[7]The play on the German words: "Unthier" and "Überthier," "Unmensch" and "Übermensch," is unfortunately not translatable.—Tr.
[7]The play on the German words: "Unthier" and "Überthier," "Unmensch" and "Übermensch," is unfortunately not translatable.—Tr.
1028.
Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not deceive ourselves.
1029.
I have taught the knowledge of such terrible things, that all "Epicurean contentment" isimpossible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is the onlyadequatekind here:I was the first to discover the tragic.Thanks to their superficiality in ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the misunderstanding of it! The yearning for nonentity is thedenialof tragic wisdom, its opposite!
1030.
A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in possession of an increased blissfulness in love. I believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will understand Dante for having written over the door of his Inferno: "I also am the creation of eternal love."
1031.
To have travelled over the whole circumference of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners—my ambition, my torment, and my happiness.
Veritably to haveovercomepessimism, and, as the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a Goethe—full of love and goodwill.
1032.
The first question is by no means whether we are satisfied with ourselves; but whether we aresatisfied with anything at all. Granting that we should say yea to any single moment, we have then affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of existence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us or in other things: and if our soul has vibrated and rung with happiness, like a chord, once only and only once, then all eternity was necessary in order to bring about that one event,—and all eternity, in this single moment of our affirmation, was called good, was saved, justified, and blessed.
1033.
The passions whichsay yea.I ride, happiness, health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war, reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will, the discipline of lofty spirituality, the will to power, and gratitude to the Earth and to Life: all that is rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes, gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life—the whole power of the virtues thatglorify—all declaring things good, saying yea, and doing yea.
1034.
We, many or few, who once more dare to live in a worldpurged of morality, wepagansin faith, we are probably also the first who understand what apagan faithis: to be obliged to imagine higher creatures than man, but to imagine thembeyondgood and evil; to be compelled to value all higher existence asimmoralexistence. We believe in Olympus, andnotin the "man on the cross."
1035.
The more modern man has exercised his idealising power in regard to aGodmostly bymoralising the latterever more and more—what does that mean?—nothing good, a diminution in man's strength.
As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible: and indications of this are not wanting. God imagined as emancipation from morality, comprising the whole of the abundant assembly of Life's contrasts, andsavingandjustifyingthem in a divine agony. God as the beyond, the superior elevation, to the wretchedcul-de-sacmorality of "Good and Evil."
1036.
A humanitarian God cannot bedemonstratedfrom the world that is known to us: so much are ye driven and forced to conclude to-day. But what conclusion do ye draw from this? "He cannot be demonstrated tous": the scepticism of knowledge. You allfearthe conclusion: "From the world that is known to us quite a different God would bedemonstrable,such a one as would certainly not be humanitarian"—and, in a word, you cling fast to your God, and invent a world for Him whichis unknown to us.
1037.
Let us banish the highest good from our concept of God: it is unworthy of a God. Let uslikewise banish the highest wisdom: it is the vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom: the idea was to make Him as like them as possible. No! Godas the highest power—that is sufficient!—Everything follows from that, even—"the world"!
1038
And how many new Gods are not still possible! I, myself, in whom the religious—that is to say, the god-creatinginstinct occasionally becomes active at the most inappropriate moments: how very differently the divine has revealed itself every time to me! ... So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments, which fall into a man's life as if they came from the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer knows how old he is or how young he still may be! ... I would not doubt that there are several kinds of gods.... Some are not wanting which one could not possibly imagine without a certain halcyonic calm and levity.... Light feet perhaps belong to the concept "God". Is it necessary to explain that aGodknows how to hold Himself preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist circles? also (between ourselves) beyond good and evil? His outlook is afreeone—as Goethe would say.—And to invoke the authority of Zarathustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in this regard: Zarathustra goes as far as to confess, "I would only believe in a God who knew how todance..."
Again I say: how many new Gods are not still possible! Certainly Zarathustra himself is merely an old atheist: he believes neither in old nor in new gods. Zarathustra says,"he would"—but Zarathustra will not.... Take care to understand him well.
The type God conceived according to the type of creative spirits, of "great men."
1039.
