PART I. MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS.

1.

TO THE DISILLUSIONED IN PHILOSOPHY.—If you hitherto believed in the

highest value of life and now find yourselves disillusioned, must you

immediately get rid of life at the lowest possible price?

2.

OVERNICE.—One can even become overnice as regards the clearness of

concepts. How disgusted one is then at having truck with the half-clear,

the hazy, the aspiring, the doubting! How ridiculous and yet not

mirth-provoking is their eternal fluttering and straining without ever

being able to fly or to grasp!

3.

THE WOOERS OF REALITY.—He who realises at last how long and how thoroughly

he has been befooled, embraces out of spite even the ugliest reality. So

that in the long run of the world’s history the best men have always been

wooers of reality, for the best have always been longest and most

thoroughly deceived.

4.

ADVANCE OF FREETHINKING.—The difference between past and present

freethinking cannot better be characterised than by that aphorism for the

recognition and expression of which all the fearlessness of the eighteenth

century was needed, and which even then, if measured by our modern view,

sinks into an unconscious naïveté. I mean Voltaire’s aphorism,

“croyez-moi, mon ami, l’erreur aussi a son mérite.”

5.

A HEREDITARY SIN OF PHILOSOPHERS.—Philosophers have at all times

appropriated and _corrupted_ the maxims of censors of men (moralists), by

taking them over without qualification and trying to prove as necessary

what the moralists only meant as a rough indication or as a truth suited

to their fellow-countrymen or fellow-townsmen for a single decade.

Moreover, the philosophers thought that they were thereby raising

themselves above the moralists! Thus it will be found that the celebrated

teachings of Schopenhauer as to the supremacy of the will over the

intellect, of the immutability of character, the negativity of

pleasure—all errors, in the sense in which he understands them—rest upon

principles of popular wisdom enunciated by the moralists. Take the very

word “will,” which Schopenhauer twisted so as to become a common

denotation of several human conditions and with which he filled a gap in

the language (to his own great advantage, in so far as he was a moralist,

for he became free to speak of the will as Pascal had spoken of it). In

the hands of its creator, Schopenhauer’s “will,” through the philosophic

craze for generalisation, already turned out to be a bane to knowledge.

For this will was made into a poetic metaphor, when it was held that all

things in nature possess will. Finally, that it might be applied to all

kinds of disordered mysticism, the word was misused by a fraudulent

convention. So now all our fashionable philosophers repeat it and seem to

be perfectly certain that all things have a will and are in fact One Will.

According to the description generally given of this All-One-Will, this is

much as if one should positively try to have the stupid Devil for one’s

God.

6.

AGAINST VISIONARIES.—The visionary denies the truth to himself, the liar

only to others.

7.

ENMITY TO LIGHT.—If we make it clear to any one that, strictly, he can

never speak of truth, but only of probability and of its degrees, we

generally discover, from the undisguised joy of our pupil, how greatly men

prefer the uncertainty of their intellectual horizon, and how in their

heart of hearts they hate truth because of its definiteness.—Is this due

to a secret fear felt by all that the light of truth may at some time be

turned too brightly upon themselves? To their wish to be of some

consequence, and accordingly their concealment from the world of what they

are? Or is it to be traced to their horror of the all-too brilliant light,

to which their crepuscular, easily dazzled, bat-like souls are not

accustomed, so that hate it they must?

8.

CHRISTIAN SCEPTICISM.—Pilate, with his question, “What is Truth?” is now

gleefully brought on the scene as an advocate of Christ, in order to cast

suspicion on all that is known or knowable as being mere appearance, and

to erect the Cross on the appalling background of the Impossibility of

Knowledge.

9.

“NATURAL LAW,” A PHRASE OF SUPERSTITION.—When you talk so delightedly of

Nature acting according to law, you must either assume that all things in

Nature follow their law from a voluntary obedience imposed by

themselves—in which case you admire the morality of Nature: or you are

enchanted with the idea of a creative mechanician, who has made a most

cunning watch with human beings as accessory ornaments.—Necessity, through

the expression, “conformity to law,” then becomes more human and a coign

of refuge in the last instance for mythological reveries.

10.

FALLEN FORFEIT TO HISTORY.—All misty philosophers and obscurers of the

world, in other words all metaphysicians of coarse or refined texture are

seized with eyeache, earache, and toothache when they begin to suspect

that there is truth in the saying: “All philosophy has from now fallen

forfeit to history.” In view of their aches and pains we may pardon them

for throwing stones and filth at him who talks like this, but this

teaching may itself thereby become dirty and disreputable for a time and

lose in effect.

11.

THE PESSIMIST OF THE INTELLECT.—He whose intellect is really free will

think freely about the intellect itself, and will not shut his eyes to

certain terrible aspects of its source and tendency. For this reason

others will perhaps designate him the bitterest opponent of free thought

and give him that dreadful, abusive name of “pessimist of the intellect”:

accustomed as they are to typify a man not by his strong point, his

pre-eminent virtue, but by the quality that is most foreign to his nature.

12.

THE METAPHYSICIANS’ KNAPSACK.—To all who talk so boastfully of the

scientific basis of their metaphysics it is best to make no reply. It is

enough to tug at the bundle that they rather shyly keep hidden behind

their backs. If one succeeds in lifting it, the results of that

“scientific basis” come to light, to their great confusion: a dear little

“God,” a genteel immortality, perhaps a little spiritualism, and in any

case a complicated mass of poor-sinners’-misery and pharisee-arrogance.

13.

OCCASIONAL HARMFULNESS OF KNOWLEDGE.—The utility involved in the unchecked

investigation of knowledge is so constantly proved in a hundred different

ways that one must remember to include in the bargain the subtler and

rarer damage which individuals must suffer on that account. The chemist

cannot avoid occasionally being poisoned or burnt at his experiments. What

applies to the chemist, is true of the whole of our culture. This, it may

be added, clearly shows that knowledge should provide itself with healing

balsam against burns and should always have antidotes ready against

poisons.

14.

THE CRAVING OF THE PHILISTINE.—The Philistine thinks that his most urgent

need is a purple patch or turban of metaphysics, nor will he let it slip.

Yet he would look less ridiculous without this adornment.

15.

ENTHUSIASTS.—With all that enthusiasts say in favour of their gospel or

their master they are defending themselves, however much they comport

themselves as the judges and not the accused: because they are

involuntarily reminded almost at every moment that they are exceptions and

have to assert their legitimacy.

16.

THE GOOD SEDUCES TO LIFE.—All good things, even all good books that are

written against life, are strong means of attraction to life.

17.

THE HAPPINESS OF THE HISTORIAN.—“When we hear the hair-splitting

metaphysicians and prophets of the after-world speak, we others feel

indeed that we are the ‘poor in spirit,’ but that ours is the heavenly

kingdom of change, with spring and autumn, summer and winter, and theirs

the after-world, with its grey, everlasting frosts and shadows.” Thus

soliloquised a man as he walked in the morning sunshine, a man who in his

pursuit of history has constantly changed not only his mind but his heart.

In contrast to the metaphysicians, he is happy to harbour in himself not

an “immortal soul” but many _mortal_ souls.

18.

THREE VARIETIES OF THINKERS.—There are streaming, flowing, trickling

mineral springs, and three corresponding varieties of thinkers. The layman

values them by the volume of the water, the expert by the contents of the

water—in other words, by the elements in them that are not water.

19.

THE PICTURE OF LIFE.—The task of painting the picture of life, often as it

has been attempted by poets and philosophers, is nevertheless irrational.

Even in the hands of the greatest artist-thinkers, pictures and miniatures

of one life only—their own—have come into being, and indeed no other

result is possible. While in the process of developing, a thing that

develops, cannot mirror itself as fixed and permanent, as a _definite

object_.

20.

TRUTH WILL HAVE NO GODS BEFORE IT.—The belief in truth begins with the

doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

21.

WHERE SILENCE IS REQUIRED.—If we speak of freethinking as of a highly

dangerous journey over glaciers and frozen seas, we find that those who do

not care to travel on this track are offended, as if they had been

reproached with cowardice and weak knees. The difficult, which we find to

be beyond our powers, must not even be mentioned in our presence.

22.

_Historia in Nuce._—The most serious parody I ever heard was this: “In the

beginning was the nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the

nonsense was God.”(4)

23.

INCURABLE.—The idealist is incorrigible: if he be thrown out of his

Heaven, he makes himself a suitable ideal out of Hell. Disillusion him,

and lo! he will embrace disillusionment with no less ardour than he

recently embraced hope. In so far as his impulse belongs to the great

incurable impulses of human nature, he can bring about tragic destinies

and later become a subject for tragedy himself, for such tragedies as deal

with the incurable, implacable, inevitable in the lot and character of

man.

24.

APPLAUSE ITSELF AS THE CONTINUATION OF THE PLAY.—Sparkling eyes and an

amiable smile are the tributes of applause paid to all the great comedy of

world and existence—but this applause is a comedy within a comedy, meant

to tempt the other spectators to a _plaudite amici_.

25.

COURAGE FOR TEDIUM.—He who has not the courage to allow himself and his

work to be considered tedious, is certainly no intellect of the first

rank, whether in the arts or in the sciences.—A scoffer, who happened for

once in a way to be a thinker, might add, with a glance at the world and

at history: “God did not possess this courage, for he wanted to make and

he made all things so interesting.”

26.

FROM THE MOST INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF THE THINKER.—Nothing is harder for a

man than to conceive of an object impersonally, I mean to see in it an

object and not a person. One may even ask whether it is possible for him

to dispense for a single moment with the machinery of his instinct to

create and construct a personality. After all, he associates with his

thoughts, however abstract they may be, as with individuals, against whom

he must fight or to whom he must attach himself, whom he must protect,

support and nourish. Let us watch or listen to ourselves at the moment

when we hear or discover a new idea. Perhaps it displeases us because it

is so defiant and so autocratic, and we unconsciously ask ourselves

whether we cannot place a contradiction of it by its side as an enemy, or

fasten on to it a “perhaps” or a “sometimes”: the mere little word

“probably” gives us a feeling of satisfaction, for it shatters the

oppressive tyranny of the unconditional. If, on the other hand, the new

idea enters in gentle shape, sweetly patient and humble, and falling at

once into the arms of contradiction, we put our autocracy to the test in

another way. Can we not come to the aid of this weak creature, stroke it

and feed it, give it strength and fulness, and truth and even

unconditionality? Is it possible for us to show ourselves parental or

chivalrous or compassionate towards our idea?—Then again, we see here a

judgment and there a judgment, sundered from each other, never looking at

or making any movement towards each other. So we are tickled by the

thought, whether it be not here feasible to make a match, to draw a

_conclusion_, with the anticipation that if a consequence follows this

conclusion it is not only the two judgments united in wedlock but the

matchmakers that will gain honour. If, however, we cannot acquire a hold

upon that thought either on the path of defiance and ill-will or on that

of good-will (if we hold it to be true)—then we submit to it and do homage

to it as a leader and a prince, give it a chair of honour, and speak not

of it without a flourish of trumpets: for we are bright in its brightness.

Woe to him who tries to dim this brightness! Perhaps we ourselves one day

grow suspicious of our idea. Then we, the indefatigable “king-makers” of

the history of the intellect, cast it down from its throne and immediately

exalt its adversary. Surely if this be considered and thought out a little

further, no one will speak of an “absolute impulse to knowledge”!

