to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after
gold: and the breathless hurry of their work—the characteristic vice of
the new world—already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage
also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now
ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of
conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with
the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are
continually "afraid of letting opportunities slip." "Better do anything
whatever, than nothing"—this principle also is a noose with which all
culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form
obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form
itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear.
The proof of this is the _clumsy perspicuity_ which is now everywhere
demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with
his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children,
teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,—one has no longer either time or
energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any _esprit_ in
conversation, or for any _otium_ whatever. For life in the hunt for gain
continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to
exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling:
the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than
another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse
_permitted_: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like
"to let themselves go," but _to stretch their legs_ out wide in awkward
style. The way people write their _letters_ nowadays is quite in keeping
with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true "sign of
the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is
enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this
moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this
increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! _Work_ is winning over more
and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment
already calls itself "need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed
of itself. "One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are
caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not
yield to the desire for the _vita contemplativa_ (that is to say,
excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad
conscience.—Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that
suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family _concealed_ his
work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the
weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible:—the "doing"
itself was something contemptible. "Only in _otium_ and _bellum_ is
there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice!
330.
_Applause._—The thinker does not need applause nor the clapping of
hands, provided he be sure of the clapping of his own hands: the latter,
however, he cannot do without. Are there men who could also do without
this, and in general without any kind of applause? I doubt it: and even
as regards the wisest, Tacitus, who is no calumniator of the wise, says:
_quando etiam sapientibus gloriæ cupido novissima exuitur_—that means
with him: never.
331.
_Better Deaf than Deafened._—Formerly a person wanted to have a
_calling_, but that no longer suffices to-day, for the market has become
too large,—there has now to be _bawling_. The consequence is that even
good throats outcry each other, and the best wares are offered for sale
with hoarse voices; without market-place bawling and hoarseness there is
now no longer any genius.—It is, sure enough, an evil age for the
thinker: he has to learn to find his stillness betwixt two noises, and
has to pretend to be deaf until he finally becomes so. As long as he has
not learned this, he is in danger of perishing from impatience and
headaches.
332.
_The Evil Hour._—There has perhaps been an evil hour for every
philosopher, in which he thought: What do I matter, if people should not
believe my poor arguments!—And then some malicious bird has flown past
him and twittered: "What do you matter? What do you matter?"
333.
_What does Knowing Mean?_—_Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed
intelligere!_ says Spinoza, so simply and sublimely, as is his wont.
Nevertheless, what else is this _intelligere_ ultimately, but just the
form in which the three other things become perceptible to us all at
once? A result of the diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to
deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge is possible each of these
impulses must first have brought forward its one-sided view of the
object or event. The struggle of these one-sided views occurs
afterwards, and out of it there occasionally arises a compromise, a
pacification, a recognition of rights on all three sides, a sort of
justice and agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agreement all
those impulses can maintain themselves in existence and retain their
mutual rights. We, to whose consciousness only the closing
reconciliation scenes and final settling of accounts of these long
processes manifest themselves, think on that account that _intelligere_
is something conciliating, just and good, something essentially
antithetical to the impulses; whereas it is only _a certain relation of
the impulses to one another_. For a very long time conscious thinking
was regarded as thinking proper: it is now only that the truth dawns
upon us that the greater part of our intellectual activity goes on
unconsciously and unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the impulses
which are here in mutual conflict understand right well how to make
themselves felt by _one another_, and how to cause pain:—the violent,
sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers, may have its origin here
(it is the exhaustion of the battle-field). Aye, perhaps in our
struggling interior there is much concealed _heroism_, but certainly
nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-itself, as Spinoza supposed.
_Conscious_ thinking, and especially that of the philosopher, is the
weakest, and on that account also the relatively mildest and quietest
mode of thinking: and thus it is precisely the philosopher who is most
easily misled concerning the nature of knowledge.
334.
