remnant of former times. The ages that celebrate it are not those which
invent it; the contrary is often the case. There are many contrasts
to be found here. The Greek cultus takes us back to a pre-Homeric
disposition and culture. It is almost the oldest that we know of the
Greeks--older than their mythology, which their poets have considerably
remoulded, so far as we know it--Can this cult really be called Greek?
I doubt it: they are finishers, not inventors. _They preserve_ by means
of this beautiful completion and adornment.
128
It is exceedingly doubtful whether we should draw any conclusion
in regard to nationality and relationship with other nations from
languages. A victorious language is nothing but a frequent (and not
always regular) indication of a successful campaign. Where could there
have been autochthonous peoples! It shows a very hazy conception of
things to talk about Greeks who never lived in Greece. That which
is really Greek is much less the result of natural aptitude than of
adapted institutions, and also of an acquired language.
129
To live on mountains, to travel a great deal, and to move quickly
from one place to another: in these ways we can now begin to compare
ourselves with the Greek gods. We know the past, too, and we almost
know the future. What would a Greek say, if only he could see us!
130
The gods make men still more evil; this is the nature of man. If we
do not like a man, we wish that he may become worse than he is, and
then we are glad. This forms part of the obscure philosophy of hate--a
philosophy which has never yet been written, because it is everywhere
the _pudendum_ that every one feels.
131
The pan-Hellenic Homer finds his delight in the frivolity of the gods;
but it is astounding how he can also give them dignity again. This
amazing ability to raise one's self again, however, is Greek.
132
What, then, is the origin of the envy of the gods? people did not
believe in a calm, quiet happiness, but only in an exuberant one.
This must have caused some displeasure to the Greeks; for their soul
was only too easily wounded: it embittered them to see a happy man.
That is Greek. If a man of distinguished talent appeared, the flock
of envious people must have become astonishingly large. If any one
met with a misfortune, they would say of him: "Ah! no wonder! he was
too frivolous and too well off." And every one of them would have
behaved exuberantly if he had possessed the requisite talent, and would
willingly have played the rôle of the god who sent the unhappiness to
men.
133
The Greek gods did not demand any complete changes of character, and
were, generally speaking, by no means burdensome or importunate: it was
thus possible to take them seriously and to believe in them. At the
time of Homer, indeed, the nature of the Greek was formed: flippancy
of images and imagination was necessary to lighten the weight of its
passionate disposition and to set it free.
134
Every religion has for its highest images an analogon in the
spiritual condition of those who profess it. The God of Mohammed: the
solitariness of the desert, the distant roar of the lion, the vision
of a formidable warrior. The God of the Christians: everything that
men and women think of when they hear the word "love." The God of the
Greeks: a beautiful apparition in a dream.
135
A great deal of intelligence must have gone to the making up of a Greek
polytheism: the expenditure of intelligence is much less lavish when
people have only _one_ God.
136
Greek morality is not based on religion, but on the _polis._ There
were only priests of the individual gods; not representatives of the
whole religion: _i.e.,_ no guild of priests. Likewise no Holy Writ.
137
The "lighthearted" gods: this is the highest adornment which has ever
been bestowed upon the world--with the feeling, How difficult it is to
live!
138
If the Greeks let their "reason" speak, their life seems to them
bitter and terrible. They are not deceived. But they play round life
with lies: Simonides advises them to treat life as they would a play;
earnestness was only too well known to them in the form of pain. The
misery of men is a pleasure to the gods when they hear the poets
singing of it. Well did the Greeks know that only through art could
even misery itself become a source of pleasure; _vide tragœdiam._
139
It is quite untrue to say that the Greeks only took _this_ life into
their consideration--they suffered also from thoughts of death and
Hell. But no "repentance" or contrition.
140
The incarnate appearance of gods, as in Sappho's invocation to
Aphrodite, must not be taken as poetic licence: they are frequently
hallucinations. We conceive of a great many things, including the will
to die, too superficially as rhetorical.
141
The "martyr" is Hellenic: Prometheus, Hercules. The hero-myth became
pan-Hellenic: a poet must have had a hand in that!
142
How _realistic_ the Greeks were even in the domain of pure inventions!
They poetised reality, not yearning to lift themselves out of it. The
raising of the present into the colossal and eternal, _e.g.,_ by Pindar.
143
What condition do the Greeks premise as the model of their life in
Hades? Anæmic, dreamlike, weak: it is the continuous accentuation of
old age, when the memory gradually becomes weaker and weaker, and the
body still more so. The senility of senility: this would be our state
of life in the eyes of the Hellenes.
144
The naïve character of the Greeks observed by the Egyptians.
