impressions--they are usually called profound people--are relatively
self-possessed and decided in all sudden emergencies, for in the first
moment the impression is still shallow, it only then _becomes_ deep.
Long foreseen, long expected events or persons, however, excite such
natures most, and make them almost incapable of eventually having
presence of mind on the arrival thereof.
624.
INTERCOURSE WITH THE HIGHER SELF.--Every one has his good day, when
he finds his higher self; and true humanity demands that a person
shall be estimated according to this state and not according to his
work-days of constraint and bondage. A painter, for instance, should be
appraised and honoured according to the most exalted vision he could
see and represent. But men themselves commune very differently with
this their higher self, and are frequently their own playactors, in so
far as they repeatedly imitate what they are in those moments. Some
stand in awe and humility before their ideal, and would fain deny it;
they are afraid of their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks
pretentiously. Besides, it has a ghost-like freedom of coming and
staying away just as it pleases; on that account it is often called a
gift of the gods, while in fact everything else is a gift of the gods
(of chance); this, however, is the man himself.
625.
LONELY PEOPLE.--Some people are so much accustomed to being alone
in self-communion that they do not at all compare themselves with
others, but spin out their soliloquising life in a quiet, happy mood,
conversing pleasantly, and even hilariously, with themselves. If,
however, they are brought to the point of comparing themselves with
others, they are inclined to a brooding under-estimation of their own
worth, so that they have first to be compelled by others _to form_ once
more a good and just opinion of themselves, and even from this acquired
opinion they will always want to subtract and abate something. We must
not, therefore, grudge certain persons their loneliness or foolishly
commiserate them on that account, as is so often done.
626.
WITHOUT MELODY.--There are persons to whom a constant repose in
themselves and the harmonious ordering of all their capacities is
so natural that every definite activity is repugnant to them. They
resemble music which consists of nothing but prolonged, harmonious
accords, without even the tendency to an organised and animated melody
showing itself. All external movement serves only to restore to the
boat its equilibrium on the sea of harmonious euphony. Modern men
usually become excessively impatient when they meet such natures, who
_will never be anything in_ the world, only it is not allowable to say
of them that they _are nothing._ But in certain moods the sight of them
raises the unusual question: "Why should there be melody at all? Why
should it not suffice us when life mirrors itself peacefully in a deep
lake?" The Middle Ages were richer in such natures than our times. How
seldom one now meets with any one who can live on so peacefully and
happily with himself even in the midst of the crowd, saying to himself,
like Goethe, "The best thing of all is the deep calm in which I live
and grow in opposition to the world, and gain what it cannot take away
from me with fire and sword."
627.
TO LIVE AND EXPERIENCE.--If we observe how some people can deal with
their experiences--their unimportant, everyday experiences--so that
these become soil which yields fruit thrice a year; whilst others--and
how many!--are driven through the surf of the most exciting adventures,
the most diversified movements of times and peoples, and yet always
remain light, always remain on the surface, like cork; we are finally
tempted to divide mankind into a minority (minimality) of those who
know how to make much out of little, and a majority of those who
know how to make little out of much; indeed, we even meet with the
counter-sorcerers who, instead of making the world out of nothing,
make a nothing out of the world.
628.
SERIOUSNESS IN PLAY.---In Genoa one evening, in the twilight, I heard
from a tower a long chiming of bells; it was never like to end, and
sounded as if insatiable above the noise of the streets, out into the
evening sky and sea-air, so thrilling, and at the same time so childish
and so sad. I then remembered the words of Plato, and suddenly felt the
force of them in my heart: "_Human matters, one and all, are not worthy
of great seriousness; nevertheless ..._"
629.
CONVICTION AND JUSTICE.--The requirement that a person must afterwards,
when cool and sober, stand by what he says, promises, and resolves
during passion, is one of the heaviest burdens that weigh upon mankind.
To have to acknowledge for all future time the consequences of anger,
of fiery revenge, of enthusiastic devotion, may lead to a bitterness
against these feelings proportionate to the idolatry with which they
are idolised, especially by artists. These cultivate to its full extent
the _esteem of the passions,_ and have always done so; to be sure, they
also glorify the terrible satisfaction of the passions which a person
affords himself, the outbreaks of vengeance, with death, mutilation, or
voluntary banishment in their train, and the resignation of the broken
heart. In any case they keep alive curiosity about the passions; it is
as if they said: "Without passions you have no experience whatever."
