THE CULT OF CULTURE.—On great minds is bestowed the terrifying

all-too-human of their natures, their blindnesses, deformities, and

extravagances, so that their more powerful, easily all-too-powerful

influence may be continually held within bounds through the distrust

aroused by such qualities. For the sum-total of all that humanity needs

for its continued existence is so comprehensive, and demands powers so

diverse and so numerous, that for every one-sided predilection, whether in

science or politics or art or commerce, to which such natures would

persuade us, mankind as a whole has to pay a heavy price. It has always

been a great disaster to culture when human beings are worshipped. In this

sense we may understand the precept of Mosaic law which forbids us to have

any other gods but God.—Side by side with the cult of genius and violence

we must always place, as its complement and remedy, the cult of culture.

This cult can find an intelligent appreciation even for the material, the

inferior, the mean, the misunderstood, the weak, the imperfect, the

one-sided, the incomplete, the untrue, the apparent, even the wicked and

horrible, and can grant them the concession that _all this is necessary_.

For the continued harmony of all things human, attained by amazing toil

and strokes of luck, and just as much the work of Cyclopes and ants as of

geniuses, shall never be lost. How, indeed, could we dispense with that

deep, universal, and often uncanny bass, without which, after all, melody

cannot be melody?

187.

THE ANTIQUE WORLD AND PLEASURE.—The man of the antique world understood

better how to rejoice, we understand better how to grieve less. They

continually found new motives for feeling happy, for celebrating

festivals, being inventive with all their wealth of shrewdness and

reflection. We, on the other hand, concentrate our intellect rather on the

solving of problems which have in view painlessness and the removal of

sources of discomfort. With regard to suffering existence, the ancients

sought to forget or in some way to convert the sensation into a pleasant

one, thus trying to supply palliatives. We attack the causes of suffering,

and on the whole prefer to use prophylactics.—Perhaps we are only building

upon a foundation whereon a later age will once more set up the temple of

joy.

188.

THE MUSES AS LIARS.—“We know how to tell many lies,” so sang the Muses

once, when they revealed themselves to Hesiod.—The conception of the

artist as deceiver, once grasped, leads to important discoveries.

189.

HOW PARADOXICAL HOMER CAN BE.—Is there anything more desperate, more

horrible, more incredible, shining over human destiny like a winter sun,

than that idea of Homer’s:

“So the decree of the Gods willed it, and doomed man to perish, that it

might be a matter for song even to distant generations”?

In other words, we suffer and perish so that poets may not lack material,

and this is the dispensation of those very Gods of Homer who seem much

concerned about the joyousness of generations to come, but very little

about us men of the present. To think that such ideas should ever have

entered the head of a Greek!

190.

SUPPLEMENTARY JUSTIFICATION OF EXISTENCE.—Many ideas have come into the

world as errors and fancies but have turned out truths, because men have

afterwards given them a genuine basis to rest upon.

191.

PRO AND CON NECESSARY.—He who has not realised that every great man must

not only be encouraged but also, for the sake of the common welfare,

opposed, is certainly still a great child—or himself a great man.

192.

INJUSTICE OF GENIUS.—Genius is most unjust towards geniuses, if they be

contemporary. Either it thinks it has no need of them and considers them

superfluous (for it can do without them), or their influence crosses the

path of its electric current, in which case it even calls them pernicious.

193.

THE SADDEST DESTINY OF A PROPHET.—He has worked twenty years to convince

his contemporaries, and succeeds at last, but in the meantime his

adversaries have also succeeded—he is no longer convinced of himself.

194.

THREE THINKERS LIKE ONE SPIDER.—In every philosophical school three

thinkers follow one another in this relation: the first produces from

himself sap and seed, the second draws it out in threads and spins a

cunning web, the third waits in this web for the victims who are caught in

it—and tries to live upon this philosophy.

195.

FROM ASSOCIATION WITH AUTHORS.—It is as bad a habit to go about with an

author grasping him by the nose as grasping him by the horn (and every

author has his horn).

196.

A TEAM OF TWO.—Vagueness of thought and outbursts of sentimentality are as

often wedded to the reckless desire to have one’s own way by hook or by

crook, to make oneself alone of any consequence, as a genuinely helpful,

gracious, and kindly spirit is wedded to the impulse towards clearness and

purity of thought and towards emotional moderation and self-restraint.

197.

BINDING AND SEPARATING FORCES.—Surely it is in the heads of men that there

arises the force that binds them—an understanding of their common interest

or the reverse; and in their hearts the force that separates them—a blind

choosing and groping in love and hate, a devotion to one at the expense of

all, and a consequent contempt for the common utility.

198.

MARKSMEN AND THINKERS.—There are curious marksmen who miss their mark, but

leave the shooting-gallery with secret pride in the fact that their bullet

at any rate flew very far (beyond the mark, it is true), or that it did

not hit the mark but hit something else. There are thinkers of the same

stamp.

199.

ATTACK FROM TWO SIDES.—We act as enemies towards an intellectual tendency

or movement when we are superior to it and disapprove of its aim, or when

its aim is too high and unrecognisable to our eye—in other words, when it

is superior to us. So the same party may be attacked from two sides, from

above and from below. Not infrequently the assailants, from common hatred,

form an alliance which is more repulsive than all that they hate.

200.

ORIGINAL.—Original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a

new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and

overlooked by every one, as something new. The first discoverer is usually

that quite ordinary and unintellectual visionary—chance.

201.

ERROR OF PHILOSOPHERS.—The philosopher believes that the value of his

philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure. Posterity finds it in the

stone with which he built and with which, from that time forth, men will

build oftener and better—in other words, in the fact that the structure

may be destroyed and yet have value as material.

202.

WIT.—Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

203.

THE MOMENT BEFORE SOLUTION.—In science it occurs every day and every hour

that a man, immediately before the solution, remains stuck, being

convinced that his efforts have been entirely in vain—like one who, in

untying a noose, hesitates at the moment when it is nearest to coming

loose, because at that very moment it looks most like a knot.

204.

AMONG THE VISIONARIES.—The thoughtful man, and he who is sure of his

intelligence, may profitably consort with visionaries for a decade and

abandon himself in their torrid zone to a moderate insanity. He will thus

have travelled a good part of the road towards that cosmopolitanism of the

intellect which can say without presumption, “Nothing intellectual is

alien to me.”

205.

KEEN AIR.—The best and healthiest element in science as amid the mountains

is the keen air that plays about it.—Intellectual molly-coddles (such as

artists) dread and abuse science on account of this atmosphere.

206.

WHY SAVANTS ARE NOBLER THAN ARTISTS.—Science requires nobler natures than

does poetry; natures that are more simple, less ambitious, more

restrained, calmer, that think less of posthumous fame and can bury

themselves in studies which, in the eye of the many, scarcely seem worthy

of such a sacrifice of personality. There is another loss of which they

are conscious. The nature of their occupation, its continual exaction of

the greatest sobriety, weakens their will; the fire is not kept up so

vigorously as on the hearths of poetic minds. As such, they often lose

their strength and prime earlier than artists do—and, as has been said,

they are aware of their danger. Under all circumstances they seem less

gifted because they shine less, and thus they will always be rated below

their value.

207.

HOW FAR PIETY OBSCURES.—In later centuries the great man is credited with

all the great qualities and virtues of his century. Thus all that is best

is continually obscured by piety, which treats the picture as a sacred

one, to be surrounded with all manner of votive offerings. In the end the

picture is completely veiled and covered by the offerings, and thenceforth

is more an object of faith than of contemplation.

208.

STANDING ON ONE’S HEAD.—If we make truth stand on its head, we generally

fail to notice that our own head, too, is not in its right position.

209.

ORIGIN AND UTILITY OF FASHION.—The obvious satisfaction of the individual

with his own form excites imitation and gradually creates the form of the

many—that is, fashion. The many desire, and indeed attain, that same

comforting satisfaction with their own form. Consider how many reasons

every man has for anxiety and shy self-concealment, and how, on this

account, three-fourths of his energy and goodwill is crippled and may

become unproductive! So we must be very grateful to fashion for

unfettering that three-fourths and communicating self-confidence and the

power of cheerful compromise to those who feel themselves bound to each

other by its law. Even foolish laws give freedom and calm of the spirit,

so long as many persons have submitted to their sway.

210.

LOOSENERS OF TONGUES.—The value of many men and books rests solely on

their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate

things. They are looseners of tongues and crowbars to open the most

stubborn teeth. Many events and misdeeds which are apparently only sent as

a curse to mankind possess this value and utility.

211.

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM OF DOMICILE.(12)—Who of us could dare to call himself

a “free spirit” if he could not render homage after his fashion, by taking

on his own shoulders a portion of that burden of public dislike and abuse,

to men to whom this name is attached as a reproach? We might as well call

ourselves in all seriousness “spirits free of domicile” (_Freizügig_) (and

without that arrogant or high-spirited defiance) because we feel the

impulse to freedom (_Zug zur Freiheit_) as the strongest instinct of our

minds and, in contrast to fixed and limited minds, practically see our

ideal in an intellectual nomadism—to use a modest and almost depreciatory

expression.

212.

YES, THE FAVOUR OF THE MUSES!—What Homer says on this point goes right to

our heart, so true, so terrible is it:

“The Muse loved him with all her heart and gave him good and evil, for she

took away his eyes and vouchsafed him sweet song.”

This is an endless text for thinking men: she gives good and evil, that is

_her_ manner of loving with all her heart and soul! And each man will

interpret specially for himself why we poets and thinkers have to give up

our eyes in her service.(13)

213.

AGAINST THE CULTIVATION OF MUSIC.—The artistic training of the eye from

childhood upwards by means of drawing, painting, landscape-sketching,

figures, scenes, involves an estimable gain in life, making the eyesight

keen, calm, and enduring in the observation of men and circumstances. No

similar secondary advantage arises from the artistic cultivation of the

ear, whence public schools will generally do well to give the art of the

eye a preference over that of the ear.

214.

THE DISCOVERERS OF TRIVIALITIES.—Subtle minds, from which nothing is

farther than trivialities, often discover a triviality after taking all

manner of circuitous routes and mountain paths, and, to the astonishment

of the non-subtle, rejoice exceedingly.

215.

