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The old Problem: "What is German?"—Let us count up apart the real acquisitions of philosophical thought for which we have to thank German intellects: are they in any allowable sense to be counted also to the credit of the whole race? Can we say that they are at the same time the work of the "German soul," or at least a symptom of it, in the sense in which we are accustomed to think, for example, of Plato's ideomania, his almost religious madness for form, as an event and an evidence of the "Greek soul"? Or would the reverse perhaps be true? Were they so individual, so much an exception to the spirit of the race, as was, for example, Goethe's Paganism with a good conscience? Or as Bismarck's Macchiavelism was with a good conscience, his so-called "practical politics" in Germany? Did our philosophers perhaps even go counter to theneedof the "German soul"? In short, were the German philosophers really philosophicalGermans?—I call to mind three cases. Firstly,Leibnitz'sincomparable insight—with which he obtained the advantage not only over Descartes, but over all who had philosophised up to his time,—that consciousness is only an accident of mental representation, andnotits necessary and essential attribute; that consequently what we call consciousness only constitutes a state of our spiritual and psychical world (perhaps a morbid state), and isfar from being that world itself:—is there anything German in this thought, the profundity of which has not as yet been exhausted? Is there reasonto think that a person of the Latin race would not readily have stumbled on this reversal of the apparent?—for it is a reversal. Let us call to mind secondly, the immense note of interrogation whichKantwrote after the notion of causality. Not that he at all doubted its legitimacy, like Hume: on the contrary, he began cautiously to define the domain within which this notion has significance generally (we have not even yet got finished with the marking out of these limits). Let us take thirdly, the astonishing hit ofHegel, who stuck at no logical usage or fastidiousness when he ventured to teach that the conceptions of kinds developout of one another: with which theory the thinkers in Europe were prepared for the last great scientific movement, for Darwinism—for without Hegel there would have been no Darwin. Is there anything German in this Hegelian innovation which first introduced the decisive conception of evolution into science? Yes, without doubt we feel that there is something of ourselves "discovered" and divined in all three cases; we are thankful for it, and at the same time surprised; each of these three principles is a thoughtful piece of German self-confession, self-understanding, and self-knowledge. We feel with Leibnitz that "our inner world is far richer, ampler, and more concealed"; as Germans we are doubtful, like Kant, about the ultimate validity of scientific knowledge of nature, and in general about whatevercanbe knowncausaliter: theknowableas such now appears to us oflessworth. We Germans should still have been Hegelians, even though there had never been aHegel, inasmuch as we (in contradistinction to all Latin peoples) instinctively attribute to becoming, to evolution, a profounder significance and higher value than to that which "is"—we hardly believe at all in the validity of the concept "being." This is all the more the case because we are not inclined to concede to our human logic that it is logic in itself, that it is the only kind of logic (we should rather like, on the contrary, to convince ourselves that it is only a special case, and perhaps one of the strangest and most stupid). A fourth question would be whether alsoSchopenhauerwith his Pessimism, that is to say the problem ofthe worth of existence, had to be a German. I think not. The eventafterwhich this problem was to be expected with certainty, so that an astronomer of the soul could have calculated the day and the hour for it—namely, the decay of the belief in the Christian God, the victory of scientific atheism,—is a universal European event, in which all races are to have their share of service and honour. On the contrary, it has to be ascribed precisely to the Germans—those with whom Schopenhauer was contemporary,—that they delayed this victory of atheism longest, and endangered it most. Hegel especially was its retarderpar excellence, in virtue of the grandiose attempt which he made to persuade us of the divinity of existence, with the help at the very last of our sixth sense, "the historical sense." As philosopher, Schopenhauer was thefirstavowed and inflexible atheist we Germans have had: his hostility to Hegel had here its background. The non-divinityof existence was regarded by him as something understood, palpable, indisputable; he always lost his philosophical composure and got into a passion when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the bush here. It is at this point that his thorough uprightness of character comes in: unconditional, honest atheism is precisely thepreliminary conditionfor his raising the problem, as a final and hardwon victory of the European conscience, as the most prolific act of two thousand years' discipline to truth, which in the end no longer tolerates thelieof the belief in a God.... One sees what has really gained the victory over the Christian God—, Christian morality itself, the conception of veracity, taken ever more strictly, the confessional subtlety of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated to the scientific conscience, to intellectual purity at any price. To look upon nature as if it were a proof of the goodness and care of a God; to interpret history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant testimony to a moral order in the world and a moral final purpose; to explain personal experiences as pious men have long enough explained them, as if everything were a dispensation or intimation of Providence, something planned and sent on behalf of the salvation of the soul: all that is nowpast, it has conscienceagainstit, it is regarded by all the more acute consciences as disreputable and dishonourable, as mendaciousness, femininism, weakness, and cowardice,—by virtue of this severity, if by anything, we aregoodEuropeans, the heirs of Europe's longest and bravest self-conquest. When we thusreject the Christian interpretation, and condemn its "significance" as a forgery, we are immediately confronted in a striking manner with theSchopenhauerianquestion:Has existence then a significance at all?—the question which will require a couple of centuries even to be completely heard in all its profundity. Schopenhauer's own answer to this question was—if I may be forgiven for saying so—a premature, juvenile reply, a mere compromise, a stoppage and sticking in the very same Christian-ascetic, moral perspectives,the belief in which had got notice to quitalong with the belief in God.... But heraisedthe question—as a good European, as we have said, andnotas a German.—Or did the Germans prove at least by the way in which they seized on the Schopenhauerian question, their inner connection and relationship to him, their preparation for his problem, and theirneedof it? That there has been thinking and printing even in Germany since Schopenhauer's time on the problem raised by him,—it was late enough!—does not at all suffice to enable us to decide in favour of this closer relationship; one could, on the contrary, lay great stress on the peculiarawkwardnessof this post-Schopenhauerian Pessimism—Germans evidently do not behave themselves there as in their element. I do not at all allude here to Eduard von Hartmann; on the contrary, my old suspicion is not vanished even at present that he istoo cleverfor us; I mean to say that as arrant rogue from the very first, he did not perhaps make merry solely over German Pessimism—and that in the end he might probably "bequeathe"to them the truth as to how far a person could bamboozle the Germans themselves in the age of bubble companies. But further, are we perhaps to reckon to the honour of Germans, the old humming-top, Bahnsen, who all his life spun about with the greatest pleasure around his realistically dialectic misery and "personal ill-luck,"—wasthatGerman? (In passing I recommend his writings for the purpose for which I myself have used them, as anti-pessimistic fare, especially on account of hiselegantia psychologica, which, it seems to me, could alleviate even the most constipated body and soul). Or would it be proper to count such dilettanti and old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainländer, among the genuine Germans? After all he was probably a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen, nor Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind, deranged and problematic, hishonourablefright) was not only an exceptional case among Germans, but aGermanevent: while everything else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: "Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles,"[12]consequentlysub specie speciei, namely, the Germanspecies), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No!The Germans of to-day arenotpessimists! And Schopenhauer was a pessimist, I repeat it once more, as a good European, andnotas a German.