And how many newidealsare not, at bottom, still possible? Here is a little ideal that I seize upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy. To spend one's life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality, half-artist, half-bird, half-metaphysician; without a yea or a nay for reality, save that from time to time one acknowledges it, after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of one's toes; always tickled by some happy ray of sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by sorrow —for sorrowpreservesthe happy man; fixing a little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing: this, as is clear, is the ideal of a heavy spirit, a ton in weightof the spirit of gravity.
1040.
From the military-school of the soul.(Dedicated to the brave, the good-humoured, and the abstinent.)
I should not like to undervalue the amiable virtues; but greatness of soul is not compatible withthem. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all merely pleasing qualities.
***
In times of painful tension and vulnerability, choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.
***
Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter; a man only has what he needs.
***
It has now already lasted ten years: no sound any longerreachesme—a land without rain. A man must have a vast amount of humanity at his disposal in order not to pine away in such drought.[8]
[8]For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted with the circumstances of Nietzsche's life, it would be as well to point out that this is a purely personal plaint, comprehensible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was for years a lonely anchorite.—Tr.
[8]For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted with the circumstances of Nietzsche's life, it would be as well to point out that this is a purely personal plaint, comprehensible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was for years a lonely anchorite.—Tr.
1041.
My new road to an affirmative attitude.—Philosophy, as I have understood it and lived it up to the present, is the voluntary quest of the repulsive and atrocious aspects of existence. From the long experience derived from such wandering over ice and desert, I learnt to regard quite differently everything that had been philosophised hitherto: theconcealedhistory of philosophy, the psychology of its great names came into the light for me. "How much truth can a spiritendure; for how much truth is itdaringenough?"—this for me was the realmeasure of value. Error is a piece ofcowardice... every victory on the part of knowledge, is theresultof courage, of hardness towards one's self, of cleanliness towards one's self.... The kind ofexperimental philosophywhich I am living, even anticipates the possibility of the most fundamental Nihilism, on principle: but by this I do not mean that it remains standing at a negation, at ano,or at a will to negation. It would rather attain to the very reverse—to aDionysian affirmationof the world, as it is, without subtraction, exception, or choice—it would have eternal circular motion: the same things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical concatenation. The highest state to which a philosopher can attain: to maintain a Dionysian attitude to Life—my formula for this isamor fati.
To this end we must not only consider those aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as:necessary,but as desirable, and not only desirable to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto (as complements or first prerequisites, so to speak), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more terrible, and moreveritableaspects of life, in which the latter's will expresses itself most clearly.
To this end, we must also value that aspect of existence which alone has been affirmed until now; we must understand whence this valuation arises, and to how slight an extent it has to do with a Dionysian valuation of Life: I selected and understood that which in this respect says "yea" (on the one hand, the instinct of the sufferer; on the other, the gregarious instinct; and thirdly, theinstinct of the greater numberagainst the exceptions).
Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind of man must necessarily imagine—the elevation and enhancement of man in another direction:higher creatures,beyond good and evil, beyond those values which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number—I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy formation of ideals in history (the concepts "pagan," "classical," "noble," have been discovered afresh and brought forward).
1042.
We should demonstrate to what extent the religion of the Greeks washigherthan Judæo-Christianity. The latter triumphed because the Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).
1043.
It is not surprising that a couple of centuries have been necessary in order to link up again—a couple of centuries are very little indeed.
1044.
There must be some people who sanctify functions, not only eating and drinking, and not only in memory of them, or in harmony with them; but this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in a novel fashion.
1045.
The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and charm ofsensualthings in a way which other men—those with "fleshy hearts"—cannot possibly imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine: they are sensualists with the best possible faith, because they grant the senses a more fundamental value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing machine, or whatever it is called, which in the language of the people is termed"spirit"The strength and power of the senses—this is the most essential thing in a sound man who is one of Nature's lucky strokes: the splendid beast must first be there—otherwise what is the value of all "humanisation"?
1046.
(1) We want to hold fast to our senses, and to the belief in them—and accept their logical conclusions! The hostility to the senses in the philosophy that has been written up to the present, has been man's greatest feat of nonsense.
(2) The world now extant, on which all earthly and living things have so built themselves, that it now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding slowly), we would faincontinue building—not criticise it away as false!
(3) Our valuations help in the process of building; they emphasise and accentuate. What does it mean when whole religions say: "Everything is bad and false and evil"? This condemnation of the whole process can only be the judgment of the failures!
