how it continually tickles and stimulates millions of young Europeans,
who cannot endure themselves and all their ennui,—I conceive that there
must be a desire in them to suffer something, in order to derive from
their suffering a worthy motive for acting, for doing something.
Distress is necessary! Hence the cry of the politicians, hence the many
false, trumped-up, exaggerated "states of distress" of all possible
kinds, and the blind readiness to believe in them. This young world
desires that there should arrive or appear _from the outside_—not
happiness—but misfortune; and their imagination is already busy
beforehand to form a monster out of it, so that they may afterwards be
able to fight with a monster. If these distress-seekers felt the power
to benefit themselves, to do something for themselves from internal
sources, they would also understand how to create a distress of their
own, specially their own, from internal sources. Their inventions might
then be more refined, and their gratifications might sound like good
music: while at present they fill the world with their cries of
distress, and consequently too often with the _feeling of distress_ in
the first place! They do not know what to make of themselves—and so they
paint the misfortune of others on the wall; they always need others! And
always again other others!—Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to
paint my _happiness_ on the wall.
-----
Footnote 7:
Allusions to the song of Clara in Goethe's "Egmont."—TR.
BOOK SECOND
57.
_To the Realists._—Ye sober beings, who feel yourselves armed against
passion and fantasy, and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out
of your emptiness, ye call yourselves realists and give to understand
that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you; before you
alone reality stands unveiled, and ye yourselves would perhaps be the
best part of it,—oh, ye dear images of Sais! But are not ye also in your
unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared
with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist?[8]—and what
is "reality" to an enamoured artist! Ye still carry about with you the
valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and
infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and
ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of
"reality," for example—oh, that is an old, primitive "love"! In every
feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love:
and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality,
ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it.
There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What is "real" in them?
Remove the phantasm and the whole human _element_ therefrom, ye sober
ones! Yes, if ye could do _that_! If ye could forget your origin, your
past, your preparatory schooling,—your whole history as man and beast!
There is no "reality" for us—nor for you either, ye sober ones,—we are
far from being so alien to one another as ye suppose, and perhaps our
good-will to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable as your
belief that ye are altogether _incapable_ of drunkenness.
58.
_Only as Creators!_—It has caused me the greatest trouble, and for ever
causes me the greatest trouble, to perceive that unspeakably more
depends upon _what things are called_, than on what they are. The
reputation, the name and appearance, the importance, the usual measure
and weight of things—each being in origin most frequently an error and
arbitrariness thrown over the things like a garment, and quite alien to
their essence and even to their exterior—have gradually, by the belief
therein and its continuous growth from generation to generation, grown
as it were on-and-into things and become their very body; the appearance
at the very beginning becomes almost always the essence in the end, and
_operates_ as the essence! What a fool he would be who would think it
enough to refer here to this origin and this nebulous veil of illusion,
in order to _annihilate_ that which virtually passes for the
world—namely, so-called "reality"! It is only as creators that we can
annihilate!—But let us not forget this: it suffices to create new names
and valuations and probabilities, in order in the long run to create new
"things."
59.
_We Artists!_—When we love a woman we have readily a hatred against
nature, on recollecting all the disagreeable natural functions to which
every woman is subject; we prefer not to think of them at all, but if
once our soul touches on these things it twitches impatiently, and
glances, as we have said, contemptuously at nature:—we are hurt; nature
seems to encroach upon our possessions, and with the profanest hands. We
then shut our ears against all physiology, and we decree in secret that
"we will hear nothing of the fact that man is something else than _soul
and form_!" "The man under the skin" is an abomination and monstrosity,
a blasphemy of God and of love to all lovers.—Well, just as the lover
still feels with respect to nature and natural functions, so did every
worshipper of God and his "holy omnipotence" formerly feel: in all that
was said of nature by astronomers, geologists, physiologists, and
physicians, he saw an encroachment on his most precious possession, and
consequently an attack,—and moreover also an impertinence of the
assailant! The "law of nature" sounded to him as blasphemy against God;
in truth he would too willingly have seen the whole of mechanics traced
back to moral acts of volition and arbitrariness:—but because nobody
could render him this service, he _concealed_ nature and mechanism from
himself as best he could, and lived in a dream. Oh, those men of former
times understood how to _dream_, and did not need first to go to
sleep!—and we men of the present day also still understand it too well,
with all our good-will for wakefulness and daylight! It suffices to
love, to hate, to desire, and in general to feel,—_immediately_ the
spirit and the power of the dream come over us, and we ascend, with open
eyes and indifferent to all danger, the most dangerous paths, to the
roofs and towers of fantasy, and without any giddiness, as persons born
for climbing—we the night-walkers by day! We artists! We concealers of
naturalness! We moon-struck and God-struck ones! We dead-silent,
untiring wanderers on heights which we do not see as heights, but as our
plains, as our places of safety!
