moods, unless it be for the moment, or at the most for a quarter of an
hour,—except the few who know by experience a longer duration of high
feeling. But to be absolutely a man with a single lofty feeling, the
incarnation of a single lofty mood—that has hitherto been only a dream
and an enchanting possibility: history does not yet give us any
trustworthy example of it. Nevertheless it could some day produce such
men also—when a multitude of favourable conditions have been created and
established, which at present even the happiest chance is unable to
throw together. Perhaps that very state which has hitherto entered into
our soul as an exception, felt with horror now and then, may be the
usual condition of those future souls: a continuous movement between
high and low, and the feeling of high and low, a constant state of
mounting as on steps, and at the same time reposing as on clouds.
289.
_Aboard Ship!_—When one considers how a full philosophical
justification of his mode of living and thinking operates upon every
individual—namely, as a warming, blessing, and fructifying sun,
specially shining on him; how it makes him independent of praise and
blame, self-sufficient, rich and generous in the bestowal of happiness
and kindness; how it unceasingly transforms the evil to the good,
brings all the energies to bloom and maturity, and altogether hinders
the growth of the greater and lesser weeds of chagrin and
discontent:—one at last cries out importunately: Oh, that many such
new suns were created! The evil man, also, the unfortunate man, and
the exceptional man, shall each have his philosophy, his rights, and
his sunshine! It is not sympathy with them that is necessary!—we must
unlearn this arrogant fancy, notwithstanding that humanity has so long
learned it and used it exclusively—we have not to set up any
confessor, exorcist, or pardoner for them! It is a new _justice_,
however, that is necessary! And a new solution! And new philosophers!
The moral earth also is round! The moral earth also has its antipodes!
The antipodes also have their right to exist! there is still another
world to discover—and more than one! Aboard ship! ye philosophers!
290.
_One Thing is Needful._—To "give style" to one's character—that is a
grand and a rare art! He who surveys all that his nature presents in its
strength and in its weakness, and then fashions it into an ingenious
plan, until everything appears artistic and rational, and even the
weaknesses enchant the eye—exercises that admirable art. Here there has
been a great amount of second nature added, there a portion of first
nature has been taken away:—in both cases with long exercise and daily
labour at the task. Here the ugly, which does not permit of being taken
away, has been concealed, there it has been re-interpreted into the
sublime. Much of the vague, which refuses to take form, has been
reserved and utilised for the perspectives:—it is meant to give a hint
of the remote and immeasurable. In the end, when the work has been
completed, it is revealed how it was the constraint of the same taste
that organised and fashioned it in whole or in part: whether the taste
was good or bad is of less importance than one thinks,—it is sufficient
that it was _a taste_!—It will be the strong imperious natures which
experience their most refined joy in such constraint, in such
confinement and perfection under their own law; the passion of their
violent volition lessens at the sight of all disciplined nature, all
conquered and ministering nature: even when they have palaces to build
and gardens to lay out, it is not to their taste to allow nature to be
free.—It is the reverse with weak characters who have not power over
themselves, and _hate_ the restriction of style: they feel that if this
repugnant constraint were laid upon them, they would necessarily become
_vulgarised_ under it: they become slaves as soon as they serve, they
hate service. Such intellects—they may be intellects of the first
rank—are always concerned with fashioning or interpreting themselves and
their surroundings as _free_ nature—wild, arbitrary, fantastic, confused
and surprising: and it is well for them to do so, because only in this
manner can they please themselves! For one thing is needful: namely,
that man should _attain to_ satisfaction with himself—be it but through
this or that fable and artifice: it is only then that man's aspect is at
all endurable! He who is dissatisfied with himself is ever ready to
avenge himself on that account: we others will be his victims, if only
in having always to endure his ugly aspect. For the aspect of the ugly
makes one mean and sad.
291.
