France of the first three decades of this century imagined him—this

stripling was completely translated into song and melody by Robert

Schumann, the eternal youth, so long as he felt himself in full possession

of his powers. There are indeed moments when his music reminds one of the

eternal “old maid.”

162.

DRAMATIC SINGERS.—“Why does this beggar sing?” “Probably he does not know

how to wail.” “Then he does right.” But our dramatic singers, who wail

because they do not know how to sing—are they also in the right?

163.

DRAMATIC MUSIC.—For him who does not see what is happening on the stage,

dramatic music is a monstrosity, just as the running commentary to a lost

text is a monstrosity. Such music requires us to have ears where our eyes

are. This, however, is doing violence to Euterpe, who, poor Muse, wants to

have her eyes and ears where the other Muses have theirs.

164.

VICTORY AND REASONABLENESS.—Unfortunately in the æsthetic wars, which

artists provoke by their works and apologias for their works, just as is

the case in real war, it is might and not reason that decides. All the

world now assumes as a historical fact that, in his dispute with Piccini,

Gluck was in the right. At any rate, he was victorious, and had might on

his side.

165.

OF THE PRINCIPLE OF MUSICAL EXECUTION.—Do the modern musical performers

really believe that the supreme law of their art is to give every piece as

much high-relief as is possible, and to make it speak at all costs a

dramatic language? Is not this principle, when applied for example to

Mozart, a veritable sin against the spirit—the gay, sunny, airy, delicate

spirit—of Mozart, whose seriousness was of a kindly and not awe-inspiring

order, whose pictures do not try to leap from the wall and drive away the

beholder in panic? Or do you think that all Mozart’s music is identical

with the statue-music in Don Juan? And not only Mozart’s, but all

music?—You reply that the advantage of your principle lies in its greater

effect. You would be right if there did not remain the counter-question,

“On whom has the effect operated, and on whom should an artist of the

first rank desire to produce his effect?” Never on the populace! Never on

the immature! Never on the morbidly sensitive! Never on the diseased! And

above all—never on the _blasé_!

166.

THE MUSIC OF TO-DAY.—This ultra-modern music, with its strong lungs and

weak nerves, is frightened above all things of itself.

167.

WHERE MUSIC IS AT HOME.—Music reaches its high-water mark only among men

who have not the ability or the right to argue. Accordingly, its chief

promoters are princes, whose aim is that there should be not much

criticism nor even much thought in their neighbourhood. Next come

societies which, under some pressure or other (political or religious),

are forced to become habituated to silence, and so feel all the greater

need of spells to charm away emotional ennui—these spells being generally

eternal love-making and eternal music. Thirdly, we must reckon whole

nations in which there is no “society,” but all the greater number of

individuals with a bent towards solitude, mystical thinking, and a

reverence for all that is inexpressible; these are the genuine “musical

souls.” The Greeks, as a nation delighting in talking and argument,

accordingly put up with music only as an _hors d’œuvre_ to those arts

which really admit of discussion and dispute. About music one can hardly

even think clearly. The Pythagoreans, who in so many respects were

exceptional Greeks, are said to have been great musicians. This was the

school that invented a five-years’ silence,(23) but did not invent a

dialectic.

168.

SENTIMENTALITY IN MUSIC.—We may be ever so much in sympathy with serious

and profound music, yet nevertheless, or perhaps all the more for that

reason, we shall at occasional moments be overpowered, entranced, and

almost melted away by its opposite—I mean, by those simple Italian

operatic airs which, in spite of all their monotony of rhythm and

childishness of harmony, seem at times to sing to us like the very soul of

music. Admit this or not as you please, you Pharisees of good taste, it is

so, and it is my present task to propound the riddle that it is so, and to

nibble a little myself at the solution.—In childhood’s days we tasted the

honey of many things for the first time. Never was honey so good as then;

it seduced us to life, into abundant life, in the guise of the first

spring, the first flower, the first butterfly, the first friendship.

Then—perhaps in our ninth year or so—we heard our first music, and this

was the first that we understood; thus the simplest and most childish

tunes, that were not much more than a sequel to the nurse’s lullaby and

the strolling fiddler’s tune, were our first experience. (For even the

most trifling “revelations” of art need preparation and study; there is no

“immediate” effect of art, whatever charming fables the philosophers may

tell.) Our sensation on hearing these Italian airs is associated with

those first musical raptures, the strongest of our lives. The bliss of

childhood and its flight, the feeling that our most precious possession

can never be brought back, all this moves the chords of the soul more

strongly than the most serious and profound music can move them.—This

mingling of æsthetic pleasure with moral pain, which nowadays it is

customary to call (rather too haughtily, I think) “sentimentality”—it is

the mood of Faust at the end of the first scene—this “sentimentality” of

the listener is all to the advantage of Italian music. It is a feeling

which the experienced connoisseurs in art, the pure “æsthetes,” like to

ignore.—Moreover, almost all music has a magical effect only when we hear

it speak the language of our own past. Accordingly, it seems to the

layman that all the old music is continually growing better, and that all

the latest is of little value. For the latter arouses no “sentimentality,”

that most essential element of happiness, as aforesaid, for every man who

cannot approach this art with pure æsthetic enjoyment.

169.

AS FRIENDS OF MUSIC.—Ultimately we are and remain good friends with music,

as we are with the light of the moon. Neither, after all, tries to

supplant the sun: they only want to illumine our nights to the best of

their powers. Yet we may jest and laugh at them, may we not? Just a

little, at least, and from time to time? At the man in the moon, at the

woman in the music?

170.

ART IN AN AGE OF WORK.—We have the conscience of an industrious epoch.

This debars us from devoting our best hours and the best part of our days

to art, even though that art be the greatest and worthiest. Art is for us

a matter of leisure, of recreation, and we consecrate to it the residue

of our time and strength. This is the cardinal fact that has altered the

relation of art to life. When art makes its great demands of time and

strength upon its recipients, it has to battle against the conscience of

the industrious and efficient, it is relegated to the idle and

conscienceless, who, by their very nature, are not exactly suited to great

art, and consider its claims arrogant. It might, therefore, be all over

with art, since it lacks air and the power to breathe. But perhaps the

great art attempts, by a sort of coarsening and disguising, to make itself

at home in that other atmosphere, or at least to put up with it—an

atmosphere which is really a natural element only for petty art, the art

of recreation, of pleasant distraction. This happens nowadays almost

everywhere. Even the exponents of great art promise recreation and

distraction; even they address themselves to the exhausted; even they

demand from him the evening hours of his working-day—just like the artists

of the entertaining school, who are content to smooth the furrowed brow

and brighten the lack-lustre eye. What, then, are the devices of their

mightier brethren? These have in their medicine-chests the most powerful

excitants, which might give a shock even to a man half-dead: they can

deafen you, intoxicate you, make you shudder, or bring tears to your eyes.

By this means they overpower the exhausted man and stimulate him for one

night to an over-lively condition, to an ecstasy of terror and delight.

This great art, as it now lives in opera, tragedy, and music—have we a

right to be angry with it, because of its perilous fascination, as we

should be angry with a cunning courtesan? Certainly not. It would far

rather live in the pure element of morning calm, and would far rather make

its appeal to the fresh, expectant, vigorous morning-soul of the beholder

or listener. Let us be thankful that it prefers living thus to vanishing

altogether. But let us also confess that an era that once more introduces

free and complete high-days and holidays into life will have no use for

our great art.

171.

THE EMPLOYEES OF SCIENCE AND THE OTHERS.—Really efficient and successful

men of science might be collectively called “The Employees.” If in youth

their acumen is sufficiently practised, their memory is full, and hand and

eye have acquired sureness, they are appointed by an older

fellow-craftsman to a scientific position where their qualities may prove

useful. Later on, when they have themselves gained an eye for the gaps and

defects in their science, they place themselves in whatever position they

are needed. These persons all exist for the sake of science. But there are

rarer spirits, spirits that seldom succeed or fully mature—“for whose sake

science exists”—at least, in their view. They are often unpleasant,

conceited, or cross-grained men, but almost always prodigies to a certain

extent. They are neither employees nor employers; they make use of what

those others have worked out and established, with a certain princely

carelessness and with little and rare praise—just as if the others

belonged to a lower order of beings. Yet they possess the same qualities

as their fellow-workers, and that sometimes in a less developed form.

Moreover, they have a peculiar limitation, from which the others are free;

this makes it impossible to put them into a place and to see in them

useful tools. They can only live in their own air and on their own soil.

This limitation suggests to them what elements of a science “are

theirs”—in other words, what they can carry home into their house and

atmosphere: they think that they are always collecting their scattered

“property.” If they are prevented from building at their own nest, they

perish like shelterless birds. The loss of freedom causes them to wilt

away. If they show, like their colleagues, a fondness for certain regions

of science, it is always only regions where the fruits and seeds necessary

to them can thrive. What do they care whether science, taken as a whole,

has untilled or badly tilled regions? They lack all impersonal interest in

a scientific problem. As they are themselves personal through and through,

all their knowledge and ideas are remoulded into a person, into a living

complexity, with its parts interdependent, overlapping, jointly nurtured,

and with a peculiar atmosphere and scent as a whole.—Such natures, with

their system of personal knowledge, produce the illusion that a science

(or even the whole of philosophy) is finished and has reached its goal.

The life in their system works this magic, which at times has been fatal

to science and deceptive to the really efficient workers above described,

and at other times, when drought and exhaustion prevailed, has acted as a

kind of restorative, as if it were the air of a cool, refreshing

resting-place.—These men are usually called philosophers.

172.

RECOGNITION OF TALENT.—As I went through the village of S., a boy began to

crack his whip with all his might—he had made great progress in this art,

and he knew it. I threw him a look of recognition—in reality it hurt me

cruelly. We do the same in our recognition of many of the talents. We do

good to them when they hurt us.

173.

LAUGHING AND SMILING.—The more joyful and assured the mind becomes, the

more man loses the habit of loud laughter. In compensation, there is an

intellectual smile continually bubbling up in him, a sign of his

astonishment at the innumerable concealed delights of a good existence.

174.

THE TALK OF INVALIDS.—Just as in spiritual grief we tear our hair, strike

our foreheads, lacerate our cheeks or even (like Œdipus) gouge our eyes

out, so against violent physical pain we call to our aid a bitter, violent

emotion, through the recollection of slanderous and malignant people,

through the denigration of our future, through the sword-pricks and acts

of malice which we mentally direct against the absent. And at times it is

true that one devil drives out another—but then we have the other.—Hence a

different sort of talk, tending to alleviate pain, should be recommended

invalids: reflections upon the kindnesses and courtesies that can be

performed towards friend and foe.

175.

MEDIOCRITY AS A MASK.—Mediocrity is the happiest mask which the superior

mind can wear, because it does not lead the great majority—that is, the

mediocre—to think that there is any disguise. Yet the superior mind

assumes the mask just for their sake—so as not to irritate them, nay,

often from a feeling of pity and kindness.

176.

THE PATIENT.—The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait, and both

without impatience. They do not give a thought to the petty human being

below who is consumed by his impatience and his curiosity.

177.

THE BEST JOKER.—My favourite joke is the one that takes the place of a

heavy and rather hesitating idea, and that at once beckons with its finger

and winks its eye.

178.

THE ACCESSARIES OF ALL REVERENCE.—Wherever the past is revered, the

over-cleanly and over-tidy people should not be admitted. Piety does not

feel content without a little dust, dirt, and dross.

179.

THE GREAT DANGER OF SAVANTS.—It is just the most thorough and profound

savants who are in peril of seeing their life’s goal set ever lower and

lower, and, with a feeling of this in their minds, to become ever more

discouraged and more unendurable in the latter half of their lives. At

first they plunge into their science with spacious hopes and set

themselves daring tasks, the ends of which are already anticipated by

their imaginations. Then there are moments as in the lives of the great

maritime discoverers—knowledge, presentiment, and power raise each other

higher and higher, until a new shore first dawns upon the eye in the far

distance. But now the stern man recognises more and more how important it

is that the individual task of the inquirer should be limited as far as

possible, so that it may be entirely accomplished and the intolerable

waste of force from which earlier periods of science suffered may be

avoided. In those days everything was done ten times over, and then the

eleventh always had the last and best word. Yet the more the savant learns

and practises this art of solving riddles in their entirety, the more

pleasure he finds in so doing. But at the same time his demands upon what

is here called “entirety” grow more exacting. He sets aside everything

that must remain in this sense incomplete, he acquires a disgust and an

acute scent for the half-soluble—for all that can only give a kind of

certainty in a general and indefinite form. His youthful plans crumble

away before his eyes. There remains scarcely anything but a few little

knots, in untying which the master now takes his pleasure and shows his

strength. Then, in the midst of all this useful, restless activity, he,

now grown old, is suddenly then often overcome by a deep misgiving, a sort

of torment of conscience. He looks upon himself as one changed, as if he

were diminished, humbled, transformed into a dexterous dwarf; he grows

anxious as to whether mastery in small matters be not a convenience, an

escape from the summons to greatness in life and form. But he cannot pass

beyond any longer—the time for that has gone by.

180.

TEACHERS IN THE AGE OF BOOKS.—Now that self-education and mutual education

are becoming more widespread, the teacher in his usual form must become

almost unnecessary. Friends eager to learn, who wish to master some branch

of knowledge together, find in our age of books a shorter and more natural

way than “school” and “teachers.”

181.