The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit.—We Europeans find ourselves in view of an immense world of ruins, where some things still tower aloft, while other objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most things however already lie on the ground, picturesque enough—where were there ever finer ruins?—overgrown with weeds, large and small. It is the Church which is this city of decay: we see the religious organisation of Christianity shaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in God is overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity—it was the last construction of the Romans!—could not of course be demolished all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it, every sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had to assist in the work of destruction. But that which is strangest is that those who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve Christianity, have been precisely those who did most to destroy it,—the Germans. It seems that the Germans do not understand the essence of a Church. Are they not spiritual enough, or not distrustful enough to do so? In any case the structure of the Church rests on asouthernfreedom and liberality of spirit, and similarly on a southern suspicion of nature, man, and spirit,—it rests on a knowledge of man,an experience of man, entirely different from what the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation in all its length and breadth was the indignation of the simple against something "complicated." To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding, in which much is to be forgiven,—people did not understand the mode of expression of avictoriousChurch, and only saw corruption; they misunderstood the noble scepticism, theluxuryof scepticism and toleration which every victorious, self-confident power permits.... One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as regards all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly endowed; he was fatally short-sighted, superficial and imprudent—and above all, as a man sprung from the people, he lacked all the hereditary qualities of a ruling caste, and all the instincts for power; so that his work, his intention to restore the work of the Romans, merely became involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement of a work of destruction. He unravelled, he tore asunder with honest rage, where the old spider had woven longest and most carefully. He gave the sacred books into the hands of everyone,—they thereby got at last into the hands of the philologists, that is to say, the annihilators of every belief based upon books. He demolished the conception of "the Church" in that he repudiated the belief in the inspiration of the Councils: for only under the supposition that the inspiring spirit which had founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it, still goes on building its house, does the conception of "the Church" retain its power. He gave backto the priest sexual intercourse: but three-fourths of the reverence of which the people (and above all the women of the people) are capable, rests on the belief that an exceptional man in this respect will also be an exceptional man in other respects. It is precisely here that the popular belief in something superhuman in man, in a miracle, in the saving God in man, has its most subtle and insidious advocate. After Luther had given a wife to the priest, he hadto take from himauricular confession; that was psychologically right: but thereby he practically did away with the Christian priest himself, whose profoundest utility has ever consisted in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, and a grave for secrets. "Every man his own priest"—behind such formulæ and their bucolic slyness, there was concealed in Luther the profoundest hatred of "higher men" and the rule of "higher men," as the Church had conceived them. Luther disowned an ideal which he did not know how to attain, while he seemed to combat and detest the degeneration thereof. As a matter of fact, he, the impossible monk, repudiated theruleof thehomines religiosi; he consequently brought about precisely the same thing within the ecclesiastical social order that he combated so impatiently in the civic order,—namely a "peasant insurrection."—As to all that grew out of his Reformation afterwards, good and bad, which can at present be almost counted up,—who would be naïve enough to praise or blame Luther simply on account of these results? He is innocent of all; he knew not what he did. The art of making the European spirit shallower,especially in the north, or moregood-natured, if people would rather hear it designated by a moral expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in advance in the Lutheran Reformation; and similarly there grew out of it the mobility and disquietude of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief in the right to freedom, and its "naturalness." If people wish to ascribe to the Reformation in the last instance the merit of having prepared and favoured that which we at present honour as "modern science," they must of course add that it is also accessory to bringing about the degeneration of the modern scholar with his lack of reverence, of shame and of profundity; and that it is also responsible for all naïve candour and plain-dealing in matters of knowledge, in short for theplebeianism of the spiritwhich is peculiar to the last two centuries, and from which even pessimism hitherto, has not in any way delivered us. "Modern ideas" also belong to this peasant insurrection of the north against the colder, more ambiguous, more suspicious spirit of the south, which has built itself its greatest monument in the Christian Church. Let us not forget in the end what a Church is, and especially, in contrast to every "State": a Church is above all an authoritative organisation which secures to themost spiritualmen the highest rank, andbelievesin the power of spirituality so far as to forbid all grosser appliances of authority. Through this alone the Church is under all circumstances anoblerinstitution than the State.—
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Vengeance on Intellect and other Backgrounds of Morality.—Morality—where do you think it has its most dangerous and rancorous advocates?—There, for example, is an ill-constituted man, who does not possess enough of intellect to be able to take pleasure in it, and just enough of culture to be aware of the fact; bored, satiated, and a self-despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by some hereditary property out of the last consolation, the "blessing of labour," the self-forgetfulness in the "day's work"; one who is thoroughly ashamed of his existence—perhaps also harbouring some vices,—and who on the other hand (by means of books to which he has no right, or more intellectual society than he can digest), cannot help vitiating himself more and more, and making himself vain and irritable: such a thoroughly poisoned man—for intellect becomes poison, culture becomes poison, possession becomes poison, solitude becomes poison, to such ill-constituted beings—gets at last into a habitual state of vengeance and inclination to vengeance.... What do you think he finds necessary, absolutely necessary in order to give himself the appearance in his own eyes of superiority over more intellectual men, so as to give himself the delight ofperfect revenge, at least in imagination? It is alwaysmoralitythat he requires, one may wager on it; always the big moral words, always the high-sounding words: justice, wisdom, holiness, virtue; always the stoicism of gestures (how well stoicism hides what one doesnotpossess!); always the mantle of wise silence, of affability, of gentleness, and whatever else the idealist-mantle is called in which the incurable self-despisers and also the incurably conceited walk about. Let me not be misunderstood: out of such bornenemies of the spiritthere arises now and then that rare specimen of humanity who is honoured by the people under the name of saint or sage: it is out of such men that there arise those prodigies of morality that make a noise, that make history,—St Augustine was one of these men. Fear of the intellect, vengeance on the intellect—Oh! how often have these powerfully impelling vices become the root of virtues! Yea, virtueitself!—And asking the question among ourselves, even the philosopher's pretension to wisdom, which has occasionally been made here and there on the earth, the maddest and most immodest of all pretensions,—has it not always been, in India as well as in Greece,above all a means of concealment? Sometimes, perhaps, from the point of view of education which hallows so many lies, it has been a tender regard for growing and evolving persons, for disciples who have often to be guarded against themselves by means of the belief in a person (by means of an error). In most cases, however, it is a means of concealment for a philosopher, behind which he seeks protection, owing to exhaustion, age, chilliness, or hardening; as a feeling of the approaching end, as the sagacity of the instinct which animals have before their death,—they go apart, remain at rest, choose solitude, creep into caves, becomewise.... What? Wisdom a means of concealment of the philosopher from—intellect?—
360.
Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded.—It seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish the cause of the action generally from the cause of action in a particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. The first kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first, an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which the quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique and definite manner: the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder. Among those insignificant hazards and lucifer-matches I count all the so-called "aims," and similarly the still more so-called "occupations" of people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and almost indifferent in relation to the immense quantum of force which presses on, as we have said, to be used up in any way whatever. One generally looks at the matter in a different manner: one is accustomed to see theimpellingforce precisely in the aim (object, calling, &c.), according to a primeval error,—but it is only thedirectingforce; the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded. And yet it is not even always the steersman, the directing force.... Is the "aim," the "purpose," not often enough only an extenuating pretext, an additional self-blinding of conceit, which does not wish it to be said that theshipfollowsthe stream into which it has accidentally run? That it "wishes" to go that way,becauseitmustgo that way? That it has a direction, sure enough, but—not a steersman? We still require a criticism of the conception of "purpose."
The Problem of the Actor.—The problem of the actor has disquieted me the longest; I was uncertain (and am sometimes so still) whether one could not get at the dangerous conception of "artist"—a conception hitherto treated with unpardonable leniency—from this point of view. Falsity with a good conscience; delight in dissimulation breaking forth as power, pushing aside, overflowing, and sometimes extinguishing the so-called "character"; the inner longing to play a rôle, to assume a mask, to put on anappearance; a surplus of capacity for adaptations of every kind, which can no longer gratify themselves in the service of the nearest and narrowest utility: all that perhaps does not pertainsolelyto the actor in himself?... Such an instinct would develop most readily in families of the lower class of the people, who have had to pass their lives in absolute dependence, under shifting pressure and constraint, who (to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to adapt themselves always to new circumstances) had again and again to pass themselves off and represent themselves as different persons,—thus having gradually qualified themselves to adjust the mantle toeverywind, thereby almost becoming the mantle itself, asmasters of the embodied and incarnated art of eternally playing the game of hide and seek, which one callsmimicryamong the animals:—until at last this ability, stored up from generation to generation, has become domineering, irrational and intractable, till as instinct it begins to command the other instincts, and begets the actor, the "artist" (the buffoon, the pantaloon, the Jack-Pudding, the fool, and the clown in the first place, also the classical type of servant, Gil Blas: for in such types one has the precursors of the artist, and often enough even of the "genius"). Also under higher social conditions there grows under similar pressure a similar species of men. Only the histrionic instinct is there for the most part held strictly in check by another instinct, for example, among "diplomatists";—for the rest, I should think that it would always be open to a good diplomatist to become a good actor on the stage, provided his dignity "allowed" it. As regards theJews, however, the adaptable peoplepar excellence, we should, in conformity to this line of thought, expect to see among them a world-historical institution from the very beginning, for the rearing of actors, a genuine breeding-place for actors; and in fact the question is very pertinent just now: what good actor at present isnot—a Jew? The Jew also, as a born literary man, as the actual ruler of the European press, exercises this power on the basis of his histrionic capacity: for the literary man is essentially an actor,—he plays the part of "expert," of "specialist."—Finallywomen. If we consider the whole history ofwomen, are they notobligedfirst of all, and above all to be actresses? If we listen to doctors who have hypnotised women, or, finally, if we love them—and let ourselves be "hypnotised" by them,—what is always divulged thereby? That they "give themselves airs," even when they—"give themselves."... Woman is so artistic....
My Belief in the Virilising of Europe.—We owe it to Napoleon (and not at all to the French Revolution, which had in view the "fraternity" of the nations, and the florid interchange of good graces among people generally) that several warlike centuries, which have not had their like in past history, may now follow one another—in short, that we have entered uponthe classical age of war, war at the same time scientific and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and discipline), to which all coming millenniums will look back with envy and awe as a work of perfection:—for the national movement out of which this martial glory springs, is only the counter-chocagainst Napoleon, and would not have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will one day be able to attribute the fact thatmanin Europe has again got the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine; perhaps even of "woman" also, who has become pampered owing to Christianity and the extravagant spirit of the eighteenth century, and still more owing to "modern ideas." Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accordingly in civilisation, something like a personalenemy, has by this hostility proved himself one of the greatest continuators of the Renaissance: he has brought to the surface a whole block of the ancient character, the decisive block perhaps, the block of granite. And who knows but that this block of ancient character will in the end get the upper hand of the national movement, and will have to make itself in apositivesense the heir and continuator of Napoleon:—who, as one knows, wantedoneEurope, which was to bemistress of the world.—
How each Sex has its Prejudice about Love.—Notwithstanding all the concessions which I am inclined to make to the monogamic prejudice, I will never admit that we should speak ofequalrights in the love of man and woman: there are no such equal rights. The reason is that man and woman understand something different by the term love,—and it belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex doesnotpresuppose the same feeling, the same conception of "love," in the other sex. What woman understands by love is clear enough: complete surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive, without any reservation, rather with shame and terror at the thought of a devotion restricted by clauses or associated with conditions. In this absence of conditions her love is precisely afaith: woman has no other.—Man, when he loves a woman,wantsprecisely this love from her; he is consequently, as regards himself, furthest removed from the prerequisites of feminine love;granted, however, that there should also be men to whom on their side the demand for complete devotion is not unfamiliar,—well, they are really—not men. A man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave; a woman, however, who loves like a woman becomes thereby amore perfectwoman.... The passion of woman in its unconditional renunciation of its own rights presupposes in fact that there doesnotexist on the other side an equalpathos, an equal desire for renunciation: for if both renounced themselves out of love, there would result—well, I don't know what, perhaps ahorror vacui? Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be merged in the conceptions of "possession" and "possessed"; consequently she wants one whotakes, who does not offer and give himself away, but who reversely is rather to be made richer in "himself"—by the increase of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives to him. Woman gives herself, man takes her.—I do not think one will get over this natural contrast by any social contract, or with the very best will to do justice, however desirable it may be to avoid bringing the severe, frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this antagonism constantly before our eyes. For love, regarded as complete, great, and full, is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something "unmoral."—Fidelityis accordingly included in woman's love, it follows from the definition thereof; with man fidelitymayreadily result in consequence of his love, perhaps as gratitude or idiosyncrasy of taste, and so-called elective affinity, but it does notbelong to theessenceof his love—and indeed so little, that one might almost be entitled to speak of a natural opposition between love and fidelity in man, whose love is just a desire to possess, andnota renunciation and giving away; the desire to possess, however, comes to an end every time with the possession.... As a matter of fact it is the more subtle and jealous thirst for possession in the man (who is rarely and tardily convinced of having this "possession"), which makes his love continue; in that case it is even possible that the love may increase after the surrender,—he does not readily own that a woman has nothing more to "surrender" to him.—