(4) True, the failures might be the greatest sufferers and therefore the most subtle! The contented might be worth little!
(5) We must understand the fundamentalartisticphenomenon which is called "Life,"—the formativespirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable circumstances: and in the slowest manner possible——Theproofof all its combinations must first be given afresh:it maintains itself.
1047.
Sexuality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived from appearance and deception, great and joyful gratitude to Life and its typical conditions—these things are essential to all paganism, and it has a good conscience on its side.—That which is hostile to Nature(already in Greek antiquity) combats paganism in the form of morality and dialectics.
1040.
An anti-metaphysical view of the world—yes, but an artistic one.
1049.
Apollo'smisapprehension: the eternity of beautiful forms, the aristocratic prescription, "Thus shall it ever be!"
Dionysus. Sensuality and cruelty. The perishable nature of existence might be interpreted as the joy of procreative and destructive force, asunremitting creation.
1050.
The word "Dionysian" expresses: a constraint to unity, a soaring above personality, the common-place,society, reality, and above the abyss of theephemeral, the passionately painful sensation of superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctuating conditions; an ecstatic saying of yea to the collective character of existence, as that which remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful throughout all change, the great pantheistic sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares even the most terrible and most questionable qualities of existence good, and sanctifies them; the eternal will to procreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence; the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of creating and annihilating.
The word "Apollonian" expresses: the constraint to be absolutely isolated, to the typical "individual," to everything that simplifies, distinguishes, and makes strong, salient, definite, and typical to freedom within the law.
The further development of art is just as necessarily bound up with the antagonism of these two natural art-forces, as the further development of mankind is bound up with the antagonism of the sexes. The plenitude of power and restraint, the highest form of self-affirmation in a cool, noble, and reserved kind of beauty: the Apollonianism of the Hellenic will.
This antagonism of the Dionysian and of the Apollonian in the Greek soul, is one of the great riddles which made me feel drawn to the essence of Hellenism. At bottom, I troubled about nothing save the solution of the question, why precisely Greek Apollonianism should have been forced to grow out of a Dionysian soil: the Dionysian Greekhad need of being Apollonian; that is to say in order to break his will to the titanic, to the complex, to the uncertain, to the horrible by a will to measure, to simplicity, and to submission to rule and concept. Extravagance, wildness, and Asiatic tendencies lie at the root of the Greeks. Their courage consists in their struggle with their Asiatic nature: they were not given beauty, any more than they were given Logic and moral! naturalness: in them these things are victories, they are willed and fought for—they constitute thetriumphof the Greeks.
1051.
It is clear that only the rarest and most lucky cases of humanity can attain to the highest and most sublime human joys in which Life celebrates its own glorification; and this only happens when these rare creatures themselves and their forbears have lived a long preparatory life leading to this goal, without, however, having done so consciously. It is then that an overflowing wealth of multifarious forces and the most agile power of "free will" and lordly command exist together in perfect concord in one man; then the intellect is just as much at ease, or at home, in the senses as the senses are at ease or at home in it; and everything that takes place in the latter must give rise to extraordinarily subtle joys in the former. Andvice versâ:just think of thisvice versâfor a moment in a man like Hafiz; even Goethe, though to a lesser degree, gives some idea of this process. Itis probable that, in such perfect and well-constituted men, the most sensual functions are finally transfigured by a symbolic elatedness of the highest intellectuality; in themselves they feel a kind ofdeification of the bodyand are most remote from the ascetic philosophy of the principle "God is a Spirit": from this principle it is clear that the ascetic is the "botched man" who declares only that to be good and "God" which is absolute, and which judges and condemns.
From that height of joy in which man feels himself completely and utterly a deified form and self-justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy peasants and healthy semi-human beasts, the whole of this long and enormous gradation of the light and colour ofhappinesswas called by the Greek—not without that grateful quivering of one who is initiated into secret, not without much caution and pious silence—by the godlike name:Dionysus.What thendoall modern men—the children of a crumbling, multifarious, sick and strange ageknowof thecompassof Greek happiness, howcouldthey know anything about it! Whence would the slaves of "modern ideas" derive their right to Dionysian feasts!