VANITY AS THE GREATEST UTILITY.—Originally the strong individual uses not

only Nature but even societies and weaker individuals as objects of

rapine. He exploits them, so far as he can, and then passes on. As he

lives from hand to mouth, alternating between hunger and superfluity, he

kills more animals than he can eat, and robs and maltreats men more than

is necessary. His manifestation of power is at the same time one of

revenge against his cramped and worried existence. Furthermore, he wishes

to be held more powerful than he is, and thus misuses opportunities; the

accretion of fear that he begets being an accretion of power. He soon

observes that he stands or falls not by what he is but by what he is

thought to be. Herein lies the origin of vanity. The man of power seeks

by every means to increase others’ faith in his power.—The thralls who

tremble before him and serve him know, for their part, that they are worth

just so much as they appear to him to be worth, and so they work with an

eye to this valuation rather than to their own self-satisfaction. We know

vanity only in its most weakened forms, in its idealisations and its small

doses, because we live in a late and very emasculated state of society.

Originally vanity is the great utility, the strongest means of

preservation. And indeed vanity will be greater, the cleverer the

individual, because an increase in the belief in power is easier than an

increase in the power itself, but only for him who has intellect or (as

must be the case under primitive conditions) who is cunning and crafty.

182.

WEATHER-SIGNS OF CULTURE.—There are so few decisive weather-signs of

culture that we must be glad to have at least one unfailing sign at hand

for use in house and garden. To test whether a man belongs to us (I mean

to the free spirits) or not, we must test his sentiments regarding

Christianity. If he looks upon Christianity with other than a critical

eye, we turn our backs to him, for he brings us impure air and bad

weather.—It is no longer our task to teach such men what a sirocco wind

is. They have Moses and the prophets of weather and of enlightenment.(24)

If they will not listen to these, then——

183.

THERE IS A PROPER TIME FOR WRATH AND PUNISHMENT.—Wrath and punishment are

our inheritance from the animals. Man does not become of age until he has

restored to the animals this gift of the cradle.—Herein lies buried one of

the mightiest ideas that men can have, the idea of a progress of all

progresses.—Let us go forward together a few millenniums, my friends!

There is still reserved for mankind a great deal of joy, the very scent of

which has not yet been wafted to the men of our day! Indeed, we may

promise ourselves this joy, nay summon and conjure it up as a necessary

thing, so long as the development of human reason does not stand still.

Some day we shall no longer be reconciled to the logical sin that lurks in

all wrath and punishment, whether exercised by the individual or by

society—some day, when head and heart have learnt to live as near together

as they now are far apart. That they no longer stand so far apart as they

did originally is fairly palpable from a glance at the whole course of

humanity. The individual who can review a life of introspective work will

become conscious of the rapprochement arrived at, with a proud delight

at the distance he has bridged, in order that he may thereupon venture

upon more ample hopes.

184.

ORIGIN OF PESSIMISTS.—A snack of good food often decides whether we are to

look to the future with hollow eye or in hopeful mood. The same influence

extends to the very highest and most intellectual states. Discontent and

reviling of the world are for the present generation an inheritance from

starveling ancestors. Even in our artists and poets we often notice that,

however exuberant their life, they are not of good birth, and have often,

from oppressed and ill-nourished ancestors, inherited in their blood and

brain much that comes out as the subject and even the conscious colouring

of their work. The culture of the Greeks is a culture of men of wealth, in

fact, inherited wealth. For a few centuries they lived better than we do

(better in every sense, in particular far more simply in food and drink).

Then the brain finally became so well-stored and subtle, and the blood

flowed so quickly, like a joyous, clear wine, that the best in them came

to light no longer as gloomy, distorted, and violent, but full of beauty

and sunshine.

185.

OF REASONABLE DEATH.—Which is more reasonable, to stop the machine when

the works have done the task demanded of them, or to let it run on until

it stands still of its own accord—in other words, is destroyed? Is not the

latter a waste of the cost of upkeep, a misuse of the strength and care of

those who serve? Are men not here throwing away that which would be sorely

needed elsewhere? Is not a kind of contempt of the machines propagated, in

that many of them are so uselessly tended and kept up?—I am speaking of

involuntary (natural) and voluntary (reasonable) death. Natural death is

independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the

pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist

or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull-witted

jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished

prisoner shall die. Natural death is the suicide of nature—in other words,

the annihilation of the most rational being through the most irrational

element that is attached thereto. Only through religious illumination can

the reverse appear; for then, as is equitable, the higher reason (God)

issues its orders, which the lower reason has to obey. Outside religious

thought natural death is not worth glorifying. The wise dispensation and

disposal of death belongs to that now quite incomprehensible and

immoral-sounding morality of the future, the dawn of which it will be an

ineffable delight to behold.

186.

RETROGRADE INFLUENCES.—All criminals force society back to earlier stages

of culture than that in which they are placed for the time being. Their

influence is retrograde. Let us consider the tools that society must forge

and maintain for its defence: the cunning detectives, the jailers, the

hangmen. Nor should we forget the public counsel for prosecution and

defence. Finally we may ask ourselves whether the judge himself and

punishment and the whole legal procedure are not oppressive rather than

elevating in their reaction upon all who are not law-breakers. For we

shall never succeed in arraying self-defence and revenge in the garb of

innocence, and so long as men are used and sacrificed as a means to the

end of society, all loftier humanity will deplore this necessity.

187.

WAR AS A REMEDY.—For nations that are growing weak and contemptible war

may be prescribed as a remedy, if indeed they really want to go on living.

National consumption as well as individual admits of a brutal cure. The

eternal will to live and inability to die is, however, in itself already a

sign of senility of emotion. The more fully and thoroughly we live, the

more ready we are to sacrifice life for a single pleasurable emotion. A

people that lives and feels in this wise has no need of war.

188.

INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL TRANSPLANTATION AS REMEDIES.—The different

cultures are so many intellectual climates, every one of which is

peculiarly harmful or beneficial to this or that organism. History as a

whole, as the knowledge of different cultures, is the science of remedies,

but not the science of the healing art itself. We still need a physician

who can make use of these remedies, in order to send every one—temporarily

or permanently—to the climate that just suits him. To live in the present,

within the limits of a single culture, is insufficient as a universal

remedy: too many highly useful kinds of men, who cannot breathe freely in

this atmosphere, would perish. With the aid of history we must give them

air and try to preserve them: even men of lower cultures have their

value.—Add to this cure of intellects that humanity, on considerations of

bodily health, must strive to discover by means of a medical geography

what kinds of degeneration and disease are caused by each region of the

earth, and conversely, what ingredients of health the earth affords: and

then, gradually, nations, families, and individuals must be transplanted

long and permanently enough for them to become masters of their inherited

physical infirmities. The whole world will finally be a series of

sanatoria.

189.

REASON AND THE TREE OF MANKIND.—What you all fear in your senile

shortsightedness, regarding the over-population of the world, gives the

more hopeful a mighty task. Man is some day to become a tree overshadowing

the whole earth, with millions upon millions of buds that shall all grow

to fruits side by side, and the earth itself shall be prepared for the

nourishment of this tree. That the shoot, tiny as yet, may increase in sap

and strength; that the sap may flow in countless channels for the

nutrition of the whole and the parts—from these and similar tasks we must

derive our standard for measuring whether a man of to-day is useful or

worthless. The task is unspeakably great and adventurous: let us all

contribute our share to prevent the tree from rotting before its time! The

historically trained mind will no doubt succeed in calling up the human

activities of all the ages before its eyes, as the community of ants with

its cunningly wrought mounds stands before our eyes. Superficially judged,

mankind as a whole, like ant-kind, might admit of our speaking of

“instinct.” On a closer examination we observe how whole nations, nay

whole centuries, take pains to discover and test new means of benefiting

the great mass of humanity, and thus finally the great common fruit-tree

of the world. Whatever injury the individual nations or periods may suffer

in this testing process, they have each become wise through this injury,

and from them the tide of wisdom slowly pours over the principles of whole

races and whole epochs. Ants too go astray and make blunders. Through the

folly of its remedies, mankind may well go to rack and ruin before the

proper time. There is no sure guiding instinct for the former or the

latter. Rather must we boldly face the great task of preparing the earth

for a plant of the most ample and joyous fruitfulness—a task set by reason

to reason!

190.

THE PRAISE OF DISINTERESTEDNESS AND ITS ORIGIN.—Between two neighbouring

chieftains there was a long-standing quarrel: they laid waste each other’s

territories, stole cattle, and burnt down houses, with an indecisive

result on the whole, because their power was fairly equal. A third, who

from the distant situation of his property was able to keep aloof from

these feuds, yet had reason to dread the day when one of the two

neighbours should gain a decisive preponderance, at last intervened

between the combatants with ceremonial goodwill. Secretly he lent a heavy

weight to his peace proposal by giving either to understand that he would

henceforth join forces with the other against the one who strove to break

the peace. They met in his presence, they hesitatingly placed into his

hand the hands that had hitherto been the tools and only too often the

causes of hatred—and then they really and seriously tried to keep the

peace. Either saw with astonishment how suddenly his prosperity and his

comfort increased; how he now had as neighbour a dealer ready to buy and

sell instead of a treacherous or openly scornful evil-doer; how even, in

unforeseen troubles, they could reciprocally save each other from

distress, instead of, as before, making capital out of this distress of

his neighbour and enhancing it to the highest degree. It even seemed as if

the human type had improved in both countries, for the eyes had become

brighter, the forehead had lost its wrinkles; all now felt confidence in

the future—and nothing is more advantageous for the souls and bodies of

men than this confidence. They saw each other every year on the

anniversary of the alliance, the chieftains as well as their retinue, and

indeed before the eyes of the mediator, whose mode of action they admired

and revered more and more, the greater the profit that they owed to him

became. Then his mode of action was called disinterested. They had

looked far too fixedly at the profit they had reaped themselves hitherto

to see anything more of their neighbour’s method of dealing than that his

condition in consequence of this had not altered so much as their own; he

had rather remained the same: and thus it appeared that the former had not

had his profit in view. For the first time people said to themselves that

disinterestedness was a virtue. It is true that in minor private matters

similar circumstances had arisen, but men only had eyes for this virtue

when it was depicted on the walls in a large script that was legible to

the whole community. Moral qualities are not recognised as virtues,

endowed with names, held in esteem, and recommended as worthy of

acquisition until the moment when they have visibly decided the

happiness and destiny of whole societies. For then the loftiness of

sentiment and the excitation of the inner creative forces is in many so

great, that offerings are brought to this quality, offerings from the best

of what each possesses. At its feet the serious man lays his seriousness,

the dignified man his dignity, women their gentleness, the young all the

wealth of hope and futurity that in them lies; the poet lends it words and

names, sets it marching in the procession of similar beings, gives it a

pedigree, and finally, as is the way of artists, adores the picture of his

fancy as a new godhead—he even teaches others to adore. Thus in the end,

with the co-operation of universal love and gratitude, a virtue becomes,

like a statue, a repository of all that is good and honourable, a sort of

temple and divine personage combined. It appears thenceforward as an

individual virtue, as an absolute entity, which it was not before, and

exercises the power and privileges of a sanctified superhumanity.—In the

later days of Greece the cities were full of such deified human

abstractions (if one may so call them). The nation, in its own fashion,

had set up a Platonic “Heaven of Ideas” on earth, and I do not think that

its inhabitants were felt to be less alive than any of the old Homeric

divinities.

191.

DAYS OF DARKNESS.—“Days of Darkness” is the name given in Norway to the

period when the sun remains below the horizon the whole day long. The

temperature then falls slowly but continually.—A fine simile for all

thinkers for whom the sun of the human future is temporarily eclipsed.

192.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUXURY.—A garden, figs, a little cheese, and three or

four good friends—that was the luxury of Epicurus.

193.

THE EPOCHS OF LIFE.—The real epochs of life are those brief periods of

cessation midway between the rise and decline of a dominating idea or

emotion. Here once again there is satisfaction: all the rest is hunger and

thirst—or satiety.

194.

DREAMS.—Our dreams, if for once in a way they succeed and are

complete—generally a dream is a bungled piece of work—are symbolic

concatenations of scenes and images in place of a narrative poetical

language. They paraphrase our experiences or expectations or relations

with poetic boldness and definiteness, so that in the morning we are

always astonished at ourselves when we remember the nature of our dream.

In dreams we use up too much artistry—and hence are often too poor in

artistry in the daytime.

195.

NATURE AND SCIENCE.—As in nature, so in science the worse and less fertile

soils are first cultivated—because the means that science in its early

stages has at command are fairly sufficient for this purpose. The working

of the most fertile soils requires an enormous, carefully developed,

persevering method, tangible individual results, and an organised body of

well-trained workers. All these are found together only at a late

stage.—Impatience and ambition often grasp too early at these most fertile

soils, but the results are then from the first null and void. In nature

such losses would usually be avenged by the starvation of the settlers.

196.

THE SIMPLE LIFE.—A simple mode of life is nowadays difficult, requiring as

it does far more reflection and gift for invention than even very clever

people possess. The most honourable will perhaps still say, “I have not

the time for such lengthy reflection. The simple life is for me too lofty

a goal: I will wait till those wiser than I have discovered it.”

197.

PEAKS AND NEEDLE-POINTS.—The poor fertility, the frequent celibacy, and in

general the sexual coldness of the highest and most cultivated spirits, as

that of the classes to which they belong, is essential in human economy.

Intelligence recognises and makes use of the fact that at an acme of

intellectual development the danger of a neurotic offspring is very great.

Such men are the peaks of mankind—they ought no longer to run out into

needle-points.

198.