The Anchorite Speaks.—The art of associating with men rests essentially on one's skilfulness (which presupposes long exercise) in accepting a repast, in taking a repast in the cuisine of which one has no confidence. Provided one comes to the table with the hunger of a wolf everything is easy ("the worst society gives theeexperience"—as Mephistopheles says); but one has not got this wolf's-hunger when one needs it! Alas! how difficult are our fellow-men to digest! First principle: to stake one's courage as in a misfortune, to seize boldly, to admire oneself at the same time, to take one's repugnance between one's teeth, to cram down one's disgust. Second principle: to "improve" one's fellow-man, by praise for example, so that he may begin to sweat out his self-complacency; or to seize a tuft of his good or "interesting" qualities, and pull at it till one gets his whole virtue out, and canput him under the folds of it. Third principle: self-hypnotism. To fix one's eye on the object of one's intercourse, as on a glass knob, until, ceasing to feel pleasure or pain thereat, one falls asleep unobserved, becomes rigid, and acquires a fixed pose: a household recipe used in married life and in friendship, well tested and prized as indispensable, but not yet scientifically formulated. Its proper name is—patience.—
The Anchorite Speaks once more.—We also have intercourse with "men," we also modestly put on the clothes in which people know us (as such), respect us and seek us; and we thereby mingle in society, that is to say, among the disguised who do not wish to be so called; we also do like all prudent masqueraders, and courteously dismiss all curiosity which has not reference merely to our "clothes." There are however other modes and artifices for "going about" among men and associating with them: for example, as a ghost,—which is very advisable when one wants to scare them, and get rid of them easily. An example: a person grasps at us, and is unable to seize us. That frightens him. Or we enter by a closed door. Or when the lights are extinguished. Or after we are dead. The latter is the artifice ofposthumousmenpar excellence. ("What?" said such a one once impatiently, "do you think we should delight in enduring this strangeness, coldness, death-stillness about us, all this subterranean, hidden, dim, undiscovered solitude, which is called life with us, andmight just as well be called death, if we were not conscious of whatwill ariseout of us,—and that only after our death shall we attain toourlife and become living, ah! very living! we posthumous men!"—)
At the Sight of a Learned Book.—We do not belong to those who only get their thoughts from books, or at the prompting of books,—it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful. Our first question concerning the value of a book, a man, or a piece of music is: Can it walk? or still better: Can it dance?... We seldom read; we do not read the worse for that—oh, how quickly do we divine how a person has arrived at his thoughts:—whether sitting before an ink-bottle with compressed belly and head bent over the paper: oh, how quickly we are then done with his book! The constipated bowels betray themselves, one may wager on it, just as the atmosphere of the room, the ceiling of the room, the smallness of the room, betray themselves.—These were my feelings as I was closing a straightforward, learned book, thankful, very thankful, but also relieved.... In the book of a learned man there is almost always something oppressive and oppressed: the "specialist" comes to light somewhere, his ardour, his seriousness, his wrath, his over-estimation of the nook in which he sits and spins, his hump—every specialist has his hump. A learned book also always mirrors a distorted soul: every tradedistorts. Look at our friends again with whom we have spent our youth, after they have taken possession of their science: alas! how the reverse has always taken place! Alas! how they themselves are now for ever occupied and possessed by their science! Grown into their nook, crumpled into unrecognisability, constrained, deprived of their equilibrium, emaciated and angular everywhere, perfectly round only in one place,—we are moved and silent when we find them so. Every handicraft, granting even that it has a golden floor,[13]has also a leaden ceiling above it, which presses and presses on the soul, till it is pressed into a strange and distorted shape. There is nothing to alter here. We need not think that it is at all possible to obviate this disfigurement by any educational artifice whatever. Every kind ofperfectionis purchased at a high price on earth, where everything is perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert in one's department at the price of being also a victim of one's department. But you want to have it otherwise—"more reasonable," above all more convenient—is it not so, my dear contemporaries? Very well! But then you will also immediately get something different: that is to say, instead of the craftsman and expert, the literary man, the versatile, "many-sided" littérateur, who to be sure lacks the hump—not taking account of the hump or bow which he makes before you as the shopman of the intellect and the "porter" of culture—, the littérateur, whoisreally nothing, but "represents"almost everything: he plays and "represents" the expert, he also takes it upon himself in all modestyto see that he ispaid, honoured and celebrated in this position.—No, my learned friends! I bless you even on account of your humps! And also because like me you despise the littérateurs and parasites of culture! And because you do not know how to make merchandise of your intellect! And have so many opinions which cannot be expressed in money value! And because you do not represent anything which youarenot! Because your sole desire is to become masters of your craft; because you reverence every kind of mastership and ability, and repudiate with the most relentless scorn everything of a make-believe, half-genuine, dressed-up, virtuoso, demagogic, histrionic nature inlitteris et artibus—all that which does not convince you by its absolutegenuinenessof discipline and preparatory training, or cannot stand your test! (Even genius does not help a person to get over such a defect, however well it may be able to deceive with regard to it: one understands this if one has once looked closely at our most gifted painters and musicians,—who almost without exception, can artificially and supplementarily appropriate to themselves (by means of artful inventions of style, make-shifts, and even principles), theappearanceof that genuineness, that solidity of training and culture; to be sure, without thereby deceiving themselves, without thereby imposing perpetual silence on their bad consciences. For you know well enough that all great modern artists suffer from bad consciences?...)
How one has to Distinguish first of all in Works of Art.—Everything that is thought, versified, painted and composed, yea, even built and moulded, belongs either to monologic art, or to art before witnesses. Under the latter there is also to be included the apparently monologic art which involves the belief in God, the whole lyric of prayer; because for a pious man there is no solitude,—we, the godless, have been the first to devise this invention. I know of no profounder distinction in all the perspective of the artist than this: Whether he looks at his growing work of art (at "himself—") with the eye of the witness; or whether he "has forgotten the world," as is the essential thing in all monologic art,——it restson forgetting, it is the music of forgetting.