_Genoa._—I have looked upon this city, its villas and pleasure-grounds
and the wide circuit of its inhabited heights and slopes, for a
considerable time: in the end I must say that I see _countenances_ out
of past generations,—this district is strewn with the images of bold and
autocratic men. They have _lived_ and have wanted to live on—they say so
with their houses, built and decorated for centuries, and not for the
passing hour: they were well disposed to life, however ill-disposed they
may often have been towards themselves. I always see the builder, how he
casts his eye on all that is built around him far and near, and likewise
on the city, the sea, and the chain of mountains; how he expresses power
and conquest in his gaze: all this he wishes to fit into _his_ plan, and
in the end make it his _property_, by its becoming a portion of the
same. The whole district is overgrown with this superb, insatiable
egoism of the desire to possess and exploit; and as these men when
abroad recognised no frontiers, and in their thirst for the new placed a
new world beside the old, so also at home everyone rose up against
everyone else, and devised some mode of expressing his superiority, and
of placing between himself and his neighbour his personal
illimitableness. Everyone won for himself his home once more by
over-powering it with his architectural thoughts, and by transforming it
into a delightful sight for his race. When we consider the mode of
building cities in the north, the law and the general delight in
legality and obedience, impose upon us: we thereby divine the propensity
to equality and submission which must have ruled in those builders.
Here, however, on turning every corner you find a man by himself, who
knows the sea, knows adventure, and knows the Orient, a man who is
averse to law and to neighbour, as if it bored him to have to do with
them, a man who scans all that is already old and established, with
envious glances: with a wonderful craftiness of fantasy, he would like,
at least in thought, to establish all this anew, to lay his hand upon
it, and introduce his meaning into it—if only for the passing hour of a
sunny afternoon, when for once his insatiable and melancholy soul feels
satiety, and when only what is his own, and nothing strange, may show
itself to his eye.
292.
_To the Preachers of Morality._—I do not mean to moralise, but to those
who do, I would give this advice: if you mean ultimately to deprive the
best things and the best conditions of all honour and worth, continue to
speak of them in the same way as heretofore! Put them at the head of
your morality, and speak from morning till night of the happiness of
virtue, of repose of soul, of righteousness, and of reward and
punishment in the nature of things: according as you go on in this
manner, all these good things will finally acquire a popularity and a
street-cry for themselves: but then all the gold on them will also be
worn off, and more besides: all the gold _in them_ will have changed
into lead. Truly, you understand the reverse art of alchemy, the
depreciating of the most valuable things! Try, just for once, another
recipe, in order not to realise as hitherto the opposite of what you
mean to attain: _deny_ those good things, withdraw from them the
applause of the populace and discourage the spread of them, make them
once more the concealed chastities of solitary souls, say that _morality
is something forbidden_! Perhaps you will thus win over for those things
the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the _heroic_. But
then there must be something formidable in them, and not as hitherto
something disgusting! Might one not be inclined to say at present with
reference to morality what Master Eckardt says: "I pray God to deliver
me from God!"
293.
_Our Atmosphere._—We know it well: to him who only casts a glance now
and then at science, as in taking a walk (in the manner of women, and
alas! also like many artists), the strictness in its service, its
inexorability in small matters as well as in great, its rapidity in
weighing, judging and condemning, produce something of a feeling of
giddiness and fright. It is especially terrifying to him that the
hardest is here demanded, that the best is done without the reward of
praise or distinction; it is rather as among soldiers—almost nothing but
blame and sharp reprimand _is heard_; for doing well prevails here as
the rule, doing ill as the exception; the rule, however, has, here as
everywhere, a silent tongue. It is the same with this "severity of
science" as with the manners and politeness of the best society: it
frightens the uninitiated. He, however, who is accustomed to it, does
not like to live anywhere but in this clear, transparent, powerful, and
highly electrified atmosphere, this _manly_ atmosphere. Anywhere else it
is not pure and airy enough for him: he suspects that _there_ his best
art would neither be properly advantageous to anyone else, nor a delight
to himself, that through misunderstandings half of his life would slip
through his fingers, that much foresight, much concealment, and
reticence would constantly be necessary,—nothing but great and useless
losses of power! In _this_ keen and clear element, however, he has his
entire power: here he can fly! Why should he again go down into those
muddy waters where he has to swim and wade and soil his wings!—No! There
it is too hard for us to live! we cannot help it that we are born for
the atmosphere, the pure atmosphere, we rivals of the ray of light; and
that we should like best to ride like it on the atoms of ether, not away
from the sun, but _towards the sun_! That, however, we cannot do:—so we
want to do the only thing that is in our power: namely, to bring light
to the earth, we want to be "the light of the earth!" And for that
purpose we have our wings and our swiftness and our severity, on that
account we are manly, and even terrible like the fire. Let those fear
us, who do not know how to warm and brighten themselves by our
influence!