_One must Learn to Love._—This is our experience in music: we must first
_learn_ in general _to hear_, to hear fully, and to distinguish a theme
or a melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by itself; then
we need to exercise effort and good-will in order _to endure_ it in
spite of its strangeness, we need patience towards its aspect and
expression, and indulgence towards what is odd in it:—in the end there
comes a moment when we are _accustomed_ to it, when we expect it, when
it dawns upon us that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then it
goes on to exercise its spell and charm more and more, and does not
cease until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers, who want
it, and want it again, and ask for nothing better from the world.—It is
thus with us, however, not only in music: it is precisely thus that we
have _learned to love_ all things that we now love. We are always
finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience, reasonableness and
gentleness towards what is unfamiliar, by the unfamiliar slowly throwing
off its veil and presenting itself to us as a new, ineffable
beauty:—that is its _thanks_ for our hospitality. He also who loves
himself must have learned it in this way: there is no other way. Love
also has to be learned.
335.
_Cheers for Physics!_—How many men are there who know how to observe?
And among the few who do know,—how many observe themselves? "Everyone is
furthest from himself"—all the "triers of the reins" know that to their
discomfort; and the saying, "Know thyself," in the mouth of a God and
spoken to man, is almost a mockery. But that the case of
self-observation is so desperate, is attested best of all by the manner
in which _almost everybody_ talks of the nature of a moral action, that
prompt, willing, convinced, loquacious manner, with its look, its smile,
and its pleasing eagerness! Everyone seems inclined to say to you: "Why,
my dear Sir, that is precisely _my_ affair! You address yourself with
your question to him who _is authorised_ to answer, for I happen to be
wiser with regard to this matter than in anything else. Therefore, when
a man decides that '_this is right_,' when he accordingly concludes that
'_it must therefore be done_,' and thereupon _does_ what he has thus
recognised as right and designated as necessary—then the nature of his
action is _moral_!" But, my friend, you are talking to me about three
actions instead of one: your deciding, for instance, that "this is
right," is also an action,—could one not judge either morally or
immorally? _Why_ do you regard this, and just this, as right?—"Because
my conscience tells me so; conscience never speaks immorally, indeed it
determines in the first place what shall be moral!"—But why do you
_listen_ to the voice of your conscience? And in how far are you
justified in regarding such a judgment as true and infallible? This
_belief_—is there no further conscience for it? Do you know nothing of
an intellectual conscience? A conscience behind your "conscience"? Your
decision, "this is right," has a previous history in your impulses, your
likes and dislikes, your experiences and non-experiences; "_how_ has it
originated?" you must ask, and afterwards the further question: "_what_
really impels me to give ear to it?" You can listen to its command like
a brave soldier who hears the command of his officer. Or like a woman
who loves him who commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid of
the commander. Or like a blockhead who follows because he has nothing to
say to the contrary. In short, you can give ear to your conscience in a
hundred different ways. But _that_ you hear this or that judgment as the
voice of conscience, consequently, _that_ you feel a thing to be
right—may have its cause in the fact that you have never reflected about
yourself, and have blindly accepted from your childhood what has been
designated to you as _right_: or in the fact that hitherto bread and
honours have fallen to your share with that which you call your duty,—it
is "right" to you, because it seems to be _your_ "condition of
existence" (that you, however, have a _right_ to existence appears to
you as irrefutable!). The _persistency_ of your moral judgment might
still be just a proof of personal wretchedness or impersonality; your
