but are you also such a noble stone that such a divine image could be
formed out of you? And without that--is not all your labour barbaric
sculpturing? A blasphemy of your ideal?
216.
_Danger in the Voice._--With a very loud voice a person is almost
incapable of reflecting on subtle matters.
217.
_Cause and Effect._--Before the effect one believes in other causes
than after the effect.
218.
_My Antipathy._--I do not like those people who, in order to produce
an effect, have to burst like bombs, and in whose neighbourhood one is
always in danger of suddenly losing one's hearing--or even something
more.
219.
_The Object of Punishment._--The object of punishment is to improve
him _who punishes,_--that is the ultimate appeal of those who justify
punishment.
220.
_Sacrifice._--The victims think otherwise than the spectators about
sacrifice and sacrificing: but they have never been allowed to express
their opinion.
221.
_Consideration._--Fathers and sons are much more considerate of one
another than mothers and daughters.
222.
_Poet and Liar._--The poet sees in the liar his foster-brother whose
milk he has drunk up; the latter has thus remained wretched, and has
not even attained to a good conscience.
223.
_Vicariousness of the Senses._--"We have also eyes in order to hear
with them,"--said an old confessor who had grown deaf; "and among the
blind he that has the longest ears is king."
224.
_Animal Criticism._--I fear the animals regard man as a being
like themselves, seriously endangered by the loss of sound animal
understanding;--they regard him perhaps as the absurd animal, the
laughing animal, the crying animal, the unfortunate animal.
225.
_The Natural._--"Evil has always had the great effect! And Nature is
evil! Let us therefore be natural!"--so reason secretly the great
aspirants after effect, who are too often counted among great men.
226.
_The Distrustful and their Style._--We say the strongest things simply,
provided people are about us who believe in our strength:--such an
environment educates to "simplicity of style." The distrustful, on the
other hand, speak emphatically; they make things emphatic.
227.
_Fallacy, Fallacy._--He cannot rule himself; therefore that woman
concludes that it will be easy to rule him, and throws out her lines to
catch him;--the poor creature, who in a short time will be his slave.
228.
_Against Mediators._--He who attempts to mediate between two decided
thinkers is rightly called mediocre: he has not an eye for seeing the
unique; similarising and equalising are signs of weak eyes.
229.
_Obstinacy and Loyalty._--Out of obstinacy he holds fast to a cause of
which the questionableness has become obvious,--he calls that, however,
his "loyalty."
230.
_Lack of Reserve._--His whole nature fails to _convince_--that results
from the fact that he has never been reticent about a good action he
has performed.
231.
_The "Plodders."_--Persons slow of apprehension think that slowness
forms part of knowledge.
232.
_Dreaming._--Either one does not dream at all, or one dreams in
an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same
fashion:--either not at all, or in an interesting manner.
233.
_The most Dangerous Point of View._--What I now do, or neglect to do,
is as important _for all that is to come,_ as the greatest event of the
past: in this immense perspective of effects all actions are equally
great and small.
234.
_Consolatory Words of a Musician._--"Your life does not sound into
people's ears: for them you live a dumb life, and all refinements of
melody, all fond resolutions in following or leading the way, are
concealed from them. To be sure you do not parade the thoroughfares
with regimental music,--but these good people have no right to say on
that account that your life is lacking in music. He that hath ears let
him hear."
235.
_Spirit and Character._--Many a one attains his full height of
character, but his spirit is not adapted to the elevation,--and many a
one reversely.
236.
_To Move the Multitude._--Is it not necessary for him who wants to
move the multitude to give a stage representation of himself? Has he
not first to translate himself into the grotesquely obvious, and then
_set forth_ his whole personality and cause in that vulgarised and
simplified fashion?
237.
_The Polite Man._--"He is so polite!"--Yes, he has always a sop
for Cerberus with him, and is so timid that he takes everybody for
Cerberus, even you and me,--that is his "politeness."
238.
_Without Envy._--He is wholly without envy, but there is no merit
therein: for he wants to conquer a land which no one has yet possessed
and hardly any one has even seen.
239.
_The Joyless Person._--A single joyless person is enough to make
constant displeasure and a clouded heaven in a household; and it is
only by a miracle that such a person is lacking!--Happiness is not
nearly such a contagious disease;--how is that?
240.
_On the Sea-Shore._--I would not build myself a house (it is an element
of my happiness not to be a house-owner!). If I had to do so, however,
I should build it, like many of the Romans, right into the sea,--I
should like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster.
241.
_Work and Artist._--This artist is ambitious and nothing more;
ultimately, however, his work is only a magnifying-glass, which he
offers to every one who looks in his direction.
242.
_Suum cuique._--However great be my greed of knowledge, I cannot
appropriate aught of things but what already belongs to me,--the
property of others still remains in the things. How is it possible for
a man to be a thief or a robber?