When the Greek body and soul were in full "bloom," and not, as it were, in states of morbid exaltation and madness, there arose the secret symbol of the loftiest affirmation and transfiguration of life and the world that has ever existed. There we have astandardbeside which everything that has grown since must seem too short, too poor, too narrow: if we but pronounce the word"Dionysus" in the presence of the best of more recent names and things, in the presence of Goethe, for instance, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or Raphael, in a trice we realise that our best things and moments arecondemned.Dionysus is ajudge!Am I understood? There can be no doubt that the Greeks sought to interpret, by means of their Dionysian experiences, the final mysteries of the "destiny of the soul" and everything they knew concerning the education and the purification of man, and above all concerning the absolute hierarchy and inequality of value between man and man. There is the deepest experience of all Greeks, which they conceal beneath great silence,—we do not know the Greeksso long as this hidden and sub-terranean access to them remains obstructed. The indiscreet eyes of scholars will never perceive anything in these things, however much learned energy may still have to be expended in the service of this excavation—; even the noble zeal of such friends of antiquity as Goethe and Winckelmann, seems to savour somewhat of bad form and of arrogance, precisely in this respect. To wait and to prepare oneself; to await the appearance of new sources of knowledge; to prepare oneself in solitude for the sight of new faces and the sound of new voices; to cleanse one's soul ever more and more of the dust and noise, as of a country fair, which is peculiar to this age; toovercomeeverything Christian by something super-Christian, and not only to rid oneself of it,—for the Christian doctrine is the counter-doctrine to the Dionysian; to rediscover theSouthin oneself, and to stretch a clear, glittering, andmysterious southern sky above one; to reconquer the southern healthiness and concealed power of the soul, once more for oneself; to increase the compass of one's soul step by step, and to become more supernational, more European, more super-European, more Oriental, and finally moreHellenic—for Hellenism was, as a matter of fact, the first great union and synthesis of everything Oriental, and precisely on that account, thebeginningof the European soul, the discovery ofour "newworld":—he who lives under such imperatives, who knows what he may not encounter some day? Possibly—anew dawn!
1052.
The two types; Dionysus and Christ on the Cross.We should ascertain whether the typicallyreligiousman is a decadent phenomenon (the great innovators are one and all morbid and epileptic); but do not let us forget to include that type of the religious man who ispagan.Is the pagan cult not a form of gratitude for, and affirmation of, Life? Ought not its most representative type to be an apology and deification of Life? The type of a well-constituted and ecstatically overflowing spirit! The type of a spirit which absorbs the contradictions and problems of existence, and whichsolvesthem!
At this point I set up theDionysusof the Greeks: the religious affirmation of Life, of the whole of Life, not of denied and partial Life (it is typical that in this cult the sexual act awakens ideas of depth, mystery, and reverence).
Dionysusversus"Christ"; here you have the contrast. It isnota difference in regard to the martyrdom,—but the latter has a different meaning. Life itself—Life s eternal fruitfulness and recurrence caused anguish, destruction, and the will to annihilation. In the other case, the suffering of the "Christ as the Innocent One" stands as an objection against Life, it is the formula of Life's condemnation.—Readers will guess that the problem concerns the meaning of suffering; whether a Christian or a tragic meaning be given to it. In the first case it is the road to a holy mode of existence; in the second caseexistence itself is regarded as sufficiently holyto justify an enormous amount of suffering. The tragic man says yea even to the most excruciating suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying, to be able to do this; the Christian denies even the happy lots on earth: he is weak, poor, and disinherited enough to suffer from life in any form. God on the Cross is a curse upon Life, a signpost directing people to deliver themselves from it;—Dionysus cut into pieces is apromiseof Life: it will be for ever born anew, and rise afresh from destruction.
1053.
My philosophy reveals the triumphant thought through which all other systems of thought must ultimately perish. It is the great disciplinary thought: those races that cannot bear it are doomed; those which regard it as the greatest blessing are destined to rule.
1054.
Thegreatestof all fights: for this purpose a newweaponis required.
A hammer: a terrible alternative must be created. Europe must be brought face to face with the logic of facts, and confronted with the question whether its will for ruin is really earnest.
General levelling down to mediocrity must be avoided. Rather than this it would be preferable to perish.
1055.
A pessimistic attitude of mind and a pessimistic doctrine and ecstatic Nihilism, may incertain circumstances even prove indispensable to the philosopher—that is to say, as a mighty form of pressure, or hammer, with which he can smash up degenerate, perishing races and put them out of existence; with which he can beat a track to a new order of life, or instil a longing for nonentity in those who are degenerate and who desire to perish.