NATURA NON FACIT SALTUM.—However strongly man may develop upwards and

seem to leap from one contradiction to another, a close observation will

reveal the dovetails where the new building grows out of the old. This is

the biographer’s task: he must reflect upon his subject on the principle

that nature takes no jumps.

199.

CLEAN, BUT—He who clothes himself with rags washed clean dresses cleanly,

to be sure, but is still ragged.

200.

THE SOLITARY SPEAKS.—In compensation for much disgust, disheartenment,

boredom—such as a lonely life without friends, books, duties, and passions

must involve—we enjoy those short spans of deep communion with ourselves

and with Nature. He who fortifies himself completely against boredom

fortifies himself against himself too. He will never drink the most

powerful elixir from his own innermost spring.

201.

FALSE RENOWN.—I hate those so-called natural beauties which really have

significance only through science, especially geographical science, but

are insignificant in an æsthetic sense: for example, the view of Mont

Blanc from Geneva. This is an insignificant thing without the auxiliary

mental joy of science: the nearer mountains are all more beautiful and

fuller of expression, but “not nearly so high,” adds that absurd

depreciatory science. The eye here contradicts science: how can it truly

rejoice in the contradiction?

202.

THOSE THAT TRAVEL FOR PLEASURE.—Like animals, stupid and perspiring, they

climb mountains: people forgot to tell them that there were fine views on

the way.

203.

TOO MUCH AND TOO LITTLE.—Men nowadays live too much and think too little.

They have hunger and dyspepsia together, and become thinner and thinner,

however much they eat. He who now says “Nothing has happened to me” is a

blockhead.

204.

END AND GOAL.—Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its

goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has also not reached

its goal. A parable.

205.

NEUTRALITY OF NATURE ON A GRAND SCALE.—The neutrality of Nature on a grand

scale (in mountain, sea, forest, and desert) is pleasing, but only for a

brief space. Afterwards we become impatient. “Have they all nothing to say

to us? Do we not exist so far as they are concerned?” There arises a

feeling that a _lèse-majesté_ is committed against humanity.

206.

FORGETTING OUR PURPOSE.—In a journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost

every vocation is chosen and entered upon as means to an end, but is

continued as the ultimate end. Forgetting our purpose is the most frequent

form of folly.

207.

SOLAR ORBIT OF AN IDEA.—When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the

soul’s temperature is usually very low. Gradually the idea develops in

warmth, and is hottest (that is to say, exerts its greatest influence)

when belief in the idea is already on the wane.

208.

HOW TO HAVE EVERY MAN AGAINST YOU.—If some one now dared to say, “He that

is not for me is against me,” he would at once have all against him.—This

sentiment does credit to our era.

209.

BEING ASHAMED OF WEALTH.—Our age endures only a single species of rich

men—those who are ashamed of their wealth. If we hear it said of any one

that he is very rich, we at once feel a similar sentiment to that

experienced at the sight of a repulsively swollen invalid, one suffering

from diabetes or dropsy. We must with an effort remember our humanity, in

order to go about with this rich man in such a way that he does not notice

our feeling of disgust. But as soon as he prides himself at all on his

wealth, our feelings are mingled with an almost compassionate surprise at

such a high degree of human unreason. We would fain raise our hands to

heaven and cry, “Poor deformed and overburdened creature, fettered a

hundredfold, to whom every hour brings or may bring something unpleasant,

in whose frame twitches every event that occurs in scores of countries,

how can you make us believe that you feel at ease in your position? If you

appear anywhere in public, we know that it is a sort of running the

gauntlet amid countless glances that have for you only cold hate or

importunity or silent scorn. You may earn more easily than others, but it

is only a superfluous earning, which brings little joy, and the guarding

of what you have earned is now, at any rate, a more troublesome business

than any toilsome process of earning. You are continually suffering,

because you are continually losing. What avails it you that they are

always injecting you with fresh artificial blood? That does not relieve

the pain of those cupping-glasses that are fixed, for ever fixed, on your

neck!—But, to be quite fair to you, it is difficult or perhaps impossible

for you not to be rich. You must guard, you must earn more; the

inherited bent of your character is the yoke fastened upon you. But do not

on that account deceive us—be honestly and visibly ashamed of the yoke you

wear, as in your soul you are weary and unwilling to wear it. This shame

is no disgrace.”

210.

EXTRAVAGANT PRESUMPTIONS.—There are men so presumptuous that they can only

praise a greatness which they publicly admire by representing it as steps

and bridges that lead to themselves.

211.

ON THE SOIL OF INSULT.—He who wishes to deprive men of a conception is

generally not satisfied with refuting it and drawing out of it the

illogical worm that resides within. Rather, when the worm has been killed,

does he throw the whole fruit as well into the mire, in order to make it

ignoble in men’s sight and to inspire disgust. Thus he thinks that he has

found a means of making the usual “third-day resurrection” of conceptions

an impossibility.—He is wrong, for on the very soil of insult, in the

midst of the filth, the kernel of the conception soon produces new

seeds.—The right thing then, is not to scorn and bespatter what one wishes

finally to remove, but to lay it tenderly on ice again and again, having

regard to the fact that conceptions are very tenacious of life. Here we

must act according to the maxim: “One refutation is no refutation.”

212.

THE LOT OF MORALITY.—Since spiritual bondage is being relaxed, morality

(the inherited, traditional, instinctive mode of action in accordance with

moral sentiments) is surely also on the decline. This, however, is not the

case with the individual virtues, moderation, justice, repose; for the

greatest freedom of the conscious intellect leads at some time, even

unconsciously, back to these virtues, and then enjoins their practice as

expedient.

213.

THE FANATIC OF DISTRUST AND HIS SURETY.—The Elder: You wish to make the

tremendous venture and instruct mankind in the great things? What is your

surety?

Pyrrho: It is this: I intend to warn men against myself; I intend to

confess all the defects of my character quite openly, and reveal to the

world my hasty conclusions, my contradictions, and my foolish blunders.

“Do not listen to me,” I will say to them, “until I have become equal to

the meanest among you, nay am even less than he. Struggle against truth as

long as you can, from your disgust with her advocate. I shall be your

seducer and betrayer if you find in me the slightest glimmering of

respectability and dignity.”

The Elder: You promise too much; you cannot bear this burden.

Pyrrho: Then I will tell men even that, and say that I am too weak, and

cannot keep my promise. The greater my unworthiness, the more will they

mistrust the truth, when it passes through my lips.

The Elder: You propose to teach distrust of truth?

Pyrrho: Yes; distrust as it never was yet on earth, distrust of anything

and everything. This is the only road to truth. The right eye must not

trust the left eye, and for some time light must be called darkness: this

is the path that you must tread. Do not imagine that it will lead you to

fruit trees and fair pastures. You will find on this road little hard

grains—these are truths. For years and years you will have to swallow

handfuls of lies, so as not to die of hunger, although you know that they

are lies. But those grains will be sown and planted, and perhaps, perhaps

some day will come the harvest. No one may promise that day, unless he

be a fanatic.

The Elder: Friend, friend! Your words too are those of a fanatic!

Pyrrho: You are right! I will be distrustful of all words.

The Elder: Then you will have to be silent.

Pyrrho: I shall tell men that I have to be silent, and that they are to

mistrust my silence.

The Elder: So you draw back from your undertaking?

Pyrrho: On the contrary—you have shown me the door through which I must

pass.

The Elder: I don’t know whether we yet completely understand each other?

Pyrrho: Probably not.

The Elder: If only you understand yourself!

(Pyrrho turns round and laughs.)

The Elder: Ah, friend! Silence and laughter—is that now your whole

philosophy?

Pyrrho: There might be a worse.

214.

EUROPEAN BOOKS.—In reading Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère,

Fontenelle (especially the Dialogues des Morts), Vauvenargues, and

Chamfort we are nearer to antiquity than in any group of six authors of

other nations. Through these six the spirit of the last centuries before

Christ has once more come into being, and they collectively form an

important link in the great and still continuous chain of the Renaissance.

Their books are raised above all changes of national taste and

philosophical nuances from which as a rule every book takes and must take

its hue in order to become famous. They contain more real ideas than all

the books of German philosophers put together: ideas of the sort that

breed ideas——I am at a loss how to define to the end: enough to say that

they appear to me writers who wrote neither for children nor for

visionaries, neither for virgins nor for Christians, neither for Germans

nor for—I am again at a loss how to finish my list. To praise them in

plain terms, I may say that had they been written in Greek, they would

have been understood by Greeks. How much, on the other hand, would even a

Plato have understood of the writings of our best German thinkers—Goethe

and Schopenhauer, for instance—to say nothing of the repugnance that he

would have felt to their style, particularly to its obscure, exaggerated,

and occasionally dry-as-dust elements? And these are defects from which

these two among German thinkers suffer least and yet far too much (Goethe

as thinker was fonder than he should have been of embracing the cloud, and

Schopenhauer almost constantly wanders, not with impunity, among symbols

of objects rather than among the objects themselves).—On the other hand,

what clearness and graceful precision there is in these Frenchmen! The

Greeks, whose ears were most refined, could not but have approved of this

art, and one quality they would even have admired and reverenced—the

French verbal wit: they were extremely fond of this quality, without being

particularly strong in it themselves.

215.

FASHION AND MODERNITY.—Wherever ignorance, uncleanness, and superstition

are still rife, where communication is backward, agriculture poor, and the

priesthood powerful, national costumes are still worn. Fashion, on the

other hand, rules where the opposite conditions prevail. Fashion is

accordingly to be found next to the virtues in modern Europe. Are we to

call it their seamy side?—Masculine dress that is fashionable and no

longer national proclaims of its wearer: firstly, that he does not wish to

appear as an individual or as member of a class or race; that he has made

an intentional suppression of these kinds of vanity a law unto himself:

secondly, that he is a worker, and has little time for dressing and

self-adornment, and moreover regards anything expensive or luxurious in

material and cut as out of harmony with his work: lastly, that by his

clothes he indicates the more learned and intellectual callings as those

to which he stands or would like to stand nearest as a European—whereas

such national costumes as still exist would exhibit the occupations of

brigand, shepherd, and soldier as the most desirable and distinguished.

Within this general character of masculine fashion exist the slight

fluctuations demanded by the vanity of young men, the dandies and dawdlers

of our great cities—in other words, Europeans who have not yet reached

maturity.—European women are as yet far less mature, and for this reason

the fluctuations with them are much greater. They also will not have the

national costume, and hate to be recognised by their dress as German,

French, or Russian. They are, however, very desirous of creating an

impression as individuals. Then, too, their dress must leave no one in

doubt that they belong to one of the more reputable classes of society (to

“good” or “high” or “great” society), and on this score their pretensions

are all the greater if they belong scarcely or not at all to that class.

Above all, the young woman does not want to wear what an older woman

wears, because she thinks she loses her market value if she is suspected

of being somewhat advanced in years. The older woman, on the other hand,

would like to deceive the world as long as possible by a youthful garb.

From this competition must continually arise temporary fashions, in which

the youthful element is unmistakably and inimitably apparent. But after

the inventive genius of the young female artists has run riot for some

time in such indiscreet revelations of youth (or rather, after the

inventive genius of older, courtly civilisations and of still existing

peoples—in fact, of the whole world of dress—has been pressed into the

service, and, say, the Spaniards, Turks, and ancient Greeks have been

yoked together for the glorification of fair flesh), then they at last

discover, time and again, that they have not been good judges of their own

interest; that if they wish to have power over men, the game of

hide-and-seek with the beautiful body is more likely to win than naked or

half-naked honesty. And then the wheel of taste and vanity turns once more

in an opposite direction. The rather older young women find that their

kingdom has come, and the competition of the dear, absurd creatures rages

again from the beginning.—But the more women advance mentally, and no

longer among themselves concede the pre-eminence to an unripe age, the

smaller their fluctuations of costume grow and the less elaborate their

adornment. A just verdict in this respect must not be based on ancient

models—in other words, not on the standard of the dress of women who dwell

on the shores of the Mediterranean—but must have an eye to the climatic

conditions of the central and northern regions, where the intellectual and

creative spirit of Europe now finds its most natural home.—Generally

speaking, therefore, it is not change that will be the characteristic mark

of fashion and modernity, for change is retrograde, and betokens the still

unripened men and women of Europe; but rather the repudiation of national,

social, and individual vanity. Accordingly, it is commendable, because

involving a saving of time and strength, if certain cities and districts

of Europe think and invent for all the rest in the matter of dress, in

view of the fact that a sense of form does not seem to have been bestowed

upon all. Nor is it really an excessive ambition, so long as these

fluctuations still exist, for Paris, for example, to claim to be the sole

inventor and innovator in this sphere. If a German, from hatred of these

claims on the part of a French city, wishes to dress differently,—as, for

example, in the Dürer style,—let him reflect that he then has a costume

which the Germans of olden times wore, but which the Germans have not in

the slightest degree invented. For there has never been a style of dress

that characterised the German as a German. Moreover, let him observe how

he looks in his costume, and whether his altogether modern face, with all

its hues and wrinkles, does not raise a protest against a Dürer fashion of

dress.—Here, where the concepts “modern” and “European” are almost

identical, we understand by “Europe” a far wider region than is embraced

by the Europe of geography, the little peninsula of Asia. In particular,

we must include America, in so far as America is the daughter of our

civilisation. On the other hand, not all Europe falls under the heading of

cultured “Europe,” but only those nations and divisions of nations which

have their common past in Greece, Rome, Judaism, and Christianity.

216.