Why, then, does man prefer the true to the untrue, in this secret combat

with thought-personalities, in this generally clandestine match-making of

thoughts, constitution-founding of thoughts, child-rearing of thoughts,

nursing and almsgiving of thoughts? For the same reason that he practises

honesty in intercourse with real persons: _now_ from habit, heredity, and

training, _originally_ because the true, like the fair and the just, is

more expedient and more reputable than the untrue. For in the realm of

thought it is difficult to assume a power and glory that are built on

error or on falsehood. The feeling that such an edifice might at some time

collapse is humiliating to the self-esteem of the architect—he is ashamed

of the fragility of the material, and, as he considers himself more

important than the rest of the world, he would fain construct nothing that

is less durable than the rest of the world. In his longing for truth he

embraces the belief in a personal immortality, the most arrogant and

defiant idea that exists, closely allied as it is to the underlying

thought, _pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim!_ His work has become his

“ego,” he transforms himself into the Imperishable with its universal

challenge. It is his immeasurable pride that will only employ the best and

hardest stones for the work—truths, or what he holds for such. Arrogance

has always been justly called the “vice of the sage”; yet without this

vice, fruitful in impulses, Truth and her status on earth would be in a

parlous plight. In our propensity to fear our thoughts, concepts and

words, and yet to honour ourselves in them, unconsciously to ascribe to

them the power of rewarding, despising, praising, and blaming us, and so

to associate with them as with free intellectual personalities, as with

independent powers, as with our equals—herein lie the roots of the

remarkable phenomenon which I have called “intellectual conscience.” Thus

something of the highest moral species has bloomed from a black root.

27.

THE OBSCURANTISTS.—The essential feature of the black art of obscurantism

is not its intention of clouding the brain, but its attempt to darken the

picture of the world and cloud our idea of existence. It often employs the

method of thwarting all illumination of the intellect, but at times it

uses the very opposite means, seeking by the highest refinement of the

intellect to induce a satiety of the intellect’s fruits. Hair-splitting

metaphysicians, who pave the way for scepticism and by their excessive

acumen provoke a distrust of acumen, are excellent instruments of the more

subtle form of obscurantism.—Is it possible that even Kant may be applied

to this purpose? Did he even _intend_ something of the sort, for a time at

least, to judge from his own notorious exposition: “to clear the way for

belief by setting limitations to knowledge”?—Certainly he did not succeed,

nor did his followers, on the wolf and fox tracks of this highly refined

and dangerous form of obscurantism—the most dangerous of all, for the

black art here appears in the garb of light.

28.

BY WHAT KIND OF PHILOSOPHY ART IS CORRUPTED.—When the mists of a

metaphysical-mystical philosophy succeed in making all æsthetic phenomena

_opaque_, it follows that these phenomena cannot be comparatively valued,

inasmuch as each becomes individually inexplicable. But when once they

cannot be compared for the sake of valuation, there arises an entire

absence-of-criticism, a blind indulgence. From this source springs a

continual diminution of the enjoyment of art (which is only distinguished

from the crude satisfaction of a need by the highest refinement of taste

and appreciation). The more taste diminishes, the more does the desire for

art change and revert to a vulgar hunger, which the artist henceforth

seeks to appease by ever coarser fare.

29.

ON GETHSEMANE.—The most painful thing a thinker can say to artists is:

“Could ye not _watch_ with me one hour?”

30.

AT THE LOOM.—There are many (artists and women, for instance) who work

against the few that take a pleasure in untying the knot of things and

unravelling their woof. The former always want to weave the woof together

again and entangle it and so turn the conceived into the unconceived and

if possible inconceivable. Whatever the result may be, the woof and knot

always look rather untidy, because too many hands are working and tugging

at them.

31.

IN THE DESERT OF SCIENCE.—As the man of science proceeds on his modest and

toilsome wanderings, which must often enough be journeys in the desert, he

is confronted with those brilliant mirages known as “philosophic systems.”

With magic powers of deception they show him that the solution of all

riddles and the most refreshing draught of true water of life are close at

hand. His weary heart rejoices, and he well-nigh touches with his lips the

goal of all scientific endurance and hardship, so that almost

unconsciously he presses forward. Other natures stand still, as if

spellbound by the beautiful illusion: the desert swallows them up, they

become lost to science. Other natures, again, that have often experienced

these subjective consolations, become very disheartened and curse the

salty taste which these mirages leave behind in the mouth and from which

springs a raging thirst—without one’s having come one step nearer to any

sort of a spring.

32.

THE SO-CALLED “REAL REALITY.”—When the poet depicts the various

callings—such as those of the warrior, the silk-weaver, the sailor—he

feigns to know all these things thoroughly, to be an expert. Even in the

exposition of human actions and destinies he behaves as if he had been

present at the spinning of the whole web of existence. In so far he is an

impostor. He practises his frauds on pure ignoramuses, and that is why he

succeeds. They praise him for his deep, genuine knowledge, and lead him

finally into the delusion that he really knows as much as the individual

experts and creators, yes, even as the great world-spinners themselves. In

the end, the impostor becomes honest, and actually believes in his own

sincerity. Emotional people say to his very face that he has the “higher”

truth and sincerity—for they are weary of reality for the time being, and

accept the poetic dream as a pleasant relaxation and a night’s rest for

head and heart. The visions of the dream now appear to them of more value,

because, as has been said, they find them more beneficial, and mankind has

always held that what is apparently of more value is more true, more real.

All that is generally called reality, the poets, conscious of this power,

proceed with intention to disparage and to distort into the uncertain, the

illusory, the spurious, the impure, the sinful, sorrowful, and deceitful.

They make use of all doubts about the limits of knowledge, of all

sceptical excesses, in order to spread over everything the rumpled veil of

uncertainty. For they desire that when this darkening process is complete

their wizardry and soul-magic may be accepted without hesitation as the

path to “true truth” and “real reality.”

33.

THE WISH TO BE JUST AND THE WISH TO BE A JUDGE.—Schopenhauer, whose

profound understanding of what is human and all-too-human and original

sense for facts was not a little impaired by the bright leopard-skin of

his metaphysic (the skin must first be pulled off him if one wants to find

the real moralist genius beneath)—Schopenhauer makes this admirable

distinction, wherein he comes far nearer the mark than he would himself

dare to admit: “Insight into the stern necessity of human actions is the

boundary line that divides philosophic from other brains.” He worked

against that wonderful insight of which he was sometimes capable by the

prejudice that he had in common with the moral man (not the moralist), a

prejudice that he expresses quite guilelessly and devoutly as follows:

“The ultimate and true explanation of the inner being of the entirety of

things must of necessity be closely connected with that about the ethical

significance of human actions.” This connection is not “necessary” at all:

such a connection must rather be rejected by that principle of the stern

necessity of human actions, that is, the unconditioned non-freedom and

non-responsibility of the will. Philosophic brains will accordingly be

distinguished from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical

significance of morality. This must create between the two kinds of brain

a gulf of a depth and unbridgeableness of which the much-deplored gulf

between “cultured” and “uncultured” scarcely gives a conception. It is

true that many back doors, which the “philosophic brains,” like

Schopenhauer’s own, have left for themselves, must be recognised as

useless. None leads into the open, into the fresh air of the free will,

but every door through which people had slipped hitherto showed behind it

once more the gleaming brass wall of fate. For we are in a prison, and can

only dream of freedom, not make ourselves free. That the recognition of

this fact cannot be resisted much longer is shown by the despairing and

incredible postures and grimaces of those who still press against it and

continue their wrestling-bout with it. Their attitude at present is

something like this: “So no one is responsible for his actions? And all is

full of guilt and the consciousness of guilt? But some one _must_ be the

sinner. If it is no longer possible or permissible to accuse and sentence

the individual, the one poor wave in the inevitable rough-and-tumble of

the waves of development—well, then, let this stormy sea, this development

itself, be the sinner. Here is free will: this totality can be accused and

sentenced, can atone and expiate. _So let God be the sinner and man his

redeemer._ Let the world’s history be guilt, expiation, and self-murder.

Let the evil-doer be his own judge, the judge his own hangman.” This

Christianity strained to its limits—for what else is it?—is the last

thrust in the fencing-match between the teaching of unconditioned morality

and the teaching of unconditioned non-freedom. It would be quite horrible

if it were anything more than a logical pose, a hideous grimace of the

underlying thought, perhaps the death-convulsion of the heart that seeks a

remedy in its despair, the heart to which delirium whispers: “Behold, thou

art the lamb which taketh away the sin of God.” This error lies not only

in the feeling, “I am responsible,” but just as much in the contradiction,

“I am not responsible, but some one must be.” That is simply not true.

Hence the philosopher must say, like Christ, “Judge not,” and the final

distinction between the philosophic brains and the others would be that

the former wish to be just and the latter wish to be judges.

34.

_Sacrifice._—You hold that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?—Just

consider whether in every action that is done with deliberation, in the

best as in the worst, there be not a sacrifice.

35.

AGAINST THE “TRIERS OF THE REINS” OF MORALITY.—One must know the best and

the worst that a man is capable of in theory and in practice before one

can judge how strong his moral nature is and can be. But this is an

experiment that one can never carry out.

36.

SERPENT’S TOOTH.—Whether we have a serpent’s tooth or not we cannot know

before some one has set his heel upon our necks. A wife or a mother could

say: until some one has put his heel upon the neck of our darling, our

child.—Our character is determined more by the absence of certain

experiences than by the experiences we have undergone.

37.

DECEPTION IN LOVE.—We forget and purposely banish from our minds a good

deal of our past. In other words, we wish our picture, that beams at us

from the past, to belie us, to flatter our vanity—we are constantly

engaged in this self-deception. And you who talk and boast so much of

“self-oblivion in love,” of the “absorption of the ego in the other

person”—you hold that this is something different? So you break the

mirror, throw yourselves into another personality that you admire, and

enjoy the new portrait of your ego, though calling it by the other

person’s name—and this whole proceeding is not to be thought

self-deception, self-seeking, you marvellous beings?—It seems to me that

those who hide something of themselves from themselves, or hide their

whole selves from themselves, are alike committing a theft from the

treasury of knowledge. It is clear, then, against what transgression the

maxim “Know thyself” is a warning.

38.

TO THE DENIER OF HIS VANITY.—He who denies his own vanity usually

possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to

avoid the necessity of despising himself.

39.

WHY THE STUPID SO OFTEN BECOME MALIGNANT.—To those arguments of our

adversary against which our head feels too weak our heart replies by

throwing suspicion on the motives of his arguments.

40.

THE ART OF MORAL EXCEPTIONS.—An art that points out and glorifies the

exceptional cases of morality—where the good becomes bad and the unjust

just—should rarely be given a hearing: just as now and again we buy

something from gipsies, with the fear that they are diverting to their own

pockets much more than their mere profit from the purchase.

41.

ENJOYMENT AND NON-ENJOYMENT OF POISONS.—The only decisive argument that

has always deterred men from drinking a poison is not that it is deadly,

but that it has an unpleasant taste.

42.

THE WORLD WITHOUT CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN.—If men only committed such deeds

as do not give rise to a bad conscience, the human world would still look

bad and rascally enough, but not so sickly and pitiable as at

present.—Enough wicked men without conscience have existed at all times,

and many good honest folk lack the feeling of pleasure in a good

conscience.

43.

THE CONSCIENTIOUS.—It is more convenient to follow one’s conscience than

one’s intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an

encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and

so few intelligent people.

44.

OPPOSITE MEANS OF AVOIDING BITTERNESS.—One temperament finds it useful to

be able to give vent to its disgust in words, being made sweeter by

speech. Another reaches its full bitterness only by speaking out: it is

more advisable for it to have to gulp down something—the restraint that

men of this stamp place upon themselves in the presence of enemies and

superiors improves their character and prevents it from becoming too acrid

and sour.

45.

NOT TO BE TOO DEJECTED.—To get bed-sores is unpleasant, but no proof

against the merits of the cure that prescribes that you should take to

your bed. Men who have long lived outside themselves, and have at last

devoted themselves to the inward philosophic life, know that one can also

get sores of character and intellect. This, again, is on the whole no

argument against the chosen way of life, but necessitates a few small

exceptions and apparent relapses.

46.

THE HUMAN “THING IN ITSELF.”—The most vulnerable and yet most

unconquerable of things is human vanity: nay, through being wounded its

strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

47.

THE FARCE OF MANY INDUSTRIOUS PERSONS.—By an excess of effort they win

leisure for themselves, and then they can do nothing with it but count the

hours until the tale is ended.

48.

THE POSSESSION OF JOY ABOUNDING.—He that has joy abounding must be a good

man, but perhaps he is not the cleverest of men, although he has reached

the very goal towards which the cleverest man is striving with all his

cleverness.

49.