60.
_Women and their Effect in the Distance._—Have I still ears? Am I only
ear, and nothing else besides? Here I stand in the midst of the surging
of the breakers, whose white flames fork up to my feet;—from all sides
there is howling, threatening, crying, and screaming at me, while in the
lowest depths the old earth-shaker sings his aria, hollow like a roaring
bull; he beats such an earth-shaker's measure thereto, that even the
hearts of these weathered rock-monsters tremble at the sound. Then,
suddenly, as if born out of nothingness, there appears before the portal
of this hellish labyrinth, only a few fathoms distant,—a great
sailing-ship gliding silently along like a ghost. Oh, this ghostly
beauty! With what enchantment it seizes me! What? Has all the repose and
silence in the world embarked here? Does my happiness itself sit in this
quiet place, my happier ego, my second immortalised self? Still not
dead, yet also no longer living? As a ghost-like, calm, gazing, gliding,
sweeping, neutral being? Similar to the ship, which, with its white
sails, like an immense butterfly, passes over the dark sea! Yes! Passing
_over_ existence! That is it! That would be it!——It seems that the noise
here has made me a visionary? All great noise causes one to place
happiness in the calm and the distance. When a man is in the midst of
_his_ hubbub, in the midst of the breakers of his plots and plans, he
there sees perhaps calm, enchanting beings glide past him, for whose
happiness and retirement he longs—_they are women_. He almost thinks
that there with the women dwells his better self; that in these calm
places even the loudest breakers become still as death, and life itself
a dream of life. But still! But still! My noble enthusiast, there is
also in the most beautiful sailing-ship so much noise and bustling, and
alas, so much petty, pitiable bustling! The enchantment and the most
powerful effect of women is, to use the language of philosophers, an
effect at a distance, an _actio in distans_; there belongs thereto,
however, primarily and above all,—_distance_!
61.
_In Honour of Friendship._—That the sentiment of friendship was regarded
by antiquity as the highest sentiment, higher even than the most vaunted
pride of the self-sufficient and wise, yea as it were its sole and still
holier brotherhood, is very well expressed by the story of the
Macedonian king who made the present of a talent to a cynical Athenian
philosopher from whom he received it back again. "What?" said the king,
"has he then no friend?" He therewith meant to say, "I honour this pride
of the wise and independent man, but I should have honoured his humanity
still higher if the friend in him had gained the victory over his pride.
The philosopher has lowered himself in my estimation, for he showed that
he did not know one of the two highest sentiments—and in fact the higher
of them!"
62.
_Love._—Love pardons even the passion of the beloved.
63.
_Woman in Music._—How does it happen that warm and rainy winds bring the
musical mood and the inventive delight in melody with them? Are they not
the same winds that fill the churches and give women amorous thoughts?
64.
_Sceptics._—I fear women who have become old are more sceptical in the
secret recesses of their hearts than any of the men are; they believe in
the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and
profundity is to them only the disguising of this "truth," the very
desirable disguising of a _pudendum_,—an affair, therefore, of decency
and of modesty, and nothing more!
65.