The Cynic Speaks.—My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections. Why should I therefore begin by disguising them under æsthetic formulæ? My "point" is that I can no longer breathe freely when this music begins to operate on me; myfootimmediately becomes indignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance and march; it demands first of all from music the ecstasies which are ingoodwalking, striding, leaping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my blood and my bowels also protest? Do I not become hoarse unawares under its influence? And then I ask myself what it is really that my bodywantsfrom music generally.I believe it wants to haverelief: so that all animal functions should be accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that brazen, leaden life should be gilded by means of golden, good, tender harmonies. My melancholy would fain rest its head in the hiding-places and abysses ofperfection: for this reason I need music. What do I care for the drama! What do I care for the spasms of its moral ecstasies, in which the "people" have their satisfaction! What do I care for the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor!... It will now be divined that I am essentially anti-theatrical at heart,—but Wagner on the contrary, was essentially a man of the stage and an actor, the most enthusiastic mummer-worshipper that has ever existed, even among musicians!... And let it be said in passing that if Wagner's theory was that "drama is the object, and music is only the means to it,"—hispracticeon the contrary from beginning to end has been to the effect that "attitude is the object, drama and even music can never be anything else but means tothat." Music as a means of elucidating, strengthening and intensifying dramatic poses and the actor's appeal to the senses, and Wagnerian drama only an opportunity for a number of dramatic attitudes! Wagner possessed, along with all other instincts, the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in all and everything, and as has been said, also as a musician.—I once made this clear with some trouble to a thorough-going Wagnerian, and I had reasons for adding:—"Do be a little more honest with yourself: we are not now in the theatre. In the theatre we are onlyhonest in the mass; as individuals we lie, we belie even ourselves. We leave ourselves at home when we go to the theatre; we there renounce the right to our own tongue and choice, to our taste, and even to our courage as we possess it and practise it within our own four walls in relation to God and man. No one takes his finest taste in art into the theatre with him, not even the artist who works for the theatre: there one is people, public, herd, woman, Pharisee, voting animal, democrat, neighbour, and fellow-creature; there even the most personal conscience succumbs to the levelling charm of the 'great multitude'; there stupidity operates as wantonness and contagion; there the neighbour rules, there onebecomesa neighbour...." (I have forgotten to mention what my enlightened Wagnerian answered to my physiological objections: "So the fact is that you are really not healthy enough for our music?"—)
Juxtapositions in us.—Must we not acknowledge to ourselves, we artists, that there is a strange discrepancy in us; that on the one hand our taste, and on the other hand our creative power, keep apart in an extraordinary manner, continue apart, and have a separate growth;—I mean to say that they have entirely different gradations andtempiof age, youth, maturity, mellowness and rottenness? So that, for example, a musician could all his life create things whichcontradictall that his ear and heart, spoilt as they are for listening, prize, relish and prefer:—he would not even requireto be aware of the contradiction! As an almost painfully regular experience shows, a person's taste can easily outgrow the taste of his power, even without the latter being thereby paralysed or checked in its productivity. The reverse, however, can also to some extent take place,—and it is to this especially that I should like to direct the attention of artists. A constant producer, a man who is a "mother" in the grand sense of the term, one who no longer knows or hears of anything except pregnancies and child-beds of his spirit, who has no time at all to reflect and make comparisons with regard to himself and his work, who is also no longer inclined to exercise his taste, but simply forgets it, letting it take its chance of standing, lying or falling,—perhaps such a man at last produces workson which he is then not at all fit to pass a judgment: so that he speaks and thinks foolishly about them and about himself. This seems to me almost the normal condition with fruitful artists,—nobody knows a child worse than its parents—and the rule applies even (to take an immense example) to the entire Greek world of poetry and art, which was never "conscious" of what it had done....
What is Romanticism?—It will be remembered perhaps, at least among my friends, that at first I assailed the modern world with some gross errors and exaggerations, but at any rate withhopein my heart. I recognised—who knows from what personal experiences?—the philosophical pessimismof the nineteenth century as the symptom of a higher power of thought, a more daring courage and a more triumphantplenitudeof life than had been characteristic of the eighteenth century, the age of Hume, Kant, Condillac, and the sensualists: so that the tragic view of things seemed to me the peculiarluxuryof our culture, its most precious, noble, and dangerous mode of prodigality; but nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, ajustifiableluxury. In the same way I interpreted for myself German music as the expression of a Dionysian power in the German soul: I thought I heard in it the earthquake by means of which a primeval force that had been imprisoned for ages was finally finding vent—indifferent as to whether all that usually calls itself culture was thereby made to totter. It is obvious that I then misunderstood what constitutes the veritable character both of philosophical pessimism and of German music,—namely, theirRomanticism. What is Romanticism? Every art and every philosophy may be regarded as a healing and helping appliance in the service of growing, struggling life: they always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferers: on the one hand those that suffer fromoverflowing vitality, who need Dionysian art, and require a tragic view and insight into life; and on the other hand those who suffer fromreduced vitality, who seek repose, quietness, calm seas, and deliverance from themselves through art or knowledge, or else intoxication, spasm, bewilderment and madness. All Romanticism in art and knowledge responds to the twofoldcraving of thelatter; to them Schopenhauer as well as Wagner responded (and responds),—to name those most celebrated and decided romanticists who were thenmisunderstoodby me (nothowever to their disadvantage, as may be reasonably conceded to me). The being richest in overflowing vitality, the Dionysian God and man, may not only allow himself the spectacle of the horrible and questionable, but even the fearful deed itself, and all the luxury of destruction, disorganisation and negation. With him evil, senselessness and ugliness seem as it were licensed, in consequence of the overflowing plenitude of procreative, fructifying power, which can convert every desert into a luxuriant orchard. Conversely, the greatest sufferer, the man poorest in vitality, would have most need of mildness, peace and kindliness in thought and action: he would need, if possible, a God who is specially the God of the sick, a "Saviour"; similarly he would have need of logic, the abstract intelligibility of existence—for logic soothes and gives confidence;—in short he would need a certain warm, fear-dispelling narrowness and imprisonment within optimistic horizons. In this manner I gradually began to understand Epicurus, the opposite of a Dionysian pessimist;—in a similar manner also the "Christian," who in fact is only a type of Epicurean, and like him essentially a romanticist:—and my vision has always become keener in tracing that most difficult and insidious of all forms ofretrospective inference, which most mistakes have been made—the inference from the work to its author, from the deed to its doer, from the ideal to him whoneedsit, from every mode of thinking and valuing to the imperativewantbehind it.—In regard to all æsthetic values I now avail myself of this radical distinction: I ask in every single case, "Has hunger or superfluity become creative here?" At the outset another distinction might seem to recommend itself more—it is far more conspicuous,—namely, to have in view whether the desire for rigidity, for perpetuation, forbeingis the cause of the creating, or the desire for destruction, for change, for the new, for the future—forbecoming. But when looked at more carefully, both these kinds of desire prove themselves ambiguous, and are explicable precisely according to the before-mentioned and, as it seems to me, rightly preferred scheme. The desire fordestruction, change and becoming, may be the expression of overflowing power, pregnant with futurity (myterminusfor this is of course the word "Dionysian"); but it may also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, destitute and unfortunate, which destroys, andmustdestroy, because the enduring, yea, all that endures, in fact all being, excites and provokes it. To understand this emotion we have but to look closely at our anarchists. The will toperpetuationrequires equally a double interpretation. It may on the one hand proceed from gratitude and love:—art of this origin will always be an art of apotheosis, perhaps dithyrambic, as with Rubens, mocking divinely, as with Hafiz, or clear and kind-hearted as with Goethe, and spreading a Homeric brightness and glory over everything (in this case I speak ofApollonianart). It may also, however, be the tyrannical will of asorely-suffering, struggling or tortured being, who would like to stamp his most personal, individual and narrow characteristics, the very idiosyncrasy of his suffering, as an obligatory law and constraint on others; who, as it were, takes revenge on all things, in that he imprints, enforces and brandshisimage, the image ofhistorture, upon them. The latter isromantic pessimismin its most extreme form, whether it be as Schopenhauerian will-philosophy, or as Wagnerian music:—romantic pessimism, the lastgreatevent in the destiny of our civilisation. (That theremay bequite a different kind of pessimism, a classical pessimism—this presentiment and vision belongs to me, as something inseparable from me, as mypropriumandipsissimum; only that the word "classical" is repugnant to my ears, it has become far too worn; too indefinite and indistinguishable. I call that pessimism of the future,—for it is coming! I see it coming!—Dionysianpessimism.)