MORALS OF SAVANTS.—A regular and rapid advance in the sciences is only

possible when the individual is compelled to be not so distrustful as to

test every calculation and assertion of others, in fields which are remote

from his own. A necessary condition, however, is that every man should

have competitors in his own sphere, who are extremely distrustful and keep

a sharp eye upon him. From this juxtaposition of “not too distrustful” and

“extremely distrustful” arises sincerity in the republic of learning.

216.

REASONS FOR STERILITY.—There are highly gifted minds which are always

sterile only because, from temperamental weakness, they are too impatient

to wait for their pregnancy.

217.

THE PERVERTED WORLD OF TEARS.—The manifold discomforts which the demands

of higher culture cause to man finally pervert his nature to such an

extent that he usually keeps himself stoical and unbending. Thus he has

tears in reserve only for rare occasions of happiness, so that many must

weep even at the enjoyment of painlessness—only when happy does his heart

still beat.

218.

THE GREEKS AS INTERPRETERS.—When we speak of the Greeks we unwittingly

speak of to-day and yesterday; their universally known history is a blank

mirror, always reflecting something that is not in the mirror itself. We

enjoy the freedom of speaking about them in order to have the right of

being silent about others—so that these Greeks themselves may whisper

something in the ear of the reflective reader. Thus the Greeks facilitate

to modern men the communication of much that is debatable and hard to

communicate.

219.

OF THE ACQUIRED CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS.—We are easily led astray by the

renowned Greek clearness, transparency, simplicity, and order, by their

crystal-like naturalness and crystal-like art, into believing that all

these gifts were bestowed on the Greeks—for instance, that they could not

but write well, as Lichtenberg expressed it on one occasion. Yet no

statement could be more hasty and more untenable. The history of prose

from Gorgias to Demosthenes shows a course of toiling and wrestling

towards light from the obscure, overloaded, and tasteless, reminding one

of the labour of heroes who had to construct the first roads through

forest and bog. The dialogue of tragedy was the real achievement of the

dramatist, owing to its uncommon clearness and precision, whereas the

national tendency was to riot in symbolism and innuendo, a tendency

expressly fostered by the great choral lyric. Similarly it was the

achievement of Homer to liberate the Greeks from Asiatic pomp and gloom,

and to have attained the clearness of architecture in details great and

small. Nor was it by any means thought easy to say anything in a pure and

illuminating style. How else should we account for the great admiration

for the epigram of Simonides, which shows itself so simple, with no gilded

points or arabesques of wit, but says all that it has to say plainly and

with the calm of the sun, not with the straining after effect of the

lightning. Since the struggle towards light from an almost native twilight

is Greek, a thrill of jubilation runs through the people when they hear a

laconic sentence, the language of elegy or the maxims of the Seven Wise

Men. Hence they were so fond of giving precepts in verse, a practice that

we find objectionable. This was the true Apolline task of the Hellenic

spirit, with the aim of rising superior to the perils of metre and the

obscurity which is otherwise characteristic of poetry. Simplicity,

flexibility, and sobriety were wrestled for and not given by nature to

this people. The danger of a relapse into Asianism constantly hovered over

the Greeks, and really overtook them from time to time like a murky,

overflowing tide of mystical impulses, primitive savagery and darkness. We

see them plunge in; we see Europe, as it were, flooded, washed away—for

Europe was very small then; but they always emerge once more to the light,

good swimmers and divers that they are, those fellow-countrymen of

Odysseus.

220.

THE PAGAN CHARACTERISTIC.—Perhaps there is nothing more astonishing to the

observer of the Greek world than to discover that the Greeks from time to

time held festivals, as it were, for all their passions and evil

tendencies alike, and in fact even established a kind of series of

festivals, by order of the State, for their “all-too-human.” This is the

pagan characteristic of their world, which Christianity has never

understood and never can understand, and has always combated and

despised.—They accepted this all-too-human as unavoidable, and preferred,

instead of railing at it, to give it a kind of secondary right by grafting

it on to the usages of society and religion. All in man that has power

they called divine, and wrote it on the walls of their heaven. They do not

deny this natural instinct that expresses itself in evil characteristics,

but regulate and limit it to definite cults and days, so as to turn those

turbulent streams into as harmless a course as possible, after devising

sufficient precautionary measures. That is the root of all the moral

broad-mindedness of antiquity. To the wicked, the dubious, the backward,

the animal element, as to the barbaric, pre-Hellenic and Asiatic, which

still lived in the depths of Greek nature, they allowed a moderate

outflow, and did not strive to destroy it utterly. The whole system was

under the domain of the State, which was built up not on individuals or

castes, but on common human qualities. In the structure of the State the

Greeks show that wonderful sense for typical facts which later on enabled

them to become investigators of Nature, historians, geographers, and

philosophers. It was not a limited moral law of priests or castes, which

had to decide about the constitution of the State and State worship, but

the most comprehensive view of the reality of all that is human. Whence do

the Greeks derive this freedom, this sense of reality? Perhaps from Homer

and the poets who preceded him. For just those poets whose nature is

generally not the most wise or just possess, in compensation, that delight

in reality and activity of every kind, and prefer not to deny even evil.

It suffices for them if evil moderates itself, does not kill or inwardly

poison everything—in other words, they have similar ideas to those of the

founders of Greek constitutions, and were their teachers and forerunners.

221.

EXCEPTIONAL GREEKS.—In Greece, deep, thorough, serious minds were the

exception. The national instinct tended rather to regard the serious and

thorough as a kind of grimace. To borrow forms from a foreign source, not

to create but to transform into the fairest shapes—that is Greek. To

imitate, not for utility but for artistic illusion, ever and anon to gain

the mastery over forced seriousness, to arrange, beautify, simplify—that

is the continual task from Homer to the Sophists of the third and fourth

centuries of our era, who are all outward show, pompous speech,

declamatory gestures, and address themselves to shallow souls that care

only for appearance, sound, and effect. And now let us estimate the

greatness of those exceptional Greeks, who created science! Whoever tells

of them, tells the most heroic story of the human mind!

222.

SIMPLICITY NOT THE FIRST NOR THE LAST THING IN POINT OF TIME.—In the

history of religious ideas many errors about development and false

gradations are made in matters which in reality are not consecutive

outgrowths but contemporary yet separate phenomena. In particular,

simplicity has still far too much the reputation of being the oldest, the

initial thing. Much that is human arises by subtraction and division, and

not merely by doubling, addition, and unification.—For instance, men still

believe in a gradual development of the idea of God from those unwieldy

stones and blocks of wood up to the highest forms of anthropomorphism. Yet

the fact is that so long as divinity was attributed to and felt in trees,

logs of wood, stones, and beasts, people shrank from humanising their

forms as from an act of godlessness. First of all, poets, apart from all

considerations of cult and the ban of religious shame, have had to make

the inner imagination of man accustomed and compliant to this notion.

Wherever more pious periods and phases of thought gained the upper hand,

this liberating influence of poets fell into the background, and sanctity

remained, after as before, on the side of the monstrous, uncanny, quite

peculiarly inhuman. And then, much of what the inner imagination ventures

to picture to itself would exert a painful influence if externally and

corporeally represented. The inner eye is far bolder and more shameless

than the outer (whence the well-known difficulty and, to some extent,

impossibility, of working epic material into dramatic form). The religious

imagination for a long time entirely refuses to believe in the identity of

God with an image: the image is meant to fix the _numen_ of the Deity,

actually and specifically, although in a mysterious and not altogether

intelligible way. The oldest image of the Gods is meant to shelter and at

the same time to hide(14) the God—to indicate him but not to expose him to

view. No Greek really looked upon his Apollo as a pointed pillar of wood,

his Eros as a lump of stone. These were symbols, which were intended to

inspire dread of the manifestation of the God. It was the same with those

blocks of wood out of which individual limbs, generally in excessive

number, were fashioned with the scantiest of carving—as, for instance, a

Laconian Apollo with four hands and four ears. In the incomplete,

symbolical, or excessive lies a terrible sanctity, which is meant to

prevent us from thinking of anything human or similar to humanity. It is

not an embryonic stage of art in which such things are made—as if they

were not _able_ to speak more plainly and portray more sensibly in the age

when such images were honoured! Rather, men are afraid of just one

thing—direct speaking out. Just as the cella hides and conceals in a

mysterious twilight, yet not completely, the holy of holies, the real

_numen_ of the Deity; just as, again, the peripteric temple hides the

cella, protecting it from indiscreet eyes as with a screen and a veil, yet

not completely—so it is with the image of the Deity, and at the same time

the concealment of the Deity.—Only when outside the cult, in the profane

world of athletic contest, the joy in the victor had risen so high that

the ripples thus started reacted upon the lake of religious emotion, was

the statue of the victor set up before the temple. Then the pious pilgrim

had to accustom his eye and his soul, whether he would or no, to the

inevitable sight of human beauty and super-strength, so that the worship

of men and Gods melted into each other from physical and spiritual

contact. Then too for the first time the fear of really humanising the

figures of the Gods is lost, and the mighty arena for great plastic art is

opened—even now with the limitation that wherever there is to be adoration

the primitive form and ugliness are carefully preserved and copied. But

the Hellene, as he dedicates and makes offerings, may now with religious

sanction indulge in his delight in making God become a man.

223.