_Devotedness._—There are noble women with a certain poverty of spirit,
who, in order to _express_ their profoundest devotedness, have no other
alternative but to offer their virtue and modesty: it is the highest
thing they have. And this present is often accepted without putting the
recipient under such deep obligation as the giver supposed,—a very
melancholy story!
66.
_The Strength of the Weak._—Women are all skilful in exaggerating their
weaknesses, indeed they are inventive in weaknesses, so as to seem quite
fragile ornaments to which even a grain of dust does harm; their
existence is meant to bring home to man's mind his coarseness, and to
appeal to his conscience. They thus defend themselves against the strong
and all "rights of might."
67.
_Self-dissembling._—She loves him now and has since been looking forth
with as quiet confidence as a cow; but alas! It was precisely his
delight that she seemed so fitful and absolutely incomprehensible! He
had rather too much steady weather in himself already! Would she not do
well to feign her old character? to feign indifference? Does not—love
itself advise her _to do so_? _Vivat comœdia!_
68.
_Will and Willingness._—Some one brought a youth to a wise man and said,
"See, this is one who is being corrupted by women!" The wise man shook
his head and smiled. "It is men," he called out, "who corrupt women; and
everything that women lack should be atoned for and improved in men,—for
man creates for himself the ideal of woman, and woman moulds herself
according to this ideal."—"You are too tender-hearted towards women,"
said one of the bystanders, "you do not know them!" The wise man
answered: "Man's attribute is will, woman's attribute is
willingness,—such is the law of the sexes, verily! a hard law for woman!
All human beings are innocent of their existence, women, however, are
doubly innocent; who could have enough of salve and gentleness for
them!"—"What about salve! What about gentleness!" called out another
person in the crowd, "we must educate women better!"—"We must educate
men better," said the wise man, and made a sign to the youth to follow
him.—The youth, however, did not follow him.
69.
_Capacity for Revenge._—That a person cannot and consequently will not
defend himself, does not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes; but we
despise the person who has neither the ability nor the good-will for
revenge—whether it be a man or a woman. Would a woman be able to
captivate us (or, as people say, to "fetter" us) whom we did not credit
with knowing how to employ the dagger (any kind of dagger) skilfully
_against us_ under certain circumstances? Or against herself; which in a
certain case might be the severest revenge (the Chinese revenge).
70.
_The Mistresses of the Masters._—A powerful contralto voice, as we
occasionally hear it in the theatre, raises suddenly for us the curtain
on possibilities in which we usually do not believe; all at once we are
convinced that somewhere in the world there may be women with high,
heroic, royal souls, capable and prepared for magnificent remonstrances,
resolutions, and self-sacrifices, capable and prepared for domination
over men, because in them the best in man, superior to sex, has become a
corporeal ideal. To be sure, it is not the intention of the theatre that
such voices should give such a conception of women; they are usually
intended to represent the ideal male lover, for example, a Romeo; but,
to judge by my experience, the theatre regularly miscalculates here, and
the musician also, who expects such effects from such a voice. People do
not believe in _these_ lovers; these voices still contain a tinge of the
motherly and housewifely character, and most of all when love is in
their tone.
71.
_On Female Chastity._—There is something quite astonishing and
extraordinary in the education of women of the higher class; indeed,
there is perhaps nothing more paradoxical. All the world is agreed to
educate them with as much ignorance as possible _in eroticis_, and to
inspire their soul with a profound shame of such things, and the
extremest impatience and horror at the suggestion of them. It is really
here only that all the "honour" of woman is at stake; what would one not
forgive them in other respects! But here they are intended to remain
ignorant to the very backbone:—they are intended to have neither eyes,
ears, words, nor thoughts for this, their "wickedness"; indeed knowledge
here is already evil. And then! To be hurled as with an awful
thunderbolt into reality and knowledge with marriage—and indeed by him
whom they most love and esteem: to have to encounter love and shame in
contradiction, yea, to have to feel rapture, abandonment, duty,
sympathy, and fright at the unexpected proximity of God and animal, and
whatever else besides! all at once!—There, in fact, a psychic
entanglement has been effected which is quite unequalled! Even the
sympathetic curiosity of the wisest discerner of men does not suffice to
divine how this or that woman gets along with the solution of this
enigma and the enigma of this solution; what dreadful, far-reaching
suspicions must awaken thereby in the poor unhinged soul; and forsooth,
how the ultimate philosophy and scepticism of the woman casts anchor at
this point!—Afterwards the same profound silence as before: and often
even a silence to herself, a shutting of her eyes to herself.—Young
wives on that account make great efforts to appear superficial and
thoughtless; the most ingenious of them simulate a kind of
impudence.—Wives easily feel their husbands as a question-mark to their
honour, and their children as an apology or atonement,—they require
children, and wish for them in quite another spirit than a husband
wishes for them.—In short, one cannot be gentle enough towards women!