IN THE MIRROR OF NATURE.—Is not a man fairly well described, when we are

told that he likes to walk between tall fields of golden corn: that he

prefers the forest and flower colours of sere and chilly autumn to all

others, because they point to something more beautiful than Nature has

ever attained: that he feels as much at home under big broad-leaved walnut

trees as among his nearest kinsfolk: that in the mountains his greatest

joy is to come across those tiny distant lakes from which the very eyes of

solitude seem to peer at him: that he loves that grey calm of the misty

twilight that steals along the windows on autumn and early winter evenings

and shuts out all soulless sounds as with velvet curtains: that in unhewn

stones he recognises the last remaining traces of the primeval age, eager

for speech, and honours them from childhood upwards: that, lastly, the sea

with its shifting serpent skin and wild-beast beauty is, and remains to

him, unfamiliar?—Yes, something of the man is described herewith, but the

mirror of Nature does not say that the same man, with (and not even “in

spite of”) all his idyllic sensibilities, might be disagreeable, stingy,

and conceited. Horace, who was a good judge of such matters, in his famous

_beatus ille qui procul negotiis_ puts the tenderest feeling for country

life into the mouth of a Roman money-lender.

50.

POWER WITHOUT VICTORY.—The strongest cognition (that of the complete

non-freedom of the human will) is yet the poorest in results, for it has

always had the mightiest of opponents—human vanity.

51.

PLEASURE AND ERROR.—A beneficial influence on friends is exerted by one

man unconsciously, through his nature; by another consciously, through

isolated actions. Although the former nature is held to be the higher, the

latter alone is allied to good conscience and pleasure—the pleasure in

justification by good works, which rests upon a belief in the volitional

character of our good and evil doing—that is to say, upon a mistake.

52.

THE FOLLY OF COMMITTING INJUSTICE.—The injustice we have inflicted

ourselves is far harder to bear than the injustice inflicted upon us by

others (not always from moral grounds, be it observed). After all, the

doer is always the sufferer—that is, if he be capable of feeling the sting

of conscience or of perceiving that by his action he has armed society

against himself and cut himself off. For this reason we should beware

still more of doing than of suffering injustice, for the sake of our own

inward happiness—so as not to lose our feeling of well-being—quite apart

from any consideration of the precepts of religion and morality. For in

suffering injustice we have the consolation of a good conscience, of hope

and of revenge, together with the sympathy and applause of the just, nay

of the whole of society, which is afraid of the evil-doer. Not a few are

skilled in the impure self-deception that enables them to transform every

injustice of their own into an injustice inflicted upon them from without,

and to reserve for their own acts the exceptional right to the plea of

self-defence. Their object, of course, is to make their own burden

lighter.

53.

ENVY WITH OR WITHOUT A MOUTHPIECE.—Ordinary envy is wont to cackle when

the envied hen has laid an egg, thereby relieving itself and becoming

milder. But there is a yet deeper envy that in such a case becomes dead

silent, desiring that every mouth should be sealed and always more and

more angry because this desire is not gratified. Silent envy grows in

silence.

54.

ANGER AS A SPY.—Anger exhausts the soul and brings its very dregs to

light. Hence, if we know no other means of gaining certainty, we must

understand how to arouse anger in our dependents and adversaries, in order

to learn what is really done and thought to our detriment.

55.

DEFENCE MORALLY MORE DIFFICULT THAN ATTACK.—The true heroic deed and

masterpiece of the good man does not lie in attacking opinions and

continuing to love their propounders, but in the far harder task of

defending his own position without causing or intending to cause bitter

heartburns to his opponent. The sword of attack is honest and broad, the

sword of defence usually runs out to a needle point.

56.

HONEST TOWARDS HONESTY.—One who is openly honest towards himself ends by

being rather conceited about this honesty. He knows only too well why he

is honest—for the same reason that another man prefers outward show and

hypocrisy.

57.

COALS OF FIRE.—The heaping of coals of fire on another’s head is generally

misunderstood and falls flat, because the other knows himself to be just

as much in the right, and on his side too has thought of collecting coals.

58.

DANGEROUS BOOKS.—A man says: “Judging from my own case, I find that this

book is harmful.” Let him but wait, and perhaps one day he will confess

that the book did him a great service by thrusting forward and bringing to

light the hidden disease of his soul.—Altered opinions alter not at all

(or very little) the character of a man: but they illuminate individual

facets of his personality, which hitherto, in another constellation of

opinions, had remained dark and unrecognisable.

59.

SIMULATED PITY.—We simulate pity when we wish to show ourselves superior

to the feeling of animosity, but generally in vain. This point is not

noticed without a considerable enhancement of that feeling of animosity.

60.

OPEN CONTRADICTION OFTEN CONCILIATORY.—At the moment when a man openly

makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the

whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter. Sometimes,

however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He

ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free

from the tortures of suppressed envy.

61.

SEEING OUR LIGHT SHINING.—In the darkest hour of depression, sickness, and

guilt, we are still glad to see others taking a light from us and making

use of us as of the disk of the moon. By this roundabout route we derive

some light from our own illuminating faculty.

62.

FELLOWSHIP IN JOY.(5)—The snake that stings us means to hurt us and

rejoices in so doing: the lowest animal can picture to itself the _pain_

of others. But to picture to oneself the _joy_ of others and to rejoice

thereat is the highest privilege of the highest animals, and again,

amongst them, is the property only of the most select

specimens—accordingly a rare “human thing.” Hence there have been

philosophers who denied fellowship in joy.

63.

_Supplementary Pregnancy._—Those who have arrived at works and deeds are

in an obscure way, they know not how, all the more pregnant with them, as

if to prove supplementarily that these are their children and not those of

chance.

64.

HARD-HEARTED FROM VANITY.—Just as justice is so often a cloak for

weakness, so men who are fairly intelligent, but weak, sometimes attempt

dissimulation from ambitious motives and purposely show themselves unjust

and hard, in order to leave behind them the impression of strength.

65.

HUMILIATION.—If in a large sack of profit we find a single grain of

humiliation we still make a wry face even at our good luck.

66.

EXTREME HEROSTRATISM.(6)—There might be Herostratuses who set fire to

their own temple, in which their images are honoured.

67.

A WORLD OF DIMINUTIVES.—The fact that all that is weak and in need of help

appeals to the heart induces in us the habit of designating by diminutive

and softening terms all that appeals to our hearts—and accordingly

_making_ such things weak and clinging to our imaginations.

68.

THE BAD CHARACTERISTIC OF SYMPATHY.—Sympathy has a peculiar impudence for

its companion. For, wishing to help at all costs, sympathy is in no

perplexity either as to the means of assistance or as to the nature and

cause of the disease, and goes on courageously administering all its quack

medicines to restore the health and reputation of the patient.

69.

IMPORTUNACY.—There is even an importunacy in relation to works, and the

act of associating oneself from early youth on an intimate footing with

the illustrious works of all times evinces an entire absence of

shame.—Others are only importunate from ignorance, not knowing with whom

they have to do—for instance classical scholars young and old in relation

to the works of the Greeks.

70.

THE WILL IS ASHAMED OF THE INTELLECT.—In all coolness we make reasonable

plans against our passions. But we make the most serious mistake in this

connection in being often ashamed, when the design has to be carried out,

of the coolness and calculation with which we conceived it. So we do just

the unreasonable thing, from that sort of defiant magnanimity that every

passion involves.

71.

WHY THE SCEPTICS OFFEND MORALITY.—He who takes his morality solemnly and

seriously is enraged against the sceptics in the domain of morals. For

where he lavishes all his force, he wishes others to marvel but not to

investigate and doubt. Then there are natures whose last shred of morality

is just the belief in morals. They behave in the same way towards

sceptics, if possible still more passionately.

72.

SHYNESS.—All moralists are shy, because they know they are confounded with

spies and traitors, so soon as their penchant is noticed. Besides, they

are generally conscious of being impotent in action, for in the midst of

work the motives of their activity almost withdraw their attention from

the work.

73.

A DANGER TO UNIVERSAL MORALITY.—People who are at the same time noble and

honest come to deify every devilry that brings out their honesty, and to

suspend for a time the balance of their moral judgment.

74.

THE SADDEST ERROR.—It is an unpardonable offence when one discovers that

where one was convinced of being loved, one is only regarded as a

household utensil and decoration, whereby the master of the house can find

an outlet for his vanity before his guests.

75.

LOVE AND DUALITY.—What else is love but understanding and rejoicing that

another lives, works, and feels in a different and opposite way to

ourselves? That love may be able to bridge over the contrasts by joys, we

must not remove or deny those contrasts. Even self-love presupposes an

irreconcileable duality (or plurality) in one person.

76.

SIGNS FROM DREAMS.—What one sometimes does not know and feel accurately in

waking hours—whether one has a good or a bad conscience as regards some

person—is revealed completely and unambiguously by dreams.

77.

DEBAUCHERY.—Not joy but joylessness is the mother of debauchery.

78.

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.—No one accuses without an underlying notion of

punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. All

complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise. Whether we do

one or the other, we always make some one responsible.

79.

DOUBLY UNJUST.—We sometimes advance truth by a twofold injustice: when we

see and represent consecutively the two sides of a case which we are not

in a position to see together, but in such a way that every time we

mistake or deny the other side, fancying that what we see is the whole

truth.

80.

MISTRUST.—Self-mistrust does not always proceed uncertainly and shyly, but

sometimes in a furious rage, having worked itself into a frenzy in order

not to tremble.

81.

PHILOSOPHY OF PARVENUS.—If you want to be a personality you must even hold

your shadow in honour.

82.

KNOWING HOW TO WASH ONESELF CLEAN.—We must know how to emerge cleaner from

unclean conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves even with

dirty water.

83.

LETTING YOURSELF GO.—The more you let yourself go, the less others let you

go.

84.

THE INNOCENT ROGUE.—There is a slow, gradual path to vice and rascality of

every description. In the end, the traveller is quite abandoned by the

insect-swarms of a bad conscience, and although a thorough scoundrel he

walks in innocence.

85.

MAKING PLANS.—Making plans and conceiving projects involves many agreeable

sentiments. He that had the strength to be nothing but a contriver of

plans all his life would be a happy man. But one must occasionally have a

rest from this activity by carrying a plan into execution, and then comes

anger and sobriety.

86.

WHEREWITH WE SEE THE IDEAL.—Every efficient man is blocked by his

efficiency and cannot look out freely from its prison. Had he not also a

goodly share of imperfection, he could, by reason of his virtue, never

arrive at an intellectual or moral freedom. Our shortcomings are the eyes

with which we see the ideal.

87.

DISHONEST PRAISE.—Dishonest praise causes many more twinges of conscience

than dishonest blame, probably only because we have exposed our capacity

for judgment far more completely through excessive praise than through

excessive and unjust blame.

88.

HOW ONE DIES IS INDIFFERENT.—The whole way in which a man thinks of death

during the prime of his life and strength is very expressive and

significant for what we call his character. But the hour of death itself,

his behaviour on the death-bed, is almost indifferent. The exhaustion of

waning life, especially when old people die, the irregular or insufficient

nourishment of the brain during this last period, the occasionally violent

pain, the novel and untried nature of the whole position, and only too

often the ebb and flow of superstitious impressions and fears, as if dying

were of much consequence and meant the crossing of bridges of the most

terrible kind—all this forbids our using death as a testimony concerning

the living. Nor is it true that the dying man is generally more honest

than the living. On the contrary, through the solemn attitude of the

bystanders, the repressed or flowing streams of tears and emotions, every

one is inveigled into a comedy of vanity, now conscious, now unconscious.

The serious way in which every dying man is treated must have been to many

a poor despised devil the highest joy of his whole life and a sort of

compensation and repayment for many privations.

89.