145
The truly scientific people, the literary people, were the Egyptians
and not the Greeks. That which has the appearance of science among
the Greeks, originated among the Egyptians and later on returned to
them to mingle again with the old current. Alexandrian culture is an
amalgamation of Hellenic and Egyptian: and when our world again founds
its culture upon the Alexandrian culture, then ...[13]
[Footnote 13: "We shall once again be shipwrecked." The omission is in
the original.--TR.]
146
The Egyptians are far more of a literary people than the Greeks. I
maintain this against Wolf. The first grain in Eleusis, the first vine
in Thebes, the first olive-tree and fig-tree. The Egyptians had lost a
great part of their mythology.
147
The unmathematical undulation of the column in Paestum is analogous to
the modification of the _tempo:_ animation in place of a mechanical
movement.
148
The desire to find something certain and fixed in æsthetic led to the
worship of Aristotle: I think, however, that we may gradually come to
see from his works that he understood nothing about art; and that it is
merely the intellectual conversations of the Athenians, echoing in his
pages, which we admire.
149
In Socrates we have as it were lying open before us a specimen of the
consciousness out of which, later on, the instincts of the theoretic
man originated: that one would rather die than grow old and weak in
mind.
150
At the twilight of antiquity there were still wholly unchristian
figures, which were more beautiful, harmonious, and pure than those
of any Christians: _e.g.,_ Proclus. His mysticism and syncretism were
things that precisely Christianity cannot reproach him with. In any
case, it would be my desire to live together with such people. In
comparison with them Christianity looks like some crude brutalisation,
organised for the benefit of the mob and the criminal classes.
Proclus, who solemnly invokes the rising moon.
151
With the advent of Christianity a religion attained the mastery which
corresponded to a pre-Greek condition of mankind: belief in witchcraft
in connection with all and everything, bloody sacrifices, superstitious
fear of demoniacal punishments, despair in one's self, ecstatic
brooding and hallucination; man's self become the arena of good and
evil spirits and their struggles.
152
All branches of history have experimented with antiquity: critical
consideration alone remains. By this term I do not mean conjectural and
literary-historical criticism.
153
Antiquity has been treated by all kinds of historians and their
methods. We have now had enough experience, however, to turn the
history of antiquity to account without being shipwrecked on antiquity
itself.
154
We can now look back over a fairly long period of human existence:
what will the humanity be like which is able to look back at us from
an equally long distance? which finds us lying intoxicated among the
debris of old culture! which finds its only consolation in "being good"
and in holding out the "helping hand," and turns away from all other
consolations!--Does beauty, too, grow out of the ancient culture? I
think that our ugliness arises from our metaphysical remnants: our
confused morals, the worthlessness of our marriages, and so on, are the
cause. The beautiful man, the healthy, moderate, and enterprising man,
moulds the objects around him into beautiful shapes after his own image.
155
Up to the present time all history has been written from the standpoint
of success, and, indeed, with the assumption of a certain reason in
this success. This remark applies also to Greek history: so far we
do not possess any. It is the same all round, however: where are the
historians who can survey things and events without being hum-bugged
by stupid theories? I know of only one, Burckhardt. Everywhere the
widest possible optimism prevails in science. The question: "What would
have been the consequence if so and so had not happened?" is almost
unanimously thrust aside, and yet it is the cardinal question. Thus
everything becomes ironical. Let us only consider our own lives. If we
examine history in accordance with a preconceived plan, let this plan
be sought in the purposes of a great man, or perhaps in those of a sex,
or of a party. Everything else is a chaos.--Even in natural science we
find this deification of the necessary.
Germany has become the breeding-place of this historical optimism;
Hegel is perhaps to blame for this. Nothing, however, is more
responsible for the fatal influence of German culture. Everything
that has been kept down by success gradually rears itself up: history
as the scorn of the conqueror; a servile sentiment and a kneeling down
before the actual fact--"a sense for the State," they now call it, as
if _that_ had still to be propagated! He who does not understand how
brutal and unintelligent history is will never understand the stimulus
to make it intelligent. Just think how rare it is to find a man with
as great an intelligent knowledge of his own life as Goethe had: what
amount of rationality can we expect to find arising out of these other
veiled and blind existences as they work chaotically with and in
opposition to each other?
And it is especially naïve when Hellwald, the author of a history of
culture, warns us away from all "ideals," simply because history has
killed them off one after the other
156
To bring to light without reserve the stupidity and the want of reason
in human things: that is the aim of _our_ brethren and colleagues.
People will then have to distinguish what is essential in them, what is
incorrigible, and what is still susceptible of further improvement. But
"Providence" must be kept out of the question, for it is a conception
that enables people to take things too easily. I wish to breathe the
breath of _this_ purpose into science. Let us advance our knowledge of
mankind! The good and rational in man is accidental or apparent, or
the contrary of something very irrational. There will come a time when
_training_ will be the only thought.