72.
_Mothers._—Animals think differently from men with respect to females;
with them the female is regarded as the productive being. There is no
paternal love among them, but there is such a thing as love of the
children of a beloved, and habituation to them. In the young, the
females find gratification for their lust of dominion; the young are a
property, an occupation, something quite comprehensible to them, with
which they can chatter: all this conjointly is maternal love,—it is to
be compared to the love of the artist for his work. Pregnancy has made
the females gentler, more expectant, more timid, more submissively
inclined; and similarly intellectual pregnancy engenders the character
of the contemplative, who are allied to women in character:—they are the
masculine mothers.—Among animals the masculine sex is regarded as the
beautiful sex.
73.
_Saintly Cruelty._—A man holding a newly born child in his hands came to
a saint. "What should I do with the child," he asked, "it is wretched,
deformed, and has not even enough of life to die." "Kill it," cried the
saint with a dreadful voice, "kill it, and then hold it in thy arms for
three days and three nights to brand it on thy memory:—thus wilt thou
never again beget a child when it is not the time for thee to
beget."—When the man had heard this he went away disappointed; and many
found fault with the saint because he had advised cruelty, for he had
advised to kill the child. "But is it not more cruel to let it live?"
asked the saint.
74.
_The Unsuccessful._—Those poor women always fail of success who become
agitated and uncertain, and talk too much in presence of him whom they
love; for men are most successfully seduced by a certain subtle and
phlegmatic tenderness.
75.
_The Third Sex._—"A small man is a paradox, but still a man,—but the
small woman seems to me to be of another sex in comparison with
well-grown ones"—said an old dancing-master. A small woman is never
beautiful—said old Aristotle.
76.
_The greatest Danger._—Had there not at all times been a larger number
of men who regarded the cultivation of their mind—their "rationality"—as
their pride, their obligation, their virtue, and were injured or shamed
by all play of fancy and extravagance of thinking—as lovers of "sound
common sense":—mankind would long ago have perished! Incipient
_insanity_ has hovered, and hovers continually over mankind as its
greatest danger: that is precisely the breaking out of inclination in
feeling, seeing, and hearing; the enjoyment of the unruliness of the
mind; the delight in human unreason. It is not truth and certainty that
is the antithesis of the world of the insane, but the universality and
all-obligatoriness of a belief, in short, non-voluntariness in forming
opinions. And the greatest labour of human beings hitherto has been to
agree with one another regarding a great many things, and to impose upon
themselves a _law of agreement_—indifferent whether these things are
true or false. This is the discipline of the mind which has preserved
mankind;—but the counter-impulses are still so powerful that one can
really speak of the future of mankind with little confidence. The ideas
of things still continually shift and move, and will perhaps alter more
than ever in the future; it is continually the most select spirits
themselves who strive against universal obligatoriness—the investigators
of _truth_ above all! The accepted belief, as the belief of all the
world, continually engenders a disgust and a new longing in the more
ingenious minds; and already the slow _tempo_ which it demands for all
intellectual processes (the imitation of the tortoise, which is here
recognised as the rule) makes the artists and poets runaways:—it is in
these impatient spirits that a downright delight in delirium breaks out,
because delirium has such a joyful _tempo_! Virtuous intellects,
therefore, are needed—ah! I want to use the least ambiguous
word,—_virtuous stupidity_ is needed, imperturbable conductors of the
_slow_ spirits are needed, in order that the faithful of the great
collective belief may remain with one another and dance their dance
further: it is a necessity of the first importance that here enjoins and
demands. _We others are the exceptions and the danger_,—we eternally
need protection!—Well, there can actually be something said in favour of
the exceptions _provided that they never want to become the rule_.