“GERMAN VIRTUE.”—There is no denying that from the end of the eighteenth

century a current of moral awakening flowed through Europe. Then only

Virtue found again the power of speech. She learnt to discover the

unrestrained gestures of exaltation and emotion, she was no longer ashamed

of herself, and she created philosophies and poems for her own

glorification. If we look for the sources of this current, we come upon

Rousseau, but the mythical Rousseau, the phantom formed from the

impression left by his writings (one might almost say again, his

mythically interpreted writings) and by the indications that he provided

himself. He and his public constantly worked at the fashioning of this

ideal figure. The other origin lies in the resurrection of the Stoical

side of Rome’s greatness, whereby the French so nobly carried on the task

of the Renaissance. With striking success they proceeded from the

reproduction of antique forms to the reproduction of antique characters.

Thus they may always claim a title to the highest honours, as the nation

which has hitherto given the modern world its best books and its best men.

How this twofold archetype, the mythical Rousseau and the resurrected

spirit of Rome, affected France’s weaker neighbours, is particularly

noticeable in Germany, which, in consequence of her novel and quite

unwonted impulse to seriousness and loftiness in will and self-control,

finally came to feel astonishment at her own newfound virtue, and launched

into the world the concept “German virtue,” as if this were the most

original and hereditary of her possessions. The first great men who

transfused into their own blood that French impulse towards greatness and

consciousness of the moral will were more honest, and more grateful.

Whence comes the moralism of Kant? He is continually reminding us: from

Rousseau and the revival of Stoic Rome. The moralism of Schiller has the

same source and the same glorification of the source. The moralism of

Beethoven in notes is a continual song in praise of Rousseau, the antique

French, and Schiller. “Young Germany” was the first to forget its

gratitude, because in the meantime people had listened to the preachers of

hatred of the French. The “young German” came to the fore with more

consciousness than is generally allowed to youths. When he investigated

his paternity, he might well think of the proximity of Schiller,

Schleiermacher, and Fichte. But he should have looked for his grandfathers

in Paris and Geneva, and it was very shortsighted of him to believe what

he believed: that virtue was not more than thirty years old. People became

used to demanding that the word “German” should connote “virtue,” and this

process has not been wholly forgotten to this day.—Be it observed further

that this moral awakening, as may almost be guessed, has resulted only in

drawbacks and obstacles to the recognition of moral phenomena. What is

the entire German philosophy, starting from Kant, with all its French,

English, and Italian offshoots and by-products? A semi-theological attack

upon Helvetius, a rejection of the slowly and laboriously acquired views

and signposts of the right road, which in the end he collected and

expressed so well. To this day Helvetius is the best-abused of all good

moralists and good men in Germany.

217.

CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC.—Both classically and romantically minded spirits—two

species that always exist—cherish a vision of the future; but the former

derive their vision from the strength of their time, the latter from its

weakness.

218.

THE MACHINE AS TEACHER.—Machinery teaches in itself the dovetailed working

of masses of men, in activities where each has but one thing to do. It is

the model of party organisations and of warfare. On the other hand, it

does not teach individual self-glorification, for it makes of the many a

machine, and of each individual a tool for one purpose. Its most general

effect is to teach the advantage of centralisation.

219.

UNABLE TO SETTLE.—One likes to live in a small town. But from time to time

just this small town drives us out into bare and lonely Nature, especially

when we think we know it too well. Finally, in order to refresh ourselves

from Nature, we go to the big town. A few draughts from this cup and we

see its dregs, and the circle begins afresh, with the small town as

starting-point.—So the moderns live; they are in all things rather too

thorough to be able to settle like the men of other days.

220.

REACTION AGAINST THE CIVILISATION OF MACHINERY.—The machine, itself a

product of the highest mental powers, sets in motion hardly any but the

lower, unthinking forces of the men who serve it. True, it unfetters a

vast quantity of force which would otherwise lie dormant. But it does not

communicate the impulse to climb higher, to improve, to become artistic.

It creates activity and monotony, but this in the long-run produces a

counter-effect, a despairing ennui of the soul, which through machinery

has learnt to hanker after the variety of leisure.

221.

THE DANGER OF ENLIGHTENMENT.—All the half-insane, theatrical, bestially

cruel, licentious, and especially sentimental and self-intoxicating

elements which go to form the true revolutionary substance, and became

flesh and spirit, before the revolution, in Rousseau—all this composite

being, with factitious enthusiasm, finally set even “enlightenment” upon

its fanatical head, which thereby began itself to shine as in an

illuminating halo. Yet, enlightenment is essentially foreign to that

phenomenon, and, if left to itself, would have pierced silently through

the clouds like a shaft of light, long content to transfigure individuals

alone, and thus only slowly transfiguring national customs and

institutions as well. But now, bound hand and foot to a violent and abrupt

monster, enlightenment itself became violent and abrupt. Its danger has

therefore become almost greater than its useful quality of liberation and

illumination, which it introduced into the great revolutionary movement.

Whoever grasps this will also know from what confusion it has to be

extricated, from what impurities to be cleansed, in order that it may then

by itself continue the work of enlightenment and also nip the revolution

in the bud and nullify its effects.

222.

PASSION IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—The Middle Ages are the period of great

passions. Neither antiquity nor our period possesses this widening of the

soul. Never was the capacity of the soul greater or measured by larger

standards. The physical, primeval sensuality of the barbarian races and

the over-soulful, over-vigilant, over-brilliant eyes of Christian mystics,

the most childish and youthful and the most over-ripe and world-weary, the

savageness of the beast of prey and the effeminacy and excessive

refinement of the late antique spirit—all these elements were then not

seldom united in one and the same person. Thus, if a man was seized by a

passion, the rapidity of the torrent must have been greater, the whirl

more confused, the fall deeper than ever before.—We modern men may be

content to feel that we have suffered a loss here.

223.

ROBBING AND SAVING.—All intellectual movements whereby the great may hope

to rob and the small to save are sure to prosper. That is why, for

instance, the German Reformation made progress.

224.

GLADSOME SOULS.—When even a remote hint of drink, drunkenness, and an

evil-smelling kind of jocularity was given, the souls of the old Germans

waxed gladsome. Otherwise they were depressed, but here they found

something they really understood.

225.

DEBAUCHERY AT ATHENS.—Even when the fish-market of Athens acquired its

thinkers and poets, Greek debauchery had a more idyllic and refined

appearance than Roman or German debauchery ever had. The voice of Juvenal

would have sounded there like a hollow trumpet, and would have been

answered by a good-natured and almost childish outburst of laughter.

226.

CLEVERNESS OF THE GREEK.—As the desire for victory and pre-eminence is an

ineradicable trait of human nature, older and more primitive than any

respect of or joy in equality, the Greek State sanctioned gymnastic and

artistic competitions among equals. In other words, it marked out an arena

where this impulse to conquer would find a vent without jeopardising the

political order. With the final decline of gymnastic and artistic contests

the Greek State fell into a condition of profound unrest and dissolution.

227.

THE “ETERNAL EPICURUS.”—Epicurus has lived in all periods, and lives yet,

unbeknown to those who called and still call themselves Epicureans, and

without repute among philosophers. He has himself even forgotten his own

name—that was the heaviest luggage that he ever cast off.

228.

THE STYLE OF SUPERIORITY.—“University slang,” the speech of the German

students, has its origin among the students who do not study. The latter

know how to acquire a preponderance over their more serious fellows by

exposing all the farcical elements of culture, respectability, erudition,

order, and moderation, and by having words taken from these realms always

on their lips, like the better and more learned students, but with malice

in their glance and an accompanying grimace. This language of

superiority—the only one that is original in Germany—is nowadays

unconsciously used by statesmen and newspaper critics as well. It is a

continual process of ironical quotation, a restless, cantankerous

squinting of the eye right and left, a language of inverted commas and

grimaces.

229.

THE RECLUSE.—We retire into seclusion, but not from personal misgivings,

as if the political and social conditions of the day did not satisfy us;

rather because by our retirement we try to save and collect forces which

will some day be urgently needed by culture, the more this present is

this present, and, as such, fulfils its task. We form a capital and try

to make it secure, but, as in times of real danger, our method is to bury

our hoard.

230.

TYRANTS OF THE INTELLECT.—In our times, any one who expressed a single

moral trait so thoroughly as the characters of Theophrastus and Molière

do, would be considered ill, and be spoken of as possessing “a fixed

idea.” The Athens of the third century, if we could visit it, would appear

to us populated by fools. Nowadays the democracy of ideas rules in every

brain—there the multitude collectively is lord. A single idea that tried

to be lord is now called, as above stated, “a fixed idea.” This is our

method of murdering tyrants—we hint at the madhouse.

231.

A MOST DANGEROUS EMIGRATION.—In Russia there is an emigration of the

intelligence. People cross the frontier in order to read and write good

books. Thus, however, they are working towards turning their country,

abandoned by the intellect, into a gaping Asiatic maw, which would fain

swallow our little Europe.

232.

POLITICAL FOOLS.—The almost religious love of the king was transferred by

the Greeks, when the monarchy was abolished, to the polis. An idea can

be loved more than a person, and does not thwart the lover so often as a

beloved human being (for the more men know themselves to be loved, the

less considerate they usually become, until they are no longer worthy of

love, and a rift really arises). Hence the reverence for State and polis

was greater than the reverence for princes had ever been. The Greeks are

the political fools of ancient history—today other nations boast that

distinction.

233.

AGAINST NEGLECT OF THE EYES.—Might one not find among the cultured classes

of England, who read the Times, a decline in their powers of sight every

ten years?

234.

GREAT WORKS AND GREAT FAITH.—One man had great works, but his comrade had

great faith in these works. They were inseparable, but obviously the

former was entirely dependent upon the latter.

235.

THE SOCIABLE MAN.—“I don’t get on well with myself,” said some one in

explanation of his fondness for society. “Society has a stronger digestion

than I have, and can put up with me.”

236.

SHUTTING THE MIND’S EYES.—If we are practised and accustomed to reflect

upon our actions, we must nevertheless close the inner eye while

performing an action (be this even only writing letters or eating or

drinking). Even in conversation with average people we must know how to

obscure our own mental vision in order to attain and grasp average

thinking. This shutting of the eyes is a conscious act and can be achieved

by the will.

237.

THE MOST TERRIBLE REVENGE.—If we wish to take a thorough revenge upon an

opponent, we must wait until we have our hand quite full of truths and

equities, and can calmly use the whole lot against him. Hence the exercise

of revenge may be identified with the exercise of equity. It is the most

terrible kind of revenge, for there is no higher court to which an appeal

can be made. Thus did Voltaire revenge himself on Piron, with five lines

that sum up Piron’s whole life, work, and character: every word is a

truth. So too he revenged himself upon Frederick the Great in a letter to

him from Ferney.

238.

TAXES OF LUXURY.—In shops we buy the most necessary and urgent things, and

have to pay very dear, because we pay as well for what is also to be had

there cheap, but seldom finds a customer—articles of luxury that minister

to pleasure. Thus luxury lays a constant tax upon the man of simple life

who does without luxuries.

239.

WHY BEGGARS STILL LIVE.—If all alms were given only out of compassion, the

whole tribe of beggars would long since have died of starvation.

240.

WHY BEGGARS STILL LIVE.—The greatest of almsgivers is cowardice.

241.

HOW THE THINKER MAKES USE OF A CONVERSATION.—Without being eavesdroppers,

we can hear a good deal if we are able to see well, and at the same time

to let ourselves occasionally get out of our own sight. But people do not

know how to make use of a conversation. They pay far too much attention to

what they want to say and reply, whereas the true listener is often

contented to make a provisional answer and to say something merely as a

payment on account of politeness, but on the other hand, with his memory

lurking in ambush, carries away with him all that the other said, together

with his tones and gestures in speaking.—In ordinary conversation every

one thinks he is the leader, just as if two ships, sailing side by side

and giving each other a slight push here and there, were each firmly

convinced that the other ship was following or even being towed.

242.

THE ART OF EXCUSING ONESELF.—If some one excuses himself to us, he has to

make out a very good case, otherwise we readily come to feel ourselves the

culprits, and experience an unpleasant emotion.

243.

IMPOSSIBLE INTERCOURSE.—The ship of your thoughts goes too deep for you to

be able to travel with it in the waters of these friendly, decorous,

obliging people. There are too many shallows and sandbanks: you would have

to tack and turn, and would find yourself continually at your wits’ end,

and they would soon also be in perplexity as to your perplexity, the

reason for which they cannot divine.

244.

THE FOX OF FOXES.—A true fox not only calls sour the grapes he cannot

reach, but also those he has reached and snatched from the grasp of

others.

245.

IN INTIMATE INTERCOURSE.—However closely men are connected, there are

still all the four quarters of the heavens in their common horizon, and at

times they become aware of this fact.

246.

THE SILENCE OF DISGUST.—Behold! some one undergoes a thorough and painful

transformation as thinker and human being, and makes a public avowal of

the change. And those who hear him see nothing, and still believe he is

the same as before! This common experience has already disgusted many

writers. They had rated the intellectuality of mankind too highly, and

made a vow to be silent as soon as they became aware of their mistake.

247.

BUSINESS SERIOUSNESS.—The business of many rich and eminent men is their

form of recreation from too long periods of habitual leisure. They then

become as serious and impassioned as other people do in their rare moments

of leisure and amusement.

248.

THE EYE’S DOUBLE SENSE.—Just as a sudden scaly ripple runs over the waters

at your feet, so there are similar sudden uncertainties and ambiguities in

the human eye. They lead to the question: is it a shudder, or a smile, or

both?

249.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE.—This thinker needs no one to refute him—he is quite

capable of doing that himself.

250.