157
Surrender to necessity is exactly what I do not teach--for one must
first know this necessity to be necessary. There may perhaps be many
necessities; but in general this inclination is simply a bed of
idleness.
158
To know history now means: to recognise how all those who believed in
a Providence took things too easily. There is no such thing. If human
affairs are seen to go forward in a loose and disordered way, do not
think that a god has any purpose in view by letting them do so or that
he is neglecting them. We can now see in a general way that the history
of Christianity on earth has been one of the most dreadful chapters in
history, and that a stop _must_ be put to it. True, the influence of
antiquity has been observed in Christianity even in our own time; and,
as it diminishes, so will our knowledge of antiquity diminish also to
an even greater extent. Now is the best time to recognise it: we are no
longer prejudiced in favour of Christianity, but we still understand
it, and also the antiquity that forms part of it, so far as this
antiquity stands in line with Christianity.
159
Philosophic heads must occupy themselves one day with the collective
account of antiquity and make up its balance-sheet. If we have this,
antiquity will be overcome. All the shortcomings which now vex us have
their roots in antiquity, so that we cannot continue to treat this
account with the mildness which has been customary up to the present.
The atrocious crime of mankind which rendered Christianity possible,
as it actually became possible, is the _guilt_ of antiquity. With
Christianity antiquity will also be cleared away.--At the present time
it is not so very far behind us, and it is certainly not possible to
do justice to it. It has been availed of in the most dreadful fashion
for purposes of repression, and has acted as a support for religious
oppression by disguising itself as "culture." It was common to hear the
saying, "Antiquity has been conquered by Christianity."
This was a historical fact, and it was thus thought that no harm
could come of any dealings with antiquity. Yes; it is so plausible
to say that we find Christian ethics "deeper" than Socrates! Plato
was easier to compete with! We are at the present time, so to speak,
merely chewing the cud of the very battle which was fought in the first
centuries of the Christian era--with the exception of the fact that
now, instead of the clearly perceptible antiquity which then existed,
we have merely its pale ghost; and, indeed, even Christianity itself
has become rather ghostlike. It is a battle fought _after_ the decisive
battle, a post-vibration. In the end, all the forces of which antiquity
consisted have reappeared in Christianity in the crudest possible form:
it is nothing new, only quantitatively extraordinary.
160
What severs us for ever from the culture of antiquity is the fact that
its foundations have become too shaky for us. A criticism of the Greeks
is at the same time a criticism of Christianity; for the bases of the
spirit of belief, the religious cult, and witchcraft, are the same in
both.--There are many rudimentary stages still remaining; but they are
by this time almost ready to collapse.
This would be a task: to characterise Greek antiquity as irretrievably
lost, and with it Christianity also and the foundations upon which, up
to the present time, our society and politics have been based.
161
Christianity has conquered antiquity--yes; that is easily said. In the
first place, it is itself a piece of antiquity; in the second place,
it has preserved antiquity; in the third place, it has never been
in combat with the pure ages of antiquity. Or rather: in order that
Christianity itself might remain, it had to let itself be overcome
by the spirit of antiquity--for example, the idea of empire, the
community, and so forth. We are suffering from the uncommon want
of clearness and uncleanliness of human things; from the ingenious
mendacity which Christianity has brought among men.
162
It is almost laughable to see how nearly all the sciences and arts
of modern times grow from the scattered seeds which have been wafted
towards us from antiquity, and how Christianity seems to us here to
be merely the evil chill of a long night, a night during which one is
almost inclined to believe that all is over with reason and honesty
among men. The battle waged against the natural man has given rise to
the unnatural man.
163
With the dissolution of Christianity a great part of antiquity has
become incomprehensible to us, for instance, the entire religious basis
of life. On this account an imitation of antiquity is a false tendency:
the betrayers or the betrayed are the philologists who still think
of such a thing. We live in a period when many different conceptions
of life are to be found: hence the present age is instructive to an
unusual degree; and hence also the reason why it is so ill, since it
suffers from the evils of all its tendencies at once. The man of the
future: the European man.
164
The German Reformation widened the gap between us and antiquity: was it
necessary for it to do so? It once again introduced the old contrast of
"Paganism" and "Christianity"; and it was at the same time a protest
against the decorative culture of the Renaissance--it was a victory
gained over the same culture as had formerly been conquered by early
Christianity.
In regard to "worldly things," Christianity preserved the grosser views
of the ancients. All the nobler elements in marriage, slavery, and the
State are unchristian. It _required_ the distorting characteristics of
worldliness to prove itself.
165
The connection between humanism and religious rationalism was
emphasised as a Saxonian trait by Köchly: the type of this philologist
is Gottfried Hermann.[14]
[Footnote 14: Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann (1772-1848), noted for his
works on metre and Greek grammar.--TR.]