1056.
I wish to teach the thought which gives unto many the right to cancel their existences—the great disciplinary thought.
1057.
Eternal Recurrence.A prophecy.
1. The exposition of the doctrine and itstheoreticalfirst principles and results.
2. The proof of the doctrine.
3. Probable results which will follow from its beingbelieved.(It makes everything break open.)
(a)The means of enduring it.
(b)The means of ignoring it.
4. Its place in history is a means.
The periodofgreatest danger. The foundation of an oligarchyabovepeoples and their interests: education directed at establishing a political policy for humanity in general.
A counterpart of Jesuitism.
1058.
The two greatest philosophical points of view (both discovered by Germans).
(a) That ofbecomingand that ofevolution.
(b) That based upon thevalues of existence(but the wretched form of German pessimism must first be overcome!)—
Both points of view reconciled by me in a decisive manner.
Everything becomes and returns for ever,escape is impossible!
Granted that wecouldappraise the value of existence, what would be the result of it? The thought of recurrence is a principleof selectionin the service ofpower(and barbarity!).
The ripeness of man for this thought.
1059.
1. The thought of eternal recurrence: its first principles which must necessarily be true if it were true. What its result is.
2. It is the mostoppressivethought: its probable results, provided it be not prevented, that is to say, provided all values be not transvalued.
3. The means ofenduring it:the transvaluation of all values. Pleasure no longer to be found in certainty, but in uncertainty; no longer "cause and effect," but continual creativeness; no longer the will to self-preservation, but to power; no longer the modest expression "it is allonlysubjective," but "it is allourwork! let us be proud of it."
1060.
In order to endure the thought of recurrence, freedom from morality is necessary; new means against thefact pain(pain regarded as the instrument, as the father of pleasure; there is no accretive consciousness of pain); pleasure derived from all kinds of uncertainty and tentativeness, as a counterpoise to extreme fatalism; suppression of the concept "necessity"; suppression of the "will"; suppression of "absolute knowledge."
Greatest elevationof man'sconsciousness of strength,as that which creates superman.
1061.
The two extremes of thought—the materialistic and the platonic—are reconciled ineternal recurrence: both are regarded as ideals.
1062.
If the universe had a goal, that goal would have been reached by now. If any sort of unforeseen final state existed, that state also would have! been reached. If it were capable of any halting or stability of any being, it would only have possessed this capability of becoming stable for one instant in its development; and again becoming would have been at an end for ages, and with it all thinking and all "spirit." The fact of "intellects" being in astate of developmentproves that the universe can have no goal, nofinal state, and is incapable of being. But the old habit of thinking of some purpose in regard to all phenomena, and of thinking of a directing and creating deity in regard to the universe, is so powerful, that the thinker has to go to great pains in order to avoid thinking of the very aimlessness of the world as intended. The idea that the universe intentionally evades a goal, and even knows artificial means wherewith it prevents itself from falling into a circular movement, must occur to all those who would fain attribute to the universe the capacity of eternally regenerating itself—that is to say, they would fain impose upon a finite, definite force which is invariable in quantity, like the universe, the miraculous gift of renewing its forms and its conditionsfor all eternity.Although the universe is no longer a God, it must still be capable of the divine power of creating and transforming; it must forbid itself to relapse into any one of its previous forms; it must not only have the intention, but also the means, of avoiding any sort of repetition, every second of its existence, even, it must control every single one of its movements, with the view of avoiding goals, final states, and repetitions and all the other results of such an unpardonable and insane method of thought and desire. All this is nothing more than the old religious mode of thought and desire, which, in spite of all, longs to believe that in some way or other the universe resembles the old, beloved, infinite, and infinitely-creative God—that in some way or other "the old God still lives"—that longing of Spinoza'swhich is expressed in the words "deus sive natura" (what he really felt was "natura sive deus"). Which, then, is the proposition and belief in which the decisive change, the presentpreponderanceof the scientific spirit over the religious and god-fancying spirit, is best formulated? Ought it not to be: the universe, as force, must not be thought of as unlimited, because it cannot be thought of in this way,—we forbid ourselves the conceptinfiniteforce, because it isincompatiblewith the idea of force? Whence it follows that the universe lacks the power of eternal renewal.