MORALITY AND ITS SACRIFICE.—The origin of morality may be traced to two

ideas: “The community is of more value than the individual,” and “The

permanent interest is to be preferred to the temporary.” The conclusion

drawn is that the permanent interest of the community is unconditionally

to be set above the temporary interest of the individual, especially his

momentary well-being, but also his permanent interest and even the

prolongation of his existence. Even if the individual suffers by an

arrangement that suits the mass, even if he is depressed and ruined by it,

morality must be maintained and the victim brought to the sacrifice. Such

a trend of thought arises, however, only in those who are _not_ the

victims—for in the victim’s case it enforces the claim that the individual

might be worth more than the many, and that the present enjoyment, the

“moment in paradise,”(7) should perhaps be rated higher than a tame

succession of untroubled or comfortable circumstances. But the philosophy

of the sacrificial victim always finds voice too late, and so victory

remains with morals and morality: which are really nothing more than the

sentiment for the whole concept of morals under which one lives and has

been reared—and reared not as an individual but as a member of the whole,

as a cipher in a majority. Hence it constantly happens that the individual

makes himself into a majority by means of his morality.

90.

THE GOOD AND THE GOOD CONSCIENCE.—You hold that all good things have at

all times had a good conscience? Science, which is certainly a very good

thing, has come into the world without such a conscience and quite free

from all pathos, rather clandestinely, by roundabout ways, walking with

shrouded or masked face like a sinner, and always with the feeling at

least of being a smuggler. Good conscience has bad conscience for its

stepping-stone, not for its opposite. For all that is good has at one time

been new and consequently strange, against morals, immoral, and has gnawed

like a worm at the heart of the fortunate discoverer.

91.

SUCCESS SANCTIFIES THE INTENTIONS.—We should not shrink from treading the

road to a virtue, even when we see clearly that nothing but egotism, and

accordingly utility, personal comfort, fear, considerations of health,

reputation, or glory, are the impelling motives. These motives are styled

ignoble and selfish. Very well, but if they stimulate us to some

virtue—for example, self-denial, dutifulness, order, thrift, measure, and

moderation—let us listen to them, whatever their epithets may be! For if

we reach the goal to which they summon us, then the virtue we have

attained, by means of the pure air it makes us breathe and the spiritual

well-being it communicates, ennobles the remoter impulses of our action,

and afterwards we no longer perform those actions from the same coarse

motives that inspired us before.—Education should therefore force the

virtues on the pupil, as far as possible, according to his disposition.

Then virtue, the sunshine and summer atmosphere of the soul, can

contribute her own share of work and add mellowness and sweetness.

92.

DABBLERS IN CHRISTIANITY, NOT CHRISTIANS.—So that is your Christianity!—To

annoy humanity you praise “God and His Saints,” and again when you want to

praise humanity you go so far that God and His Saints must be annoyed.—I

wish you would at least learn Christian manners, as you are so deficient

in the civility of the Christian heart.

93.

THE RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS IMPRESSION OF NATURE.—A true believer must

be to us an object of veneration, but the same holds good of a true,

sincere, convinced unbeliever. With men of the latter stamp we are near to

the high mountains where mighty rivers have their source, and with

believers we are under vigorous, shady, restful trees.

94.

JUDICIAL MURDER.—The two greatest judicial murders(8) in the world’s

history are, to speak without exaggeration, concealed and well-concealed

suicide. In both cases a man _willed_ to die, and in both cases he let his

breast be pierced by the sword in the hand of human injustice.

95.

“LOVE.”—The finest artistic conception wherein Christianity had the

advantage over other religious systems lay in one word—Love. Hence it

became the _lyric_ religion (whereas in its two other creations Semitism

bestowed heroico-epical religions upon the world). In the word “love”

there is so much meaning, so much that stimulates and appeals to memory

and hope, that even the meanest intelligence and the coldest heart feel

some glimmering of its sense. The cleverest woman and the lowest man think

of the comparatively unselfish moments of their whole life, even if with

them Eros never soared high: and the vast number of beings who _miss_ love

from their parents or children or sweethearts, especially those whose

sexual instincts have been refined away, have found their heart’s desire

in Christianity.

96.

THE FULFILMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.—In Christianity there is also an Epicurean

trend of thought, starting from the idea that God can only demand of man,

his creation and his image, what it is possible for man to fulfil, and

accordingly that Christian virtue and perfection are attainable and often

attained. Now, for instance, the belief in loving one’s enemies—even if it

is only a belief or fancy, and by no means a psychological reality (a real

love)—gives unalloyed happiness, so long as it is genuinely believed. (As

to the reason of this, psychologist and Christian might well differ.)

Hence earthly life, through the belief, I mean the fancy, that it

satisfies not only the injunction to love our enemies, but all the other

injunctions of Christianity, and that it has really assimilated and

embodied in itself the Divine perfection according to the command, “Be

perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” might actually become a holy

life. Thus error can make Christ’s promise come true.

97.

OF THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY.—We may be allowed to form a conjecture as

to the disappearance of Christianity and as to the places where it will be

the slowest to retreat, if we consider where and for what reasons

Protestantism spread with such startling rapidity. As is well known,

Protestantism promised to do far more cheaply all that the old Church did,

without costly masses, pilgrimages, and priestly pomp and circumstance. It

spread particularly among the Northern nations, which were not so deeply

rooted as those of the South in the old Church’s symbolism and love of

ritual. In the South the more powerful pagan religion survived in

Christianity, whereas in the North Christianity meant an opposition to and

a break with the old-time creed, and hence was from the first more

thoughtful and less sensual, but for that very reason, in times of peril,

more fanatical and more obstinate. If from the standpoint of _thought_ we

succeed in uprooting Christianity, we can at once know the point where it

will begin to disappear—the very point at which it will be most stubborn

in defence. In other places it will bend but not break, lose its leaves

but burst into leaf afresh, because the senses, and not thought, have gone

over to its side. But it is the senses that maintain the belief that with

all its expensive outlay the Church is more cheaply and conveniently

managed than under the stern conditions of work and wages. Yet what does

one hold leisure (or semi-idleness) to be worth, when once one has become

accustomed to it? The senses plead against a dechristianised world, saying

that there would be too much work to do in it and an insufficient supply

of leisure. They take the part of magic—that is, they let God work himself

(_oremus nos, Deus laboret_).

98.

THEATRICALITY AND HONESTY OF UNBELIEVERS.—There is no book that contains

in such abundance or expresses so faithfully all that man occasionally

finds salutary—ecstatic inward happiness, ready for sacrifice or death in

the belief in and contemplation of _his_ truth—as the book that tells of

Christ. From that book a clever man may learn all the means whereby a book

can be made into a world-book, a vade-mecum for all, and especially that

master-means of representing everything as discovered, nothing as future

and uncertain. All influential books try to leave the same impression, as

if the widest intellectual horizon were circumscribed here and as if about

the sun that shines here every constellation visible at present or in the

future must revolve.—Must not then all purely scientific books be poor in

influence on the same grounds as such books are rich in influence? Is not

the book fated to live humble and among humble folk, in order to be

crucified in the end and never resurrected? In relation to what the

religious inform us of their “knowledge” and their “holy spirit,” are not

all upright men of science “poor in spirit”? Can any religion demand more

self-denial and draw the selfish out of themselves more inexorably than

science?—This and similar things we may say, in any case with a certain

theatricality, when we have to defend ourselves against believers, for it

is impossible to conduct a defence without a certain amount of

theatricality. But between ourselves our language must be more honest, and

we employ a freedom that those believers are not even allowed, in their

own interests, to understand. Away, then, with the monastic cowl of

self-denial, with the appearance of humility! Much more and much better—so

rings our truth! If science were not linked with the pleasure of

knowledge, the utility of the thing known, what should we care for

science? If a little faith, love, and hope did not lead our souls to

knowledge, what would attract us to science? And if in science the ego

means nothing, still the inventive, happy ego, every upright and

industrious ego, means a great deal in the republic of the men of science.

The homage of those who pay homage, the joy of those whom we wish well or

honour, in some cases glory and a fair share of immortality, is the

personal reward for every suppression of personality: to say nothing here

of meaner views and rewards, although it is just on this account that the

majority have sworn and always continue to swear fidelity to the laws of

the republic and of science. If we had not remained in some degree

unscientific, what would science matter to us? Taking everything together

and speaking in plain language: “To a purely knowing being knowledge would

be indifferent.”—Not the quality but the quantity of faith and devoutness

distinguishes us from the pious, the believers. We are content with less.

But should one of them cry out to us: “Be content and show yourselves

contented!” we could easily answer: “As a matter of fact, we do not belong

to the most discontented class. But you, if your faith makes you happy,

show yourselves to be happy. Your faces have always done more harm to your

faith than our reasons! If that glad message of your Bible were written in

your faces, you would not need to demand belief in the authority of that

book in such stiff-necked fashion. Your words, your actions should

continually make the Bible superfluous—in fact, through you a new Bible

should continually come into being. As it is, your apologia for

Christianity is rooted in your unchristianity, and with your defence you

write your own condemnation. If you, however, should wish to emerge from

your dissatisfaction with Christianity, you should ponder over the

experience of two thousand years, which, clothed in the modest form of a

question, may be voiced as follows: ‘If Christ really intended to redeem

the world, may he not be said to have failed?’ ”

99.

THE POET AS GUIDE TO THE FUTURE.—All the surplus poetical force that still

exists in modern humanity, but is not used under our conditions of life,

should (without any deduction) be devoted to a definite goal—not to

depicting the present nor to reviving and summarising the past, but to

pointing the way to the future. Nor should this be so done as if the poet,

like an imaginative political economist, had to anticipate a more

favourable national and social state of things and picture their

realisation. Rather will he, just as the earlier poets portrayed the

images of the Gods, portray the fair images of men. He will divine those

cases where, in the midst of our modern world and reality (which will not

be shirked or repudiated in the usual poetic fashion), a great, noble soul

is still possible, where it may be embodied in harmonious, equable

conditions, where it may become permanent, visible, and representative of

a type, and so, by the stimulus to imitation and envy, help to create the

future. The poems of such a poet would be distinguished by appearing

secluded and protected from the heated atmosphere of the passions. The

irremediable failure, the shattering of all the strings of the human

instrument, the scornful laughter and gnashing of teeth, and all tragedy

and comedy in the usual old sense, would appear by the side of this new

art as mere archaic lumber, a blurring of the outlines of the

world-picture. Strength, kindness, gentleness, purity, and an unsought,

innate moderation in the personalities and their action: a levelled soil,

giving rest and pleasure to the foot: a shining heaven mirrored in faces

and events: science and art welded into a new unity: the mind living

together with her sister, the soul, without arrogance or jealousy, and

enticing from contrasts the grace of seriousness, not the impatience of

discord—all this would be the general environment, the background on which

the delicate differences of the embodied ideals would make the real

picture, that of ever-growing human majesty. Many roads to this poetry of

the future start from Goethe, but the quest needs good pathfinders and

above all a far greater strength than is possessed by modern poets, who

unscrupulously represent the half-animal and the immaturity and

intemperance that are mistaken by them for power and naturalness.

100.

THE MUSE AS PENTHESILEA.(9)—“Better to rot than to be a woman without

charm.” When once the Muse thinks thus, the end of her art is again at

hand. But it can be a tragic and also a comic finale.

101.

THE CIRCUITOUS PATH TO THE BEAUTIFUL.—If the beautiful is to be identified

with that which gives pleasure—and thus sang the Muses once—the useful is

often the necessary circuitous path to the beautiful, and has a perfect

right to spurn the short-sighted censure of men who live for the moment,

who will not wait, and who think that they can reach all good things

without ever taking a circuitous path.

102.

AN EXCUSE FOR MANY A TRANSGRESSION.—The ceaseless desire to create, the

eternal looking outward of the artist, hinders him from becoming better

and more beautiful as a personality: unless his craving for glory be great

enough to compel him to exhibit in his relations with other men a growth

corresponding to the growing beauty and greatness of his works. In any

case he has but a limited measure of strength, and how could the

proportion of strength that he spends on himself be of any benefit to his

work—or _vice versa_?

103.

SATISFYING THE BEST PEOPLE.—If we have satisfied the best people of our

time with our art, it is a sign that we shall not satisfy the best people

of the succeeding period. We have indeed “lived for all time,” and the

applause of the best people ensures our fame.(10)

104.