We Unintelligible Ones.—Have we ever complained among ourselves of being misunderstood, misjudged, and confounded with others; of being calumniated, misheard, and not heard? That is just our lot—alas, for a long time yet! say, to be modest, until 1901—, it is also our distinction; we should not have sufficient respect for ourselves if we wished it otherwise. People confound us with others—the reason of it is that we ourselves grow, we change continually, we cast off old bark, we still slough every spring, we always become younger,higher, stronger, as men of the future, we thrust our roots always more powerfully into the deep—into evil—, while at the same time we embrace the heavens ever more lovingly, more extensively, and suck in their light ever more eagerly with all our branches and leaves. We grow like trees—that is difficult to understand, like all life!—not in one place, but everywhere, not in one direction only, but upwards and outwards, as well as inwards and downwards. At the same time our force shoots forth in stem, branches, and roots; we are really no longer free to do anything separately, or tobeanything separately.... Such is our lot, as we have said: we grow inheight; and even should it be our calamity—for we dwell ever closer to the lightning!—well, we honour it none the less on that account; it is that which we do not wish to share with others, which we do not wish to bestow upon others, the fate of all elevation,ourfate....
Why we are not Idealists.—Formerly philosophers were afraid of the senses: have we, perhaps, been far too forgetful of this fear? We are at present all of us sensualists, we representatives of the present and of the future in philosophy,—notaccording to theory, however, but inpraxis, in practice.... Those former philosophers, on the contrary, thought that the senses lured them out oftheirworld, the cold realm of "ideas," to a dangerous southern island, where they were afraid that their philosopher-virtues would melt away like snow in the sun. "Wax in the ears," was then almost acondition of philosophising; a genuine philosopher no longer listened to life, in so far as life is music, hedeniedthe music of life—it is an old philosophical superstition that all music is Sirens' music.—Now we should be inclined at the present day to judge precisely in the opposite manner (which in itself might be just as false), and to regardideas, with their cold, anæmic appearance, and not even in spite of this appearance, as worse seducers than the senses. They have always lived on the "blood" of the philosopher, they always consumed his senses, and indeed, if you will believe me, his "heart" as well. Those old philosophers were heartless: philosophising was always a species of vampirism. At the sight of such figures even as Spinoza, do you not feel a profoundly enigmatical and disquieting sort of impression? Do you not see the drama which is here performed, the constantlyincreasing pallor—, the spiritualisation always more ideally displayed? Do you not imagine some long-concealed blood-sucker in the background, which makes its beginning with the senses, and in the end retains or leaves behind nothing but bones and their rattling?—I mean categories, formulæ, andwords(for you will pardon me in saying that whatremainsof Spinoza,amor intellectualis dei, is rattling and nothing more! What isamor, what isdeus, when they have lost every drop of blood?...)In summa: all philosophical idealism has hitherto been something like a disease, where it has not been, as in the case of Plato, the prudence of superabundant and dangerous healthfulness, the fear ofoverpowerfulsenses,and the wisdom of a wise Socratic.—Perhaps, is it the case that we moderns are merely not sufficiently soundto requirePlato's idealism? And we do not fear the senses because——.
"Science" as Prejudice.—It follows from the laws of class distinction that the learned, in so far as they belong to the intellectual middle-class, are debarred from getting even a sight of the reallygreatproblems and notes of interrogation. Besides, their courage, and similarly their outlook, does not reach so far,—and above all, their need, which makes them investigators, their innate anticipation and desire that things should be constitutedin such and such a way, their fears and hopes are too soon quieted and set at rest. For example, that which makes the pedantic Englishman, Herbert Spencer, so enthusiastic in his way, and impels him to draw a line of hope, a horizon of desirability, the final reconciliation of "egoism and altruism" of which he dreams,—that almost causes nausea to people like us:—a humanity with such Spencerian perspectives as ultimate perspectives would seem to us deserving of contempt, of extermination! But thefactthat something has to be taken by him as his highest hope, which is regarded, and may well be regarded, by others merely as a distasteful possibility, is a note of interrogation which Spencer could not have foreseen.... It is just the same with the belief with which at present so many materialistic natural-scientists are content, the belief in a world which is supposed to have itsequivalent and measure in human thinking and human valuations, a "world of truth" at which we might be able ultimately to arrive with the help of our insignificant, four-cornered human reason! What? do we actually wish to have existence debased in that fashion to a ready-reckoner exercise and calculation for stay-at-home mathematicians? We should not, above all, seek to divest existence of itsambiguouscharacter:goodtaste forbids it, gentlemen, the taste of reverence for everything that goes beyond your horizon! That a world-interpretation is alone right by whichyoumaintain your position, by which investigation and work can go on scientifically inyoursense (you really meanmechanically?), an interpretation which acknowledges numbering, calculating, weighing, seeing and handling, and nothing more—such an idea is a piece of grossness and naïvety, provided it is not lunacy and idiocy. Would the reverse not be quite probable, that the most superficial and external characters of existence—its most apparent quality, its outside, its embodiment—should let themselves be apprehended first? perhaps alone allow themselves to be apprehended? A "scientific" interpretation of the world as you understand it might consequently still be one of thestupidestthat is to say, the most destitute of significance, of all possible world-interpretations:—I say this in confidence to my friends the Mechanicians, who to-day like to hobnob with philosophers, and absolutely believe that mechanics is the teaching of the first and last laws upon which, as upon a ground-floor, all existence must bebuilt. But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentiallymeaninglessworld! Supposing we valued theworthof a music with reference to how much it could be counted, calculated, or formulated—how absurd such a "scientific" estimate of music would be! What would one have apprehended, understood, or discerned in it! Nothing, absolutely nothing of what is really "music" in it!...