WHITHER WE MUST TRAVEL.—Immediate self-observation is not enough, by a

long way, to enable us to learn to know ourselves. We need history, for

the past continues to flow through us in a hundred channels. We ourselves

are, after all, nothing but our own sensation at every moment of this

continued flow. Even here, when we wish to step down into the stream of

our apparently most peculiar and personal development, Heraclitus’

aphorism, “You cannot step twice into the same river,” holds good.—This is

a piece of wisdom which has, indeed, gradually become trite, but

nevertheless has remained as strong and true as it ever was. It is the

same with the saying that, in order to understand history, we must

scrutinise the living remains of historical periods; that we must travel,

as old Herodotus travelled, to other nations, especially to those

so-called savage or half-savage races in regions where man has doffed or

not yet donned European garb. For they are ancient and firmly established

steps of culture on which we can stand. There is, however, a more subtle

art and aim in travelling, which does not always necessitate our passing

from place to place and going thousands of miles away. Very probably the

last three centuries, in all their colourings and refractions of culture,

survive even in our vicinity, only they have to be discovered. In some

families, or even in individuals, the strata are still superimposed on

each other, beautifully and perceptibly; in other places there are

dispersions and displacements of the structure which are harder to

understand. Certainly in remote districts, in less known mountain valleys,

circumscribed communities have been able more easily to maintain an

admirable pattern of a far older sentiment, a pattern that must here be

investigated. On the other hand, it is improbable that such discoveries

will be made in Berlin, where man comes into the world washed-out and

sapless. He who after long practice of this art of travel has become a

hundred-eyed Argus will accompany his Io—I mean his ego—everywhere, and in

Egypt and Greece, Byzantium and Rome, France and Germany, in the age of

wandering or settled races, in Renaissance or Reformation, at home and

abroad, in sea, forest, plant, and mountain, will again light upon the

travel-adventure of this ever-growing, ever-altered ego.—Thus

self-knowledge becomes universal knowledge as regards the entire past,

and, by another chain of observation, which can only be indicated here,

self-direction and self-training in the freest and most far-seeing spirits

might become universal direction as regards all future humanity.

224.

BALM AND POISON.—We cannot ponder too deeply on this fact: Christianity is

the religion of antiquity grown old; it presupposes degenerate old

culture-stocks, and on them it had, and still has, power to work like

balm. There are periods when ears and eyes are full of slime, so that they

can no longer hear the voice of reason and philosophy or see the wisdom

that walks in bodily shape, whether it bears the name of Epictetus or of

Epicurus. Then, perhaps, the erection of the martyr’s cross and the

“trumpet of the last judgment” may have the effect of still inspiring such

races to end their lives decently. If we think of Juvenal’s Rome, of that

poisonous toad with the eyes of Venus, we understand what it means to make

the sign of the Cross before the world, we honour the silent Christian

community and are grateful for its having stifled the Greco-Roman Empire.

If, indeed, most men were then born in spiritual slavery, with the

sensuality of old men, what a pleasure to meet beings who were more soul

than body, and who seemed to realise the Greek idea of the shades of the

under-world—shy, scurrying, chirping, kindly creatures, with a reversion

on the “better life,” and therefore so unassuming, so secretly scornful,

so proudly patient!—This Christianity, as the evening chime of the _good_

antiquity, with cracked, weary and yet melodious bell, is balm in the ears

even to one who only now traverses those centuries historically. What must

it have been to those men themselves!—To young and fresh barbarian

nations, on the other hand, Christianity is a poison. For to implant the

teaching of sinfulness and damnation in the heroic, childlike, and animal

soul of the old Germans is nothing but poisoning. An enormous chemical

fermentation and decomposition, a medley of sentiments and judgments, a

rank growth of adventurous legend, and hence in the long run a fundamental

weakening of such barbarian peoples, was the inevitable result. True,

without this weakening what should we have left of Greek culture, of the

whole cultured past of the human race? For the barbarians untouched by

Christianity knew very well how to make a clean sweep of old cultures, as

was only too clearly shown by the heathen conquerors of Romanised Britain.

Thus Christianity, against its will, was compelled to aid in making “the

antique world” immortal.—There remains, however, a counter-question and

the possibility of a counter-reckoning. Without this weakening through the

poisoning referred to, would any of those fresh stocks—the Germans, for

instance—have been in a position gradually to find by themselves a higher,

a peculiar, a new culture, of which the most distant conception would

therefore have been lost to humanity?—In this, as in every case, we do not

know, Christianly speaking, whether God owes the devil or the devil God

more thanks for everything having turned out as it has.

225.

FAITH MAKES HOLY AND CONDEMNS.—A Christian who happened upon forbidden

paths of thought might well ask himself on some occasion whether it is

really necessary that there should be a God, side by side with a

representative Lamb, if faith in the existence of these beings suffices to

produce the same influences? If they do exist after all, are they not

superfluous beings? For all that is given by the Christian religion to the

human soul, all that is beneficent, consoling, and edifying, just as much

as all that depresses and crushes, emanates from that faith and not from

the objects of that faith. It is here as in another well-known case—there

were indeed no witches, but the terrible effects of the belief in witches

were the same as if they really had existed. For all occasions where the

Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a God, though in vain (for

there is no God), his religion is inventive enough to find subterfuges and

reasons for tranquillity. In so far Christianity is an ingenious

religion.—Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real

mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can

put mountains where there are none.

226.

THE TRAGI-COMEDY OF REGENSBURG.—Here and there we see with terrible

clearness the harlequinade of Fortune, how she fastens the rope, on which

she wills that succeeding centuries should dance, on to a few days, one

place, the condition and opinions of one brain. Thus the fate of modern

German history lies in the days of that disputation at Regensburg: the

peaceful settlement of ecclesiastical and moral affairs, without religious

wars or a counter-reformation, and also the unity of the German nation,

seemed assured: the deep, gentle spirit of Contarini hovered for one

moment over the theological squabble, victorious, as representative of the

riper Italian piety, reflecting the morning glory of intellectual freedom.

But Luther’s hard head, full of suspicions and strange misgivings, showed

resistance. Because justification by grace appeared to him _his_ greatest

motto and discovery, he did not believe the phrase in the mouth of

Italians; whereas, in point of fact, as is well known, they had invented

it much earlier and spread it throughout Italy in deep silence. In this

apparent agreement Luther saw the tricks of the devil, and hindered the

work of peace as well as he could, thereby advancing to a great extent the

aims of the Empire’s foes.—And now, in order to have a still stronger idea

of the dreadful farcicality of it all, let us add that none of the

principles about which men then disputed in Regensburg—neither that of

original sin, nor that of redemption by proxy, nor that of justification

by faith—is in any way true or even has any connection with truth: that

they are now all recognised as incapable of being discussed. Yet on this

account the world was set on fire—that is to say, by opinions which

correspond to no things or realities; whereas as regards purely

philological questions—as, for instance, that of the sacramental words in

the Eucharist—discussion at any rate is permitted, because in this case

the truth can be said. But “where nothing is, even truth has lost her

right.”(15)—Lastly, it only remains to be said that it is true these

principles give rise to sources of power so mighty that without them all

the mills of the modern world could not be driven with such force. And it

is primarily a matter of force, only secondarily of truth (and perhaps not

even secondarily)—is it not so, my dear up-to-date friends?

227.

GOETHE’S ERRORS.—Goethe is a signal exception among great artists in that

he did not live within the limited confines of his real capacity, as if

that must be the essential, the distinctive, the unconditional, and the

last thing in him and for all the world. Twice he intended to possess

something higher than he really possessed—and went astray in the second

half of his life, where he seems quite convinced that he is one of the

great scientific discoverers and illuminators. So too in the first half of

his life he demanded of himself something higher than the poetic art

seemed to him—and here already he made a mistake. That nature wished to

make him a plastic artist,—_this_ was his inwardly glowing and scorching

secret, which finally drove him to Italy, that he might give vent to his

mania in this direction and make to it every possible sacrifice. At last,

shrewd as he was, and honestly averse to any mental perversion in himself,

he discovered that a tricksy elf of desire had attracted him to the belief

in this calling, and that he must free himself of the greatest passion of

his heart and bid it farewell. The painful conviction, tearing and gnawing

at his vitals, that it was necessary to bid farewell, finds full

expression in the character of Tasso. Over Tasso, that Werther

intensified, hovers the premonition of something worse than death, as when

one says: “Now it is over, after this farewell: how shall I go on living

without going mad?” These two fundamental errors of his life gave Goethe,

in face of a purely literary attitude towards poetry (the only attitude

then known to the world), such an unembarrassed and apparently almost

arbitrary position. Not to speak of the period when Schiller (poor

Schiller, who had no time himself and left no time to others) drove away

his shy dread of poetry, his fear of all literary life and craftsmanship,

Goethe appears like a Greek who now and then visits his beloved, doubting

whether she be not a Goddess to whom he can give no proper name. In all

his poetry one notices the inspiring neighbourhood of plastic art and

Nature. The features of these figures that floated before him—and perhaps

he always thought he was on the track of the metamorphoses of one

Goddess—became, without his will or knowledge, the features of all the

children of his art. Without the extravagances of error he would not have

been Goethe—that is, the only German artist in writing who has not yet

become out of date—just because he desired as little to be a writer as a

German by vocation.

228.

TRAVELLERS AND THEIR GRADES.—Among travellers we may distinguish five

grades. The first and lowest grade is of those who travel and are

seen—they become really travelled and are, as it were, blind. Next come

those who really see the world. The third class experience the results of

their seeing. The fourth weave their experience into their life and carry

it with them henceforth. Lastly, there are some men of the highest

strength who, as soon as they have returned home, must finally and

necessarily work out in their lives and productions all the things seen

that they have experienced and incorporated in themselves.—Like these five

species of travellers, all mankind goes through the whole pilgrimage of

life, the lowest as purely passive, the highest as those who act and live

out their lives without keeping back any residue of inner experiences.

229.

IN CLIMBING HIGHER.—So soon as we climb higher than those who hitherto

admired us, we appear to them as sunken and fallen. For they imagined that

under all circumstances they were on the heights in our company (maybe

also through our agency).

230.

MEASURE AND MODERATION.—Of two quite lofty things, measure and moderation,

it is best never to speak. A few know their force and significance, from

the mysterious paths of inner experiences and conversions: they honour in

them something quite godlike, and are afraid to speak aloud. All the rest

hardly listen when they are spoken about, and think the subjects under

discussion are tedium and mediocrity. We must perhaps except those who

have once heard a warning note from that realm but have stopped their ears

against the sound. The recollection of it makes them angry and

exasperated.

231.

HUMANITY OF FRIENDSHIP AND COMRADESHIP.—“If thou wilt take the left hand,

then I will go to the right,”(16) that feeling is the hall-mark of

humanity in intimate intercourse, and without that feeling every

friendship, every band of apostles or disciples, sooner or later becomes a

fraud.

232.

THE PROFOUND.—Men of profound thought appear to themselves in intercourse

with others like comedians, for in order to be understood they must always

simulate superficiality.

233.

FOR THE SCORNERS OF “HERD-HUMANITY.”—He who regards human beings as a

herd, and flies from them as fast as he can, will certainly be caught up

by them and gored upon their horns.