243.
_Origin of "Good" and "Bad."_--He only will devise an improvement who
can feel that "this is not good."
244.
_Thoughts and Words._--Even our thoughts we are unable to render
completely in words.
245.
_Praise in Choice._--The artist chooses his subjects; that is his mode
of praising.
246.
_Mathematics._--We want to carry the refinement and rigour of
mathematics into all the sciences, as far as it is in any way possible,
not in the belief that we shall apprehend things in this way, but in
order thereby to _assert_ our human relation to things. Mathematics is
only a means to general and ultimate human knowledge.
247.
_Habits._--All habits make our hand wittier and our wit unhandier.
248.
_Books._--Of what account is a book that never carries us away beyond
all books?
249.
_The Sigh of the Seeker of Knowledge._--"Oh, my covetousness! In this
soul there is no disinterestedness--but an all-desiring self, which,
by means of many individuals, would fain see as with _its own_ eyes,
and grasp as with _its own_ hands--a self bringing back even the entire
past, and wanting to lose nothing that could in anyway belong to it!
Oh, this flame of my covetousness! Oh, that I were reincarnated in a
hundred individuals!"--He who does not know this sigh by experience,
does not know the passion of the seeker of knowledge either.
250.
_Guilt._--Although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even
the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the
guilt, nevertheless, was not there. So it is with all guilt.
251.
_Misunderstood Sufferers._--Great natures suffer otherwise than their
worshippers imagine; they suffer most severely from the ignoble, petty
emotions of certain evil moments; in short, from doubt of their own
greatness;--not however from the sacrifices and martyrdoms which their
tasks require of them. As long as Prometheus sympathises with men and
sacrifices himself for them, he is happy and proud in himself; but on
becoming envious of Zeus and of the homage which mortals pay him--then
Prometheus suffers!
252.
_Better to be in Debt._--"Better to remain in debt than to pay with
money which does not bear our stamp!"--that is what our sovereignty
prefers.
253.
_Always at Home._--One day we attain our _goal_--and then refer with
pride to the long journeys we have made to reach it. In truth, we did
not notice that we travelled. We got into the habit of thinking that we
were _at home_ in every place.
254.
_Against Embarrassment._--He who is always thoroughly occupied is rid
of all embarrassment.
255.
_Imitators._--A: "What? You don't want to have imitators?" B: "I
don't want people to do anything _after_ me; I want every one to do
something _before_ himself (as a pattern to himself)--just as _I_ do."
A: "Consequently--?"
256.
_Skinniness._--All profound men have their happiness in imitating
the flying-fish at times, and playing on the crests of the waves;
they think that what is best of all in things is their surface: their
skinniness--_sit venia verbo_.
257.
_From Experience._--A person often does not know how rich he is, until
he learns from experience what rich men even play the thief on him.
258.
_The Deniers of Chance._--No conqueror believes in chance.
259.
_From Paradise._--"Good and Evil are God's prejudices"--said the
serpent.
260.
_One times One._--One only is always in the wrong, but with two truth
begins.--One only cannot prove himself right; but two are already
beyond refutation.
261.
_Originality._--What is originality? To _see_ something that does
not yet bear a name, that cannot yet be named, although it is before
everybody's eyes. As people are usually constituted, it is the name
that first makes a thing generally visible to them.--Original persons
have also for the most part been the namers of things.
262.
_Sub specie æterni._--A: "You withdraw faster and faster from the
living; they will soon strike you out of their lists!"--B: "It is the
only way to participate in the privilege of the dead." A: "In what
privilege?"--B: "No longer having to die."
263.
_Without Vanity._--When we love we want our defects to remain
concealed,--not out of vanity, but lest the person loved should suffer
therefrom. Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,--and not
out of vanity either.
264.
_What we Do._--What we do is never understood, but only praised and
blamed.
265.
_Ultimate Scepticism._--But what after all are man's truths?--They are
his _irrefutable_ errors.
266.
_Where Cruelty is Necessary._--He who is great is cruel to his
second-rate virtues and judgments.
267.
_With a high Aim._--With a high aim a person is superior even to
justice, and not only to his deeds and his judges.
268.
_What makes Heroic?_--To face simultaneously one's greatest suffering
and one's highest hope.
269.
_What dost thou Believe in?_--In this: That the weights of all things
must be determined anew.
270.
_What Saith thy Conscience?_--"Thou shalt become what thou art."
271.
_Where are thy Greatest Dangers?_--In pity.
272.
_What dost thou Love in others?_--My hopes.
273.
_Whom dost thou call Bad?_--Him who always wants to put others to shame.
274.
_What dost thou think most humane?_--To spare a person shame.
275.