Because we have sworn fidelity (perhaps even to a purely fictitious
being, such as a god), because we have surrendered our heart to a
prince, a party, a woman, a priestly order, an artist, or a thinker,
in a state of infatuated delusion that threw a charm over us and made
those beings appear worthy of all veneration, and every sacrifice--are
we, therefore, firmly and inevitably bound? Or did we not, after all,
deceive ourselves then? Was there not a hypothetical promise, under the
tacit presupposition that those beings to whom we consecrated ourselves
were really the beings they seemed to be in our imagination? Are we
under obligation to be faithful to our errors, even with the knowledge
that by this fidelity we shall cause injury to our higher selves? No,
there is no law, no obligation of that sort; we _must_ become traitors,
we must act unfaithfully and abandon our ideals again and again. We
cannot advance from one period of life into another without causing
these pains of treachery and also suffering from them. Might it be
necessary to guard against the ebullitions of our feelings in order
to escape these pains? Would not the world then become too arid, too
ghost-like for us? Rather will we ask ourselves whether these pains
are _necessary_ on a change of convictions, or whether they do not
depend on a _mistaken_ opinion and estimate. Why do we admire a person
who remains true to his convictions and despise him who changes them?
I fear the answer must be, "because every one takes for granted that
such a change is caused only by motives of more general utility or of
personal trouble." That is to say, we believe at bottom that nobody
alters his opinions as long as they are advantageous to him, or at
least as long as they do not cause him any harm. If it is so, however,
it furnishes a bad proof of the _intellectual_ significance of all
convictions. Let us once examine how convictions arise, and let us see
whether their importance is not greatly over-estimated; it will thereby
be seen that the _change_ of convictions also is in all circumstances
judged according to a false standard, that we have hitherto been
accustomed to suffer _too much_ from this change.
630.
Conviction is belief in the possession of absolute truth on any matter
of knowledge. This belief takes it for granted, therefore, that there
are absolute truths; also, that perfect methods have been found for
attaining to them; and finally, that every one who has convictions
makes use of these perfect methods. All three notions show at once that
the man of convictions is not the man of scientific thought; he seems
to us still in the age of theoretical innocence, and is practically
a child, however grown-up he may be. Whole centuries, however, have
been lived under the influence of those childlike presuppositions, and
out of them have flowed the mightiest sources of human strength. The
countless numbers who sacrificed themselves for their convictions
believed they were doing it for the sake of absolute truth. They were
all wrong, however; probably no one has ever sacrificed himself for
Truth; at least, the dogmatic expression of the faith of any such
person has been unscientific or only partly scientific. But really,
people wanted to carry their point because they believed that they
_must be_ in the right. To allow their belief to be wrested from
them probably meant calling in question their eternal salvation. In
an affair of such extreme importance the "will" was too audibly the
prompter of the intellect. The presupposition of every believer of
every shade of belief has been that he _could not_ be confuted; if the
counter-arguments happened to be very strong, it always remained for
him to decry intellect generally, and, perhaps, even to set up the
"_credo quia absurdum est_" as the standard of extreme fanaticism. It
is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so turbulent; but
the struggle of belief in opinions,--that is to say, of convictions.
If all those who thought so highly of their convictions, who made
sacrifices of all kinds for them, and spared neither honour, body,
nor life in their service, had only devoted half of their energy to
examining their right to adhere to this or that conviction and by what
road they arrived at it, how peaceable would the history of mankind now
appear! How much more knowledge would there be! All the cruel scenes
in connection with the persecution of heretics of all kinds would have
been avoided, for two reasons: firstly, because the inquisitors would
above all have inquired of themselves, and would have recognised
the presumption of defending absolute truth; and secondly, because
the heretics themselves would, after examination, have taken no more
interest in such badly established doctrines as those of all religious
sectarians and "orthodox" believers.
631.
From the ages in which it was customary to believe in the possession
of absolute truth, people have inherited a profound _dislike_ of all
sceptical and relative attitudes with regard to questions of knowledge;
they mostly prefer to acquiesce, for good or evil, in the convictions
of those in authority (fathers, friends, teachers, princes), and they
have a kind of remorse of conscience when they do not do so. This
tendency is quite comprehensible, and its results furnish no ground
for condemnation of the course of the development of human reason.
The scientific spirit in man, however, has gradually to bring to
maturity the virtue of _cautious forbearance,_ the wise moderation,
which is better known in practical than in theoretical life, and
which, for instance, Goethe has represented in "Antonio," as an object
of provocation for all Tassos,--that is to say, for unscientific and
at the same time inactive natures. The man of convictions has in
himself the right not to comprehend the man of cautious thought, the
theoretical Antonio; the scientific man, on the other hand, has no
right to blame the former on that account, he takes no notice thereof,
and knows, moreover, that in certain cases the former will yet cling
to him, as Tasso finally clung to Antonio.
632.