THE REVENGE OF THE EMPTY NETS.—Above all we should beware of those who

have the bitter feeling of the fisherman who after a hard day’s work comes

home in the evening with nets empty.

251.

NON-ASSERTION OF OUR RIGHTS.—The exertion of power is laborious and

demands courage. That is why so many do not assert their most valid

rights, because their rights are a kind of power, and they are too lazy or

too cowardly to exercise them. Indulgence and patience are the names

given to the virtues that cloak these faults.

252.

BEARERS OF LIGHT.—In Society there would be no sunshine if the born

flatterers (I mean the so-called amiable people) did not bring some in

with them.

253.

WHEN MOST BENEVOLENT.—When a man has been highly honoured and has eaten a

little, he is most benevolent.

254.

TO THE LIGHT.—Men press forward to the light not in order to see better

but to shine better.—The person before whom we shine we gladly allow to be

called a light.

255.

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC.—The hypochondriac is a man who has just enough

intellect and pleasure in the intellect to take his sorrows, his losses,

and his mistakes seriously. But the field on which he grazes is too small:

he crops it so close that in the end he has to look for single stalks.

Thus he finally becomes envious and avaricious—and only then is he

unbearable.

256.

GIVING IN RETURN.—Hesiod advises us to give the neighbour who has helped

us good measure and, if possible, fuller measure in return, as soon as we

have the power. For this is where the neighbour’s pleasure comes in, since

his former benevolence brings him interest. Moreover, he who gives in

return also has his pleasure, inasmuch as, by giving a little more than he

got, he redeems the slight humiliation of being compelled to seek aid.

257.

MORE SUBTLE THAN IS NECESSARY.—Our sense of observation for how far others

perceive our weaknesses is far more subtle than our sense of observation

for the weaknesses of others. It follows that the first-named sense is

more subtle than is necessary.

258.

A KIND OF BRIGHT SHADOWS.—Close to the nocturnal type of man we almost

regularly find, as if bound up with him, a bright soul. This is, as it

were, the negative shadow cast by the former.

259.

NOT TO TAKE REVENGE.—There are so many subtle sorts of revenge that one

who has occasion to take revenge can really do or omit to do what he

likes. In any case, the whole world will agree, after a time, that he

has avenged himself. Hence the avoidance of revenge is hardly within

man’s power. He must not even so much as say that he does not want to do

so, since the contempt for revenge is interpreted and felt as a sublime

and exquisite form of revenge.—It follows that we must do nothing

superfluous.

260.

THE MISTAKE OF THOSE WHO PAY HOMAGE.—Every one thinks he is paying a most

agreeable compliment to a thinker when he says that he himself hit upon

exactly the same idea and even upon the same expression. The thinker,

however, is seldom delighted at hearing such news, nay, rather, he often

becomes distrustful of his own thoughts and expressions. He silently

resolves to revise both some day. If we wish to pay homage to any one, we

must beware of expressing our agreement, for this puts us on the same

level.—Often it is a matter of social tact to listen to an opinion as if

it were not ours or even travelled beyond the limits of our own

horizon—as, for example, when an old man once in a while opens the

storehouse of his acquired knowledge.

261.

LETTERS.—A letter is an unannounced visit, and the postman is the

intermediary of impolite surprises. Every week we ought to have one hour

for receiving letters, and then go and take a bath.

262.

PREJUDICED.—Some one said: I have been prejudiced against myself from

childhood upwards, and hence I find some truth in every censure and some

absurdity in every eulogy. Praise I generally value too low and blame too

high.

263.

THE PATH TO EQUALITY.—A few hours of mountain-climbing make a blackguard

and a saint two rather similar creatures. Weariness is the shortest path

to equality and fraternity—and finally liberty is bestowed by sleep.

264.

CALUMNY.—If we begin to trace to its source a real scandalous

misrepresentation, we shall rarely look for its origin in our honourable

and straightforward enemies; for if they invented anything of the sort

about us, they, as being our enemies, would gain no credence. Those,

however, to whom for a time we have been most useful, but who, from some

reason or other, may be secretly sure that they will obtain no more from

us—such persons are in a position to start the ball of slander rolling.

They gain credence, firstly, because it is assumed that they would invent

nothing likely to do them damage; secondly, because they have learnt to

know us intimately.—As a consolation, the much-slandered man may say to

himself: Calumnies are diseases of others that break out in your body.

They prove that Society is a (moral) organism, so that you can prescribe

to yourself the cure that will in the end be useful to others.

265.

THE CHILD’S KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.—The happiness of a child is as much of a

myth as the happiness of the Hyperboreans of whom the Greeks fabled. The

Greeks supposed that, if indeed happiness dwells anywhere on our earth, it

must certainly dwell as far as possible from us, perhaps over yonder at

the edge of the world. Old people have the same thought—if man is at all

capable of being happy, he must be happy as far as possible from our age,

at the frontiers and beginnings of life. For many a man the sight of

children, through the veil of this myth, is the greatest happiness that he

can feel. He enters himself into the forecourt of heaven when he says,

“Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of them is the kingdom of

heaven.” The myth of the child’s kingdom of heaven holds good, in some way

or other, wherever in the modern world some sentimentality exists.

266.

THE IMPATIENT.—It is just the growing man who does not want things in the

growing stage. He is too impatient for that. The youth will not wait

until, after long study, suffering, and privation, his picture of men and

things is complete. Accordingly, he confidently accepts another picture

that lies ready to his hand and is recommended to him, and pins his faith

to that, as if it must give him at once the lines and colours of his own

painting. He presses a philosopher or a poet to his bosom, and must from

that time forth perform long stretches of forced labour and renounce his

own self. He learns much in the process, but he often forgets what is most

worth learning and knowing—his self. He remains all his life a partisan.

Ah, a vast amount of tedious work has to be done before you find your own

colours, your own brush, your own canvas!—Even then you are very far from

being a master in the art of life, but at least you are the boss in your

own workshop.

267.

THERE ARE NO TEACHERS.—As thinkers we ought only to speak of

self-teaching. The instruction of the young by others is either an

experiment performed upon something as yet unknown and unknowable, or else

a thorough levelling process, in order to make the new member of society

conform to the customs and manners that prevail for the time being. In

both cases the result is accordingly unworthy of a thinker—the handiwork

of parents and teachers, whom some valiantly honest person(25) has called

“nos ennemis naturels.” One day, when, as the world thinks, we have long

since finished our education, we discover ourselves. Then begins the

task of the thinker, and then is the time to summon him to our aid—not as

a teacher, but as a self-taught man who has experience.

268.

SYMPATHY WITH YOUTH.—We are sorry when we hear that some one who is still

young is losing his teeth or growing blind. If we knew all the irrevocable

and hopeless feelings hidden in his whole being, how great our sorrow

would be! Why do we really suffer on this account? Because youth has to

continue the work we have undertaken, and every flaw and failing in its

strength is likely to injure our work, that will fall into its hands. It

is the sorrow at the imperfect guarantee of our immortality: or, if we

only feel ourselves as executors of the human mission, it is the sorrow

that this mission must pass to weaker hands than ours.

269.

THE AGES OF LIFE.—The comparison of the four ages of life with the four

seasons of the year is a venerable piece of folly. Neither the first

twenty nor the last twenty years of a life correspond to a season of the

year, assuming that we are not satisfied with drawing a parallel between

white hair and snow and similar colour-analogies. The first twenty years

are a preparation for life in general, for the whole year of life, a sort

of long New Year’s Day. The last twenty review, assimilate, bring into

union and harmony all that has been experienced till then: as, in a small

degree, we do on every New Year’s Eve with the whole past year. But in

between there really lies an interval which suggests a comparison with the

seasons—the time from the twentieth to the fiftieth year (to speak here of

decades in the lump, while it is an understood thing that every one must

refine for himself these rough outlines). Those three decades correspond

to three seasons—summer, spring, and autumn. Winter human life has none,

unless we like to call the (unfortunately) often intervening hard, cold,

lonely, hopeless, unfruitful periods of disease the winters of man. The

twenties, hot, oppressive, stormy, impetuous, exhausting years, when we

praise the day in the evening, when it is over, as we wipe the sweat from

our foreheads—years in which work seems to us cruel but necessary—these

twenties are the summer of life. The thirties, on the other hand, are its

spring-time, with the air now too warm, now too cold, ever restless and

stimulating, bubbling sap, bloom of leaves, fragrance of buds everywhere,

many delightful mornings and evenings, work to which the song of birds

awakens us, a true work of the heart, a kind of joy in our own robustness,

strengthened by the savour of hopeful anticipation. Lastly the forties,

mysterious like all that is stationary, like a high, broad plateau,

traversed by a fresh breeze, with a clear, cloudless sky above it, which

always has the same gentle look all day and half the night—the time of

harvest and cordial gaiety—that is the autumn of life.

270.

WOMEN’S INTELLECT IN MODERN SOCIETY.—What women nowadays think of men’s

intellect may be divined from the fact that in their art of adornment they

think of anything but of emphasising the intellectual side of their faces

or their single intellectual features. On the contrary, they conceal such

traits, and understand, for example by an arrangement of their hair over

their forehead, how to give themselves an appearance of vivid, eager

sensuality and materialism, just when they but slightly possess those

qualities. Their conviction that intellect in women frightens men goes so

far that they even gladly deny the keenness of the most intellectual sense

and purposely invite the reputation of shortsightedness. They think they

will thereby make men more confiding. It is as if a soft, attractive

twilight were spreading itself around them.

271.

GREAT AND TRANSITORY.—What moves the observer to tears is the rapturous

look of happiness with which a fair young bride gazes upon her husband. We

feel all the melancholy of autumn in thinking of the greatness and of the

transitoriness of human happiness.

272.

SENSE AND SACRIFICE.—Many a woman has the intelletto del sacrifizio,(26)

and no longer enjoys life when her husband refuses to sacrifice her. With

all her wit, she then no longer knows—whither? and without perceiving it,

is changed from sacrificial victim to sacrificial priest.

273.

THE UNFEMININE.—“Stupid as a man,” say the women; “Cowardly as a woman,”

say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.

274.

MASCULINE AND FEMININE TEMPERAMENT AND MORTALITY.—That the male sex has a

worse temperament than the female follows from the fact that male children

have a greater mortality than female, clearly because they “leap out of

their skins” more easily. Their wildness and unbearableness soon make all

the bad stuff in them deadly.

275.

THE AGE OF CYCLOPEAN BUILDING.—The democratisation of Europe is a

resistless force. Even he who would stem the tide uses those very means

that democratic thought first put into men’s hands, and he makes these

means more handy and workable. The most inveterate enemies of democracy (I

mean the spirits of upheaval) seem only to exist in order, by the fear

that they inspire, to drive forward the different parties faster and

faster on the democratic course. Now we may well feel sorry for those who

are working consciously and honourably for this future. There is something

dreary and monotonous in their faces, and the grey dust seems to have been

wafted into their very brains. Nevertheless, posterity may possibly some

day laugh at our anxiety, and see in the democratic work of several

generations what we see in the building of stone dams and walls—an

activity that necessarily covers clothes and face with a great deal of

dust, and perhaps unavoidably makes the workmen, too, a little

dull-witted; but who would on that account desire such work undone? It

seems that the democratisation of Europe is a link in the chain of those

mighty prophylactic principles which are the thought of the modern era,

and whereby we rise up in revolt against the Middle Ages. Now, and now

only, is the age of Cyclopean building! A final security in the

foundations, that the future may build on them without danger! Henceforth,

an impossibility of the orchards of culture being once more destroyed

overnight by wild, senseless mountain torrents! Dams and walls against

barbarians, against plagues, against physical and spiritual serfdom! And

all this understood at first roughly and literally, but gradually in an

ever higher and more spiritual sense, so that all the principles here

indicated may appear as the intellectual preparation of the highest artist

in horticulture, who can only apply himself to his own task when the other

is fully accomplished!—True, if we consider the long intervals of time

that here lie between means and end, the great, supreme labour, straining

the powers and brains of centuries, that is necessary in order to create

or to provide each individual means, we must not bear too hardly upon the

workers of the present when they loudly proclaim that the wall and the

fence are already the end and the final goal. After all, no one yet sees

the gardener and the fruit, for whose sake the fence exists.

276.

THE RIGHT OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.—The people has not granted itself

universal suffrage but, wherever this is now in force, it has received and

accepted it as a temporary measure. But in any case the people has the

right to restore the gift, if it does not satisfy its anticipations. This

dissatisfaction seems universal nowadays, for when, at any occasion where

the vote is exercised, scarce two-thirds, nay perhaps not even the

majority of all voters, go to the polls, that very fact is a vote against

the whole suffrage system.—On this point, in fact, we must pronounce a

much sterner verdict. A law that enacts that the majority shall decide as

to the welfare of all cannot be built up on the foundation that it alone

has provided, for it is bound to require a far broader foundation, namely

the unanimity of all. Universal suffrage must not only be the expression

of the will of a majority, but of the whole country. Thus the dissent of a

very small minority is already enough to set aside the system as

impracticable; and the abstention from voting is in fact a dissent of this

kind, which ruins the whole institution. The “absolute veto” of the

individual, or—not to be too minute—the veto of a few thousands, hangs

over the system as the consequence of justice. On every occasion when it

is employed, the system must, according to the variety of the division,

first prove that it has still a right to exist.

277.

FALSE CONCLUSIONS.—What false conclusions are drawn in spheres where we

are not at home, even by those of us who are accustomed as men of science

to draw right conclusions! It is humiliating! Now it is clear that in the

great turmoil of worldly doings, in political affairs, in all sudden and

urgent matters such as almost every day brings up, these false conclusions

must decide. For no one feels at home with novelties that have sprung up

in the night. All political work, even with great statesmen, is an

improvisation that trusts to luck.