_What is the Seal of Attained Liberty?_--To be no longer ashamed of
oneself.
BOOK FOURTH
SANCTUS JANUARIUS
Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from
its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea:
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,--
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint!
_Genoa,_ January 1882.
276.
_For the New Year._--I still live, I still think; I must still live,
for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ To-day
everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite
thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself
to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,--a thought
which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my
future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters
in things as the beautiful:--I shall thus be one of those who beautify
things. _Amor fati:_ let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to
wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to
accuse the accusers. _Looking aside,_ let that be my sole negation!
And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a
yea-sayer!
277.
_Personal Providence._--There is a certain climax in life, at which,
notwithstanding all our freedom, and however much we may have denied
all directing reason and goodness in the beautiful chaos of existence,
we are once more in great danger of intellectual bondage, and have to
face our hardest test. For now the thought of a personal Providence
first presents itself before us with its most persuasive force, and
has the best of advocates, apparentness, in its favour, now when it
is obvious that all and everything that happens to us always _turns
out for the best._ The life of every day and of every hour seems to be
anxious for nothing else but always to prove this proposition anew;
let it be what it will, bad or good weather, the loss of a friend,
a sickness, a calumny, the non-receipt of a letter, the spraining
of one's foot, a glance into a shop-window, a counter-argument, the
opening of a book, a dream, a deception:--it shows itself immediately,
or very soon afterwards, as something "not permitted to be absent,"--it
is full of profound significance and utility precisely _for us!_ Is
there a more dangerous temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in
the Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods, and believe in
some anxious and mean Divinity, who knows personally every little hair
on our heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most wretched
services? Well--I mean in spite of all this! we want to leave the
Gods alone (and the serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content
ourselves with the assumption that our own practical and theoretical
skilfulness in explaining and suitably arranging events has now reached
its highest point. We do not want either to think too highly of this
dexterity of our wisdom, when the wonderful harmony which results from
playing on our instrument sometimes surprises us too much: a harmony
which sounds too well for us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In
fact, now and then there is one who plays _with_ us--beloved Chance: he
leads our hand occasionally, and even the all-wisest Providence could
not devise any finer music than that of which our foolish hand is then
capable.
278.
_The Thought of Death._--It gives me a melancholy happiness to live
in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices:
how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and
drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will
soon be so still for all these shouting, lively, life-loving people!
How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling-companion stands behind
him! It is always as in the last moment before the departure of an
emigrant-ship: people have more than ever to say to one another, the
hour presses, the ocean with its lonely silence waits impatiently
behind all the noise--so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all,
all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that
the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this
self-deafening and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be foremost in
this future,--and yet death and the stillness of death are the only
things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that
this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost
no influence on men, and that they are the _furthest_ from regarding
themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that
men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would fain do
something to make the idea of life even a hundred times _more worthy of
their attention_.
279.
_Stellar Friendship_.--We were friends, and have become strangers to
each other. But this is as it ought to be, and we do not want either
to conceal or obscure the fact, as if we had to be ashamed of it. We
are two ships, each of which has its goal and its course; we may,
to be sure, cross one another in our paths, and celebrate a feast
together as we did before,--and then the gallant ships lay quietly in
one harbour, and in one sunshine, so that it might have been thought
they were already at their goal, and that they had had one goal. But
then the almighty strength of our tasks forced us apart once more into
different seas and into different zones, and perhaps we shall never see
one another again,--or perhaps we may see one another, but not know
one another again; the different seas and suns have altered us! That
we had to become strangers to one another is the law to which we are
_subject_: just by that shall we become more sacred to one another!
Just by that shall the thought of our former friendship become holier!
There is probably some immense, invisible curve and stellar orbit in
which our courses and goals, so widely different, may be _comprehended_
as small stages of the way,--let us raise ourselves to this thought!
But our life is too short, and our power of vision too limited for us
to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility.--And
so we will _believe_ in our stellar friendship, though we should have
to be terrestrial enemies to one another.
280.
_Architecture for Thinkers._--An insight is needed (and that probably
very soon) as to what is specially lacking in our great cities--namely,
quiet, spacious, and widely extended places for reflection, places
with long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too sunny days,
where no noise of wagons or of shouters would penetrate, and where
a more refined propriety would prohibit loud praying even to the
priest: buildings and situations which as a whole would express the
sublimity of self-communion and seclusion from the world. The time
is past when the Church possessed the monopoly of reflection, when
the _vita contemplativa_ had always in the first place to be the
_vita religiosa:_ and everything that the Church has built expresses
this thought. I know not how we could content ourselves with their
structures, even if they should be divested of their ecclesiastical
purposes: these structures speak a far too pathetic and too biassed
speech, as houses of God and places of splendour for supernatural
intercourse, for us godless ones to be able to think _our thoughts_ in
them. We want to have _ourselves_ translated into stone and plant, we
want to go for a walk in _ourselves_ when we wander in these halls and
gardens.