234.

THE MAIN TRANSGRESSION AGAINST THE VAIN.—In society, he who gives another

an opportunity of favourably setting forth his knowledge, sentiments, and

experience sets himself above him. Unless he is felt by the other to be a

superior being without limitation, he is guilty of an attack upon his

vanity, while what he aimed at was the gratification of the other man’s

vanity.

235.

DISAPPOINTMENT.—When a long life of action distinguished by speeches and

writings gives publicity to a man’s personality, personal intercourse with

him is generally disappointing on two grounds. Firstly, one expects too

much from a brief period of intercourse (namely, all that the thousand and

one opportunities of life can alone bring out). Secondly, no recognised

person gives himself the trouble to woo recognition in individual cases.

He is too careless, and we are at too high a tension.

236.

TWO SOURCES OF KINDNESS.—To treat all men with equal good-humour, and to

be kind without distinction of persons, may arise as much from a profound

contempt for mankind as from an ingrained love of humanity.

237.

THE WANDERER IN THE MOUNTAINS TO HIMSELF.—There are certain signs that you

have gone farther and higher. There is a freer, wider prospect before you,

the air blows cooler yet milder in your face (you have unlearned the folly

of confounding mildness with warmth), your gait is more firm and vigorous,

courage and discretion have waxed together. On all these grounds your

journey may now be more lonely and in any case more perilous than

heretofore, if indeed not to the extent believed by those who from the

misty valley see you, the roamer, striding on the mountains.

238.

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF OUR NEIGHBOUR.—I admit that my head is set wrong on

my neck only, for every other man, as is well known, knows better than I

what I should do or leave alone. The only one who cannot help me is

myself, poor beggar! Are we not all like statues on which false heads have

been placed? Eh, dear neighbour?—Ah no; you, just you, are the exception!

239.

CAUTION.—We must either not go about at all with people who are lacking in

the reverence for personalities, or inexorably fetter them beforehand with

the manacles of convention.

240.

THE WISH TO APPEAR VAIN.—In conversation with strangers or little-known

acquaintances, to express only selected thoughts, to speak of one’s famous

acquaintances, and important experiences and travels, is a sign that one

is not proud, or at least would not like to appear proud. Vanity is the

polite mask of pride.

241.

GOOD FRIENDSHIP.—A good friendship arises when the one man deeply respects

the other, more even than himself; loves him also, though not so much as

himself; and finally, to facilitate intercourse, knows how to add the

delicate bloom and veneer of intimacy, but at the same time wisely

refrains from a true, real intimacy, from the confounding of _meum_ and

_tuum_.

242.

FRIENDS AS GHOSTS.—If we change ourselves vitally, our friends, who have

not changed, become ghosts of our own past: their voice sounds shadowy and

dreadful to us, as if we heard our own voice speaking, but younger,

harder, less mellow.

243.

ONE EYE AND TWO GLANCES.—The same people whose eyes naturally plead for

favours and indulgences are accustomed, from their frequent humiliations

and cravings for revenge, to assume a shameless glance as well.

244.

THE HAZE OF DISTANCE.—A child throughout life—that sounds very touching,

but is only the verdict from the distance. Seen and known close at hand,

he is always called “puerile throughout life.”

245.

ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE IN THE SAME MISUNDERSTANDING.—The mute

perplexity of the subtle brain is usually understood by the non-subtle as

a silent superiority, and is much dreaded whereas the perception of

perplexity would produce good will.

246.

THE SAGE GIVING HIMSELF OUT TO BE A FOOL.—The philanthropy of the sage

sometimes makes him decide to pretend to be excited, enraged, or

delighted, so that he may not hurt his surroundings by the coldness and

rationality of his true nature.

247.

FORCING ONESELF TO ATTENTION.—So soon as we note that any one in

intercourse and conversation with us has to force himself to attention, we

have adequate evidence that he loves us not, or loves us no longer.

248.

THE WAY TO A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE.—Learning from one’s enemies is the best way

to love them, for it inspires us with a grateful mood towards them.

249.

STRATAGEM OF THE IMPORTUNATE.—The importunate man gives us gold coins as

change for our convention coins, and thereby tries to force us afterwards

to treat our convention as an oversight and him as an exception.

250.

REASON FOR DISLIKE.—We become hostile to many an artist or writer, not

because we notice in the end that he has duped us, but because he did not

find more subtle means necessary to entrap us.

251.

IN PARTING.—Not by the way one soul approaches another, but by the way it

separates, do I recognise its relationship and homogeneity with the other.

252.

SILENTIUM.—We must not speak about our friends, or we renounce the

sentiment of friendship.

253.

IMPOLITENESS.—Impoliteness is often the sign of a clumsy modesty, which

when taken by surprise loses its head and would fain hide the fact by

means of rudeness.

254.

HONESTY’S MISCALCULATION.—Our newest acquaintances are sometimes the first

to learn what we have hitherto kept dark. We have the foolish notion that

our proof of confidence is the strongest fetter wherewith to hold them

fast. But _they_ do not know enough about us to feel so strongly the

sacrifice involved in our speaking out, and betray our secrets to others

without any idea of betrayal. Hereby we possibly lose our old friends.

255.

IN THE ANTE-CHAMBER OF FAVOUR.—All men whom we let stand long in the

ante-chamber of our favour get into a state of fermentation or become

bitter.

256.

WARNING TO THE DESPISED.—When we have sunk unmistakably in the estimation

of mankind we should cling tooth and nail to modesty in intercourse, or we

shall betray to others that we have sunk in our own estimation as well.

Cynicism in intercourse is a sign that a man, when alone, treats himself

too as a dog.

257.

IGNORANCE OFTEN ENNOBLES.—With regard to the respect of those who pay

respect, it is an advantage ostensibly not to understand certain things.

Ignorance, too, confers privileges.

258.

THE OPPONENT OF GRACE.—The impatient and arrogant man does not care for

grace, feeling it to be a corporeal, visible reproach against himself. For

grace is heartfelt toleration in movement and gesture.

259.

ON SEEING AGAIN.—When old friends see each other again after a long

separation, it often happens that they affect an interest in matters to

which they have long since become indifferent. Sometimes both remark this,

but dare not raise the veil—from a mournful doubt. Hence arise

conversations as in the realm of the dead.

260.

MAKING FRIENDS ONLY WITH THE INDUSTRIOUS.—The man of leisure is dangerous

to his friends, for, having nothing to do, he talks of what his friends

are doing or not doing, interferes, and finally makes himself a nuisance.

The clever man will only make friends with the industrious.

261.

ONE WEAPON TWICE AS MUCH AS TWO.—It is an unequal combat when one man

defends his cause with head and heart, the other with head alone. The

first has sun and wind against him, as it were, and his two weapons

interfere with each other: he loses the prize—in the eyes of truth. True,

the victory of the second, with his one weapon, is seldom a victory after

the hearts of all the other spectators, and makes him unpopular.

262.

DEPTH AND TROUBLED WATERS.—The public easily confounds him who fishes in

troubled waters with him who pumps up from the depths.

263.

DEMONSTRATING ONE’S VANITY TO FRIEND AND FOE.—Many a man, from vanity,

maltreats even his friends, when in the presence of witnesses to whom he

wishes to make his own preponderance clear. Others exaggerate the merits

of their enemies, in order to point proudly to the fact that they are

worthy of such foes.

264.

COOLING OFF.—The over-heating of the heart is generally allied with

illness of the head and judgment. He who is concerned for a time with the

health of his head must know what he has to cool, careless of the future

of his heart. For if we are capable at all of giving warmth, we are sure

to become warm again and then have our summer.

265.

MINGLED FEELINGS.—Towards science women and self-seeking artists entertain

a feeling that is composed of envy and sentimentality.

266.

WHERE DANGER IS GREATEST.—We seldom break our leg so long as life

continues a toilsome upward climb. The danger comes when we begin to take

things easily and choose the convenient paths.

267.

NOT TOO EARLY.—We must beware of becoming sharp too early, or we shall

also become thin too early.

268.

JOY IN REFRACTORINESS.—The good teacher knows cases where he is proud that

his pupil remains true to himself in opposition to him—at times when the

youth must not understand the man or would be harmed by understanding him.

269.

THE EXPERIMENT OF HONESTY.—Young men, who wish to be more honest than they

have been, seek as victim some one acknowledged to be honest, attacking

him first with an attempt to reach his height by abuse—with the underlying

notion that this first experiment at any rate is void of danger. For just

such a one has no right to chastise the impudence of the honest man.

270.

THE ETERNAL CHILD.—We think, short-sighted that we are, that fairy-tales

and games belong to childhood. As if at any age we should care to live

without fairy-tales and games! Our words and sentiments are indeed

different, but the essential fact remains the same, as is proved by the

child himself looking on games as his work and fairy-tales as his truth.

The shortness of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic distinction

between the different ages—as if every age brought something new—and a

poet ought one day to portray a man of two hundred, who really lives

without fairy-tales and games.

271.

EVERY PHILOSOPHY IS THE PHILOSOPHY OF A PERIOD OF LIFE.—The period of life

in which a philosopher finds his teaching is manifested by his teaching;

he cannot avoid that, however elevated above time and hour he may feel

himself. Thus, Schopenhauer’s philosophy remains a mirror of his hot and

melancholy youth—it is no mode of thought for older men. Plato’s

philosophy reminds one of the middle thirties, when a warm and a cold

current generally rush together, so that spray and delicate clouds and,

under favourable circumstances and glimpses of sunshine, enchanting

rainbow-pictures result.

272.

OF THE INTELLECT OF WOMEN.—The intellectual strength of a woman is best

proved by the fact that she offers her own intellect as a sacrifice out of

love for a man and his intellect, and that nevertheless in the new domain,

which was previously foreign to her nature, a second intellect at once

arises as an aftergrowth, to which the man’s mind impels her.

273.

RAISING AND LOWERING IN THE SEXUAL DOMAIN.—The storm of desire will

sometimes carry a man up to a height where all desire is silenced, where

he really loves and lives in a better state of being rather than in a

better state of choice. On the other hand, a good woman, from true love,

often climbs down to desire, and lowers herself in her own eyes. The

latter action in particular is one of the most pathetic sensations which

the idea of a good marriage can involve.