OF ONE SUBSTANCE.—If we are of one substance with a book or a work of art,

we think in our heart of hearts that it must be excellent, and are

offended if others find it ugly, over-spiced, or pretentious.

105.

SPEECH AND EMOTION.—That speech is not given to us to communicate our

emotions may be seen from the fact that all simple men are ashamed to seek

for words to express their deeper feelings. These feelings are expressed

only in actions, and even here such men blush if others seem to divine

their motives. After all, among poets, to whom God generally denies this

shame, the more noble are more monosyllabic in the language of emotion,

and evince a certain constraint: whereas the real poets of emotion are for

the most part shameless in practical life.

106.

A MISTAKE ABOUT A PRIVATION.—He that has not for a long time been

completely weaned from an art, and is still always at home in it, has no

idea how small a privation it is to live without that art.

107.

THREE-QUARTER STRENGTH.—A work that is meant to give an impression of

health should be produced with three-quarters, at the most, of the

strength of its creator. If he has gone to his farthest limit, the work

excites the observer and disconcerts him by its tension. All good things

have something lazy about them and lie like cows in the meadow.

108.

REFUSING TO HAVE HUNGER AS A GUEST.—As refined fare serves a hungry man as

well as and no better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist will

not dream of inviting the hungry man to his meal.

109.

LIVING WITHOUT ART AND WINE.—It is with works of art as with wine—it is

better if one can do without both and keep to water, and if from the inner

fire and inner sweetness of the soul the water spontaneously changes again

into wine.

110.

THE PIRATE-GENIUS.—The pirate-genius in art, who even knows how to deceive

subtle minds, arises when some one unscrupulously and from youth upwards

regards all good things, that are not protected by law, as the property of

a particular person, as his legitimate spoil. Now all the good things of

past ages and masters lie free around us, hedged about and protected by

the reverential awe of the few who know them. To these few our

robber-genius, by the force of his impudence, bids defiance and

accumulates for himself a wealth that once more calls forth homage and

awe.

111.

TO THE POETS OF GREAT TOWNS.—In the gardens of modern poetry it will

clearly be observed that the sewers of great towns are too near. With the

fragrance of flowers is mingled something that betrays abomination and

putrescence. With pain I ask: “Must you poets always request wit and dirt

to stand godfather, when an innocent and beautiful sensation has to be

christened by you? Are you obliged to dress your noble goddess in a hood

of devilry and caricature? But whence this necessity, this obligation?”

The reason is—because you live too near the sewers.

112.

OF THE SALT OF SPEECH.—No one has ever explained why the Greek writers,

having at command such an unparalleled wealth and power of language, made

so sparing a use of their resources that every post-classical Greek book

appears by comparison crude, over-coloured, and extravagant. It is said

that towards the North Polar ice and in the hottest countries salt is

becoming less and less used, whereas on the other hand the dwellers on the

plains and by the coast in the more temperate zones use salt in great

abundance. Is it possible that the Greeks from a twofold reason—because

their intellect was colder and clearer but their fundamental passionate

nature far more tropical than ours—did not need salt and spice to the same

extent that we do?

113.

THE FREEST WRITER.—In a book for free spirits one cannot avoid mention of

Laurence Sterne, the man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of his

century. May he be satisfied with the honour of being called the freest

writer of all times, in comparison with whom all others appear stiff,

square-toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case we should not

speak of the clear and rounded but of “the endless melody”—if by this

phrase we arrive at a name for an artistic style in which the definite

form is continually broken, thrust aside and transferred to the realm of

the indefinite, so that it signifies one and the other at the same time.

Sterne is the great master of _double entendre_, this phrase being

naturally used in a far wider sense than is commonly done when one applies

it to sexual relations. We may give up for lost the reader who always

wants to know exactly what Sterne thinks about a matter, and whether he be

making a serious or a smiling face (for he can do both with one wrinkling

of his features; he can be and even wishes to be right and wrong at the

same moment, to interweave profundity and farce). His digressions are at

once continuations and further developments of the story, his maxims

contain a satire on all that is sententious, his dislike of seriousness is

bound up with a disposition to take no matter merely externally and on the

surface. So in the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty

whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a feeling most closely akin to

that of floating in the air. He, the most versatile of writers,

communicates something of this versatility to his reader. Yes, Sterne

unexpectedly changes the parts, and is often as much reader as author, his

book being like a play within a play, a theatre audience before another

theatre audience. We must surrender at discretion to the mood of Sterne,

although we can always expect it to be gracious. It is strangely

instructive to see how so great a writer as Diderot has affected this

_double entendre_ of Sterne’s—to be equally ambiguous throughout is just

the Sternian super-humour. Did Diderot imitate, admire, ridicule, or

parody Sterne in his _Jacques le Fataliste_? One cannot be exactly

certain, and this uncertainty was perhaps intended by the author. This

very doubt makes the French unjust to the work of one of their first

masters, one who need not be ashamed of comparison with any of the

ancients or moderns. For humour (and especially for this humorous attitude

towards humour itself) the French are too serious. Is it necessary to add

that of all great authors Sterne is the worst model, in fact the

inimitable author, and that even Diderot had to pay for his daring? What

the worthy Frenchmen and before them some Greeks and Romans aimed at and

attained in prose is the very opposite of what Sterne aims at and attains.

He raises himself as a masterly exception above all that artists in

writing demand of themselves—propriety, reserve, character, steadfastness

of purpose, comprehensiveness, perspicuity, good deportment in gait and

feature. Unfortunately Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely

related to Sterne the writer. His squirrel-soul sprang with insatiable

unrest from branch to branch; he knew what lies between sublimity and

rascality; he had sat on every seat, always with unabashed watery eyes and

mobile play of feature. He was—if language does not revolt from such a

combination—of a hard-hearted kindness, and in the midst of the joys of a

grotesque and even corrupt imagination he showed the bashful grace of

innocence. Such a carnal and spiritual hermaphroditism, such untrammelled

wit penetrating into every vein and muscle, was perhaps never possessed by

any other man.

114.

A CHOICE REALITY.—Just as the good prose writer only takes words that

belong to the language of daily intercourse, though not by a long way all

its words—whence arises a choice style—so the good poet of the future will

only represent the real and turn his eyes away from all fantastic,

superstitious, half-voiced, forgotten stories, to which earlier poets

devoted their powers. Only reality, though by a long way not every

reality—but a choice reality.

115.

DEGENERATE SPECIES OF ART.—Side by side with the genuine species of art,

those of great repose and great movement, there are degenerate

species—weary, blasé art and excited art. Both would have their weakness

taken for strength and wish to be confounded with the genuine species.

116.

A HERO IMPOSSIBLE FROM LACK OF COLOUR.—The typical poets and artists of

our age like to compose their pictures upon a background of shimmering

red, green, grey, and gold, on the background of nervous sensuality—a

condition well understood by the children of this century. The drawback

comes when we do _not_ look at these pictures with the eyes of our

century. Then we see that the great figures painted by these artists have

something flickering, tremulous, and dizzy about them, and accordingly we

do not ascribe to them heroic deeds, but at best mock-heroic, swaggering

_mis_deeds.

117.

OVERLADEN STYLE.—The overladen style is a consequence of the

impoverishment of the organising force together with a lavish stock of

expedients and intentions. At the beginnings of art the very reverse

conditions sometimes appear.

118.

_PULCHRUM EST PAUCORUM HOMINUM._—History and experience tell us that the

significant grotesqueness that mysteriously excites the imagination and

carries one beyond everyday reality, is older and grows more luxuriantly

than the beautiful and reverence for the beautiful in art: and that it

begins to flourish exceedingly when the sense for beauty is on the wane.

For the vast majority of mankind this grotesque seems to be a higher need

than the beautiful, presumably because it contains a coarser narcotic.

119.

ORIGINS OF TASTE IN WORKS OF ART.—If we consider the primary germs of the

artistic sense, and ask ourselves what are the various kinds of joy

produced by the firstlings of art—as, for example, among savage tribes—we

find first of all the joy of understanding what another means. Art in this

case is a sort of conundrum, which causes its solver pleasure in his own

quick and keen perceptions.—Then the roughest works of art remind us of

the pleasant things we have actually experienced, and so give joy—as, for

example, when the artist alludes to a chase, a victory, a wedding.—Again,

the representation may cause us to feel excited, touched, inflamed, as for

instance in the glorification of revenge and danger. Here the enjoyment

lies in the excitement itself, in the victory over tedium.—The memory,

too, of unpleasant things, so far as they have been overcome or make us

appear interesting to the listener as subjects for art (as when the singer

describes the mishaps of a daring seaman), can inspire great joy, the

credit for which is given to art.—A more subtle variety is the joy that

arises at the sight of all that is regular and symmetrical in lines,

points, and rhythms. For by a certain analogy is awakened the feeling for

all that is orderly and regular in life, which one has to thank alone for

all well-being. So in the cult of symmetry we unconsciously do homage to

rule and proportion as the source of our previous happiness, and the joy

in this case is a kind of hymn of thanksgiving. Only when a certain

satiety of the last-mentioned joy arises does a more subtle feeling step

in, that enjoyment might even lie in a violation of the symmetrical and

regular. This feeling, for example, impels us to seek reason in apparent

unreason, and the sort of æsthetic riddle-guessing that results is in a

way the higher species of the first-named artistic joy.—He who pursues

this speculation still further will know what kind of hypotheses for the

explanation of æsthetic phenomena are hereby fundamentally rejected.

120.

NOT TOO NEAR.—It is a disadvantage for good thoughts when they follow too

closely on one another, for they hide the view from each other. That is

why great artists and writers have made an abundant use of the mediocre.

121.

ROUGHNESS AND WEAKNESS.—Artists of all periods have made the discovery

that in roughness lies a certain strength, and that not every one can be

rough who wants to be: also that many varieties of weakness have a

powerful effect on the emotions. From this source are derived many

artistic substitutes, which not even the greatest and most conscientious

artists can abstain from using.

122.

GOOD MEMORY.—Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that

his memory is too good.

123.

AROUSING INSTEAD OF APPEASING HUNGER.—Great artists fancy that they have

taken full possession of a soul. In reality, and often to their painful

disappointment, that soul has only been made more capacious and

insatiable, so that a dozen greater artists could plunge into its depths

without filling it up.

124.

ARTISTS’ ANXIETY.—The anxiety lest people may not believe that their

figures are _alive_ can mislead many artists of declining taste to portray

these figures so that they appear as if mad. From the same anxiety, on the

other hand, Greek artists of the earliest ages gave even dead and sorely

wounded men that smile which they knew as the most vivid sign of

life—careless of the actual forms bestowed by nature on life at its last

gasp.

125.

THE CIRCLE MUST BE COMPLETED.—He who follows a philosophy or a genre of

art to the end of its career and beyond, understands from inner experience

why the masters and disciples who come after have so often turned, with a

depreciatory gesture, into a new groove. The circle must be described—but

the individual, even the greatest, sits firm on his point of the

circumference, with an inexorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle

ought never to be completed.

126.

THE OLDER ART AND THE SOUL OF THE PRESENT.—Since every art becomes more

and more adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the more

lively, delicate, energetic, and passionate states, the later masters,

spoilt by these means of expression, do not feel at their ease in the

presence of the old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients had

merely been lacking in the means of making their souls speak clearly, also

perhaps in some necessary technical preliminaries. They think that they

must render some assistance in this quarter, for they believe in the

similarity or even unity of all souls. In truth, however, measure,

symmetry, a contempt for graciousness and charm, an unconscious severity

and morning chilliness, an evasion of passion, as if passion meant the

death of art—such are the constituents of sentiment and morality in all

old masters, who selected and arranged their means of expression not at

random but in a necessary connection with their morality. Knowing this,

are we to deny those that come after the right to animate the older works

with their soul? No, for these works can only survive through our giving

them our soul, and our blood alone enables them to speak to _us_. The real

“historic” discourse would talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the

great artists less by that barren timidity that allows every word, every

note to remain intact than by energetic endeavours to aid them continually

to a new life.—True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life and hear

one of his works performed with that modern animation and nervous

refinement that bring glory to our masters of execution, he would probably

be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should raise his hand to

curse or to bless, but perhaps say at last: “Well, well! That is neither I

nor not-I, but a third thing—it seems to me, too, something right, if not

just _the_ right thing. But you must know yourselves what to do, as in any

case it is you who have to listen. As our Schiller says, ‘the living man

is right.’ So have it your own way, and let me go down again.”