281.
_Knowing how to Find the End._--Masters of the first rank are
recognised by knowing in a perfect manner how to find the end, in
the whole as well as in the part; be it the end of a melody or of a
thought, be it the fifth act of a tragedy or of a state affair. The
masters of the second degree always become restless towards the end,
and seldom dip down into the sea with such proud, quiet equilibrium
as for example, the mountain-ridge at _Porto fino_--where the Bay of
Genoa sings its melody to an end.
282.
_The Gait._--There are mannerisms of the intellect by which even
great minds betray that they originate from the populace, or from the
semi-populace--it is principally the gait and step, of their thoughts
which betray them; they cannot _walk._ It was thus that even Napoleon,
to his profound chagrin, could not walk "legitimately" and in princely
fashion on occasions when it was necessary to do so properly, as in
great coronation processions and on similar occasions: even there he
was always just the leader of a column--proud and brusque at the same
time, and very self-conscious of it all.--It is something laughable to
see those writers who make the folding robes of their periods rustle
around them: they want to cover their _feet_.
283.
_Pioneers._--I greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and
warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again
into honour! For it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age,
and gather the force which the latter will one day require,--the age
which will carry heroism into knowledge, and _wage war_ for the sake
of ideas and their consequences. For that end many brave pioneers
are now needed, who, however, cannot originate out of nothing,--and
just as little out of the sand and slime of present-day civilisation
and the culture of great cities: men silent, solitary and resolute,
who know how to be content and persistent in invisible activity: men
who with innate disposition seek in all things that which is _to be
overcome_ in them: men to whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity, and
contempt of the great vanities belong just as much as do magnanimity in
victory and indulgence to the trivial vanities of all the vanquished:
men with an acute and independent judgment regarding all victors, and
concerning the part which chance has played in the winning of victory
and fame: men with their own holidays, their own work-days, and their
own periods of mourning; accustomed to command with perfect assurance,
and equally ready, if need be, to obey, proud in the one case as in
the other, equally serving their own interests: men more imperilled,
more productive, more happy! For believe me!--the secret of realising
the largest productivity and the greatest enjoyment of existence is
_to live in danger!_ Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send
your ships into unexplored seas! Live in war with your equals and with
yourselves! Be robbers and spoilers, ye knowing ones, as long as ye
cannot be rulers and possessors! The time will soon pass when you
can be satisfied to live like timorous deer concealed in the forests.
Knowledge will finally stretch out her hand for that which belongs to
her:--she means to _rule_ and _possess,_ and you with her!
284.
_Belief in Oneself_--In general, few men have belief in
themselves:--and of those few some are endowed with it as a useful
blindness or partial obscuration of intellect (what would they perceive
if they could see _to the bottom of themselves!_). The others must
first acquire the belief for themselves: everything good, clever, or
great that they do, is first of all an argument against the sceptic
that dwells in them: the question is how to convince or persuade _this
sceptic,_ and for that purpose genius almost is needed. They are
signally dissatisfied with themselves.
285.
_Excelsior!_--"Thou wilt never more pray, never more worship, never
more repose in infinite trust--thou refusest to stand still and
dismiss thy thoughts before an ultimate wisdom, an ultimate virtue, an
ultimate power,--thou hast no constant guardian and friend in thy seven
solitudes--thou livest without the outlook on a mountain that has snow
on its head and fire in its heart--there is no longer any requiter for
thee, nor any amender with, his finishing touch--there is no longer any
reason in that which happens, or any love in that which will happen
to thee--there is no longer any resting-place for thy weary heart,
where it has only to find and no longer to seek, thou art opposed to
any kind of ultimate peace, thou desirest the eternal recurrence of
war and peace:--man of renunciation, wilt thou renounce in all these
things? Who will give thee the strength to do so? No one has yet had
this strength!"--There is a lake which one day refused to flow away,
and threw up a dam at the place where it had hitherto discharged: since
then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very
renunciation will also furnish us with the strength with which the
renunciation itself can be borne; perhaps man will ever rise higher and
higher from that point onward, when he no longer _flows out_ into a God.
286.
_A Digression._--Here are hopes; but what will you see and hear of
them, if you have not experienced glance and glow and dawn of day in
your own souls? I can only suggest--I cannot do more! To move the
stones, to make animals men--would you have me do that? Alas, if you
are yet stones and animals, you must seek your Orpheus!
287.
_Love of Blindness._--"My thoughts," said the wanderer to his shadow,
"ought to show me where I stand, but they should not betray to me
_whither I go._ I love ignorance of the future, and do not want to come
to grief by impatience and anticipatory tasting of promised things."
288.