294.
_Against the Disparagers of Nature._—They are disagreeable to me, those
men in whom every natural inclination forthwith becomes a disease,
something disfiguring, or even disgraceful. _They_ have seduced us to
the opinion that the inclinations and impulses of men are evil; _they_
are the cause of our great injustice to our own nature, and to all
nature! There are enough of men who _may_ yield to their impulses
gracefully and carelessly: but they do not do so, for fear of that
imaginary "evil thing" in nature! _That is the cause_ why there is so
little nobility to be found among men: the indication of which will
always be to have no fear of oneself, to expect nothing disgraceful from
oneself, to fly without hesitation whithersoever we are impelled—we
free-born birds! Wherever we come, there will always be freedom and
sunshine around us.
295.
_Short-lived Habits._—I love short-lived habits, and regard them as an
invaluable means for getting a knowledge of _many_ things and various
conditions, to the very bottom of their sweetness and bitterness; my
nature is altogether arranged for short-lived habits, even in the needs
of its bodily health, and in general, _as far as_ I can see, from the
lowest up to the highest matters. I always think that _this_ will at
last satisfy me permanently (the short-lived habit has also that
characteristic belief of passion, the belief in everlasting duration; I
am to be envied for having found it and recognised it), and then it
nourishes me at noon and at eve, and spreads a profound satisfaction
around me and in me, so that I have no longing for anything else, not
needing to compare, or despise, or hate. But one day the habit has had
its time: the good thing separates from me, not as something which then
inspires disgust in me—but peaceably and as though satisfied with me, as
I am with it; as if we had to be mutually thankful, and _thus_ shook
hands for farewell. And already the new habit waits at the door, and
similarly also my belief—indestructible fool and sage that I am!—that
this new habit will be the right one, the ultimate right one. So it is
with me as regards foods, thoughts, men, cities, poems, music,
doctrines, arrangements of the day, and modes of life.—On the other
hand, I hate _permanent_ habits, and feel as if a tyrant came into my
neighbourhood, and as if my life's breath _condensed_, when events take
such a form that permanent habits seem necessarily to grow out of them:
for example, through an official position, through constant
companionship with the same persons, through a settled abode, or through
a uniform state of health. Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I am
gratefully disposed to all my misery and sickness, and to whatever is
imperfect in me, because such things leave me a hundred back-doors
through which I can escape from permanent habits. The most unendurable
thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without
habits, a life which continually required improvisation:—that would be
my banishment and my Siberia.
296.
_A Fixed Reputation._—A fixed reputation was formerly a matter of the
very greatest utility; and wherever society continues to be ruled by the
herd-instinct, it is still most suitable for every individual _to give_
to his character and business _the appearance_ of unalterableness,—even
when they are not so in reality. "One can rely on him, he remains the
same"—that is the praise which has most significance in all dangerous
conditions of society. Society feels with satisfaction that it has a
reliable _tool_ ready at all times in the virtue of this one, in the
ambition of that one, and in the reflection and passion of a third
one,—it honours this _tool-like nature_, this self-constancy, this
unchangeableness in opinions, efforts, and even in faults, with the
highest honours. Such a valuation, which prevails and has prevailed
everywhere simultaneously with the morality of custom, educates
"characters," and brings all changing, re-learning, and
self-transforming into _disrepute_. Be the advantage of this mode of
thinking ever so great otherwise, it is in any case the mode of judging
which is most injurious _to knowledge_: for precisely the good-will of
the knowing one ever to declare himself unhesitatingly as _opposed_ to
his former opinions, and in general to be distrustful of all that wants
to be fixed in him—is here condemned and brought into disrepute. The
disposition of the thinker, as incompatible with a "fixed reputation,"
is regarded as _dishonourable_, while the petrifaction of opinions has
all the honour to itself:—we have at present still to live under the
interdict of such rules! How difficult it is to live when one feels that
the judgment of many millenniums is around one and against one. It is
probable that for many millenniums knowledge was afflicted with a bad
conscience, and that there must have been much self-contempt and secret
misery in the history of the greatest intellects.