166
I understand religions as narcotics: but when they are given to such
nations as the Germans, I think they are simply rank poison.
167
All religions are, in the end, based upon certain physical assumptions,
which are already in existence and adapt the religions to their needs:
for example, in Christianity, the contrast between body and soul,
the unlimited importance of the earth as the "world," the marvellous
occurrences in nature. If once the opposite views gain the mastery--for
instance, a strict law of nature, the helplessness and superfluousness
of all gods, the strict conception of the soul as a bodily process--all
is over. But all Greek culture is based upon such views.
168
When we look from the character and culture of the Catholic Middle
Ages back to the Greeks, we see them resplendent indeed in the rays
of higher humanity; for, if we have anything to reproach these Greeks
with, we must reproach the Middle Ages with it also to a much greater
extent. The worship of the ancients at the time of the Renaissance was
therefore quite honest and proper. We have carried matters further in
one particular point, precisely in connection with that dawning ray of
light. We have outstripped the Greeks in the clarifying of the world by
our studies of nature and men. Our knowledge is much greater, and our
judgments are more moderate and just.
In addition to this, a more gentle spirit has become widespread, thanks
to the period of illumination which has weakened mankind--but this
weakness, when turned into morality, leads to good results and honours
us. Man has now a great deal of freedom: it is his own fault if he
does not make more use of it than he does; the fanaticism of opinions
has become much milder. Finally, that we would much rather live in the
present age than in any other is due to science; and certainly no other
race in the history of mankind has had such a wide choice of noble
enjoyments as ours--even if our race has not the palate and stomach to
experience a great deal of joy. But one can live comfortably amid all
this "freedom" only when one merely understands it and does not wish to
participate in it--that is the modern crux. The participants appear to
be less attractive than ever: how stupid they must be!
Thus the danger arises that knowledge may avenge itself on us, just as
ignorance avenged itself on us during the Middle Ages. It is all over
with those religions which place their trust in gods, Providences,
rational orders of the universe, miracles, and sacraments; as is also
the case with certain types of holy lives, such as ascetics; for we
only too easily conclude that such people are the effects of sickness
and an aberrant brain. There is no doubt that the contrast between
a pure, incorporeal soul and a body has been almost set aside. Who
now believes in the immortality of the soul! Everything connected
with blessedness or damnation, which was based upon certain erroneous
physiological assumptions, falls to the ground as soon as these
assumptions are recognised to be errors. Our scientific assumptions
admit just as much of an interpretation and utilisation in favour of a
besotting philistinism--yea, in favour of bestiality--as also in favour
of "blessedness" and soul-inspiration. As compared with all previous
ages, we are now standing on a new foundation, so that something may
still be expected from the human race.
As regards culture, we have hitherto been acquainted with only one
complete form of it, _i.e.,_ the city-culture of the Greeks, based as
it was on their mythical and social foundations; and one incomplete
form, the Roman, which acted as an adornment of life, derived from the
Greek. Now all these bases, the mythical and the politico-social, have
changed; our alleged culture has no stability, because it has been
erected upon insecure conditions and opinions which are even now almost
ready to collapse.--When we thoroughly grasp Greek culture, then,
we see that it is all over with it. The philologist is thus a great
sceptic in the present conditions of our culture and training: that is
his mission. Happy is he if, like Wagner and Schopenhauer, he has a dim
presentiment of those auspicious powers amid which a new culture is
stirring.
169
Those who say: "But antiquity nevertheless remains as a subject of
consideration for pure science, even though all its educational
purposes may be disowned," must be answered by the words, What is pure
science here! Actions and characteristics must be judged; and those
who judge them must stand above them: so you must first devote your
attention to overcoming antiquity. If you do not do that, your science
is not pure, but impure and limited: as may now be perceived.
170
To overcome Greek antiquity through our own deeds: this would be the
right task. But before we can do this we must first _know_ it!--There
is a thoroughness which is merely an excuse for inaction. Let it be
recollected how much Goethe knew of antiquity: certainly not so much as
a philologist, and yet sufficient to contend with it in such a way as
to bring about fruitful results. One _should_ not even know more about
a thing than one could create. Moreover, the only time when we can
actually _recognise_ something is when we endeavour to _make_ it. Let
people but attempt to live after the manner of antiquity; and they will
at once come hundreds of miles nearer to antiquity than they can do
with all their erudition.--Our philologists never show that they strive
to emulate antiquity in any way, and thus _their_ antiquity remains
without any effect on the schools.
The study of the spirit of emulation (Renaissance, Goethe), and the
study of despair.
The non-popular element in the new culture of the Renaissance: a
frightful fact!
171