274.

MAN PROMISES, WOMAN FULFILS.—By woman Nature shows how far she has

hitherto achieved her task of fashioning humanity, by man she shows what

she has had to overcome and what she still proposes to do for

humanity.—The most perfect woman of every age is the holiday-task of the

Creator on every seventh day of culture, the recreation of the artist from

his work.

275.

TRANSPLANTING.—If we have spent our intellect in order to gain mastery

over the intemperance of the passions, the sad result often follows that

we transfer the intemperance to the intellect, and from that time forth

are extravagant in thought and desire of knowledge.

276.

LAUGHTER AS TREACHERY.—How and when a woman laughs is a sign of her

culture, but in the ring of laughter her nature reveals itself, and in

highly cultured women perhaps even the last insoluble residue of their

nature. Hence the psychologist will say with Horace, though from different

reasons: “Ridete puellae.”

277.

FROM THE YOUTHFUL SOUL.—Youths varyingly show devotion and impudence

towards the same person, because at bottom they only despise or admire

themselves in that other person, and between the two feelings but stagger

to and fro in themselves, so long as they have not found in experience the

measure of their will and ability.

278.

FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE WORLD.—If we forbade the discontented, the

sullen, and the atrabilious to propagate, we might transform the world

into a garden of happiness.—This aphorism belongs to a practical

philosophy for the female sex.

279.

NOT TO DISTRUST YOUR EMOTIONS.—The feminine phrase “Do not distrust your

emotions” does not mean much more than “Eat what tastes good to you.” This

may also, especially for moderate natures, be a good everyday rule. But

other natures must live according to another maxim: “You must eat not only

with your mouth but also with your brain, in order that the greediness of

your mouth may not prove your undoing.”

280.

A CRUEL FANCY OF LOVE.—Every great love involves the cruel thought of

killing the object of love, so that it may be removed once for all from

the mischievous play of change. For love is more afraid of change than of

destruction.

281.

DOORS.—In everything that is learnt or experienced, the child, just like

the man, sees doors; but for the former they are places to go _to_, for

the latter to go _through_.

282.

SYMPATHETIC WOMEN.—The sympathy of women, which is talkative, takes the

sick-bed to market.

283.

EARLY MERIT.—He who acquires merit early in life tends to forget all

reverence for age and old people, and accordingly, greatly to his

disadvantage, excludes himself from the society of the mature, those who

confer maturity. Thus in spite of his early merit he remains green,

importunate, and boyish longer than others.

284.

SOULS ALL OF A PIECE.—Women and artists think that where we do not

contradict them we cannot. Reverence on ten counts and silent disapproval

on ten others appears to them an impossible combination, because their

souls are all of a piece.

285.

YOUNG TALENTS.—With respect to young talents we must strictly follow

Goethe’s maxim, that we should often avoid harming error in order to avoid

harming truth. Their condition is like the diseases of pregnancy, and

involves strange appetites. These appetites should be satisfied and

humoured as far as possible, for the sake of the fruit they may be

expected to produce. It is true that, as nurse of these remarkable

invalids, one must learn the difficult art of voluntary self-abasement.

286.

DISGUST WITH TRUTH.—Women are so constituted that all truth (in relation

to men, love, children, society, aim of life) disgusts them—and that they

try to be revenged on every one who opens their eyes.

287.

THE SOURCE OF GREAT LOVE.—Whence arises the sudden passion of a man for a

woman, a passion so deep, so vital? Least of all from sensuality only: but

when a man finds weakness, need of help, and high spirits united in the

same creature, he suffers a sort of overflowing of soul, and is touched

and offended at the same moment. At this point arises the source of great

love.

288.

CLEANLINESS.—In the child, the sense for cleanliness should be fanned into

a passion, and then later on he will raise himself, in ever new phases, to

almost every virtue, and will finally appear, in compensation for all

talent, as a shining cloud of purity, temperance, gentleness, and

character, happy in himself and spreading happiness around.

289.

OF VAIN OLD MEN.—Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of

thought to old age. When, in spite of this, old men sometimes speak and

write in the manner of the profound, they do so from vanity, imagining

that they thereby assume the charm of juvenility, enthusiasm, growth,

apprehensiveness, hopefulness.

290.

ENJOYMENT OF NOVELTY.—Men use a new lesson or experience later on as a

ploughshare or perhaps also as a weapon, women at once make it into an

ornament.

291.

HOW BOTH SEXES BEHAVE WHEN IN THE RIGHT.—If it is conceded to a woman that

she is right, she cannot deny herself the triumph of setting her heel on

the neck of the vanquished; she must taste her victory to the full. On the

other hand, man towards man in such a case is ashamed of being right. But

then man is accustomed to victory; with woman it is an exception.

292.

ABNEGATION IN THE WILL TO BEAUTY.—In order to become beautiful, a woman

must not desire to be considered pretty. That is to say, in ninety-nine

out of a hundred cases where she could please she must scorn and put aside

all thoughts of pleasing. Only then can she ever reap the delight of him

whose soul’s portal is wide enough to admit the great.

293.

UNINTELLIGIBLE, UNENDURABLE.—A youth cannot understand that an old man has

also had his delights, his dawns of feeling, his changings and soarings of

thought. It offends him to think that such things have existed before. But

it makes him very bitter to hear that, to become fruitful, he must lose

those buds and dispense with their fragrance.

294.

THE PARTY WITH THE AIR OF MARTYRDOM.—Every party that can assume an air of

martyrdom wins good-natured souls over to its side and thereby itself

acquires an air of good nature—greatly to its advantage.

295.

ASSERTIONS SURER THAN ARGUMENTS.—An assertion has, with the majority of

men at any rate, more effect than an argument, for arguments provoke

mistrust. Hence demagogues seek to strengthen the arguments of their party

by assertions.

296.

THE BEST CONCEALERS.—All regularly successful men are profoundly cunning

in making their faults and weaknesses look like manifestations of

strength. This proves that they must know their defects uncommonly well.

297.

FROM TIME TO TIME.—He sat in the city gateway and said to one who passed

through that this was the city gate. The latter replied that this was

true, but that one must not be too much in the right if one expected to be

thanked for it. “Oh,” answered the other, “I don’t want thanks, but from

time to time it is very pleasant not merely to be in the right but to

remain in the right.”

298.

VIRTUE WAS NOT INVENTED BY THE GERMANS.—Goethe’s nobleness and freedom

from envy, Beethoven’s fine hermitical resignation, Mozart’s cheerfulness

and grace of heart, Handel’s unbending manliness and freedom under the

law, Bach’s confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need

to renounce glamour and success—are these qualities peculiarly German?—If

they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and

to what they can attain.

299.

_PIA FRAUS_ OR SOMETHING ELSE.—I hope I am mistaken, but I think that in

Germany of to-day a twofold sort of hypocrisy is set up as the duty of the

moment for every one. From imperial-political misgivings Germanism is

demanded, and from social apprehensions Christianity—but both only in

words and gestures, and particularly in ability to keep silent. It is the

veneer that nowadays costs so much and is paid for so highly; and for the

benefit of the spectators the face of the nation assumes German and

Christian wrinkles.

300.

HOW FAR EVEN IN THE GOOD THE HALF MAY BE MORE THAN THE WHOLE.—In all

things that are constructed to last and demand the service of many hands,

much that is less good must be made a rule, although the organiser knows

what is better and harder very well. He will calculate that there will

never be a lack of persons who _can_ correspond to the rule, and he knows

that the middling good is the rule.—The youth seldom sees this point, and

as an innovator thinks how marvellously he is in the right and how strange

is the blindness of others.

301.

THE PARTISAN.—The true partisan learns nothing more, he only experiences

and judges. It is significant that Solon, who was never a partisan but

pursued his aims above and apart from parties or even against them, was

the father of that simple phrase wherein lies the secret of the health and

vitality of Athens: “I grow old, but I am always learning.”

302.

WHAT IS GERMAN ACCORDING TO GOETHE.—They are really intolerable people of

whom one cannot even accept the good, who have freedom of disposition but

do not remark that they are lacking in freedom of taste and spirit. Yet

just this, according to Goethe’s well-weighed judgment, is German.—His

voice and his example indicate that the German should be more than a

German if he wishes to be useful or even endurable to other nations—and

which direction his striving should take, in order that he may rise above

and beyond himself.

303.

WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO REMAIN STATIONARY.—When the masses begin to rage,

and reason is under a cloud, it is a good thing, if the health of one’s

soul is not quite assured, to go under a doorway and look out to see what

the weather is like.

304.

THE REVOLUTION-SPIRIT AND THE POSSESSION-SPIRIT.—The only remedy against

Socialism that still lies in your power is to avoid provoking Socialism—in

other words, to live in moderation and contentment, to prevent as far as

possible all lavish display, and to aid the State as far as possible in

its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries. You do not like this remedy?

Then, you rich bourgeois who call yourselves “Liberals,” confess that it

is your own inclination that you find so terrible and menacing in

Socialists, but allow to prevail in yourselves as unavoidable, as if with

you it were something different. As you are constituted, if you had not

your fortune and the cares of maintaining it, this bent of yours would

make Socialists of you. Possession alone differentiates you from them. If

you wish to conquer the assailants of your prosperity, you must first

conquer yourselves.—And if that prosperity only meant well-being, it would

not be so external and provocative of envy; it would be more generous,

more benevolent, more compensatory, more helpful. But the spurious,

histrionic element in your pleasures, which lie more in the feeling of

contrast (because others have them not, and feel envious) than in feelings

of realised and heightened power—your houses, dresses, carriages, shops,

the demands of your palates and your tables, your noisy operatic and

musical enthusiasm; lastly your women, formed and fashioned but of base

metal, gilded but without the ring of gold, chosen by you for show and

considering themselves meant for show—these are the things that spread the

poison of that national disease, which seizes the masses ever more and

more as a Socialistic heart-itch, but has its origin and breeding-place in

you. Who shall now arrest this epidemic?

305.

PARTY TACTICS.—When a party observes that a previous member has changed

from an unqualified to a qualified adherent, it endures it so ill that it

irritates and mortifies him in every possible way with the object of

forcing him to a decisive break and making him an opponent. For the party

suspects that the intention of finding a relative value in its faith, a

value which admits of pro and con, of weighing and discarding, is more

dangerous than downright opposition.

