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 one might also some day produce
such men--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 and 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 and 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
with 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, and
say: _morality is something forbidden!_ Perhaps you will thus attract
to your cause the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the
_heroic._ But then there must be something formidable in it, and not
as hitherto something disgusting I 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: in him who only casts a glance now
and then at science, as when 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 this
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 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 good 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 a _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. But it has died in these dry words, and hangs and flaps about in
them--and now I hardly know, 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
this 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 lives, 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 to 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, who think and feel, that
actually and unceasingly _make_ something which did not before 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 not it 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 Homerr_! 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.