278.

PREMISSES OF THE AGE OF MACHINERY.—The press, the machine, the railway,

the telegraph are premisses of which no one has yet dared to draw the

conclusions that will follow in a thousand years.

279.

A DRAG UPON CULTURE.—When we are told that here men have no time for

productive occupations, because military manœuvres and processions take up

their days, and the rest of the population must feed and clothe them,

their dress, however, being striking, often gay and full of absurdities;

that there only a few distinguished qualities are recognised, individuals

resemble each other more than elsewhere, or at any rate are treated as

equals, yet obedience is exacted and yielded without reasoning, for men

command and make no attempt to convince; that here punishments are few,

but these few cruel and likely to become the final and most terrible; that

there treason ranks as the capital offence, and even the criticism of

evils is only ventured on by the most audacious; that there, again, human

life is cheap, and ambition often takes the form of setting life in

danger—when we hear all this, we at once say, “This is a picture of a

barbarous society that rests on a hazardous footing.” One man perhaps will

add, “It is a portrait of Sparta.” But another will become meditative and

declare that this is a description of our modern military system, as it

exists in the midst of our altogether different culture and society, a

living anachronism, the picture, as above said, of a community resting on

a hazardous footing; a posthumous work of the past, which can only act as

a drag upon the wheels of the present.—Yet at times even a drag upon

culture is vitally necessary—that is to say, when culture is advancing too

rapidly downhill or (as perhaps in this case) uphill.

280.

MORE REVERENCE FOR THEM THAT KNOW.—In the competition of production and

sale the public is made judge of the product. But the public has no

special knowledge, and judges by the appearance of the wares. In

consequence, the art of appearance (and perhaps the taste for it) must

increase under the dominance of competition, while on the other hand the

quality of every product must deteriorate. The result will be—so far as

reason does not fall in value—that one day an end will be put to that

competition, and a new principle will win the day. Only the master of the

craft should pronounce a verdict on the work, and the public should be

dependent on the belief in the personality of the judge and his honesty.

Accordingly, no anonymous work! At least an expert should be there as

guarantor and pledge his name if the name of the creator is lacking or is

unknown. The cheapness of an article is for the layman another kind of

illusion and deceit, since only durability can decide that a thing is

cheap and to what an extent. But it is difficult, and for a layman

impossible, to judge of its durability.—Hence that which produces an

effect on the eye and costs little at present gains the advantage—this

being naturally machine-made work. Again, machinery—that is to say, the

cause of the greatest rapidity and facility in production—favours the most

saleable kind of article. Otherwise it involves no tangible profit; it

would be too little used and too often stand idle. But as to what is most

saleable, the public, as above said, decides: it must be the most

exchangeable—in other words, the thing that appears good and also appears

cheap. Thus in the domain of labour our motto must also hold good: “More

respect for them that know!”

281.

THE DANGER OF KINGS.—Democracy has it in its power, without any violent

means, and only by a lawful pressure steadily exerted, to make kingship

and emperorship hollow, until only a zero remains, perhaps with the

significance of every zero in that, while nothing in itself, it multiplies

a number tenfold if placed on the right side. Kingship and emperorship

would remain a gorgeous ornament upon the simple and appropriate dress of

democracy, a beautiful superfluity that democracy allows itself, a relic

of all the historically venerable, primitive ornaments, nay the symbol of

history itself, and in this unique position a highly effective thing if,

as above said, it does not stand alone, but is put on the right side.—In

order to avoid the danger of this nullification, kings hold by their teeth

to their dignity as war-lords. To this end they need wars, or in other

words exceptional circumstances, in which that slow, lawful pressure of

the democratic forces is relaxed.

282.

THE TEACHER A NECESSARY EVIL.—Let us have as few people as possible

between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The

middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. For

their work as middlemen they want too high a fee for themselves, and this

is drawn from the original, productive spirits—namely, interest,

admiration, leisure, money, and other advantages.—Accordingly, we should

always look upon the teacher as a necessary evil, just like the merchant;

as an evil that we should make as small as possible.—Perhaps the

prevailing distress in Germany has its main cause in the fact that too

many wish to live and live well by trade (in other words, desiring as far

as possible to diminish prices for the producer and raise prices for the

consumer, and thus to profit by the greatest possible loss to both). In

the same way, we may certainly trace a main cause of the prevailing

intellectual poverty in the superabundance of teachers. It is because of

teachers that so little is learnt, and that so badly.

283.

THE TAX OF HOMAGE.—Him whom we know and honour,—be he physician, artist,

or artisan,—who does and produces something for us, we gladly pay as

highly as we can, often a fee beyond our means. On the other hand, we pay

the unknown as low a price as possible; here is a contest in which every

one struggles and makes others struggle for a foot’s breadth of land. In

the work of the known there is something that cannot be bought, the

sentiment and ingenuity put into his work for our own sake. We think we

cannot better express our sense of obligation than by a sort of sacrifice

on our part.—The heaviest tax is the tax of homage. The more competition

prevails, the more we buy for the unknown and work for the unknown, the

lower does this tax become, whereas it is really the standard for the

loftiness of man’s spiritual intercourse.

284.

THE MEANS TOWARDS GENUINE PEACE.—No government will nowadays admit that it

maintains an army in order to satisfy occasionally its passion for

conquest. The army is said to serve only defensive purposes. This

morality, which justifies self-defence, is called in as the government’s

advocate. This means, however, reserving morality for ourselves and

immorality for our neighbour, because he must be thought eager for attack

and conquest if our state is forced to consider means of self-defence.—At

the same time, by our explanation of our need of an army (because he

denies the lust of attack just as our state does, and ostensibly also

maintains his army for defensive reasons), we proclaim him a hypocrite and

cunning criminal, who would fain seize by surprise, without any fighting,

a harmless and unwary victim. In this attitude all states face each other

to-day. They presuppose evil intentions on their neighbour’s part and good

intentions on their own. This hypothesis, however, is an inhuman notion,

as bad as and worse than war. Nay, at bottom it is a challenge and motive

to war, foisting as it does upon the neighbouring state the charge of

immorality, and thus provoking hostile intentions and acts. The doctrine

of the army as a means of self-defence must be abjured as completely as

the lust of conquest. Perhaps a memorable day will come when a nation

renowned in wars and victories, distinguished by the highest development

of military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest

sacrifice to these objects, will voluntarily exclaim, “We will break our

swords,” and will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and

barrel. Making ourselves defenceless (after having been the most strongly

defended) from a loftiness of sentiment—that is the means towards genuine

peace, which must always rest upon a pacific disposition. The so-called

armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a

bellicose disposition, of a disposition that trusts neither itself nor its

neighbour, and, partly from hate, partly from fear, refuses to lay down

its weapons. Better to perish than to hate and fear, and twice as far

better to perish than to make oneself hated and feared—this must some day

become the supreme maxim of every political community!—Our liberal

representatives of the people, as is well known, have not the time for

reflection on the nature of humanity, or else they would know that they

are working in vain when they work for “a gradual diminution of the

military burdens.” On the contrary, when the distress of these burdens is

greatest, the sort of God who alone can help here will be nearest. The

tree of military glory can only be destroyed at one swoop, with one stroke

of lightning. But, as you know, lightning comes from the cloud and from

above.

285.

WHETHER PROPERTY CAN BE SQUARED WITH JUSTICE.—When the injustice of

property is strongly felt (and the hand of the great clock is once more at

this place), we formulate two methods of relieving this injustice: either

an equal distribution, or an abolition of private possession and a return

to State ownership. The latter method is especially dear to the hearts of

our Socialists, who are angry with that primitive Jew for saying, “Thou

shalt not steal.” In their view the eighth(27) commandment should rather

run, “Thou shalt not possess.”—The former method was frequently tried in

antiquity, always indeed on a small scale, and yet with poor success. From

this failure we too may learn. “Equal plots of land” is easily enough

said, but how much bitterness is aroused by the necessary division and

separation, by the loss of time-honoured possessions, how much piety is

wounded and sacrificed! We uproot the foundation of morality when we

uproot boundary-stones. Again, how much fresh bitterness among the new

owners, how much envy and looking askance! For there have never been two

really equal plots of land, and if there were, man’s envy of his neighbour

would prevent him from believing in their equality. And how long would

this equality, unhealthy and poisoned at the very roots, endure? In a few

generations, by inheritance, here one plot would come to five owners,

there five plots to one. Even supposing that men acquiesced in such abuses

through the enactment of stern laws of inheritance, the same equal plots

would indeed exist, but there would also be needy malcontents, owning

nothing but dislike of their kinsmen and neighbours, and longing for a

general upheaval.—If, however, by the second method we try to restore

ownership to the community and make the individual but a temporary tenant,

we interfere with agriculture. For man is opposed to all that is only a

transitory possession, unblessed with his own care and sacrifice. With

such property he behaves in freebooter fashion, as robber or as worthless

spendthrift. When Plato declares that self-seeking would be removed with

the abolition of property, we may answer him that, if self-seeking be

taken away, man will no longer possess the four cardinal virtues either;

as we must say that the most deadly plague could not injure mankind so

terribly as if vanity were one day to disappear. Without vanity and

self-seeking what are human virtues? By this I am far from meaning that

these virtues are but varied names and masks for these two qualities.

Plato’s Utopian refrain, which is still sung by Socialists, rests upon a

deficient knowledge of men. He lacked the historical science of moral

emotions, the insight into the origin of the good and useful

characteristics of the human soul. He believed, like all antiquity, in

good and evil as in black and white—that is to say, in a radical

difference between good and bad men and good and bad qualities.—In order

that property may henceforth inspire more confidence and become more

moral, we should keep open all the paths of work for small fortunes, but

should prevent the effortless and sudden acquisition of wealth.

Accordingly, we should take all the branches of transport and trade which

favour the accumulation of large fortunes—especially, therefore, the money

market—out of the hands of private persons or private companies, and look

upon those who own too much, just as upon those who own nothing, as types

fraught with danger to the community.

286.

THE VALUE OF LABOUR.—If we try to determine the value of labour by the

amount of time, industry, good or bad will, constraint, inventiveness or

laziness, honesty or make-believe bestowed upon it, the valuation can

never be a just one. For the whole personality would have to be thrown

into the scale, and this is impossible. Here the motto is, “Judge not!”

But after all the cry for justice is the cry we now hear from those who

are dissatisfied with the present valuation of labour. If we reflect

further we find every person non-responsible for his product, the labour;

hence merit can never be derived therefrom, and every labour is as good or

as bad as it must be through this or that necessary concatenation of

forces and weaknesses, abilities and desires. The worker is not at liberty

to say whether he shall work or not, or to decide how he shall work. Only

the standpoints of usefulness, wider and narrower, have created the

valuation of labour. What we at present call justice does very well in

this sphere as a highly refined utility, which does not only consider the

moment and exploit the immediate opportunity, but looks to the permanence

of all conditions, and thus also keeps in view the well-being of the

worker, his physical and spiritual contentment: in order that he and his

posterity may work well for our posterity and become trustworthy for

longer periods than the individual span of human life. The exploitation

of the worker was, as we now understand, a piece of folly, a robbery at

the expense of the future, a jeopardisation of society. We almost have the

war now, and in any case the expense of maintaining peace, of concluding

treaties and winning confidence, will henceforth be very great, because

the folly of the exploiters was very great and long-lasting.

287.

OF THE STUDY OF THE SOCIAL BODY.—The worst drawback for the modern student

of economics and political science in Europe, and especially in Germany,

is that the actual conditions, instead of exemplifying rules, illustrate

exceptions or stages of transition and extinction. We must therefore learn

to look beyond actually existing conditions and, for example, turn our

eyes to distant North America, where we can still contemplate and

investigate, if we will, the initial and normal movement of the social

body. In Germany such a study requires arduous and historical research,

or, as I have suggested, a telescope.

288.

HOW FAR MACHINERY HUMILIATES.—Machinery is impersonal; it robs the piece

of work of its pride, of the individual merits and defects that cling to

all work that is not machine-made—in other words, of its bit of humanity.

Formerly, all buying from handicraftsmen meant a mark of distinction for

their personalities, with whose productions people surrounded themselves.

Furniture and dress accordingly became the symbols of mutual valuation and

personal connection. Nowadays, on the other hand, we seem to live in the

midst of anonymous and impersonal serfdom.—We must not buy the

facilitation of labour too dear.

289.

CENTURY-OLD QUARANTINE.—Democratic institutions are centres of quarantine

against the old plague of tyrannical desires. As such they are extremely

useful and extremely tedious.

290.

THE MOST DANGEROUS PARTISAN.—The most dangerous partisan is he whose

defection would involve the ruin of the whole party—in other words, the

best partisan.

291.

DESTINY AND THE STOMACH.—A piece more or less of bread and butter in the

jockey’s body is occasionally the decisive factor in races and bets, and

thus in the good and bad luck of thousands.—So long as the destiny of

nations depends upon diplomats, the stomachs of diplomats will always be

the object of patriotic misgivings. Quousque tandem….

292.