306.

FOR THE STRENGTHENING OF PARTIES.—Whoever wishes to strengthen a party

internally should give it an opportunity of being forcibly treated with

obvious injustice. The party thus acquires a capital of good conscience,

which hitherto it perhaps lacked.

307.

TO PROVIDE FOR ONE’S PAST.—As men after all only respect the

old-established and slowly developed, he who would survive after his death

must not only provide for posterity but still more for the past. Hence

tyrants of every sort (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like

to do violence to history, so that history may seem a preparation and a

ladder up to them.

308.

PARTY WRITERS.—The beating of drums, which delights young writers who

serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party like a

rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration.

309.

TAKING SIDES AGAINST OURSELVES.—Our followers never forgive us for taking

sides against ourselves, for we seem in their eyes not only to be spurning

their love but to be exposing them to the charge of lack of intelligence.

310.

DANGER IN WEALTH.—Only a man of intellect should hold property: otherwise

property is dangerous to the community. For the owner, not knowing how to

make use of the leisure which his possessions might secure to him, will

continue to strive after more property. This strife will be his

occupation, his strategy in the war with ennui. So in the end real wealth

is produced from the moderate property that would be enough for an

intellectual man. Such wealth, then, is the glittering outcrop of

intellectual dependence and poverty, but it looks quite different from

what its humble origin might lead one to expect, because it can mask

itself with culture and art—it can, in fact, purchase the mask. Hence it

excites envy in the poor and uncultured—who at bottom always envy culture

and see no mask in the mask—and gradually paves the way for a social

revolution. For a gilded coarseness and a histrionic blowing of trumpets

in the pretended enjoyment of culture inspires that class with the

thought, “It is only a matter of money,” whereas it is indeed to some

extent a matter of money, but far more of intellect.

311.

JOY IN COMMANDING AND OBEYING.—Commanding is a joy, like obeying; the

former when it has not yet become a habit, the latter just when it has

become a habit. Old servants under new masters advance each other mutually

in giving pleasure.

312.

AMBITION FOR A FORLORN HOPE.—There is an ambition for a forlorn hope which

forces a party to place itself at the post of extreme danger.

313.

WHEN ASSES ARE NEEDED.—We shall not move the crowd to cry “Hosanna!” until

we have ridden into the city upon an ass.

314.

PARTY USAGE.—Every party attempts to represent the important elements that

have sprung up outside it as unimportant, and if it does not succeed, it

attacks those elements the more bitterly, the more excellent they are.

315.

BECOMING EMPTY.—Of him who abandons himself to the course of events, a

smaller and smaller residue is continually left. Great politicians may

therefore become quite empty men, although they were once full and rich.

316.

WELCOME ENEMIES.—The Socialistic movements are nowadays becoming more and

more agreeable rather than terrifying to the dynastic governments, because

by these movements they are provided with a right and a weapon for making

exceptional rules, and can thus attack their real bogies, democrats and

anti-dynasts.—Towards all that such governments professedly detest they

feel a secret cordiality and inclination. But they are compelled to draw

the veil over their soul.

317.

POSSESSION POSSESSES.—Only up to a certain point does possession make men

feel freer and more independent; one step farther, and possession becomes

lord, the possessor a slave. The latter must sacrifice his time, his

thoughts to the former, and feels himself compelled to an intercourse,

nailed to a spot, incorporated with the State—perhaps quite in conflict

with his real and essential needs.

318.

OF THE MASTERY OF THEM THAT KNOW.—It is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up

a model for the choice of a legislative body. First of all the honest and

reliable men of the nation, who at the same time are masters and experts

in some one branch, have to become prominent by mutual scenting-out and

recognition. From these, by a narrower process of selection, the learned

and expert of the first rank in each individual branch must again be

chosen, also by mutual recognition and guarantee. If the legislative body

be composed of these, it will finally be necessary, in each individual

case, that only the voices and judgments of the most specialised experts

should decide; the honesty of all the rest should have become so great

that it is simply a matter of decency to leave the voting also in the

hands of these men. The result would be that the law, in the strictest

sense, would emanate from the intelligence of the most intelligent.—As

things now are, voting is done by parties, and at every division there

must be hundreds of uneasy consciences among the ill-taught, the incapable

of judgment, among those who merely repeat, imitate, and go with the tide.

Nothing lowers the dignity of a new law so much as this inherent

shamefaced feeling of insincerity that necessarily results at every party

division. But, as has been said, it is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up

such a model: no power on earth is at present strong enough to realise

such an ideal—unless the belief in the highest utility of knowledge, and

of those that know, at last dawns even upon the most hostile minds and is

preferred to the prevalent belief in majorities. In the sense of such a

future may our watchword be: “More reverence for them that know, and down

with all parties!”

319.

OF THE “NATION OF THINKERS” (OR OF BAD THINKING).—The vague, vacillating,

premonitory, elementary, intuitive elements—to choose obscure names for

obscure things—that are attributed to the German nature would be, if they

really still existed, a proof that our culture has remained several stages

behind and is still surrounded by the spell and atmosphere of the Middle

Ages.—It is true that in this backwardness there are certain advantages:

by these qualities the Germans (if, as has been said before, they still

possess them) would possess the capacity, which other nations have now

lost, for doing certain things and particularly for understanding certain

things. Much undoubtedly is lost if the lack of sense—which is just the

common factor in all those qualities—is lost. Here too, however, there are

no losses without the highest compensatory gains, so that no reason is

left for lamenting, granting that we do not, like children, and gourmands,

wish to enjoy at once the fruits of all seasons of the year.

320.

CARRYING COALS TO NEWCASTLE.—The governments of the great States have two

instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a

coarser, the army, and a more refined, the school. With the aid of the

former they win over to their side the ambition of the higher strata and

the strength of the lower, so far as both are characteristic of active and

energetic men of moderate or inferior gifts. With the aid of the latter

they win over gifted poverty, especially the intellectually pretentious

semi-poverty of the middle classes. Above all, they make teachers of all

grades into an intellectual court looking unconsciously “towards the

heights.” By putting obstacle after obstacle in the way of private schools

and the wholly distasteful individual tuition they secure the disposal of

a considerable number of educational posts, towards which numerous hungry

and submissive eyes are turned to an extent five times as great as can

ever be satisfied. These posts, however, must support the holder but

meagrely, so that he maintains a feverish thirst for promotion and becomes

still more closely attached to the views of the government. For it is

always more advantageous to foster moderate discontent than contentment,

the mother of courage, the grandmother of free thought and exuberance. By

means of this physically and mentally bridled body of teachers, the youth

of the country is as far as possible raised to a certain level of culture

that is useful to the State and arranged on a suitable sliding-scale.

Above all, the immature and ambitious minds of all classes are almost

imperceptibly imbued with the idea that only a career which is recognised

and hall-marked by the State can lead immediately to social distinction.

The effect of this belief in government examinations and titles goes so

far that even men who have remained independent and have risen by trade or

handicraft still feel a pang of discontent in their hearts until their

position too is marked and acknowledged by a gracious bestowal of rank and

orders from above—until one becomes a “somebody.” Finally the State

connects all these hundreds of offices and posts in its hands with the

obligation of being trained and hallmarked in these State schools if one

ever wishes to enter this charmed circle. Honour in society, daily bread,

the possibility of a family, protection from above, the feeling of

community in a common culture—all this forms a network of hopes into which

every young man walks: how should he feel the slightest breath of

mistrust? In the end, perhaps, the obligation of being a soldier for one

year has become with every one, after the lapse of a few generations, an

unreflecting habit, an understood thing, with an eye to which we construct

the plan of our lives quite early. Then the State can venture on the

master-stroke of weaving together school and army, talent, ambition and

strength by means of common advantages—that is, by attracting the more

highly gifted on favourable terms to the army and inspiring them with the

military spirit of joyful obedience; so that finally, perhaps, they become

attached permanently to the flag and endow it by their talents with an

ever new and more brilliant lustre. Then nothing more is wanted but an

opportunity for great wars. These are provided from professional reasons

(and so in all innocence) by diplomats, aided by newspapers and Stock

Exchanges. For “the nation,” as a nation of soldiers, need never be

supplied with a good conscience in war—it has one already.

321.

THE PRESS.—If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions

glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by

unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show

their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after

they have taken place;—what significance can we attach to the Press in its

present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to

bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an

everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a

false direction?

322.

AFTER A GREAT EVENT.—A nation and a man whose soul has come to light

through some great event generally feel the immediate need of some act of

childishness or coarseness, as much from shame as for purposes of

recreation.

323.

TO BE A GOOD GERMAN MEANS TO DE-GERMANISE ONESELF.—National differences

consist, far more than has hitherto been observed, only in the differences

of various grades of culture, and are only to a very small extent

permanent (nor even that in a strict sense). For this reason all arguments

based on national character are so little binding on one who aims at the

alteration of convictions—in other words, at culture. If, for instance, we

consider all that has already been German, we shall improve upon the

hypothetical question, “What is German?” by the counter-question, “What is

_now_ German?” and every good German will answer it practically, by

overcoming his German characteristics. For when a nation advances and

grows, it bursts the girdle previously given to it by its national

outlook. When it remains stationary or declines, its soul is surrounded by

a fresh girdle, and the crust, as it becomes harder and harder, builds a

prison around, with walls growing ever higher. Hence if a nation has much

that is firmly established, this is a sign that it wishes to petrify and

would like to become nothing but a monument. This happened, from a

definite date, in the case of Egypt. So he who is well-disposed towards

the Germans may for his part consider how he may more and more grow out of

what is German. The tendency to be un-German has therefore always been a

mark of efficient members of our nation.

324.