He who has not passed through different phases of conviction, but
sticks to the faith in whose net he was first caught, is, under
all circumstances, just on account of this unchangeableness, a
representative of _atavistic_ culture; in accordance with this lack
of culture (which always presupposes plasticity for culture), he
is severe, unintelligent, unteachable, without liberality, an ever
suspicious person, an unscrupulous person who has recourse to all
expedients for enforcing his opinions because he cannot conceive that
there must be other opinions; he is, in such respects, perhaps a
source of strength, and even wholesome in cultures that have become
too emancipated and languid, but only because he strongly incites to
opposition: for thereby the delicate organisation of the new culture,
which is forced to struggle with him, becomes strong itself.
633.
In essential respects we are still the same men as those of the time
of the Reformation; how could it be otherwise? But the fact that we
_no longer_ allow ourselves certain means for promoting the triumph
of our opinions distinguishes us from that age, and proves that we
belong to a higher culture. He who still combats and overthrows
opinions with calumnies and outbursts of rage, after the manner of
the Reformation men, obviously betrays the fact that he would have
burnt his adversaries had he lived in other times, and that he would
have resorted to all the methods of the Inquisition if he had been
an opponent of the Reformation. The Inquisition was rational at that
time; for it represented nothing else than the universal application of
martial law, which had to be proclaimed throughout the entire domain
of the Church, and which, like all martial law, gave a right to the
extremest methods, under the presupposition, of course, (which we now
no longer share with those people), that the Church _possessed_ truth
and had to preserve it at all costs, and at any sacrifice, for the
salvation of mankind. Now, however, one does not so readily concede to
any one that he possesses the truth; strict methods of investigation
have diffused enough of distrust and precaution, so that every one who
violently advocates opinions in word and deed is looked upon as an
enemy of our modern culture, or, at least, as an atavist. As a matter
of fact the pathos that man possesses truth is now of very little
consequence in comparison with the certainly milder and less noisy
pathos of the search for truth, which is never weary of learning afresh
and examining anew.
634.
Moreover, the methodical search for truth is itself the outcome of
those ages in which convictions were at war with each other. If the
individual had not cared about _his_ "truth," that is to say, about
carrying his point, there would have been no method of investigation;
thus, however, by the eternal struggle of the claims of different
individuals to absolute truth, people went on step by step to find
irrefragable principles according to which the rights of the claims
could be tested and the dispute settled. At first people decided
according to authorities; later on they criticised one another's ways
and means of finding the presumed truth; in the interval there was a
period when people deduced the consequences of the adverse theory, and
perhaps found them to be productive of injury and unhappiness; from
which it was then to be inferred by every one that the conviction of
the adversary involved an error. The _personal struggle of the thinker_
at last so sharpened his methods that real truths could be discovered,
and the mistakes of former methods exposed before the eyes of all.
635.
On the whole, scientific methods are at least as important results
of investigation as any other results, for the scientific spirit is
based upon a knowledge of method, and if the methods were lost, all
the results of science could not prevent the renewed prevalence of
superstition and absurdity. Clever people may _learn_ as much as
they like of the results of science, but one still notices in their
conversation, and especially in the hypotheses they make, that they
lack the scientific spirit; they have not the instinctive distrust of
the devious courses of thinking which, in consequence of long training,
has taken root in the soul of every scientific man. It is enough for
them to find any kind of hypothesis on a subject, they are then all
on fire for it, and imagine the matter is thereby settled. To have
an opinion is with them equivalent to immediately becoming fanatical
for it, and finally taking it to heart as a conviction. In the case
of an unexplained matter they become heated for the first idea that
comes into their head which has any resemblance to an explanation--a
course from which the worst results constantly follow, especially in
the field of politics. On that account everybody should nowadays have
become thoroughly acquainted with at least _one_ science, for then
surely he knows what is meant by method, and how necessary is the
extremest carefulness. To women in particular this advice is to be
given at present; as to those who are irretrievably the victims of all
hypotheses, especially when these have the appearance of being witty,
attractive, enlivening, and invigorating. Indeed, on close inspection
one sees that by far the greater number of educated people still desire
convictions from a thinker and nothing but _convictions,_ and that
only a small minority want _certainty._ The former want to be forcibly
carried away in order thereby to obtain an increase of strength; the
latter few have the real interest which disregards personal advantages
and the increase of strength also. The former class, who greatly
predominate, are always reckoned upon when the thinker comports himself
and labels himself as a _genius,_ and thus views himself as a higher
being to whom authority belongs. In so far as genius of this kind
upholds the ardour of convictions, and arouses distrust of the cautious
and modest spirit of science, it is an enemy of truth, however much it
may think itself the wooer thereof.
636.