Our new "Infinite."—How far the perspective character of existence extends, or whether it have any other character at all, whether an existence without explanation, without "sense" does not just become "nonsense," whether, on the other hand, all existence is not essentially anexplainingexistence—these questions, as is right and proper, cannot be determined even by the most diligent and severely conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect, because in this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its perspective forms, andonlyin them. We cannot see round our corner: it is hopeless curiosity to want to know what other modes of intellect and perspective theremightbe: for example, whether any kind of being could perceive time backwards, or alternately forwards and backwards (by which another direction of life and another conception of cause and effect would be given). But I think that we are to-day at least far from the ludicrous immodesty of decreeing from our nook that therecanonly be legitimate perspectives from that nook. The world, on the contrary, hasonce more become "infinite" to us: in so far we cannot dismiss the possibility that itcontains infinite interpretations. Once more the great horror seizes us—but who would desire forthwith to deify once morethismonster of an unknown world in the old fashion? And perhaps worshiptheunknown thing asthe"unknown person" in future? Ah! there are too manyungodlypossibilities of interpretation comprised in this unknown, too much devilment, stupidity and folly of interpretation.—also our own human, all too human interpretation itself, which we know....
Why we Seem to be Epicureans.—We are cautious, we modern men, with regard to final convictions, our distrust lies in wait for the enchantments and tricks of conscience involved in every strong belief, in every absolute Yea and Nay: how is this explained? Perhaps one may see in it a good deal of the caution of the "burnt child," of the disillusioned idealist; but one may also see in it another and better element, the joyful curiosity of a former lingerer in the corner, who has been brought to despair by his nook, and now luxuriates and revels in its antithesis, in the unbounded, in the "open air in itself." Thus there is developed an almost Epicurean inclination for knowledge, which does not readily lose sight of the questionable character of things; likewise also a repugnance to pompous moral phrases and attitudes, a taste that repudiates all coarse, square contrasts, and is proudly conscious of its habitualreserve. Forthis tooconstitutes our pride, this easy tightening of the reins in our headlong impulse after certainty, this self-control of the rider in his most furious riding: for now, as of old we have mad, fiery steeds under us, and if we delay, it is certainly least of all the danger which causes us to delay....
Our Slow Periods.—It is thus that artists feel, and all men of "works," the maternal species of men: they always believe at every chapter of their life—a work always makes a chapter—that they have already reached the goal itself; they would always patiently accept death with the feeling: "we are ripe for it." This is not the expression of exhaustion,—but rather that of a certain autumnal sunniness and mildness, which the work itself, the maturing of the work, always leaves behind in its originator. Then thetempoof life slows down—turns thick and flows with honey—into long pauses, into the belief inthelong pause....
We Homeless Ones.—Among the Europeans of to-day there are not lacking those who may call themselves homeless ones in a way which is at once a distinction and an honour; it is by them that my secret wisdom andgaya scienzais expressly to be laid to heart. For their lot is hard, their hope uncertain; it is a clever feat to devise consolation for them. But what good does it do! We children of the future, howcouldwe be at home in the present?We are unfavourable to all ideals which could make us feel at home in this frail, broken-down, transition period; and as regards the "realities" thereof, we do not believe in theirendurance. The ice which still carries us has become very thin: the thawing wind blows; we ourselves, the homeless ones, are an influence that breaks the ice, and the other all too thin "realities."... We "preserve" nothing, nor would we return to any past age; we are not at all "liberal," we do not labour for "progress," we do not need first to stop our ears to the song of the market-place and the sirens of the future—their song of "equal rights," "free society," "no longer either lords or slaves," does not allure us! We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who, like ourselves, love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery—for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery. Is it not obvious that with all this we must feel ill at ease in an age which claims the honour of being the most humane, gentle and just that the sun has ever seen? What a pity that at the mere mention of these fine words, the thoughts at the back of our minds are all the more unpleasant, that wesee therein only the expression—or the masquerade—of profound weakening, exhaustion, age, and declining power! What can it matter to us with what kind of tinsel an invalid decks out his weakness? He may parade it as hisvirtue; there is no doubt whatever that weakness makes people gentle, alas, so gentle, so just, so inoffensive, so "humane"!—The "religion of pity," to which people would like to persuade us—yes, we know sufficiently well the hysterical little men and women who need this religion at present as a cloak and adornment! We are no humanitarians; we should not dare to speak of our "love of mankind"; for that, a person of our stamp is not enough of an actor! Or not sufficiently Saint-Simonist, not sufficiently French. A person must have been affected with aGallicexcess of erotic susceptibility and amorous impatience even to approach mankind honourably with his lewdness.... Mankind! Was there ever a more hideous old woman among all old women (unless perhaps it were "the Truth": a question for philosophers)? No, we do not love Mankind! On the other hand, however, we are not nearly "German" enough (in the sense in which the word "German" is current at present) to advocate nationalism and race-hatred, or take delight in the national heart-itch and blood-poisoning, on account of which the nations of Europe are at present bounded off and secluded from one another as if by quarantines. We are too unprejudiced for that, too perverse, too fastidious; also too well-informed, and too much "travelled." We prefer much rather to live on mountains, apart and "out of season," inpast or coming centuries, in order merely to spare ourselves the silent rage to which we know we should be condemned as witnesses of a system of politics which makes the German nation barren by making it vain, and which is apettysystem besides:—will it not be necessary for this system to plant itself between two mortal hatreds, lest its own creation should immediately collapse? Will it notbe obligedto desire the perpetuation of the petty-state system of Europe?... We homeless ones are too diverse and mixed in race and descent as "modern men," and are consequently little tempted to participate in the falsified racial self-admiration and lewdness which at present display themselves in Germany, as signs of German sentiment, and which strike one as doubly false and unbecoming in the people with the "historical sense." We are, in a word—and it shall be our word of honour!—good Europeans, the heirs of Europe, the rich, over-wealthy heirs, also the too deeply pledged heirs of millenniums of European thought. As such, we have also outgrown Christianity, and are disinclined to it—and just because we have grownout ofit, because our forefathers were Christians uncompromising in their Christian integrity, who willingly sacrificed possessions and positions, blood and country, for the sake of their belief. We—do the same. For what, then? For our unbelief? For all sorts of unbelief? Nay, you know better than that, my friends! The hiddenYeain you is stronger than all the Nays and Perhapses, of which you and your age are sick;and when you are obliged to put out to sea, you emigrants, it is—once more afaithwhich urges you thereto!...