THE VICTORY OF DEMOCRACY.—All political powers nowadays attempt to exploit

the fear of Socialism for their own strengthening. Yet in the long run

democracy alone gains the advantage, for all parties are now compelled

to flatter “the masses” and grant them facilities and liberties of all

kinds, with the result that the masses finally become omnipotent. The

masses are as far as possible removed from Socialism as a doctrine of

altering the acquisition of property. If once they get the steering-wheel

into their hands, through great majorities in their Parliaments, they will

attack with progressive taxation the whole dominant system of capitalists,

merchants, and financiers, and will in fact slowly create a middle class

which may forget Socialism like a disease that has been overcome.—The

practical result of this increasing democratisation will next be a

European league of nations, in which each individual nation, delimited by

the proper geographical frontiers, has the position of a canton with its

separate rights. Small account will be taken of the historic memories of

previously existing nations, because the pious affection for these

memories will be gradually uprooted under the democratic régime, with all

its craze for novelty and experiment. The corrections of frontiers that

will prove necessary will be so carried out as to serve the interests of

the great cantons and at the same time that of the whole federation, but

not that of any venerable memories. To find the standpoints for these

corrections will be the task of future diplomats, who will have to be at

the same time students of civilisation, agriculturists, and commercial

experts, with no armies but motives and utilities at their back. Then only

will foreign and home politics be inseparably connected, whereas to-day

the latter follows its haughty dictator, and gleans in sorry baskets the

stubble that is left over from the harvest of the former.

293.

GOAL AND MEANS OF DEMOCRACY.—Democracy tries to create and guarantee

independence for as many as possible in their opinions, way of life, and

occupation. For this purpose democracy must withhold the political

suffrage both from those who have nothing and from those who are really

rich, as being the two intolerable classes of men. At the removal of these

classes it must always work, because they are continually calling its task

in question. In the same way democracy must prevent all measures that seem

to aim at party organisation. For the three great foes of independence, in

that threefold sense, are the have-nots, the rich, and the parties.—I

speak of democracy as of a thing to come. What at present goes by that

name is distinguished from older forms of government only by the fact that

it drives with new horses; the roads and the wheels are the same as of

yore.—Has the danger really become less with these conveyances of the

commonwealth?

294.

DISCRETION AND SUCCESS.—That great quality of discretion, which is

fundamentally the virtue of virtues, their ancestress and queen, has in

common life by no means always success on its side. The wooer would find

himself deceived if he had wooed that virtue only for the sake of success.

For it is rated by practical people as suspicious, and is confused with

cunning and hypocrisy: he who obviously lacks discretion, the man who

quickly grasps and sometimes misses his grasp, has prejudice on his

side—he is an honest, trustworthy fellow. Practical people, accordingly,

do not like the prudent man, thinking he is to them a danger. Moreover, we

often assume the prudent man to be anxious, preoccupied,

pedantic—unpractical, butterfly people find him uncomfortable, because he

does not live in their happy-go-lucky way, without thinking of actions and

duties; he appears among them as their embodied conscience, and the bright

day is dimmed to their eyes before his gaze. Thus when success and

popularity fail him, he may often say by way of private consolation, “So

high are the taxes you have to pay for the possession of the most precious

of human commodities—still it is worth the price!”

295.

ET IN ARCADIA EGO.—I looked down, over waves of hills, to a milky-green

lake, through firs and pines austere with age; rocky crags of all shapes

about me, the soil gay with flowers and grasses. A herd of cattle moved,

stretched, and expanded itself before me; single cows and groups in the

distance, in the clearest evening light, hard by the forest of pines;

others nearer and darker; all in calm and eventide contentment. My watch

pointed to half-past six. The bull of the herd had stepped into the white

foaming brook, and went forward slowly, now striving against, now giving

way to his tempestuous course; thus, no doubt, he took his sort of fierce

pleasure. Two dark brown beings, of Bergamasque origin, tended the herd,

the girl dressed almost like a boy. On the left, overhanging cliffs and

fields of snow above broad belts of woodland; to the right, two enormous

ice-covered peaks, high above me, shimmering in the veil of the sunny

haze—all large, silent, and bright. The beauty of the whole was

awe-inspiring and induced to a mute worship of the moment and its

revelation. Unconsciously, as if nothing could be more natural, you

peopled this pure, clear world of light (which had no trace of yearning,

of expectancy, of looking forward or backward) with Greek heroes. You felt

it all as Poussin and his school felt—at once heroic and idyllic.—So

individual men too have lived, constantly feeling themselves in the world

and the world in themselves, and among them one of the greatest men, the

inventor of a heroico-idyllic form of philosophy—Epicurus.

296.

COUNTING AND MEASURING.—The art of seeing many things, of weighing one

with another, of reckoning one thing with another and constructing from

them a rapid conclusion, a fairly correct sum—that goes to make a great

politician or general or merchant. This quality is, in fact, a power of

speedy mental calculation. The art of seeing one thing alone, of finding

therein the sole motive for action, the guiding principle of all other

action, goes to make the hero and also the fanatic. This quality means a

dexterity in measuring with one scale.

297.

NOT TO SEE TOO SOON.—As long as we undergo some experience, we must give

ourselves up to the experience and shut our eyes—in other words, not

become observers of what we are undergoing. For to observe would disturb

good digestion of the experience, and instead of wisdom we should gain

nothing but dyspepsia.

298.

FROM THE PRACTICE OF THE WISE.—To become wise we must will to undergo

certain experiences, and accordingly leap into their jaws. This, it is

true, is very dangerous. Many a “sage” has been eaten up in the process.

299.

EXHAUSTION OF THE INTELLECT.—Our occasional coldness and indifference

towards people, which is imputed to us as hardness and defect of

character, is often only an exhaustion of the intellect. In this state

other men are to us, as we are to ourselves, tedious or immaterial.

300.

“THE ONE THING NEEDFUL.”—If we are clever, the one thing we need is to

have joy in our hearts. “Ah,” adds some one, “if we are clever, the best

thing we can do is to be wise.”

301.

A SIGN OF LOVE.—Some one said, “There are two persons about whom I have

never thought deeply. That is a sign of my love for them.”

302.

HOW WE SEEK TO IMPROVE BAD ARGUMENTS.—Many a man adds a bit of his

personality to his bad arguments, as if they would thus go better and

change into straight and good arguments. In the same way, players at

skittles, even after a throw, try to give a direction to the ball by turns

and gestures.

303.

HONESTY.—It is but a small thing to be a pattern sort of man with regard

to rights and property—for instance (to name trifling points, which of

course give a better proof of this sort of pattern nature than great

examples), if as a boy one never steals fruit from another’s orchard, and

as a man never walks on unmown fields. It is but little; you are then

still only a “law-abiding person,” with just that degree of morality of

which a “society,” a group of human beings, is capable.

304.

“MAN!”—What is the vanity of the vainest individual as compared with the

vanity which the most modest person feels when he thinks of his position

in nature and in the world as “Man!”

305.

THE MOST NECESSARY GYMNASTIC.—Through deficiency in self-control in small

matters a similar deficiency on great occasions slowly arises. Every day

on which we have not at least once denied ourselves some trifle is

turned to bad use and a danger to the next day. This gymnastic is

indispensable if we wish to maintain the joy of being our own master.

306.

LOSING OURSELVES.—When we have first found ourselves, we must understand

how from time to time to lose ourselves and then to find ourselves

again.—This is true on the assumption that we are thinkers. A thinker

finds it a drawback always to be tied to one person.

307.

WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO PART.—You must, for a time at least, part from

that which you want to know and measure. Only when you have left a city do

you see how high its towers rise above its houses.

308.

AT NOONTIDE.—He to whom an active and stormy morning of life is allotted,

at the noontide of life feels his soul overcome by a strange longing for a

rest that may last for months and years. All grows silent around him,

voices sound farther and farther in the distance, the sun shines straight

down upon him. On a hidden woodland sward he sees the great God Pan

sleeping, and with Pan Nature seems to him to have gone to sleep with an

expression of eternity on their faces. He wants nothing, he troubles about

nothing; his heart stands still, only his eye lives. It is a death with

waking eyes. Then man sees much that he never saw before, and, so far as

his eye can reach, all is woven into and as it were buried in a net of

light. He feels happy, but it is a heavy, very heavy kind of

happiness.—Then at last the wind stirs in the trees, noontide is over,

life carries him away again, life with its blind eyes, and its tempestuous

retinue behind it—desire, illusion, oblivion, enjoyment, destruction,

decay. And so comes evening, more stormy and more active than was even the

morning.—To the really active man these prolonged phases of cognition seem

almost uncanny and morbid, but not unpleasant.

309.

TO BEWARE OF ONE’S PORTRAIT-PAINTER.—A great painter, who in a portrait

has revealed and put on canvas the fullest expression and look of which a

man is capable, will almost always think, when he sees the man later in

real life, that he is only looking at a caricature.

310.

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW LIFE.—_First Principle_: to arrange one’s

life on the most secure and tangible basis, not as hitherto upon the most

distant, undetermined, and cloudy foundation. Second Principle: to

establish the rank of the nearest and nearer things, and of the more and

less secure, before one arranges one’s life and directs it to a final end.

311.

DANGEROUS IRRITABILITY.—Talented men who are at the same time idle will

always appear somewhat irritated when one of their friends has

accomplished a thorough piece of work. Their jealousy is awakened, they

are ashamed of their own laziness, or rather, they fear that their active

friend will now despise them even more than before. In such a mood they

criticise the new achievement, and, to the utter astonishment of the

author, their criticism becomes a revenge.

312.

DESTRUCTIONS OF ILLUSIONS.—Illusions are certainly expensive amusements;

but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon

as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.

313.

THE MONOTONE OF THE “SAGE.”—Cows sometimes have a look of wondering which

stops short on the path to questioning. In the eye of the higher

intelligence, on the other hand, the nil admirari is spread out like the

monotony of the cloudless sky.

314.

NOT TO BE ILL TOO LONG.—We should beware of being ill too long. The

lookers-on become impatient of their customary duty of showing sympathy,

because they find it too much trouble to maintain the appearance of this

emotion for any length of time. Then they immediately pass to suspicion of

our character, with the conclusion: “You deserve to be ill, and we need no

longer be at pains to show our sympathy.”

315.

A HINT TO ENTHUSIASTS.—He who likes to be carried away, and would fain be

carried on high, must beware lest he become too heavy. For instance, he

must not learn much, and especially not let himself be crammed with

science. Science makes men ponderous—take care, ye enthusiasts!

316.

KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO SURPRISE ONESELF.—He who would see himself as he is,

must know how to surprise himself, torch in hand. For with the mind it

is as with the body: whoever is accustomed to look at himself in the glass

forgets his ugliness, and only recognises it again by means of the

portrait-painter. Yet he even grows used to the picture and forgets his

ugliness all over again.—Herein we see the universal law that man cannot

endure unalterable ugliness, unless for a moment. He forgets or denies it

in all cases.—The moralists must reckon upon that “moment” for bringing

forward their truths.

317.

OPINIONS AND FISH.—We are possessors of our opinions as of fish—that is,

in so far as we are possessors of a fish pond. We must go fishing and have

luck—then we have our fish, our opinions. I speak here of live

opinions, of live fish. Others are content to possess a cabinet of

fossils—and, in their head, “convictions.”

318.

SIGNS OF FREEDOM AND SERVITUDE.—To satisfy one’s needs so far as possible

oneself, even if imperfectly, is the path towards freedom in mind and

personality. To satisfy many even superfluous needs, and that as fully as

possible, is a training for servitude. The Sophist Hippias, who himself

earned and made all that he wore within and without, is the representative

of the highest freedom of mind and personality. It does not matter whether

all is done equally well and perfectly—pride can repair the damaged

places.

319.

BELIEF IN ONESELF.—In our times we mistrust every one who believes in

himself. Formerly this was enough to make people believe in one. The

recipe for finding faith now runs: “Spare not thyself! In order to set thy

opinion in a credible light, thou must first set fire to thy own hut!”

320.

AT ONCE RICHER AND POORER.—I know a man who accustomed himself even in

childhood to think well of the intellectuality of mankind—in other words,

of their real devotion as regards things of the intellect, their unselfish

preference for that which is recognised as true—but who had at the same

time a modest or even depreciatory view of his own brain (judgment,

memory, presence of mind, imagination). He set no value on himself when he

compared himself with others. Now in the course of years he was compelled,

first once and then in a hundred ways, to revise this verdict. One would

have thought he would be thoroughly satisfied and delighted. Such, in

fact, was to some extent the case, but, as he once said, “Yet a bitterness

of the deepest dye is mingled with my feeling, such as I did not know in

earlier life; for since I learnt to value men and myself more correctly,

my intellect seems to me of less use. I scarcely think I can now do any

good at all with it, because the minds of others cannot understand the

good. I now always see before me the frightful gulf between those who

could give help and those who need help. So I am troubled by the

misfortune of having my intellect to myself and of being forced to enjoy

it alone so far as it can give any enjoyment. But to give is more blessed

than to possess, and what is the richest man in the solitude of a

desert?”(28)

321.

HOW WE SHOULD ATTACK.—The reasons for which men believe or do not believe

are in very few people as strong as they might be. As a rule, in order to

shake a belief it is far from necessary to use the heaviest weapon of

attack. Many attain their object by merely making the attack with some

noise—in fact, pop-guns are often enough. In dealing with very vain

persons, the semblance of a strong attack is enough. They think they are

being taken quite seriously, and readily give way.

322.

DEATH.—Through the certain prospect of death a precious, fragrant drop of

frivolity might be mixed with every life—and now, you singular

druggist-souls, you have made of death a drop of poison, unpleasant to

taste, which makes the whole of life hideous.

323.

REPENTANCE.—Never allow repentance free play, but say at once to yourself,

“That would be adding a second piece of folly to the first.” If you have

worked evil, you must bethink yourself of doing good. If you are punished

for your actions, submit to the punishment with the feeling that by this

very submission you are somehow doing good, in that you are deterring

others from falling into the same error. Every malefactor who is punished

has a right to consider himself a benefactor to mankind.