1063.
The principle of the conservation of energy inevitably involveseternal recurrence.
1064.
That a state of equilibrium has never been reached, proves that it is impossible, but in infinite space it must have been reached. Likewise in spherical space. Theformof space must be the cause of the eternal movement, and ultimately of all imperfection. That "energy" and "stability" and "immutability" are contradictory. The measure of energy (dimensionally) is fixed though it is essentially fluid.
"That which is timeless" must be refuted, any given moment of energy, the absolute conditions for a new distribution of all forces are present, it cannot remain stationary. Change is part ofits essence, therefore time is as well; by this means, however, the necessity of change has only been established once more in theory.
1065.
A certain emperor always bore the fleeting nature of all things in his mind, in order not to value them too seriously, and to be able to live quietly in their midst. Conversely, everything seems to me much too important for it to be so fleeting, I seek an eternity for everything: ought one to pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea? My consolation is that everything that has been is eternal: the sea will wash it up again.
1066.
The new concept of the universe.The universe exists; it is nothing that grows into existence and that passes out of existence. Or, better still, it develops, it passes away, but it never began to develop, and has never ceased from passing away; itmaintainsitself in both states. It lives on itself, its excrements are its nourishment.
We need not concern ourselves for one instant with the hypothesis of acreatedworld. The concept create is to-day utterly indefinable and unrealisable; it is but a word which hails from superstitious ages, nothing can be explained with a word. The last attempt that was made to conceive of a world thatbeganoccurred quite recently,in many cases with the help of logical reasoning,—generally, too, as you will guess, with an ulterior theological motive.
Several attempts have been made lately to show that the concept that "the universe has an infinite past (regressus in infinitum) is contradictory, it was even demonstrated, it is true, at the price of confounding the head with the tail. Nothing can prevent me from calculating backwards from this moment of time, and of saying: "I shall never reach the end"; just as I can calculate without end in a forward direction, from the same moment. It is only when I wish to commit the error—I shall be careful to avoid it—of reconciling this correct concept of aregressus in infinitumwith the absolutely unrealisable concept of a finiteprogressusup to the present; only when I consider the direction (forwards or backwards) as logically indifferent, that I take hold of the head—this very moment—and think I hold the tail: this pleasure I leave to you, Mr. Dühring!...
I have come across this thought in other thinkers before me, and every time I found that it was determined by other ulterior motives (chiefly theological, in favour of acreator spiritus).If the universe were in any way able to congeal, to dry up, to perish; or if it were capable of attaining to a state of equilibrium; or if it had any kind of goal at all which a long lapse of time, immutability, and finality reserved for it (in short, to speak metaphysically, if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nonentity), this state ought already to have been reached.
But it has not been reached: it therefore follows.... This is the only certainty we can grasp, which can serve as a corrective to a host of cosmic hypotheses possible in themselves. If, for instance, materialism cannot consistently escape the conclusion of a finite state, which William Thomson has traced out for it, then materialism is thereby refuted.
If the universe may be conceived as a definite quantity of energy, as a definite number of centres of energy,—and every other concept remains indefinite and therefore useless,—it follows therefrom that the universe must go through a calculable number of combinations in the great game of chance which constitutes its existence. In infinity, at some moment or other, every possible combination must once have been realised; not only this, but it must have been realised an infinite number of times. And inasmuch as between every one of these combinations and its next recurrence every other possible combination would necessarily have been undergone, and since every one of these combinations would determine the whole series in the same order, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the universe is thus shown to be a circular movement which has already repeated itself an infinite number of times, and which plays its game for all eternity.—This conception is not simply materialistic; for if it were this, it would not involve an infinite recurrence of identical cases, but a finite state. Owing to the fact that the universe has not reached this finite state, materialismshows itself to be but an imperfect and provisional hypothesis.
1067.
And do ye know what "the universe" is to my mind? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity o; energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier, it is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty. It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over in calculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, most rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even in this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity,—a becoming which knows not satiety, or disgust, or weariness:—this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, ofeternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my "Beyond Good and Evil" without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep goodwill to itself,—would you have a name for my world? Asolutionof all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and most undaunted men of the blackest midnight?—This world is the Will to Power—and nothing else!And even ye yourselves are this will to power—and nothing besides!