297.
_Ability to Contradict._—Everyone knows at present that the ability to
endure contradiction is a high indication of culture. Some people even
know that the higher man courts opposition, and provokes it, so as to
get a cue to his hitherto unknown partiality. But the _ability_ to
contradict, the attainment of _good_ conscience in hostility to the
accustomed, the traditional and the hallowed,—that is more than both the
above-named abilities, and is the really great, new and astonishing
thing in our culture, the step of all steps of the emancipated
intellect: who knows that?—
298.
_A Sigh._—I caught this notion on the way, and rapidly took the
readiest, poor words to hold it fast, so that it might not again fly
away. And now it has died in these dry words, and hangs and flaps about
in them—and I hardly know now, when I look upon it, how I could have had
such happiness when I caught this bird.
299.
_What one should Learn from Artists._—What means have we for making
things beautiful, attractive, and desirable, when they are not so?—and I
suppose they are never so in themselves! We have here something to learn
from physicians, when, for example, they dilute what is bitter, or put
wine and sugar into their mixing-bowl; but we have still more to learn
from artists, who in fact, are continually concerned in devising such
inventions and artifices. To withdraw from things until one no longer
sees much of them, until one has even to see things into them, _in order
to see them at all_—or to view them from the side, and as in a frame—or
to place them so that they partly disguise themselves and only permit of
perspective views—or to look at them through coloured glasses, or in the
light of the sunset—or to furnish them with a surface or skin which is
not fully transparent: we should learn all that from artists, and
moreover be wiser than they. For this fine power of theirs usually
ceases with them where art ceases and life begins; _we_, however, want
to be the poets of our life, and first of all in the smallest and most
commonplace matters.
300.
_Prelude to Science._—Do you believe then that the sciences would have
arisen and grown up if the sorcerers, alchemists, astrologers and
witches had not been their forerunners; those who, with their promisings
and foreshadowings, had first to create a thirst, a hunger, and a taste
for _hidden and forbidden_ powers? Yea, that infinitely more had to be
_promised_ than could ever be fulfilled, in order that something might
be fulfilled in the domain of knowledge? Perhaps the whole of
_religion_, also, may appear to some distant age as an exercise and a
prelude, in like manner as the prelude and preparation of science here
exhibit themselves, though _not_ at all practised and regarded as such.
Perhaps religion may have been the peculiar means for enabling
individual men to enjoy but once the entire self-satisfaction of a God
and all his self-redeeming power. Indeed!—one may ask—would man have
learned at all to get on the tracks of hunger and thirst for _himself_,
and to extract satiety and fullness out of _himself_, without that
religious schooling and preliminary history? Had Prometheus first to
_fancy_ that he had _stolen_ the light, and that he did penance for the
theft—in order finally to discover that he had created the light, _in
that he had longed for the light_, and that not only man, but also _God_
had been the work of _his_ hands and the clay in his hands? All mere
creations of the creator?—just as the illusion, the theft, the Caucasus,
the vulture, and the whole tragic Prometheia of all thinkers!
301.