77.
_The Animal with good Conscience._—It is not unknown to me that there is
vulgarity in everything that pleases Southern Europe—whether it be
Italian opera (for example, Rossini's and Bellini's), or the Spanish
adventure-romance (most readily accessible to us in the French garb of
Gil Blas)—but it does not offend me, any more than the vulgarity which
one encounters in a walk through Pompeii, or even in the reading of
every ancient book: what is the reason of this? Is it because shame is
lacking here, and because the vulgar always comes forward just as sure
and certain of itself as anything noble, lovely, and passionate in the
same kind of music or romance? "The animal has its rights like man, so
let it run about freely; and you, my dear fellow-man, are still this
animal, in spite of all!"—that seems to me the moral of the case, and
the peculiarity of southern humanity. Bad taste has its rights like good
taste, and even a prerogative over the latter when it is the great
requisite, the sure satisfaction, and as it were a universal language,
an immediately intelligible mask and attitude; the excellent, select
taste on the other hand has always something of a seeking, tentative
character, not fully certain that it understands,—it is never, and has
never been popular! The _masque_ is and remains popular! So let all this
masquerade run along in the melodies and cadences, in the leaps and
merriment of the rhythm of these operas! Quite the ancient life! What
does one understand of it, if one does not understand the delight in the
masque, the good conscience of all masquerade! Here is the bath and the
refreshment of the ancient spirit:—and perhaps this bath was still more
necessary for the rare and sublime natures of the ancient world than for
the vulgar.—On the other hand, a vulgar turn in northern works, for
example in German music, offends me unutterably. There is _shame_ in it,
the artist has lowered himself in his own sight, and could not even
avoid blushing: we are ashamed with him, and are so hurt because we
surmise that he believed he had to lower himself on our account.
78.
_What we should be Grateful for._—It is only the artists, and especially
the theatrical artists who have furnished men with eyes and ears to hear
and see with some pleasure what everyone is in himself, what he
experiences and aims at: it is only _they_ who have taught us how to
estimate the hero that is concealed in each of these common-place men,
and the art of looking at ourselves from a distance as heroes, and as it
were simplified and transfigured,—the art of "putting ourselves on the
stage" before ourselves. It is thus only that we get beyond some of the
paltry details in ourselves! Without that art we should be nothing but
fore-ground, and would live absolutely under the spell of the
perspective which makes the closest and the commonest seem immensely
large and like reality in itself.—Perhaps there is merit of a similar
kind in the religion which commanded us to look at the sinfulness of
every individual man with a magnifying-glass, and to make a great,
immortal criminal out of the sinner; in that it put eternal perspectives
around man, it taught him to see himself from a distance, and as
something past, something entire.
79.
_The Charm of Imperfection._—I see here a poet, who, like so many men,
exercises a higher charm by his imperfections than by all that is
rounded off and takes perfect shape under his hands,—indeed, he derives
his advantage and reputation far more from his actual limitations than
from his abundant powers. His work never expresses altogether what he
would really like to express, what he _would like to have seen_: he
appears to have had the foretaste of a vision and never the vision
itself:—but an extraordinary longing for this vision has remained in his
soul; and from this he derives his equally extraordinary eloquence of
longing and craving. With this he raises those who listen to him above
his work and above all "works," and gives them wings to rise higher than
hearers have ever risen before, thus making them poets and seers
themselves; they then show an admiration for the originator of their
happiness, as if he had led them immediately to the vision of his
holiest and ultimate verities, as if he had reached his goal, and had
actually _seen_ and communicated his vision. It is to the advantage of
his reputation that he has not really arrived at his goal.
80.