"And once more Grow Clear."—We, the generous and rich in spirit, who stand at the sides of the streets like open fountains and would hinder no one from drinking from us: we do not know, alas! how to defend ourselves when we should like to do so; we have no means of preventing ourselves being madeturbidand dark,—we have no means of preventing the age in which we live casting its "up-to-date rubbish" into us, nor of hindering filthy birds throwing their excrement, the boys their trash, and fatigued resting travellers their misery, great and small, into us. But we do as we have always done: we take whatever is cast into us down into our depths—for we are deep, we do not forget—and once more grow clear....
The Fool's Interruption.—It is not a misanthrope who has written this book: the hatred of men costs too dear to-day. To hate as they formerly hatedman, in the fashion of Timon, completely, without qualification, with all the heart, from the pureloveof hatred—for that purpose one would have to renounce contempt:—and how much refined pleasure, how much patience, how much benevolence even, do we owe to contempt! Moreover we are thereby the "elect of God": refined contempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtueperhaps, we, the most modern amongst the moderns!... Hatred, on the contrary, makes equal, it puts men face to face, in hatred there is honour; finally, in hatred there isfear, quite a large amount of fear. We fearless ones, however, we, the most intellectual men of the period, know our advantage well enough to live without fear as the most intellectual persons of this age. People will not easily behead us, shut us up, or banish us; they will not even ban or burn our books. The age loves intellect, it loves us, and needs us, even when we have to give it to understand that we are artists in despising; that all intercourse with men is something of a horror to us; that with all our gentleness, patience, humanity and courteousness, we cannot persuade our nose to abandon its prejudice against the proximity of man; that we love nature the more, the less humanly things are done by her, and that we love artwhenit is the flight of the artist from man, or the raillery of the artist at man, or the raillery of the artist at himself....
"The Wanderer" Speaks.—In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: for that purpose heleavesthe city. "Thoughts concerning moral prejudices," if they are not to be prejudices concerning prejudices, presuppose a positionoutside ofmorality, somesort of world beyond good and evil, to which one must ascend, climb, or fly—and in the given case at any rate, a position beyondourgood and evil, an emancipation from all "Europe," understood as a sum of inviolable valuations which have become part and parcel of our flesh and blood. That onewantsin fact to get outside, or aloft, is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiarly unreasonable "thou must"—for even we thinkers have our idiosyncrasies of "unfree will"—: the question is whether onecanreally get there. That may depend on manifold conditions: in the main it is a question of how light or how heavy we are, the problem of our "specific gravity." One must bevery lightin order to impel one's will to knowledge to such a distance, and as it were beyond one's age, in order to create eyes for oneself for the survey of millenniums, and a pure heaven in these eyes besides! One must have freed oneself from many things by which we Europeans of to-day are oppressed, hindered, held down, and made heavy. The man of such a "Beyond," who wants to get even in sight of the highest standards of worth of his age, must first of all "surmount" this age in himself—it is the test of his power—and consequently not only his age, but also his past aversion and oppositiontohis age, his sufferingcaused byhis age, his unseasonableness, his Romanticism....
The Question of Intelligibility.—One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also—quite as certainly—notto be understood. It isby no means an objection to a book when someone finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author,—perhaps he did notwantto be understood by "anyone." A distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers; by selecting them, it at the same time closes its barriers against "the others." It is there that all the more refined laws of style have their origin: they at the same time keep off, they create distance, they prevent "access" (intelligibility, as we have said,)—while they open the ears of those who are acoustically related to them. And to say it between ourselves and with reference to my own case,—I do not desire that either my ignorance, or the vivacity of my temperament, should prevent me being understood byyou, my friends: I certainly do not desire that my vivacity should have that effect, however much it may impel me to arrive quickly at an object, in order to arrive at it at all. For I think it is best to do with profound problems as with a cold bath—quickly in, quickly out. That one does not thereby get into the depths, that one does not get deep enoughdown—is a superstition of the hydrophobic, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. Oh! the great cold makes one quick!—And let me ask by the way: Is it a fact that a thing has been misunderstood and unrecognised when it has only been touched upon in passing, glanced at, flashed at? Must one absolutely sit upon it in the first place? Must one have brooded on it as on an egg?Diu noctuque incubando, as Newton said of himself? Atleast there are truths of a peculiar shyness and ticklishness which one can only get hold of suddenly, and in no other way,—which one must eithertake by surprise, or leave alone.... Finally, my brevity has still another value: on those questions which pre-occupy me, I must say a great deal briefly, in order that it may be heard yet more briefly. For as immoralist, one has to take care lest one ruins innocence, I mean the asses and old maids of both sexes, who get nothing from life but their innocence; moreover my writings are meant to fill them with enthusiasm, to elevate them, to encourage them in virtue. I should be at a loss to know of anything more amusing than to see enthusiastic old asses and maids moved by the sweet feelings of virtue: and "that have I seen"—spake Zarathustra. So much with respect to brevity; the matter stands worse as regards my ignorance, of which I make no secret to myself. There are hours in which I am ashamed of it; to be sure there are likewise hours in which I am ashamed of this shame. Perhaps we philosophers, all of us, are badly placed at present with regard to knowledge: science is growing, the most learned of us are on the point of discovering that we know too little. But it would be worse still if it were otherwise,—if we knew too much; our duty is and remains, first of all, not to get into confusion about ourselves. Wearedifferent from the learned; although it cannot be denied that amongst other things we are also learned. We have different needs, a different growth, a different digestion: we need more, we need also less. There is no formulaas to how much an intellect needs for its nourishment; if, however, its taste be in the direction of independence, rapid coming and going, travelling, and perhaps adventure for which only the swiftest are qualified, it prefers rather to live free on poor fare, than to be unfree and plethoric. Not fat, but the greatest suppleness and power is what a good dancer wishes from his nourishment,—and I know not what the spirit of a philosopher would like better than to be a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, and also his art, in the end likewise his sole piety, his "divine service."...