Part Nine: What is Noble?
257
Every
elevation of the type 'man' has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic
society - and so it will always be: a society which believes in a long scale of
orders of rank and differences of worth between man and man and needs slavery
in some sense or another. Without the pathos
of distance such as develops from the incarnate differences of classes,
from the ruling caste's constant looking out and looking down on subjects and
instruments and from its equally constant exercise of obedience and command,
its holding down and holding at a distance, that other, more mysterious pathos
could not have developed either, that longing for an ever-increasing widening
of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, more
remote, tenser, more comprehensive states, in short precisely the elevation of
the type 'man', the continual 'self-overcoming of man', to take a moral formula
in a supra-moral sense. As to how an
aristocratic society (that is to say, the precondition for this elevation of
the type 'man') originates, one ought not to yield to any humanitarian
illusions: truth is hard. Let us admit
to ourselves unflinchingly how every higher culture on earth has hitherto begun! Men of a still natural nature, barbarians in
every fearful sense of the word, men of prey still in possession of an unbroken
strength of will and lust for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more
civilized, more peaceful, perhaps trading or cattle-raising races, or upon old
mellow cultures, the last vital forces in which were even then flickering out
in a glittering fireworks display of spirit and corruption. The noble caste was in the beginning always
the barbarian caste: their superiority lay, not in their physical strength, but
primarily in their psychical - they were more complete human beings
(which, on every level, also means as much as 'more complete beasts' - ).
258
Corruption
as the indication that anarchy threatens within the instincts, and that the foundation
of the emotions which is called 'life' has been shaken: corruption is something
fundamentally different according to which life-form it appears in. When, for example, an aristocracy such as
that of France at the start of the Revolution throws away its privileges with a
sublime disgust and sacrifices itself to an excess of moral feeling, then that
is corruption - it was really only the closing act of that corruption which had
been going on for centuries by virtue of which it had step by step abdicated
its prerogatives of government and demoted itself to a function of the
monarchy (in the end to no more than its decoration and show-piece). The essential thing in a good and healthy
aristocracy is, however, that it does not feel itself to be a function
(of the monarchy or of the commonwealth) but as their meaning and
supreme justification - that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the
sacrifice of innumerable men who for its sake have to be suppressed and
reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental faith must be that society
should not exist for the sake of society but only as foundation and
scaffolding upon which a select species of being is able to raise itself to its
higher task and in general to a higher existence: like those sun-seeking
climbing plants of Java - they are named sipo
matador - which clasp an oak-tree with their tendrils so long and often
that at last, high above it but supported by it, they can unfold their crowns
in the open light and display their happiness. -
259
To
refrain from mutual injury, mutual violence, mutual exploitation, to equate
one's own will with that of another: this may in a certain rough sense become
good manners between individuals if the conditions for it are present (namely if
their strength and value standards are in fact similar and they both belong to one
body). As soon as there is a desire to
take this principle further, however, and if possible even as the fundamental
principle of society, it at once reveals itself for what it is: as the will
to the denial of life, as the principle of dissolution and decay. One has to think that matter thoroughly
through to the bottom and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially
appropriation, injury, overpowering of the strange and weaker, suppression,
severity, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and, at the least and
mildest, exploitation - but why should one always have to employ precisely
those words which have from of old been stamped with a slanderous intention? Even that body within which, as was
previously assumed, individuals treat one another as equals - this happens in
every healthy aristocracy - must, if it is a living and not a decaying body,
itself do all that to other bodies which the individuals within it refrain from
doing to one another: it will have to be the will to power incarnate, it will
want to grow, expand, draw to itself, gain ascendancy - not out of any morality
or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is will to
power. On no point, however, is the
common European consciousness more reluctant to learn than it is here;
everywhere one enthuses, even under scientific disguises, about coming states
of society in which there will be 'no more exploitation' - that sounds to my ears
like promising a life in which there will be no organic functions. 'Exploitation' does not pertain to a corrupt
or imperfect or primitive society: it pertains to the essence of the
living thing as a fundamental organic function, it is
a consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will of
life. - Granted this is a novelty as a theory - as a reality it is the primordial
fact of all history: let us be at least that honest with ourselves!
260
In
a tour of the many finer and coarser moralities which have ruled or still rule
on earth I found certain traits regularly recurring together and bound up with
one another: until at length two basic types were revealed and a basic
distinction emerged. There is master
morality and slave morality - I add at once that in all higher and
mixed cultures attempts at mediation between the two are apparent and more
frequently confusion and mutual misunderstanding between them, indeed sometimes
their harsh juxtaposition - even within the same man, within one
soul. The moral value-distinctions have
arisen either among a ruling order which was pleasurably conscious of its
distinction from the ruled - or among the ruled, the slaves and dependants of
every degree. In the former case, when
it is the rulers who determine the concept 'good', it is the exalted, proud
states of soul which are considered distinguishing and determine the order of
rank. The noble human being separates
from himself those natures in which the opposite of such exalted proud states find
expression: he despises them. It should
be noted at once that in this first type of morality the antithesis 'good' and
'bad' means the same thing as 'noble' and 'despicable' - the antithesis 'good'
and 'evil' originates elsewhere.
The cowardly, the timid, the petty, and those who think only of narrow
utility are despised; as are the mistrustful with their constricted glance,
those who abase themselves, the dog-like type of man who lets himself be
mistreated, the fawning flatterer, above all the liar - it is a fundamental
belief of all aristocrats that the common people are liars. 'We who are truthful' - thus did the nobility
of ancient
261
Among
the things which a noble human being perhaps finds hardest to understand is
vanity: he will be tempted to deny its existence where a different type of
human being will think it palpably evident.