"moral force" might have its source in your obstinacy—or in your
incapacity to perceive new ideals! And to be brief: if you had thought
more acutely, observed more accurately, and had learned more, you would
no longer under all circumstances call this and that your "duty" and
your "conscience": the knowledge _how moral judgments have in general
always originated_, would make you tired of these pathetic words,—as you
have already grown tired of other pathetic words, for instance "sin,"
"salvation," and "redemption."—And now, my friend, do not talk to me
about the categorical imperative! That word tickles my ear, and I must
laugh in spite of your presence and your seriousness. In this connection
I recollect old Kant, who, as a punishment for having _gained possession
surreptitiously_ of the "thing in itself"—also a very ludicrous
affair!—was imposed upon by the categorical imperative, and with that in
his heart _strayed back again_ to "God," the "soul," "freedom," and
"immortality," like a fox which strays back into its cage: and it had
been _his_ strength and shrewdness which had _broken open_ this
cage!—What? You admire the categorical imperative in you? This
"persistency" of your so-called moral judgment? This absoluteness of the
feeling that "as I think on this matter, so must everyone think"? Admire
rather your _selfishness_ therein! And the blindness, paltriness, and
modesty of your selfishness! For it is selfishness in a person to regard
_his_ judgment as universal law, and a blind, paltry and modest
selfishness besides, because it betrays that you have not yet discovered
yourself, that you have not yet created for yourself any individual,
quite individual ideal:—for this could never be the ideal of another, to
say nothing of all, of every one!——He who still thinks that "each would
have to act in this manner in this case," has not yet advanced half a
dozen paces in self-knowledge: otherwise he would know that there
neither are nor can be similar actions,—that every action that has been
done, has been done in an entirely unique and inimitable manner, and
that it will be the same with regard to all future actions; that all
precepts of conduct (and even the most esoteric and subtle precepts of
all moralities up to the present), apply only to the coarse
exterior,—that by means of them, indeed, a semblance of equality can be
attained, _but only a semblance_,—that in outlook or retrospect, _every_
action is and remains an impenetrable affair,—that our opinions of
"good," "noble" and "great" can never be demonstrated by our actions,
because no action is cognisable,—that our opinions, estimates, and
tables of values are certainly among the most powerful levers in the
mechanism of our actions, that in every single case, nevertheless, the
law of their mechanism is untraceable. Let us _confine_ ourselves,
therefore, to the purification of our opinions and appreciations, and to
the _construction of new tables of value of our own_:—we will, however,
brood no longer over the "moral worth of our actions"! Yes, my friends!
As regards the whole moral twaddle of people about one another, it is
time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment morally ought to be
opposed to our taste! Let us leave this nonsense and this bad taste to
those who have nothing else to do, save to drag the past a little
distance further through time, and who are never themselves the
present,—consequently to the many, to the majority! We, however, _would
seek to become what we are_,—the new, the unique, the incomparable,
making laws for ourselves and creating ourselves! And for this purpose
we must become the best students and discoverers of all the laws and
necessities in the world. We must be _physicists_ in order to be
_creators_ in that sense,—whereas hitherto all appreciations and ideals
have been based on _ignorance_ of physics, or in _contradiction_ to it.
And therefore, three cheers for physics! And still louder cheers for
that which _impels_ us to it—our honesty.
336.
_Avarice of Nature._—Why has nature been so niggardly towards humanity
that she has not let human beings shine, this man more and that man
less, according to their inner abundance of light? Why have not great
men such a fine visibility in their rising and setting as the sun? How
much less equivocal would life among men then be!
337.