127.

AGAINST THE DISPARAGERS OF BREVITY.—A brief dictum may be the fruit and

harvest of long reflection. The reader, however, who is a novice in this

field and has never considered the case in point, sees something embryonic

in all brief dicta, not without a reproachful hint to the author,

requesting him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared food.

128.

AGAINST THE SHORT-SIGHTED.—Do you think it is piece-work because it is

(and must be) offered you in pieces?

129.

READERS OF APHORISMS.—The worst readers of aphorisms are the friends of

the author, if they make a point of referring the general to the

particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin. This

namby-pamby attitude brings all the author’s trouble to naught, and

instead of a philosophic lesson and a philosophic frame of mind, they

deservedly gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curiosity.

130.

READERS’ INSULTS.—The reader offers a two-fold insult to the author by

praising his second book at the expense of his first (or _vice versa_) and

by expecting the author to be grateful to him on that account.

131.

THE EXCITING ELEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ART.—We fall into a state of

terrible tension when we follow the history of an art—as, for example,

that of Greek oratory—and, passing from master to master, observe their

increasing precautions to obey the old and the new laws and all these

self-imposed limitations. We see that the bow _must_ snap, and that the

so-called “loose” composition, with the wonderful means of expression

smothered and concealed (in this particular case the florid style of

Asianism), was once necessary and almost _beneficial_.

132.

TO THE GREAT IN ART.—That enthusiasm for some object which you, O great

man, introduce into this world causes the intelligence of the many to be

stunted. The knowledge of this fact spells humiliation. But the enthusiast

wears his hump with pride and pleasure, and you have the consolation of

feeling that you have increased the world’s happiness.

133.

CONSCIENCELESS ÆSTHETES.—The real fanatics of an artistic school are

perhaps those utterly inartistic natures that are not even grounded in the

elements of artistic study and creation, but are impressed with the

strongest of all the elementary influences of an art. For them there is no

æsthetic conscience—hence nothing to hold them back from fanaticism.

134.

HOW THE SOUL SHOULD BE MOVED BY THE NEW MUSIC.—The artistic purpose

followed by the new music, in what is now forcibly but none too lucidly

termed “endless melody,” can be understood by going into the sea,

gradually losing one’s firm tread on the bottom, and finally surrendering

unconditionally to the fluid element. One has to _swim_. In the previous,

older music one was forced, with delicate or stately or impassioned

movement, to _dance_. The measure necessary for dancing, the observance of

a distinct balance of time and force in the soul of the hearer, imposed a

continual self-control. Through the counteraction of the cooler draught of

air which came from this caution and the warmer breath of musical

enthusiasm, that music exercised its spell.—Richard Wagner aimed at a

different excitation of the soul, allied, as above said, to swimming and

floating. This is perhaps the most essential of his innovations. His

famous method, originating from this aim and adapted to it—the “endless

melody”—strives to break and sometimes even to despise all mathematical

equilibrium of time and force. He is only too rich in the invention of

such effects, which sound to the old school like rhythmic paradoxes and

blasphemies. He dreads petrifaction, crystallisation, the development of

music into the architectural. He accordingly sets up a three-time rhythm

in opposition to the double-time, not infrequently introduces five-time

and seven-time, immediately repeats a phrase, but with a prolation, so

that its time is again doubled and trebled. From an easy-going imitation

of such art may arise a great danger to music, for by the side of the

superabundance of rhythmic emotion demoralisation and decadence lurk in

ambush. The danger will become very great if such music comes to associate

itself more and more closely with a quite naturalistic art of acting and

pantomime, trained and dominated by no higher plastic models; an art that

knows no measure in itself and can impart no measure to the kindred

element, the all-too-womanish nature of music.

135.

POET AND REALITY.—The Muse of the poet who is not in love with reality

will not be reality, and will bear him children with hollow eyes and all

too tender bones.

136.

MEANS AND END.—In art the end does not justify the means, but holy means

can justify the end.

137.

THE WORST READERS.—The worst readers are those who act like plundering

soldiers. They take out some things that they might use, cover the rest

with filth and confusion, and blaspheme about the whole.

138.

SIGNS OF A GOOD WRITER.—Good writers have two things in common: they

prefer being understood to being admired, and they do not write for the

critical and over-shrewd reader.

139.

THE MIXED SPECIES.—The mixed species in art bear witness to their authors’

distrust of their own strength. They seek auxiliary powers, advocates,

hiding-places—such is the case with the poet who calls in philosophy, the

musician who calls in the drama, and the thinker who calls in rhetoric to

his aid.

140.

SHUTTING ONE’S MOUTH.—When his book opens its mouth, the author must shut

his.

141.

BADGES OF RANK.—All poets and men of letters who are in love with the

superlative want to do more than they can.

142.

COLD BOOKS.—The deep thinker reckons on readers who feel with him the

happiness that lies in deep thinking. Hence a book that looks cold and

sober, if seen in the right light, may seem bathed in the sunshine of

spiritual cheerfulness and become a genuine soul-comforter.

143.

A KNACK OF THE SLOW-WITTED.—The slow-witted thinker generally allies

himself with loquacity and ceremoniousness. By the former he thinks he is

gaining mobility and fluency, by the latter he gives his peculiarity the

appearance of being a result of free will and artistic purpose, with a

view to dignity, which needs slow movement.

144.

_LE STYLE BAROQUE._(11)—He who as thinker and writer is not born or

trained to dialectic and the consecutive arrangement of ideas, will

unconsciously turn to the rhetoric and dramatic forms. For, after all, his

object is to make himself understood and to carry the day by force, and he

is indifferent whether, as shepherd, he honestly guides to himself the

hearts of his fellow-men, or, as robber, he captures them by surprise.

This is true of the plastic arts as of music: where the feeling of

insufficient dialectic or a deficiency in expression or narration,

together with an urgent, over-powerful impulse to form, gives birth to

that species of style known as “baroque.” Only the ill-educated and the

arrogant will at once find a depreciatory force in this word. The baroque

style always arises at the time of decay of a great art, when the demands

of art in classical expression have become too great. It is a natural

phenomenon which will be observed with melancholy—for it is a forerunner

of the night—but at the same time with admiration for its peculiar

compensatory arts of expression and narration. To this style belongs

already a choice of material and subjects of the highest dramatic tension,

at which the heart trembles even when there is no art, because heaven and

hell are all too near the emotions: then, the oratory of strong passion

and gestures, of ugly sublimity, of great masses, in fact of absolute

quantity _per se_ (as is shown in Michael Angelo, the father or

grandfather of the Italian baroque stylists): the lights of dusk,

illumination and conflagration playing upon those strongly moulded forms:

ever-new ventures in means and aims, strongly underscored by artists for

artists, while the layman must fancy he sees an unconscious overflowing of

all the horns of plenty of an original nature-art: all these

characteristics that constitute the greatness of that style are neither

possible nor permitted in the earlier ante-classical and classical periods

of a branch of art. Such luxuries hang long on the tree like forbidden

fruit. Just now, when music is passing into this last phase, we may learn

to know the phenomenon of the baroque style in peculiar splendour, and, by

comparison, find much that is instructive for earlier ages. For from Greek

times onward there has often been a baroque style, in poetry, oratory,

prose writing, sculpture, and, as is well known, in architecture. This

style, though wanting in the highest nobility,—the nobility of an

innocent, unconscious, triumphant perfection,—has nevertheless given

pleasure to many of the best and most serious minds of their time. Hence,

as aforesaid, it is presumptuous to depreciate it without reserve, however

happy we may feel because our taste for it has not made us insensible to

the purer and greater style.

145.

THE VALUE OF HONEST BOOKS.—Honest books make the reader honest, at least

by exciting his hatred and aversion, which otherwise cunning cleverness

knows so well how to conceal. Against a book, however, we let ourselves

go, however restrained we may be in our relations with men.

146.

HOW ART MAKES PARTISANS.—Individual fine passages, an exciting general

tenor, a moving and absorbing finale—so much of a work of art is

accessible even to most laymen. In an art period when it is desired to win

over the great majority of the laymen to the side of the artists and to

make a party perhaps for the very preservation of art, the creative artist

will do well to offer nothing more than the above. Then he will not be a

squanderer of his strength, in spheres where no one is grateful to him.

For to perform the remaining functions, the imitation of Nature in her

organic development and growth, would in that case be like sowing seeds in

water.

147.

BECOMING GREAT TO THE DETRIMENT OF HISTORY.—Every later master who leads

the taste of art-lovers into his channel unconsciously gives rise to a

selection and revaluation of the older masters and their works. Whatever

in them is conformable and akin to him, and anticipates and foreshadows

him, appears henceforth as the only important element in them and their

works—a fruit in which a great error usually lies hidden like a worm.

148.

HOW AN EPOCH BECOMES LURED TO ART.—If we teach people by all the

enchantments of artists and thinkers to feel reverence for their defects,

their intellectual poverty, their absurd infatuations and passions (as it

is quite possible to do); if we show them only the lofty side of crime and

folly, only the touching and appealing element in weakness and flabbiness

and blind devotion (that too has often enough been done):—we have employed

the means for inspiring even an unphilosophical and inartistic age with an

ecstatic love of philosophy and art (especially of thinkers and artists as

personalities) and, in the worst case, perhaps with the only means of

defending the existence of such tender and fragile beings.

149.

CRITICISM AND JOY.—Criticism, one-sided and unjust as well as intelligent

criticism, gives so much pleasure to him who exercises it that the world

is indebted to every work and every action that inspires much criticism

and many critics. For criticism draws after it a glittering train of

joyousness, wit, self-admiration, pride, instruction, designs of

improvement.—The God of joy created the bad and the mediocre for the same

reason that he created the good.

150.

BEYOND HIS LIMITS.—When an artist wants to be more than an artist—for

example, the moral awakener of his people—he at last falls in love, as a

punishment, with a monster of moral substance. The Muse laughs, for,

though a kind-hearted Goddess, she can also be malignant from jealousy.

Milton and Klopstock are cases in point.

151.

A GLASS EYE.—The tendency of a talent towards moral subjects, characters,

motives, towards the “beautiful soul” of the work of art, is often only a

glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful soul. It may result,

though rarely, that his eye finally becomes living Nature, if indeed it be

Nature with a somewhat troubled look. But the ordinary result is that the

whole world thinks it sees Nature where there is only cold glass.

152.

WRITING AND DESIRE FOR VICTORY.—Writing should always indicate a victory,

indeed a conquest of oneself which must be communicated to others for

their behoof. There are, however, dyspeptic authors who only write when

they cannot digest something, or when something has remained stuck in

their teeth. Through their anger they try unconsciously to disgust the

reader too, and to exercise violence upon him—that is, they desire

victory, but victory over others.

153.

A GOOD BOOK NEEDS TIME.—Every good book tastes bitter when it first comes

out, for it has the defect of newness. Moreover, it suffers damage from

its living author, if he is well known and much talked about. For all the

world is accustomed to confuse the author with his work. Whatever of

profundity, sweetness, and brilliance the work may contain must be

developed as the years go by, under the care of growing, then old, and

lastly traditional reverence. Many hours must pass, many a spider must

have woven its web about the book. A book is made better by good readers

and clearer by good opponents.

154.

EXTRAVAGANCE AS AN ARTISTIC MEANS.—Artists well understand the idea of

using extravagance as an artistic means in order to convey an impression

of wealth. This is one of those innocent wiles of soul-seduction that the

artist must know, for in his world, which has only appearance in view, the

means to appearance need not necessarily be genuine.

155.

THE HIDDEN BARREL-ORGAN.—Genius, by virtue of its more ample drapery,

knows better than talent how to hide its barrel-organ. Yet after all it

too can only play its seven old pieces over and over again.

156.