FOREIGNISMS.—A foreigner who travelled in Germany found favour or the

reverse by certain assertions of his, according to the districts in which

he stayed. All intelligent Suabians, he used to say, are coquettish.—The

other Suabians still believed that Uhland was a poet and Goethe

immoral.—The best about German novels now in vogue was that one need not

read them, for one knew already what they contained.—The native of Berlin

seemed more good-humoured than the South German, for he was all too fond

of mocking, and so could endure mockery himself, which the South German

could not.—The intellect of the Germans was kept down by their beer and

their newspapers: he recommended them tea and pamphlets, of course as a

cure.—He advised us to contemplate the different nations of worn-out

Europe and see how well each displayed some particular quality of old age,

to the delight of those who sit before the great spectacle: how the French

successfully represent the cleverness and amiability of old age, the

English the experience and reserve, the Italians the innocence and

candour. Can the other masks of old age be wanting? Where is the proud old

man, the domineering old man, the covetous old man?—The most dangerous

region in Germany was Saxony and Thuringia: nowhere else was there more

mental nimbleness, more knowledge of men, side by side with freedom of

thought; and all this was so modestly veiled by the ugly dialect and the

zealous officiousness of the inhabitants that one hardly noticed that one

here had to deal with the intellectual drill-sergeants of Germany, her

teachers for good or evil.—The arrogance of the North Germans was kept in

check by their tendency to obey, that of the South Germans by their

tendency—to make themselves comfortable.—It appeared to him that in their

women German men possessed awkward but self-opinionated housewives, who

belauded themselves so perseveringly that they had almost persuaded the

world, and at any rate their husbands, of their peculiarly German

housewifely virtue.—When the conversation turned on Germany’s home and

foreign policy, he used to say (he called it “betray the secret”) that

Germany’s greatest statesman did not believe in great statesmen.—The

future of Germany he found menaced and menacing, for Germans had forgotten

how to enjoy themselves (an art that the Italians understood so well),

but, by the great games of chance called wars and dynastic revolutions,

had accustomed themselves to emotionalism, and consequently would one day

have an _émeute_. For that is the strongest emotion that a nation can

procure for itself.—The German Socialist was all the more dangerous

because impelled by no definite necessity: his trouble lay in not knowing

what he wanted; so, even if he attained many of his objects, he would

still pine away from desire in the midst of delights, just like Faust, but

presumably like a very vulgar Faust. “For the Faust-Devil,” he finally

exclaimed, “by whom cultured Germans were so much plagued, was exorcised

by Bismarck; but now the Devil has entered into the swine,(17) and is

worse than ever!”

325.

OPINIONS.—Most men are nothing and count for nothing until they have

arrayed themselves in universal convictions and public opinions. This is

in accordance with the tailors’ philosophy, “The apparel makes the man.”

Of exceptional men, however, it must be said, “The wearer primarily makes

the apparel.” Here opinions cease to be public, and become something else

than masks, ornament, and disguise.

326.

TWO KINDS OF SOBRIETY.—In order not to confound the sobriety arising from

mental exhaustion with that arising from moderation, one must remark that

the former is peevish, the latter cheerful.

327.

DEBASEMENT OF JOY.—To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears

to us good, and above all not a day earlier—that is the only way to keep

joy pure. Otherwise, joy all too easily becomes insipid and rotten to the

taste, and counts, for whole strata of the people, among the adulterated

foodstuffs.

328.

THE SCAPEGOAT OF VIRTUE.—When a man does his very best, those who mean

well towards him, but are not capable of appreciating him, speedily seek a

scapegoat to immolate, thinking it is the scapegoat of sin—but it is the

scapegoat of virtue.

329.

SOVEREIGNTY.—To honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it _pleases_

one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being

pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small.

330.

INFLUENCE A PHANTOM, NOT A REALITY.—The man of mark gradually learns that

so far as he has influence he is a phantom in other brains, and perhaps he

falls into a state of subtle vexation of soul, in which he asks himself

whether he must not maintain this phantom of himself for the benefit of

his fellow-men.

331.

GIVING AND TAKING.—When one takes away (or anticipates) the smallest thing

that another possesses, the latter is blind to the fact that he has been

given something greater, nay, even the greatest thing.

332.

GOOD PLOUGHLAND.—All rejection and negation betoken a deficiency in

fertility. If we were good ploughland, we should allow nothing to be

unused or lost, and in every thing, event, or person we should welcome

manure, rain, or sunshine.

333.

INTERCOURSE AS AN ENJOYMENT.—If a man renounces the world and

intentionally lives in solitude, he may come to regard intercourse with

others, which he enjoys but seldom, as a special delicacy.

334.

TO KNOW HOW TO SUFFER IN PUBLIC.—We must advertise our misfortunes and

from time to time heave audible sighs and show visible marks of

impatience. For if we could let others see how assured and happy we are in

spite of pain and privation, how envious and ill-tempered they would

become at the sight!—But we must take care not to corrupt our fellow-men;

besides, if they knew the truth, they would levy a heavy toll upon us. At

any rate our public misfortune is our private advantage.

335.

WARMTH ON THE HEIGHTS.—On the heights it is warmer than people in the

valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognises the full

import of this simile.

336.

TO WILL THE GOOD AND BE CAPABLE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.—It is not enough to

practise the good one must have willed it, and, as the poet says, include

the Godhead in our will. But the beautiful we must not will, we must be

capable of it, in innocence and blindness, without any psychical

curiosity. He that lights his lantern to find perfect men should remember

the token by which to know them. They are the men who always act for the

sake of the good and in so doing always attain to the beautiful without

thinking of the beautiful. Many better and nobler men, from impotence or

from want of beauty in their souls, remain unrefreshing and ugly to

behold, with all their good will and good works. They rebuff and injure

even virtue through the repulsive garb in which their bad taste arrays

her.

337.

DANGER OF RENUNCIATION.—We must beware of basing our lives on too narrow a

foundation of appetite. For if we renounce all the joys involved in

positions, honours, associations, revels, creature comforts, and arts, a

day may come when we perceive that this repudiation has led us not to

wisdom but to satiety of life.

338.

FINAL OPINION ON OPINIONS.—Either we should hide our opinions or hide

ourselves behind our opinions. Whoever does otherwise, does not know the

way of the world, or belongs to the order of pious fire-eaters.

339.

“_GAUDEAMUS IGITUR._”—Joy must contain edifying and healing forces for the

moral nature of man. Otherwise, how comes it that our soul, as soon as it

basks in the sunshine of joy, unconsciously vows to itself, “I will be

good!” “I will become perfect!” and is at once seized by a premonition of

perfection that is like a shudder of religious awe?

340.

TO ONE WHO IS PRAISED.—So long as you are praised, believe that you are

not yet on your own course but on that of another.

341.

LOVING THE MASTER.—The apprentice and the master love the master in

different ways.

342.

ALL-TOO-BEAUTIFUL AND HUMAN.—“Nature is too beautiful for thee, poor

mortal,” one often feels. But now and then, at a profound contemplation of

all that is human, in its fulness, vigour, tenderness, and complexity, I

have felt as if I must say, in all humility, “Man also is too beautiful

for the contemplation of man!” Nor did I mean the moral man alone, but

every one.

343.

REAL AND PERSONAL ESTATE.—When life has treated us in true robber fashion,

and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health,

and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the

first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first

time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and

perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the

airs of a mighty real estate owner.

344.

INVOLUNTARILY IDEALISED.—The most painful feeling that exists is finding

out that we are always taken for something higher than we really are. For

we must thereby confess to ourselves, “There is in you some element of

fraud—your speech, your expression, your bearing, your eye, your dealings;

and this deceitful something is as necessary as your usual honesty, but

constantly destroys its effect and its value.”

345.

IDEALIST AND LIAR.—We must not let ourselves be tyrannised even by that

finest faculty of idealising things: otherwise, truth will one day part

company from us with the insulting remark: “Thou arch-liar, what have I to

do with thee?”

346.

BEING MISUNDERSTOOD.—When one is misunderstood generally, it is impossible

to remove a particular misunderstanding. This point must be recognised, to

save superfluous expenditure of energy in self-defence.

347.

THE WATER-DRINKER SPEAKS.—Go on drinking your wine, which has refreshed

you all your life—what affair is it of yours if I have to be a

water-drinker? Are not wine and water peaceable, brotherly elements, that

can live side by side without mutual recriminations?

348.

FROM CANNIBAL COUNTRY.—In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself,

among crowds by the many. Choose which you prefer.

349.

THE FREEZING-POINT OF THE WILL.—“Some time the hour will come at last, the

hour that will envelop you in the golden cloud of painlessness; when the

soul enjoys its own weariness and, happy in patient playing with patience,

resembles the waves of a lake, which on a quiet summer day, in the

reflection of a many-hued evening sky, sip and sip at the shore and again

are hushed—without end, without purpose, without satiety, without need—all

calm rejoicing in change, all ebb and flow of Nature’s pulse.” Such is the

feeling and talk of all invalids, but if they attain that hour, a brief

period of enjoyment is followed by ennui. But this is the thawing-wind of

the frozen will, which awakes, stirs, and once more begets desire upon

desire.—Desire is a sign of convalescence or recovery.

350.

THE DISCLAIMED IDEAL.—It happens sometimes by an exception that a man only

reaches the highest when he disclaims his ideal. For this ideal previously

drove him onward too violently, so that in the middle of the track he

regularly got out of breath and had to rest.

351.

A TREACHEROUS INCLINATION.—It should be regarded as a sign of an envious

but aspiring man, when he feels himself attracted by the thought that with

regard to the eminent there is but one salvation—love.

352.

STAIRCASE HAPPINESS.—Just as the wit of many men does not keep pace with

opportunity (so that opportunity has already passed through the door while

wit still waits on the staircase outside), so others have a kind of

staircase happiness, which walks too slowly to keep pace with swift-footed

Time. The best that it can enjoy of an experience, of a whole span of

life, falls to its share long afterwards, often only as a weak, spicy

fragrance, giving rise to longing and sadness—as if “it might have been

possible”—some time or other—to drink one’s fill of this element: but now

it is too late.

353.

WORMS.—The fact that an intellect contains a few worms does not detract

from its ripeness.

354.

THE SEAT OF VICTORY.—A good seat on horseback robs an opponent of his

courage, the spectator of his heart—why attack such a man? Sit like one

who has been victorious!

355.

DANGER IN ADMIRATION.—From excessive admiration for the virtues of others

one can lose the sense of one’s own, and finally, through lack of

practice, lose these virtues themselves, without retaining the alien

virtues as compensation.

356.