324.

BECOMING A THINKER.—How can any one become a thinker if he does not spend

at least a third part of the day without passions, men, and books?

325.

THE BEST REMEDY.—A little health on and off is the best remedy for the

invalid.

326.

DON’T TOUCH.—There are dreadful people who, instead of solving a problem,

complicate it for those who deal with it and make it harder to solve.(29)

Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be entreated

not to hit the nail at all.

327.

FORGETTING NATURE.—We speak of Nature, and, in doing so, forget ourselves:

we ourselves are Nature, _quand même_.—Consequently, Nature is something

quite different from what we feel on hearing her name pronounced.

328.

PROFUNDITY AND ENNUI.—In the case of profound men, as of deep wells, it

takes a long time before anything that is thrown into them reaches the

bottom. The spectators, who generally do not wait long enough, too readily

look upon such a man as callous and hard—or even as boring.

329.

WHEN IT IS TIME TO VOW FIDELITY TO ONESELF.—We sometimes go astray in an

intellectual direction which does not correspond to our talents. For a

time we struggle heroically against wind and tide, really against

ourselves; but finally we become weary and we pant. What we accomplish

gives us no real pleasure, since we think that we have paid too heavy a

price for these successes. We even despair of our productivity, of our

future, perhaps in the midst of victory.—Finally, finally we turn back—and

then the wind swells our sails and bears us into our smooth water. What

bliss! How certain of victory we feel! Only now do we know what we are and

what we intend, and now we vow fidelity to ourselves, and have a right to

do so—as men that know.

330.

WEATHER PROPHETS.—Just as the clouds reveal to us the direction of the

wind high above our heads, so the lightest and freest spirits give signs

of future weather by their course. The wind in the valley and the

market-place opinions of to-day have no significance for the future, but

only for the past.

331.

CONTINUAL ACCELERATION.—Those who begin slowly and find it hard to become

familiar with a subject, sometimes acquire afterwards the quality of

continual acceleration—so that in the end no one knows where the current

will take them.

332.

THE THREE GOOD THINGS.—Greatness, calm, sunlight—these three embrace all

that a thinker desires and also demands of himself: his hopes and duties,

his claims in the intellectual and moral sphere, nay even in his daily

manner of life and the scenic background of his residence. Corresponding

to these three things are, firstly thoughts that exalt, secondly thoughts

that soothe, and thirdly thoughts that illuminate—but, fourthly, thoughts

that share in all these three qualities, in which all earthly things are

transfigured. This is the kingdom of the great trinity of joy.

333.

DYING FOR “TRUTH.”—We should not let ourselves be burnt for our

opinions—we are not so certain of them as all that. But we might let

ourselves be burnt for the right of possessing and changing our opinions.

334.

MARKET VALUE.—If we wish to pass exactly for what we are, we must be

something that has its market value. As, however, only objects in common

use have a market value, this desire is the consequence either of shrewd

modesty or of stupid immodesty.

335.

MORAL FOR BUILDERS.—We must remove the scaffolding when the house has been

built.

336.

SOPHOCLEANISM.—Who poured more water into wine than the Greeks? Sobriety

and grace combined—that was the aristocratic privilege of the Athenian in

the time of Sophocles and after. Imitate that whoever can! In life and in

work!

337.

HEROISM.—The heroic consists in doing something great (or in nobly not

doing something) without feeling oneself to be in competition with or

before others. The hero carries with him, wherever he goes, the

wilderness and the holy land with inviolable precincts.

338.

FINDING OUR “DOUBLE” IN NATURE.—In some country places we rediscover

ourselves, with a delightful shudder: it is the pleasantest way of finding

our “double.”—How happy must he be who has that feeling just here, in this

perpetually sunny October air, in this happy elfin play of the wind from

morn till eve, in this clearest of atmospheres and mildest of

temperatures, in all the serious yet cheerful landscape of hill, lake, and

forest on this plateau, which has encamped fearlessly next to the terrors

of eternal snow: here, where Italy and Finland have joined hands, and

where the home of all the silver colour-tones of Nature seems to be

established. How happy must he be who can say, “True, there are many

grander and finer pieces of scenery, but this is so familiar and intimate

to me, related by blood, nay even more to me!”

339.

AFFABILITY OF THE SAGE.—The sage will unconsciously be affable in his

intercourse with other men, as a prince would be, and will readily treat

them as equals, in spite of all differences of talent, rank, and

character. For this characteristic, however, so soon as people notice it,

he is most heavily censured.

340.

GOLD.—All that is gold does not glitter. A soft sheen characterises the

most precious metal.

341.

WHEEL AND DRAG.—The wheel and the drag have different duties, but also one

in common—that of hurting each other.

342.

DISTURBANCES OF THE THINKER.—All that interrupts the thinker in his

thoughts (disturbs him, as people say) must be regarded by him calmly, as

a new model who comes in by the door to offer himself to the artist.

Interruptions are the ravens which bring food to the recluse.

343.

BEING VERY CLEVER.—Being very clever keeps men young, but they must put up

with being considered, for that very reason, older than they are. For men

read the handwriting of the intellect as signs of experience—that is, of

having lived much and evilly, of suffering, error, and repentance. Hence,

if we are very clever and show it, we appear to them older and wickeder

than we are.

344.

HOW WE MUST CONQUER.—We ought not to desire victory if we only have the

prospect of overcoming our opponent by a hair’s breadth. A good victory

makes the vanquished rejoice, and must have about it something divine

which spares humiliation.

345.

AN ILLUSION OF SUPERIOR MINDS.—Superior minds find it difficult to free

themselves from an illusion; for they imagine that they excite envy among

the mediocre and are looked upon as exceptions. As a matter of fact,

however, they are looked upon as superfluous, as something that would not

be missed if it did not exist.

346.

DEMANDED BY CLEANLINESS.—Changing opinions is in some natures as much

demanded by cleanliness as changing clothes. In the case of other natures

it is only demanded by vanity.

347.

ALSO WORTHY OF A HERO.—Here is a hero who did nothing but shake the tree

as soon as the fruits were ripe. Do you think that too small a thing?

Well, just look at the tree that he shook.

348.

A GAUGE FOR WISDOM.—The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the

diminution of ill-temper.

349.

EXPRESSING AN ERROR DISAGREEABLY.—It is not to every one’s taste to hear

truth pleasantly expressed. But let no one at least believe that error

will become truth if it is disagreeably expressed.

350.

THE GOLDEN MAXIM.—Man has been bound with many chains, in order that he

may forget to comport himself like an animal. And indeed he has become

more gentle, more intellectual, more joyous, more meditative than any

animal. But now he still suffers from having carried his chains so long,

from having been so long without pure air and free movement—these chains,

however, are, as I repeat again and again, the ponderous and significant

errors of moral, religious, and metaphysical ideas. Only when the disease

of chains is overcome is the first great goal reached—the separation of

man from the brute. At present we stand in the midst of our work of

removing the chains, and in doing so we need the strictest precautions.

Only the ennobled man may be granted freedom of spirit; to him alone comes

the alleviation of life and heals his wounds; he is the first who can say

that he lives for the sake of joy, with no other aim; in any other mouth,

his motto of “Peace around me and goodwill towards all the most familiar

things,” would be dangerous.—In this motto for single individuals he is

thinking of an ancient saying, magnificent and pathetic, which applied to

all, and has remained standing above all mankind, as a motto and a beacon

whereby shall perish all who adorn their banner too early—the rock on

which Christianity foundered. It is not even yet time, it seems, for _all

men_ to have the lot of those shepherds who saw the heavens lit up above

them and heard the words: “Peace on earth and goodwill to one another

among men.”—It is still the age of the individual.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The Shadow: Of all that you have enunciated, nothing pleased me more

than one promise: “Ye want again to be good neighbours to the most

familiar things.” This will be to the advantage of us poor shadows too.

For do but confess that you have hitherto been only too fond of reviling

us.

The Wanderer: Reviling? But why did you never defend yourselves? After

all, you were very close to our ears.

The Shadow: It seemed to us that we were too near you to have a right to

talk of ourselves.

The Wanderer: What delicacy! Ah, you shadows are “better men”(30) than

we, I can see that.

The Shadow: And yet you called us “importunate”—us, who know one thing

at least extremely well: how to be silent and to wait—no Englishman knows

it better. It is true we are very, very often in the retinue of men, but

never as their bondsmen. When man shuns light, we shun man—so far, at

least, we are free.

The Wanderer: Ah, light shuns man far oftener, and then also you abandon

him.

The Shadow: It has often pained me to leave you. I am eager for

knowledge, and much in man has remained obscure to me, because I cannot

always be in his company. At the price of complete knowledge of man I

would gladly be your slave.

The Wanderer: Do you know, do I know, whether you would not then

unwittingly become master instead of slave? Or would remain a slave

indeed, but would lead a life of humiliation and disgust because you

despised your master? Let us both be content with freedom such as you have

enjoyed up to now—you and I! For the sight of a being not free would

embitter my greatest joys; all that is best would be repugnant to me if

any one had to share it with me—I will not hear of any slaves about me.

That is why I do not care for the dog, that lazy, tail-wagging parasite,

who first became “doggish” as the slave of man, and of whom they still say

that he is loyal to his master and follows him like——

The Shadow: Like his shadow, they say. Perhaps I have already followed

you too long to-day? It has been the longest day, but we are nearing the

end; be patient a little more! The grass is damp; I am feeling chilly.

The Wanderer: Oh, is it already time to part? And I had to hurt you in

the end—I saw you became darker.

The Shadow: I blushed the only colour I have at command. I remembered

that I had often lain at your feet like a dog, and that you then——

The Wanderer: Can I not with all speed do something to please you? Have

you no wish?

The Shadow: None, except perhaps the wish that the philosophic “dog”(31)

expressed to Alexander the Great—just move a little out of my light; I

feel cold.

The Wanderer: What am I to do?

The Shadow: Walk under those fir-trees and look around you towards the

mountains; the sun is sinking.

The Wanderer: Where are you? Where are you?

FOOTNOTES

1 “Foreword” and “forword” would be the literal rendering of the play

on words.—TR.

2 The allusion is to the ending of the Second Part of Goethe’s

Faust—“das Ewig Weibliche Zieht uns hinan!”—“The Eternal

Feminine Draweth us on!”—TR.

3 It has been attempted to render the play on “Gewissen” and

“Wissen.”—TR.

4 Cf. John i. 1.—TR.

5 The German word Mitfreude, coined by Nietzsche in opposition to

Mitleid (sympathy), is untranslateable.—TR.

6 Herostratus of Ephesus (in 356 B.C.) set fire to the temple of Diana

in order (as he confessed on the rack) to gain notoriety.—TR.

7 Quotation from Schiller, Don Carlos, i. 5.—TR.

8 This, of course, refers to Jesus and Socrates.—TR.

9 Queen of the Amazons, slain by Achilles in the Trojan War.—TR.

10 From Schiller, _Wallenstein’s Lager_: “Wer den Besten seiner Zeit

genug gethan, der hat gelebt für alle Zeiten” (“He that has

satisfied the best men of his time has lived for all time”).

11 In German Barockstil, i.e. the degenerate post-Renaissance style

in art and literature, which spread from Italy in the seventeenth

century.—TR.

12 The original word, _Freizügig_, means, in the modern German Empire,

possessing the free right of migration, without pecuniary burdens or

other restrictions, from one German state to another. The play on

words in Zug zur Freiheit (“impulse to freedom”) is

untranslateable.—TR.

13 Nietzsche seems to allude to his own case, for he ultimately

contracted a myopia which bordered on blindness.—TR.

14 The play on bergen (shelter) and verbergen (hide) is

untranslateable.—TR.

15 Allusion to German proverb: “Where there is nothing, the Emperor has

lost his rights.”—TR.

16 Genesis xiii. 9.—TR.

17 Luke viii. 33.—TR.

18 The play on Freudenschaften (i.e. pleasure-giving passions) and

Leidenschaften (i.e. pain-giving passions) is often used by

Nietzsche, and is untranslateable.—_Tr._

19 The wife of the Stoic Thrasea Paetus, when their complicity in the

great conspiracy of 65 A.D. against Nero was discovered, is reported

to have said as she committed suicide, “It doesn’t hurt,

Paetus.”—_Tr._

20 It is interesting to compare this judgment with Carlyle’s praise of

Jean Paul. The dressing-gown is an allusion to Jean Paul’s favourite

costume.—TR.

21 The German copyright expires thirty years after publication.—TR.

22 Nietzsche himself was extremely shortsighted.—TR.

23 In the sixth century B.C. Pythagoras founded at Croton a “school”

somewhat resembling a monastic order. Among the ordeals for

novitiates was enforced silence for five years.—TR.

24 In the German _Aufklärung_ there is a play on the sense “clearing

up” (of weather) and “enlightenment.”—TR.

25 Stendhal.—TR.

26 A transposition of _sacrifizio dell’ intelletto_, the Jesuit

maxim.—TR.

27 The original, by a curious slip, has “seventh.”—TR.

28 Clearly autobiographical. Nietzsche, like all great men, passed

through a period of modesty and doubt.—TR.

29 Nietzsche here alludes to his own countrymen.—TR.

30 An allusion to the poem “Der Wilde” (The Savage) by Säume, which

ends with the line, “Sehet, wir wilden sind doch bessere Menschen”

(Behold, after all, we savages are better men).—TR.

31 Diogenes, founder of the Cynic school, which derived its name from

κυών (dog).—TR.