_Future "Humanity."_—When I look at this age with the eye of a distant
future, I find nothing so remarkable in the man of the present day as
his peculiar virtue and sickness called "the historical sense." It is a
tendency to something quite new and foreign in history: if this embryo
were given several centuries and more, there might finally evolve out of
it a marvellous plant, with a smell equally marvellous, on account of
which our old earth might be more pleasant to live in than it has been
hitherto. We moderns are just beginning to form the chain of a very
powerful, future sentiment, link by link,—we hardly know what we are
doing. It almost seems to us as if it were not the question of a new
sentiment, but of the decline of all old sentiments:—the historical
sense is still something so poor and cold, and many are attacked by it
as by a frost, and are made poorer and colder by it. To others it
appears as the indication of stealthily approaching age, and our planet
is regarded by them as a melancholy invalid, who, in order to forget his
present condition, writes the history of his youth. In fact, this is one
aspect of the new sentiment. He who knows how to regard the history of
man in its entirety as _his own history_, feels in the immense
generalisation all the grief of the invalid who thinks of health, of the
old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of the lover who is robbed
of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is destroyed, of the hero on
the evening of the indecisive battle which has brought him wounds and
the loss of a friend. But to bear this immense sum of grief of all
kinds, to be able to bear it, and yet still be the hero who at the
commencement of a second day of battle greets the dawn and his
happiness, as one who has an horizon of centuries before and behind him,
as the heir of all nobility, of all past intellect, and the obligatory
heir (as the noblest) of all the old nobles; while at the same time the
first of a new nobility, the equal of which has never been seen nor even
dreamt of: to take all this upon his soul, the oldest, the newest, the
losses, hopes, conquests, and victories of mankind: to have all this at
last in one soul, and to comprise it in one feeling:—this would
necessarily furnish a happiness which man has not hitherto known,—a
God's happiness, full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a
happiness which, like the sun in the evening, continually gives of its
inexhaustible riches and empties into the sea,—and like the sun, too,
feels itself richest when even the poorest fisherman rows with golden
oars! This divine feeling might then be called—humanity!
338.
_The Will to Suffering and the Compassionate._—Is it to your advantage
to be above all compassionate? And is it to the advantage of the
sufferers when you are so? But let us leave the first question for a
moment without an answer.—That from which we suffer most profoundly and
personally is almost incomprehensible and inaccessible to every one
else: in this matter we are hidden from our neighbour even when he eats
at the same table with us. Everywhere, however, where we are _noticed_
as sufferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow way; it belongs
to the nature of the emotion of pity to _divest_ unfamiliar suffering of
its properly personal character:—our "benefactors" lower our value and
volition more than our enemies. In most benefits which are conferred on
the unfortunate there is something shocking in the intellectual levity
with which the compassionate person plays the rôle of fate: he knows
nothing of all the inner consequences and complications which are called
misfortune for _me_ or for _you_! The entire economy of my soul and its
adjustment by "misfortune," the uprising of new sources and needs, the
closing up of old wounds, the repudiation of whole periods of the
past—none of these things which may be connected with misfortune
preoccupy the dear sympathiser. He wishes _to succour_, and does not
reflect that there is a personal necessity for misfortune; that terror,
want, impoverishment, midnight watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes
are as necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea, that, to
speak mystically, the path to one's own heaven always leads through the
voluptuousness of one's own hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. The
"religion of compassion" (or "the heart") bids him help, and he thinks
he has helped best when he has helped most speedily! If you adherents of
this religion actually have the same sentiments towards yourselves which
you have towards your fellows, if you are unwilling to endure your own
suffering even for an hour, and continually forestall all possible
misfortune, if you regard suffering and pain generally as evil, as
detestable, as deserving of annihilation, and as blots on existence,
well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another
religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the
former)—_the religion of smug ease_. Ah, how little you know of the
_happiness_ of man, you comfortable and good-natured ones!—for happiness
and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall
together, or, as with you, _remain small_ together! But now let us
return to the first question.—How is it at all possible for a person to
keep to _his_ path! Some cry or other is continually calling one aside:
our eye then rarely lights on anything without it becoming necessary for
us to leave for a moment our own affairs and rush to give assistance. I
know there are hundreds of respectable and laudable methods of making me
stray _from my course_, and in truth the most "moral" of methods!