USES OF SICKLINESS.—He who is often ill not only has a far greater

pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires

a very keen sense of what is healthy or sickly in actions and

achievements, both his own and others’. Thus, for example, it is just the

writers of uncertain health—among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great

writers must be classed—who are wont to have a far more even and assured

tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are

the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and

convalescence and in their teachers—morning, sunshine, forest, and

fountain.

357.

DISLOYALTY A CONDITION OF MASTERY.—It cannot be helped—every master has

but one pupil, and _he_ becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined

for mastery.

358.

NEVER IN VAIN.—In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either

you already reach a higher point to-day, or you exercise your strength in

order to be able to climb higher to-morrow.

359.

THROUGH GREY WINDOW-PANES.—Is what you see through this window of the

world so beautiful that you do not wish to look through any other

window—ay, and even try to prevent others from so doing?

360.

A SIGN OF RADICAL CHANGES.—When we dream of persons long forgotten or

dead, it is a sign that we have suffered radical changes, and that the

soil on which we live has been completely undermined. The dead rise again,

and our antiquity becomes modernity.

361.

MEDICINE OF THE SOUL.—To lie still and think little is the cheapest

medicine for all diseases of the soul, and, with the aid of good-will,

becomes pleasanter every hour that it is used.

362.

INTELLECTUAL ORDER OF PRECEDENCE.—You rank far below others when you try

to establish the exception and they the rule.

363.

THE FATALIST.—You must believe in fate—science can compel you thereto. All

that develops in you out of that belief—cowardice, devotion or loftiness,

and uprightness—bears witness to the soil in which the grain was sown, but

not to the grain itself, for from that seed anything and everything can

grow.

364.

THE REASON FOR MUCH FRETFULNESS.—He that prefers the beautiful to the

useful in life will undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to

bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the

world.

365.

EXCESS AS A REMEDY.—We can make our own talent once more acceptable to

ourselves by honouring and enjoying the opposite talent for some time to

excess.—Using excess as a remedy is one of the more refined devices in the

art of life.

366.

“WILL A SELF.”—Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim,

“Know thyself,” but as if always confronted with the command, “Will a

self, so you will become a self.”—Fate seems always to have left them a

choice. Inactive, contemplative natures, on the other hand, reflect on how

they have chosen their self “once for all” at their entry into life.

367.

TO LIVE AS FAR AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT A FOLLOWING.—How small is the

importance of followers we first grasp when we have ceased to be the

followers of our followers.

368.

OBSCURING ONESELF.—We must understand how to obscure ourselves in order to

get rid of the gnat-swarms of pestering admirers.

369.

ENNUI.—There is an ennui of the most subtle and cultured brains, to which

the best that the world can offer has become stale. Accustomed to eat ever

more and more recherché fare and to feel disgust at coarser diet, they are

in danger of dying of hunger. For the very best exists but in small

quantities, and has sometimes become inaccessible or hard as stone, so

that even good teeth can no longer bite it.

370.

THE DANGER IN ADMIRATION.—The admiration of a quality or of an art may be

so strong as to deter us from aspiring to possess that quality or art.

371.

WHAT IS REQUIRED OF ART.—One man wants to enjoy himself by means of art,

another for a time to get out of or above himself.—To meet both

requirements there exists a twofold species of artists.

372.

SECESSIONS.—Whoever secedes from us offends not us, perhaps, but certainly

our adherents.

373.

AFTER DEATH.—It is only long after the death of a man that we find it

inconceivable that he should be missed—in the case of really great men,

only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when any one dies

that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a

piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an

individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh.

374.

LEAVING IN HADES.—We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious

feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else

they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with

cruel lust after our blood.

375.

NEAR TO BEGGARY.—Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to

the room in which his hoarded treasures repose. He is then like the

poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living.

376.

CHAIN-THINKERS.—To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought

that he hears or reads at once assumes the form of a chain.

377.

PITY.—In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy.

378.

WHAT IS GENIUS?—To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that

aim.

379.

VANITY OF COMBATANTS.—He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is

obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting

should be admired.

380.

THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE MISINTERPRETED.—At the moment when one is beginning

to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing

the reverse.

381.

IMITATION.—By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit—especially

in art.

382.

FINAL TEACHING OF HISTORY.—“Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is

the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history

that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past,

we shall rather cry out at the end, “Anything but a return to that! The

spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred

atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil

you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pass the same

verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under

such conditions was intolerable. “And yet every one can endure his own

times?” Yes, because the spirit of his age not only lies _upon_ him but is

_in_ him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear

itself.

383.

GREATNESS AS A MASK.—By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes;

by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us. For envy

levels and makes equal; it is an unconscious, plaintive variety of

modesty.—It may be indeed that here and there, for the sake of the

above-named advantage, envy has been assumed as a mask by those who are

not envious. Certainly, however, greatness in comportment is often used as

the mask of envy by ambitious men who would rather suffer drawbacks and

embitter their foes than let it be seen that they place them on an equal

footing with themselves.

384.

UNPARDONABLE.—You gave him an opportunity of displaying the greatness of

his character, and he did not make use of the opportunity. He will never

forgive you for that.

385.

CONTRASTS.—The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the

famous saying, “The ego is always hateful,” the most childish in the still

more famous saying, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”—With the one

knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun.

386.

A DEFECTIVE EAR.—“We still belong to the mob so long as we always shift

the blame on to others; we are on the track of wisdom when we always make

ourselves alone responsible; but the wise man finds no one to blame,

neither himself nor others.”—Who said that? Epictetus, eighteen hundred

years ago.—The world has heard but forgotten the saying.—No, the world has

not heard and not forgotten it: everything is not forgotten. But we had

not the necessary ear, the ear of Epictetus.—So he whispered it into his

own ear?—Even so: wisdom is the whispering of the sage to himself in the

crowded market-place.

387.

A DEFECT OF STANDPOINT, NOT OF VISION.—We always stand a few paces too

near ourselves and a few paces too far from our neighbour. Hence we judge

him too much in the lump, and ourselves too much by individual,

occasional, insignificant features and circumstances.

388.

IGNORANCE ABOUT WEAPONS.—How little we care whether another knows a

subject or not!—whereas he perhaps sweats blood at the bare idea that he

may be considered ignorant on the point. Yes, there are exquisite fools,

who always go about with a quiverful of mighty, excommunicatory

utterances, ready to shoot down any one who shows freely that there are

matters in which their judgment is not taken into account.

389.

AT THE DRINKING-TABLE OF EXPERIENCE.—People whose innate moderation leads

them to drink but the half of every glass, will not admit that everything

in the world has its lees and sediment.

390.

SINGING-BIRDS.—The followers of a great man often put their own eyes out,

so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.

391.

BEYOND OUR KEN.—The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our

ken.

392.

RULE AS MOTHER OR AS CHILD.—There is one condition that gives birth to

rules, another to which rules give birth.

393.

COMEDY.—We sometimes earn honour or love for actions and achievements

which we have long since sloughed as the snake sloughs his skin. We are

hereby easily seduced into becoming the comic actors of our own past, and

into throwing the old skin once more about our shoulders—and that not

merely from vanity, but from good-will towards our admirers.

394.

A MISTAKE OF BIOGRAPHERS.—The small force that is required to launch a

boat into the stream must not be confounded with the force of the stream

that carries the boat along. Yet this mistake is made in nearly all

biographies.

395.

NOT BUYING TOO DEAR.—The things that we buy too dear we generally turn to

bad use, because we have no love for them but only a painful recollection.

Thus they involve a twofold drawback.

396.

THE PHILOSOPHY THAT SOCIETY ALWAYS NEEDS.—The pillars of the social

structure rest upon the fundamental fact that every one cheerfully

contemplates all that he is, does, and attempts, his sickness or health,

his poverty or affluence, his honour or insignificance, and says to

himself, “After all, I would not change places with any one!”—Whoever

wishes to add a stone to the social structure should always try to implant

in mankind this cheerful philosophy of contentment and refusal to change

places.

397.

THE MARK OF A NOBLE SOUL.—A noble soul is not that which is capable of the

highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living

always in a free and bright atmosphere and altitude.

398.

GREATNESS AND ITS CONTEMPLATOR.—The noblest effect of greatness is that it

gives the contemplator a power of vision that magnifies and embellishes.

399.

BEING SATISFIED.—We show that we have attained maturity of understanding

when we no longer go where rare flowers lurk under the thorniest hedges of

knowledge, but are satisfied with gardens, forests, meadows, and

ploughlands, remembering that life is too short for the rare and uncommon.

400.

ADVANTAGE IN PRIVATION.—He who always lives in the warmth and fulness of

the heart, and, as it were, in the summer air of the soul, cannot form an

idea of that fearful delight which seizes more wintry natures, who for

once in a way are kissed by the rays of love and the milder breath of a

sunny February day.

401.

RECIPE FOR THE SUFFERER.—You find the burden of life too heavy? Then you

must increase the burden of your life. When the sufferer finally thirsts

after and seeks the river of Lethe, then he must become a _hero_ to be

certain of finding it.

402.

THE JUDGE.—He who has seen another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge,

and as it were his evil conscience.

403.

THE UTILITY OF GREAT RENUNCIATION.—The useful thing about great

renunciation is that it invests us with that youthful pride through which

we can thenceforth easily demand of ourselves small renunciations.

404.

HOW DUTY ACQUIRES A GLAMOUR.—You can change a brazen duty into gold in the

eyes of all by always performing something more than you have promised.

405.

PRAYER TO MANKIND.—“Forgive us our virtues”—so should we pray to mankind.

406.

THEY THAT CREATE AND THEY THAT ENJOY.—Every one who enjoys thinks that the

principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the

principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them

that create and them that enjoy.

407.

THE GLORY OF ALL GREAT MEN.—What is the use of genius if it does not

invest him who contemplates and reveres it with such freedom and loftiness

of feeling that he no longer has need of genius?—To make themselves

superfluous is the glory of all great men.

408.

THE JOURNEY TO HADES.—I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus,

and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that

I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own

blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my

sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau,

Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have

long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will

I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say,

conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those

eight and see their eyes fastened on mine.—May the living forgive me if I

look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and,

alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so

living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never

become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point:

what matters “eternal life,” or indeed life at all?