THE NAME ON THE TITLE-PAGE.—It is now a matter of custom and almost of

duty for the author’s name to appear on the book, and this is a main cause

of the fact that books have so little influence. If they are good, they

are worth more than the personalities of their authors, of which they are

the quintessences. But as soon as the author makes himself known on the

title-page, the quintessence, from the reader’s point of view, becomes

diluted with the personal, the most personal element, and the aim of the

book is frustrated. It is the ambition of the intellect no longer to

appear individual.

157.

THE MOST CUTTING CRITICISM.—We make the most cutting criticism of a man or

a book when we indicate his or its ideal.

158.

LITTLE OR NO LOVE.—Every good book is written for a particular reader and

men of his stamp, and for that very reason is looked upon unfavourably by

all other readers, by the vast majority. Its reputation accordingly rests

on a narrow basis and must be built up by degrees.—The mediocre and bad

book is mediocre and bad because it seeks to please, and does please, a

great number.

159.

MUSIC AND DISEASE.—The danger of the new music lies in the fact that it

puts the cup of rapture and exaltation to the lips so invitingly, and with

such a show of moral ecstasy, that even the noble and temperate man always

drinks a drop too much. This minimum of intemperance, constantly repeated,

can in the end bring about a deeper convulsion and destruction of mental

health than any coarse excess could do. Hence nothing remains but some day

to fly from the grotto of the nymph, and through perils and billowy seas

to forge one’s way to the smoke of Ithaca and the embraces of a simpler

and more human spouse.

160.

ADVANTAGE FOR OPPONENTS.—A book full of intellect communicates something

thereof even to its opponents.

161.

YOUTH AND CRITICISM.—To criticise a book means, for the young, not to let

oneself be touched by a single productive thought therefrom, and to

protect one’s skin with hands and feet. The youngster lives in opposition

to all novelty that he cannot love in the lump, in a position of

self-defence, and in this connection he commits, as often as he can, a

superfluous sin.

162.

EFFECT OF QUANTITY.—The greatest paradox in the history of poetic art lies

in this: that in all that constitutes the greatness of the old poets a man

may be a barbarian, faulty and deformed from top to toe, and still remain

the greatest of poets. This is the case with Shakespeare, who, as compared

with Sophocles, is like a mine of immeasurable wealth in gold, lead, and

rubble, whereas Sophocles is not merely gold, but gold in its noblest

form, one that almost makes us forget the money-value of the metal. But

quantity in its highest intensity has the same effect as quality. That is

a good thing for Shakespeare.

163.

ALL BEGINNING IS DANGEROUS.—The Poet can choose whether to raise emotion

from one grade to another, and so finally to exalt it to a great height—or

to try a surprise attack, and from the start to pull the bell-rope with

might and main. Both processes have their danger—in the first case his

hearer may run away from him through boredom, in the second through

terror.

164.

IN FAVOUR OF CRITICS.—Insects sting, not from malice, but because they too

want to live. It is the same with our critics—they desire our blood, not

our pain.

165.

SUCCESS OF APHORISMS.—The inexperienced, when an aphorism at once

illuminates their minds with its naked truth, always think that it is old

and well known. They look askance at the author, as if he had wanted to

steal the common property of all, whereas they enjoy highly spiced

half-truths, and give the author to understand as much. He knows how to

appreciate the hint, and easily guesses thereby where he has succeeded and

failed.

166.

THE DESIRE FOR VICTORY.—An artist who exceeds the limit of his strength in

all that he undertakes will end by carrying the multitude along with him

through the spectacle of violent wrestling that he affords. Success is not

always the accompaniment only of victory, but also of the desire for

victory.

167.

_SIBI SCRIBERE._—The sensible author writes for no other posterity than

his own—that is, for his age—so as to be able even then to take pleasure

in himself.

168.

PRAISE OF THE APHORISM.—A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time,

and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for

every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the

imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains

highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.

169.

THE ART-NEED OF THE SECOND ORDER.—The people may have something of what

can be called art-need, but it is small, and can be cheaply satisfied. On

the whole, the remnant of art (it must be honestly confessed) suffices for

this need. Let us consider, for example, the kind of melodies and songs in

which the most vigorous, unspoiled, and true-hearted classes of the

population find genuine delight; let us live among shepherds, cowherds,

peasants, huntsmen, soldiers, and sailors, and give ourselves the answer.

And in the country town, just in the houses that are the homes of

inherited civic virtue, is it not the worst music at present produced that

is loved and, one might say, cherished? He who speaks of deeper needs and

unsatisfied yearnings for art among the people, as it is, is a crank or an

impostor. Be honest! Only in exceptional men is there now an art-need in

the highest sense—because art is once more on the down-grade, and human

powers and hopes are for the time being directed to other matters.—Apart

from this, outside the populace, there exists indeed, in the higher and

highest strata of society, a broader and more comprehensive art-need, but

_of the second order_. Here there is a sort of artistic commune, which

possibly means to be sincere. But let us look at the elements! They are in

general the more refined malcontents, who attain no genuine pleasure in

themselves; the cultured, who have not become free enough to dispense with

the consolations of religion, and yet do not find its incense sufficiently

fragrant; the half-aristocratic, who are too weak to combat by a heroic

conversion or renunciation the one fundamental error of their lives or the

pernicious bent of their characters; the highly gifted, who think

themselves too dignified to be of service by modest activity, and are too

lazy for real, self-sacrificing work; girls who cannot create for

themselves a satisfactory sphere of duties; women who have tied themselves

by a light-hearted or nefarious marriage, and know that they are not tied

securely enough; scholars, physicians, merchants, officials who

specialised too early and never gave their lives a free enough scope—who

do their work efficiently, it is true, but with a worm gnawing at their

hearts; finally, all imperfect artists—these are nowadays the true needers

of art! What do they really desire from art? Art is to drive away hours

and moments of discomfort, boredom, half-bad conscience, and, if possible,

transform the faults of their lives and characters into faults of

world-destiny. Very different were the Greeks, who realised in their art

the outflow and overflow of their own sense of well-being and health, and

loved to see their perfection once more from a standpoint outside

themselves. They were led to art by delight in themselves; our

contemporaries—by disgust of themselves.

170.

THE GERMANS IN THE THEATRE.—The real theatrical talent of the Germans was

Kotzebue. He and his Germans, those of higher as well as those of

middle-class society, were necessarily associated, and his contemporaries

should have said of him in all seriousness, “in him we live and move and

have our being.” Here was nothing—no constraint, pretence, or

half-enjoyment: what he could and would do was understood. Yes, until now

the honest theatrical success on the German stage has been in the hands of

the shamefaced or unashamed heirs of Kotzebue’s methods and influence—that

is, as far as comedy still flourishes at all. The result is that much of

the Germanism of that age, sometimes far off from the great towns, still

survives. Good-natured; incontinent in small pleasures; always ready for

tears; with the desire, in the theatre at any rate, to be able to get rid

of their innate sobriety and strict attention to duty and exercise; a

smiling, nay, a laughing indulgence; confusing goodness and sympathy and

welding them into one, as is the essential characteristic of German

sentimentality; exceedingly happy at a noble, magnanimous action; for the

rest, submissive towards superiors, envious of each other, and yet in

their heart of hearts thoroughly self-satisfied—such were they and such

was he.—The second dramatic talent was Schiller. He discovered a class of

hearers which had hitherto never been taken into consideration: among the

callow German youth of both sexes. His poetry responded to their higher,

nobler, more violent if more confused emotions, their delight in the

jingle of moral words (a delight that begins to disappear when we reach

the thirties). Thus he won for himself, by virtue of the passionateness

and partisanship of the young, a success which gradually reacted with

advantage upon those of riper years. Generally speaking, Schiller

rejuvenated the Germans. Goethe stood and still stands above the Germans

in every respect. To them he will never belong. How could a nation in

well-being and well-wishing come up to the intellectuality of Goethe?

Beethoven composed and Schopenhauer philosophised above the heads of the

Germans, and it was above their heads, in the same way, that Goethe wrote

his _Tasso_, his _Iphigenie_. He was followed by a small company of highly

cultured persons, who were educated by antiquity, life, and travel, and

had grown out of German ways of thought. He himself did not wish it to be

otherwise.—When the Romantics set up their well-conceived Goethe cult;

when their amazing skill in appreciation was passed on to the disciples of

Hegel, the real educators of the Germans of this century; when the

awakening national ambition turned out advantageous to the fame of the

German poets; when the real standard of the nation, as to whether it could

honestly find enjoyment in anything, became inexorably subordinated to the

judgment of individuals and to that national ambition,—that is, when

people began to enjoy by compulsion,—then arose that false, spurious

German culture which was ashamed of Kotzebue; which brought Sophocles,

Calderon, and even the Second Part of Goethe’s _Faust_ on the stage; and

which, on account of its foul tongue and congested stomach, no longer

knows now what it likes and what it finds tedious.—Happy are those who

have taste, even if it be a bad taste! Only by this characteristic can one

be wise as well as happy. Hence the Greeks, who were very refined in such

matters, designated the sage by a word that means “man of taste,” and

called wisdom, artistic as well as scientific, “taste” (_sophia_).

171.

MUSIC AS A LATE-COMER IN EVERY CULTURE.—Among all the arts that are

accustomed to grow on a definite culture-soil and under definite social

and political conditions, music is the last plant to come up, arising in

the autumn and fading-season of the culture to which it belongs. At the

same time, the first signs and harbingers of a new spring are usually

already noticeable, and sometimes music, like the language of a forgotten

age, rings out into a new, astonished world, and comes too late. In the

art of the Dutch and Flemish musicians the soul of the Christian middle

ages at last found its fullest tone: their sound-architecture is the

posthumous but legitimate and equal sister of Gothic. Not until Handel’s

music was heard the note of the best in the soul of Luther and his kin,

the great Judæo-heroical impulse that created the whole Reformation

movement. Mozart first expressed in golden melody the age of Louis XIV.

and the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain. The eighteenth century—that

century of rhapsody, of broken ideals and transitory happiness—only sang

itself out in the music of Beethoven and Rossini. A lover of sentimental

similes might say that all really important music was a swan-song.—Music

is, in fact, not a universal language for all time, as is so often said in

its praise, but responds exactly to a particular period and warmth of

emotion which involves a quite definite, individual culture, determined by

time and place, as its inner law. The music of Palestrina would be quite

unintelligible to a Greek; and again, what would the music of Rossini

convey to Palestrina?—It may be that our most modern German music, with

all its pre-eminence and desire of pre-eminence, will soon be no longer

understood. For this music sprang from a culture that is undergoing a

rapid decay, from the soil of that epoch of reaction and restoration in

which a certain Catholicism of feeling, as well as a delight in all

indigenous, national, primitive manners, burst into bloom and scattered a

blended perfume over Europe. These two emotional tendencies, adopted in

their greatest strength and carried to their farthest limits, found final

expression in the music of Wagner. Wagner’s predilection for the old

native sagas, his free idealisation of their unfamiliar gods and

heroes,—who are really sovereign beasts of prey with occasional fits of

thoughtfulness, magnanimity, and boredom,—his re-animation of those

figures, to which he gave in addition the mediæval Christian thirst for

ecstatic sensuality and spiritualisation—all this Wagnerian give-and-take

with regard to materials, souls, figures, and words—would clearly express

the spirit of his music, if it could not, like all music, speak quite

unambiguously of itself. This spirit wages the last campaign of reaction

against the spirit of illumination which passed into this century from the

last, and also against the super-national ideas of French revolutionary

romanticism and of English and American insipidity in the reconstruction

of state and society.—But is it not evident that the spheres of thought

and emotion apparently suppressed by Wagner and his school have long since

acquired fresh strength, and that his late musical protest against them

generally rings into ears that prefer to hear different and opposite

notes; so that one day that high and wonderful art will suddenly become

unintelligible and will be covered by the spider’s web of oblivion?—In

considering this state of affairs we must not let ourselves be led astray

by those transitory fluctuations which arise like a reaction within a

reaction, as a temporary sinking of the mountainous wave in the midst of

the general upheaval. Thus, this decade of national war, ultramontane

martyrdom, and socialistic unrest may, in its remoter after-effect, even

aid the Wagnerian art to acquire a sudden halo, without guaranteeing that

it “has a future” or that it has _the_ future. It is in the very nature of

music that the fruits of its great culture-vintage should lose their taste

and wither earlier than the fruits of the plastic arts or those that grow

on the tree of knowledge. Among all the products of the human artistic

sense ideas are the most solid and lasting.