_Illusion of the Contemplative._—Higher men are distinguished from
lower, by seeing and hearing immensely more, and in a thoughtful
manner—and it is precisely this that distinguishes man from the animal,
and the higher animal from the lower. The world always becomes fuller
for him who grows up into the full stature of humanity; there are always
more interesting fishing-hooks, thrown out to him; the number of his
stimuli is continually on the increase, and similarly the varieties of
his pleasure and pain,—the higher man becomes always at the same time
happier and unhappier. An _illusion_, however, is his constant
accompaniment all along: he thinks he is placed as a _spectator_ and
_auditor_ before the great pantomime and concert of life; he calls his
nature a _contemplative nature_, and thereby overlooks the fact that he
himself is also a real creator, and continuous poet of life,—that he no
doubt differs greatly from the _actor_ in this drama, the so-called
practical man, but differs still more from a mere onlooker or spectator
_before_ the stage. There is certainly _vis contemplativa_, and
re-examination of his work peculiar to him as poet, but at the same
time, and first and foremost, he has the _vis creativa_, which the
practical man or doer _lacks_, whatever appearance and current belief
may say to the contrary. It is we, we who think and feel, that actually
and unceasingly _make_ something which does not yet exist: the whole
eternally increasing world of valuations, colours, weights,
perspectives, gradations, affirmations and negations. This composition
of ours is continually learnt, practised, and translated into flesh and
actuality, and even into the commonplace, by the so-called practical men
(our actors, as we have said). Whatever has _value_ in the present
world, has it not in itself, by its nature,—nature is always
worthless:—but a value was once given to it, bestowed upon it, and it
was _we_ who gave and bestowed! We only have created the world _which is
of any account to man_!—But it is precisely this knowledge that we lack,
and when we get hold of it for a moment we have forgotten it the next:
we misunderstand our highest power, we contemplative men, and estimate
ourselves at too low a rate,—we are neither as _proud nor as happy_ as
we might be.
302.
_The Danger of the Happiest Ones._—To have fine senses and a fine taste;
to be accustomed to the select and the intellectually best as our proper
and readiest fare; to be blessed with a strong, bold, and daring soul;
to go through life with a quiet eye and a firm step, ever ready for the
worst as for a festival, and full of longing for undiscovered worlds and
seas, men and Gods; to listen to all joyous music, as if there, perhaps,
brave men, soldiers and seafarers, took a brief repose and enjoyment,
and in the profoundest pleasure of the moment were overcome with tears
and the whole purple melancholy of happiness: who would not like all
this to be _his_ possession, his condition! It was the _happiness of
Homer_! The condition of him who invented the Gods for the Greeks,—nay,
who invented _his_ Gods for himself! But let us not conceal the fact
that with this happiness of Homer in one's soul, one is more liable to
suffering than any other creature under the sun! And only at this price
do we purchase the most precious pearl that the waves of existence have
hitherto washed ashore! As its possessor one always becomes more
sensitive to pain, and at last too sensitive: a little displeasure and
loathing sufficed in the end to make Homer disgusted with life. He was
unable to solve a foolish little riddle which some young fishers
proposed to him! Yes, the little riddles are the dangers of the happiest
ones!—
303.
_Two Happy Ones._—Certainly this man, notwithstanding his youth,
understands the _improvisation of life_, and astonishes even the acutest
observers. For it seems that he never makes a mistake, although he
constantly plays the most hazardous games. One is reminded of the
improvising masters of the musical art, to whom even the listeners would
fain ascribe a divine _infallibility_ of the hand, notwithstanding that
they now and then make a mistake, as every mortal is liable to do. But
they are skilled and inventive, and always ready in a moment to arrange
into the structure of the score the most accidental tone (where the jerk
of a finger or a humour brings it about), and to animate the accident
with a fine meaning and a soul.—Here is quite a different man:
everything that he intends and plans fails with him in the long run.
That on which he has now and again set his heart has already brought him
several times to the abyss, and to the very verge of ruin; and if he has
as yet got out of the scrape, it certainly has not been merely with a
"black eye." Do you think he is unhappy over it? He resolved long ago
not to regard his own wishes and plans as of so much importance. "If
this does not succeed with me,"—he says to himself, "perhaps that will
succeed; and on the whole I do not know but that I am under more
obligation to thank my failures than any of my successes. Am I made to
be headstrong, and to wear the bull's horns? That which constitutes the
worth and the sum of life _for me_, lies somewhere else; I know more of
life, because I have been so often on the point of losing it; and just
on that account I _have_ more of life than any of you!"
304.