Indeed, the opinion of the present-day preachers of the morality of
compassion goes so far as to imply that just this, and this alone is
moral:—to stray from _our_ course to that extent and to run to the
assistance of our neighbour. I am equally certain that I need only give
myself over to the sight of one case of actual distress, and I, too,
_am_ lost! And if a suffering friend said to me, "See, I shall soon die,
only promise to die with me"—I might promise it, just as—to select for
once bad examples for good reasons—the sight of a small, mountain people
struggling for freedom, would bring me to the point of offering them my
hand and my life. Indeed, there is even a secret seduction in all this
awakening of compassion, and calling for help: our "own way" is a thing
too hard and insistent, and too far removed from the love and gratitude
of others,—we escape from it and from our most personal conscience, not
at all unwillingly, and, seeking security in the conscience of others,
we take refuge in the lovely temple of the "religion of pity." As soon
now as any war breaks out, there always breaks out at the same time a
certain secret delight precisely in the noblest class of the people:
they rush with rapture to meet the new danger of _death_, because they
believe that in the sacrifice for their country they have finally that
long-sought-for permission—the permission _to shirk their aim_:—war is
for them a detour to suicide, a detour, however, with a good conscience.
And although silent here about some things, I will not, however, be
silent about my morality, which says to me: Live in concealment in order
that thou _mayest_ live to thyself. Live _ignorant_ of that which seems
to thy age to be most important! Put at least the skin of three
centuries betwixt thyself and the present day! And the clamour of the
present day, the noise of wars and revolutions, ought to be a murmur to
thee! Thou wilt also want to help, but only those whose distress thou
entirely _understandest_, because they have _one_ sorrow and _one_ hope
in common with thee—thy _friends_: and only in _the_ way that thou
helpest thyself:—I want to make them more courageous, more enduring,
more simple, more joyful! I want to teach them that which at present so
few understand, and the preachers of fellowship in sorrow least of
all:—namely, _fellowship in joy_!
339.
_Vita femina._—To see the ultimate beauties in a work—all knowledge and
good-will is not enough; it requires the rarest, good chance for the
veil of clouds to move for once from the summits, and for the sun to
shine on them. We must not only stand at precisely the right place to
see this, our very soul itself must have pulled away the veil from its
heights, and must be in need of an external expression and simile, so as
to have a support and remain master of itself. All these, however, are
so rarely united at the same time that I am inclined to believe that the
highest summit of all that is good, be it work, deed, man, or nature,
has hitherto remained for most people, and even for the best, as
something concealed and shrouded:—that, however, which unveils itself to
us, _unveils itself to us but once_. The Greeks indeed prayed: "Twice
and thrice, everything beautiful!" Ah, they had their good reason to
call on the Gods, for ungodly actuality does not furnish us with the
beautiful at all, or only does so once! I mean to say that the world is
overfull of beautiful things, but it is nevertheless poor, very poor, in
beautiful moments, and in the unveiling of those beautiful things. But
perhaps this is the greatest charm of life: it puts a gold-embroidered
veil of lovely potentialities over itself, promising, resisting, modest,
mocking, sympathetic, seductive. Yes, life is a woman!
340.
_The Dying Socrates._—I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in all
that he did, said—and did not say. This mocking and amorous demon and
rat-catcher of Athens, who made the most insolent youths tremble and sob
was not only the wisest babbler that has ever lived, but was just as
great in his silence. I would that he had also been silent in the last
moment of his life,—perhaps he might then have belonged to a still
higher order of intellects. Whether it was death, or the poison, or
piety, or wickedness—something or other loosened his tongue at that
moment, and he said: "O Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepios." For him who
has ears, this ludicrous and terrible "last word" implies: "O Crito,
_life is a long sickness_!" Is it possible! A man like him, who had
lived cheerfully and to all appearance as a soldier,—was a pessimist! He
had merely put on a good demeanour towards life, and had all along
concealed his ultimate judgment, his profoundest sentiment! Socrates,
Socrates _had suffered from life_! And he also took his revenge for
it—with that veiled, fearful, pious, and blasphemous phrase! Had even a
Socrates to revenge himself? Was there a grain too little of magnanimity
in his superabundant virtue? Ah, my friends! We must surpass even the
Greeks!
341.