There is, certainly, also an entirely different species of genius, that
of justice; and I cannot make up my mind to estimate it lower than any
kind of philosophical, political, or artistic genius. Its peculiarity
is to go, with heartfelt aversion, out of the way of everything that
blinds and confuses people's judgment of things; it is consequently
an _adversary of convictions,_ for it wants to give their own to all,
whether they be living or dead, real or imaginary--and for that purpose
it must know thoroughly; it therefore places everything in the best
light and goes around it with careful eyes. Finally, it will even give
to its adversary the blind or short-sighted "conviction" (as men call
it,--among women it is called "faith"), what is due to conviction--for
the sake of truth.
637.
Opinions evolve out of _passions; indolence of intellect_ allows those
to congeal into _convictions._ He, however, who is conscious of himself
as a _free,_ restless, lively spirit can prevent this congelation by
constant change; and if he is altogether a thinking snowball, he will
not have opinions in his head at all, but only certainties and properly
estimated probabilities. But we, who are of a mixed nature, alternately
inspired with ardour and chilled through and through by the intellect,
want to kneel before justice, as the only goddess we acknowledge. The
_fire_ in us generally makes us unjust, and impure in the eyes of our
goddess; in this condition we are not permitted to take her hand, and
the serious smile of her approval never rests upon us. We reverence
her as the veiled Isis of our life; with shame we offer her our pain
as penance and sacrifice when the fire threatens to burn and consume
us. It is the _intellect_ that saves us from being utterly burnt and
reduced to ashes; it occasionally drags us away from the sacrificial
altar of justice or enwraps us in a garment of asbestos. Liberated from
the fire, and impelled by the intellect, we then pass from opinion to
opinion, through the change of parties, as noble _betrayers_ of all
things that can in any way be betrayed--and nevertheless without a
feeling of guilt.
638.
THE WANDERER.--He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any
extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as
a wanderer on the face of the earth--and not even as a traveller
_towards_ a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly
wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens
in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to
anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that
takes pleasure in change and transitoriness. To be sure such a man will
have bad nights, when he is weary and finds the gates of the town that
should offer him rest closed; perhaps he may also find that, as in
the East, the desert reaches to the gates, that wild beasts howl far
and near, that a strong wind arises, and that robbers take away his
beasts of burden. Then the dreadful night closes over him like a second
desert upon the desert, and his heart grows weary of wandering. Then
when the morning sun rises upon him, glowing like a Deity of anger,
when the town is opened, he sees perhaps in the faces of the dwellers
therein still more desert, uncleanliness, deceit, and insecurity than
outside the gates--and the day is almost worse than the night. Thus
it may occasionally happen to the wanderer; but then there come as,
compensation the delightful mornings of other lands and days, when
already in the grey of the dawn he sees the throng of muses dancing
by, close to him, in the mist of the mountain; when afterwards, in
the symmetry of his ante-meridian soul, he strolls silently under
the trees, out of whose crests and leafy hiding-places all manner of
good and bright things are flung to him, the gifts of all the free
spirits who are at home in mountains, forests, and solitudes, and who,
like himself, alternately merry and thoughtful, are wanderers and
philosophers. Born of the secrets of the early dawn, they ponder the
question how the day, between the hours of ten and twelve, can have
such a pure, transparent, and gloriously cheerful countenance: they
seek the _ante-meridian_ philosophy.
[Footnote 1: This is why Nietzsche pointed out later on that he had an
interest in the preservation of Christianity, and that he was sure his
teaching would not undermine this faith--just as little as anarchists
have undermined kings; but have left them seated all the more firmly on
their thrones.--J.M.K.]
[Footnote 2: Women never understand this.--J.M.K.]
AN EPODE.
AMONG FRIENDS.
(Translated by T. COMMON.)
Nice, when mute we lie a-dreaming,
Nicer still when we are laughing,
'Neath the sky heaven's chariot speeding,
On the moss the book a-reading,
Sweetly loud with friends all laughing
Joyous, with white teeth a-gleaming.
Do I well, we're mute and humble;
Do I ill--we'll laugh exceeding;
Make it worse and worse, unheeding,
Worse proceeding, more laughs needing,
Till into the grave we stumble.
Friends! Yea! so shall it obtain?
Amen! Till we meet again.
II.
No excuses need be started!
Give, ye glad ones, open hearted,
To this foolish book before you
Ear and heart and lodging meet;
Trust me, 'twas not meant to bore you,
Though of folly I may treat!
What I find, seek, and am needing,
Was it e'er in book for reading?
Honour now fools in my name,
Learn from out this book by reading
How "our sense" from reason came.
Thus, my friends, shall it obtain?
Amen! Till we meet again.