172.

THE POET NO LONGER A TEACHER.—Strange as it may sound to our time, there

were once poets and artists whose soul was above the passions with their

delights and convulsions, and who therefore took their pleasure in purer

materials, worthier men, more delicate complications and dénouements. If

the artists of our day for the most part unfetter the will, and so are

under certain circumstances for that very reason emancipators of life,

those were tamers of the will, enchanters of animals, creators of men. In

fact, they moulded, re-moulded, and new-moulded life, whereas the fame of

poets of our day lies in unharnessing, unchaining, and shattering.—The

ancient Greeks demanded of the poet that he should be the teacher of grown

men. How ashamed the poet would be now if this demand were made of him! He

is not even a good student of himself, and so never himself becomes a good

poem or a fine picture. Under the most favourable circumstances he remains

the shy, attractive ruin of a temple, but at the same time a cavern of

cravings, overgrown like a ruin with flowers, nettles, and poisonous

weeds, inhabited and haunted by snakes, worms, spiders, and birds; an

object for sad reflection as to why the noblest and most precious must

grow up at once like a ruin, without the past and future of perfection.

173.

LOOKING FORWARD AND BACKWARD.—An art like that which streams out of Homer,

Sophocles, Theocritus, Calderon, Racine, Goethe, as the superabundance of

a wise and harmonious conduct of life—that is the true art, at which we

grasp when we have ourselves become wiser and more harmonious. It is not

that barbaric, if ever so delightful, outpouring of hot and highly

coloured things from an undisciplined, chaotic soul, which is what we

understood by “art” in our youth. It is obvious from the nature of the

case that for certain periods of life an art of overstrain, excitement,

antipathy to the orderly, monotonous, simple, logical, is an inevitable

need, to which artists must respond, lest the soul of such periods should

unburden itself in other ways, through all kinds of disorder and

impropriety. Hence youths as they generally are, full, fermenting,

tortured above all things by boredom, and women who lack work that fully

occupies their soul, require that art of delightful disorder. All the more

violently on that account are they inflamed with a desire for satisfaction

without change, happiness without stupor and intoxication.

174.

AGAINST THE ART OF WORKS OF ART.—Art is above all and first of all meant

to embellish life, to make us ourselves endurable and if possible

agreeable in the eyes of others. With this task in view, art moderates us

and holds us in restraint, creates forms of intercourse, binds over the

uneducated to laws of decency, cleanliness, politeness, well-timed speech

and silence. Hence art must conceal or transfigure everything that is

ugly—the painful, terrible, and disgusting elements which in spite of

every effort will always break out afresh in accordance with the very

origin of human nature. Art has to perform this duty especially in regard

to the passions and spiritual agonies and anxieties, and to cause the

significant factor to shine through unavoidable or unconquerable ugliness.

To this great, super-great task the so-called art proper, that of works of

art, is a mere accessary. A man who feels within himself a surplus of such

powers of embellishment, concealment, and transfiguration will finally

seek to unburden himself of this surplus in works of art. The same holds

good, under special circumstances, of a whole nation.—But as a rule we

nowadays begin art at the end, hang on to its tail, and think that works

of art constitute art proper, and that life should be improved and

transformed by this means—fools that we are! If we begin a dinner with

dessert, and try sweet after sweet, small wonder that we ruin our

digestions and even our appetites for the good, hearty, nourishing meal to

which art invites us!

175.

CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF ART.—Why, really, does a creative art nowadays

continue to exist? Because the majority who have hours of leisure (and

such an art is for them only) think that they cannot fill up their time

without music, theatres and picture-galleries, novels and poetry. Granted

that one could keep them from this indulgence, either they would strive

less eagerly for leisure, and the invidious sight of the rich would be

less common (a great gain for the stability of society), or they would

have leisure, but would learn to reflect on what can be learnt and

unlearnt: on their work, for instance, their associations, the pleasure

they could bestow. All the world, with the exception of the artist, would

in both cases reap the advantage.—Certainly, there are many vigorous,

sensible readers who could take objection to this. Still, it must be said

on behalf of the coarse and malignant that the author himself is concerned

with this protest, and that there is in his book much to be read that is

not actually written down therein.

176.

THE MOUTHPIECE OF THE GODS.—The poet expresses the universal higher

opinions of the nation, he is its mouthpiece and flute; but by virtue of

metre and all other artistic means he so expresses them that the nation

regards them as something quite new and wonderful, and believes in all

seriousness that he is the mouthpiece of the Gods. Yes, under the clouds

of creation the poet himself forgets whence he derives all his

intellectual wisdom—from father and mother, from teachers and books of all

kinds, from the street and particularly from the priest. He is deceived by

his own art, and really believes, in a naïve period, that a God is

speaking through him, that he is creating in a state of religious

inspiration. As a matter of fact, he is only saying what he has learnt, a

medley of popular wisdom and popular foolishness. Hence, so far as a poet

is really _vox populi_ he is held to be _vox dei_.

177.

WHAT ALL ART WANTS TO DO AND CANNOT.—The last and hardest task of the

artist is the presentment of what remains the same, reposes in itself, is

lofty and simple and free from the bizarre. Hence the noblest forms of

moral perfection are rejected as inartistic by weaker artists, because the

sight of these fruits is too painful for their ambition. The fruit gleams

at them from the topmost branches of art, but they lack the ladder, the

courage, the grip to venture so high. In himself a Phidias is quite

possible as a poet, but, if modern strength be taken into consideration,

almost solely in the sense that to God nothing is impossible. The desire

for a poetical Claude Lorrain is already an immodesty at present, however

earnestly one man’s heart may yearn for such a consummation.—The

presentment of the highest man, the most simple and at the same time the

most complete, has hitherto been beyond the scope of all artists. Perhaps,

however, the Greeks, in the ideal of Athene, saw farther than any men did

before or after their time.

178.

ART AND RESTORATION.—The retrograde movements in history, the so-called

periods of restoration, which try to revive intellectual and social

conditions that existed before those immediately preceding,—and seem

really to succeed in giving them a brief resurrection,—have the charm of

sentimental recollection, ardent longing for what is almost lost, hasty

embracing of a transitory happiness. It is on account of this strange

trend towards seriousness that in such transient and almost dreamy periods

art and poetry find a natural soil, just as the tenderest and rarest

plants grow on mountain-slopes of steep declivity.—Thus many a good artist

is unwittingly impelled to a “restoration” way of thinking in politics and

society, for which, on his own account, he prepares a quiet little corner

and garden. Here he collects about himself the human remains of the

historical epoch that appeals to him, and plays his lyre to many who are

dead, half-dead, and weary to death, perhaps with the above-mentioned

result of a brief resurrection.

179.

HAPPINESS OF THE AGE.—In two respects our age is to be accounted happy.

With respect to the _past_, we enjoy all cultures and their productions,

and nurture ourselves on the noblest blood of all periods. We stand

sufficiently near to the magic of the forces from whose womb these periods

are born to be able in passing to submit to their spell with pleasure and

terror; whereas earlier cultures could only enjoy themselves, and never

looked beyond themselves, but were rather overarched by a bell of broader

or narrower dome, through which indeed light streamed down to them, but

which their gaze could not pierce. With respect to the _future_, there

opens out to us for the first time a mighty, comprehensive vista of human

and economic purposes engirdling the whole inhabited globe. At the same

time, we feel conscious of a power ourselves to take this new task in hand

without presumption, without requiring supernatural aids. Yes, whatever

the result of our enterprise, however much we may have overestimated our

strength, at any rate we need render account to no one but ourselves, and

mankind can henceforth begin to do with itself what it will.—There are, it

is true, peculiar human bees, who only know how to suck the bitterest and

worst elements from the chalice of every flower. It is true that all

flowers contain something that is not honey, but these bees may be allowed

to feel in their own way about the happiness of our time, and continue to

build up their hive of discomfort.

180.

A VISION.—Hours of instruction and meditation for adults, even the most

mature, and such institutions visited without compulsion but in accordance

with the moral injunction of the whole community; the churches as the

meeting-places most worthy and rich in memories for the purpose; at the

same time daily festivals in honour of the reason that is attained and

attainable by man; a newer and fuller budding and blooming of the ideal of

the teacher, in which the clergyman, the artist and the physician, the man

of science and the sage are blended, and their individual virtues should

come to the fore as a collective virtue in their teaching itself, in their

discourses, in their method—this is my ever-recurring vision, of which I

firmly believe that it has raised a corner of the veil of the future.

181.

EDUCATION A DISTORTION.—The extraordinary haphazardness of the whole

system of education, which leads every adult to say nowadays that his sole

educator was chance, and the weathercock-nature of educational methods and

aims, may be explained as follows. The oldest and the newest

culture-powers, as in a turbulent mass-meeting, would rather be heard than

understood, and wish to prove at all costs by their outcries and

clamourings that they still exist or already exist. The poor teachers and

educators are first dazed by this senseless noise, then become silent and

finally apathetic, allowing anything to be done to them just as they in

their turn allow anything to be done to their pupils. They are not trained

themselves, so how are they to train others? They are themselves no

straight-growing, vigorous, succulent trees, and he who wishes to attach

himself to them must wind and bend himself and finally become distorted

and deformed as they.

182.

PHILOSOPHERS AND ARTISTS OF THE AGE.—Rhapsody and frigidity, burning

desires and waning of the heart’s glow—this wretched medley is to be found

in the picture of the highest European society of the present day. There

the artist thinks that he is achieving a great deal when through his art

he lights the torch of the heart as well as the torch of desire. The

philosopher has the same notion, when in the chilliness of his heart,

which he has in common with his age, he cools hot desires in himself and

his following by his world-denying judgments.

183.

NOT TO BE A SOLDIER OF CULTURE WITHOUT NECESSITY.—At last people are

learning what it costs us so dear not to know in our youth—that we must

first do superior actions and secondly seek the superior wherever and

under whatever names it is to be found; that we must at once go out of the

way of all badness and mediocrity _without fighting it_; and that even

doubt as to the excellence of a thing (such as quickly arises in one of

practised taste) should rank as an argument against it and a reason for

completely avoiding it. We must not shrink from the danger of occasionally

making a mistake and confounding the less accessible good with the bad and

imperfect. Only he who can do nothing better should attack the world’s

evils as the soldier of culture. But those who should support culture and

spread its teachings ruin themselves if they go about armed, and by

precautions, night-watches, and bad dreams turn the peace of their

domestic and artistic life into sinister unrest.

184.

HOW NATURAL HISTORY SHOULD BE EXPOUNDED.—Natural history, like the history

of the war and victory of moral and intellectual forces in the campaign

against anxiety, self-delusion, laziness, superstition, folly, should be

so expounded that every reader or listener may be continually aroused to

strive after mental and physical health and soundness, after the feeling

of joy, and be awakened to the desire to be the heir and continuator of

mankind, to an ever nobler adventurous impulse. Hitherto natural history

has not found its true language, because the inventive and eloquent

artists—who are needed for this purpose—never rid themselves of a secret

mistrust of it, and above all never wish to learn from it a thorough

lesson. Nevertheless it must be conceded to the English that their

scientific manuals for the lower strata of the people have made admirable

strides towards that ideal. But then such books are written by their

foremost men of learning, full, complete, and inspiring natures, and not,

as among us, by mediocre investigators.

185.

GENIUS IN HUMANITY.—If genius, according to Schopenhauer’s observation,

lies in the coherent and vivid recollection of our own experience, a

striving towards genius in humanity collectively might be deduced from the

striving towards knowledge of the whole historic past—which is beginning

to mark off the modern age more and more as compared with earlier ages and

has for the first time broken down the barriers between nature and spirit,

men and animals, morality and physics. A perfectly conceived history would

be cosmic self-consciousness.

186.