For him the problem is to imagine creatures who try to awaken a good
opinion of themselves which they themselves do not hold - and thus do not
'deserve' either - and yet subsequently come to believe this good
opinion themselves. This seems to him in
part so tasteless and lacking in self-respect and in part so baroquely
irrational that he would prefer to consider vanity exceptional and in most
cases where it is spoken of he doubts its existence. He will say, for example: 'I can rate my
value incorrectly and yet demand that others too should recognize my value
exactly as I rate it - but that is not vanity (but self-conceit, or, more
usually, what is called "humility" or "modesty"). Or he will say: 'I can, for many reasons,
take pleasure in the good opinion of others, perhaps because I love and honour
them and take pleasure in all their pleasures, perhaps because their good
opinion sustains me in my faith in my own good opinion, perhaps because the
good opinion of others, even when I do not share it, is still useful to me or
promises to be useful - but none of this is vanity.' The noble human being requires the assistance
of history if he is to see that, from time immemorial, in all strata which were
in any way dependent the common man was only that which he counted as
- in no way accustomed to positing values himself, he also accorded himself no
other value than that which his master accorded him (it is the intrinsic right
of masters to create values). It can
be conceived as the consequence of a tremendous atavism that even now the
ordinary man still always waits for an opinion about himself and then
instinctively submits to it: but this happens not merely in the case of a
'good' opinion, but also in that of a bad and unfair one (consider, for
instance, the greater part of the self-estimates and self-underestimates which
believing women acquire from their father-confessors and the believing
Christian acquires from his Church). Now
it is a fact that, in accordance with the slow rise of the democratic order of
things, (and its cause, the mixing of the blood of masters and slaves), the
originally noble and rare impulse to ascribe a value to oneself on one's own
account and to 'think well' of oneself will be increasingly encouraged and
spread wider and wider: but it has at all times an older, more widespread and
more thoroughly ingrained inclination against it - and in the phenomenon of
'vanity' this older inclination masters the younger. The vain man takes pleasure in every
good opinion he hears about himself (quite apart from any point of view of
utility and likewise regardless of truth or falsehood), just as he suffers from
every bad opinion: for he submits to both, he feels subject to them from
that oldest instinct of subjection which breaks out in him. - It is 'the slave'
in the vain man's blood, a remnant of the craftiness of the slave - and how
much 'slave' still remains in woman, for example! - which
seeks to seduce him to good opinions about himself; it is likewise the
slave who immediately afterwards falls down before these opinions as if he
himself had not called them forth. - And to say it again: vanity is an atavism.
262
A
species arises, a type becomes fixed and
strong, through protracted struggle against essentially constant unfavourable
conditions. Conversely, one knows from
the experience of breeders that species which receive plentiful nourishment and
an excess of care and protection soon tend very strongly to produce variations
of their type and are rich in marvels and monstrosities (also in monstrous
vices). Now look for once at an
aristocratic community, Venice, say, or an ancient Greek polis, as a
voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of breeding: there there are human beings living together and thrown on their
own resources who want their species to prevail usually because they have
to prevail or run the terrible risk of being exterminated. Here those favourable conditions, that
excess, that protection which favours variations, is lacking; the species needs
itself as species, as something that can prevail and purchase durability in its
continual struggle against its neighbours or against the oppressed in revolt or
threatening revolt, precisely by virtue of its hardness, uniformity, simplicity
of form. The most manifold experience
teaches it which qualities it has principally to thank that, in spite of all
gods and men, it still exists and has always been victorious: these qualities
it calls virtues, these virtues alone does it breed and cultivate. It does so with severity, indeed it wants
severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant, in the education of the
young, in the measures it takes with respect to women, in marriage customs, in
the relations between young and old, in the penal laws (which are directed only
at variants) - it counts intolerance itself among the virtues under the name
'justice'. A type with few but very
marked traits, a species of stern, warlike, prudently silent, determined and
taciturn men (and, as such, men of the finest feeling for the charm and nuances
of society), is in this way firmly fixed beyond the changes of generations;
continual struggle against ever-constant unfavourable conditions is, as
aforesaid, that which fixes and hardens a type.
In the end, however, there arises one day an easier state of affairs and
the tremendous tension relaxes; perhaps there are no longer any enemies among
their neighbours, and the means of life, even for the enjoyment of life, are
there in plenty. With one stroke the
bond and constraint of the ancient discipline is broken: it is no longer felt
to be a necessity, a condition of existence - if it were to persist it could be
only as a form of luxury, as an archaizing taste. Variation, whether as deviation (into the
higher, rarer, more refined) or as degeneration and monstrosity, is suddenly on
the scene in the greatest splendour and abundance, the individual dares to be
individual and stand out. At these
turning-points of history there appear side by side and often entangled and
entwined together a glorious, manifold, jungle-like growth and up-stirring, a
kind of tropical tempo in competition in growing, and a tremendous
perishing and self-destruction, thanks to the savage egoisms which, turning on
one another and as it were exploding, wrestle together 'for sun and light' and
no longer know how to draw any limitation, any restraint, any forbearance from
the morality reigning hitherto. It was
this morality which stored up such enormous energy, which bent the bow in such
a threatening manner - now it is 'spent', now it is
becoming 'outlived'. The dangerous and
uncanny point is reached where the grander, more manifold, more comprehensive
life lives beyond the old morality; the 'individual' stands there,
reduced to his own law-giving, to his own arts and strategems
for self-preservation, self-enhancement, self-redemption. Nothing but new whys and wherewithals,
no longer an common formulas, misunderstanding in alliance with disrespect,
decay, corruption and the highest desires horribly tangled together, the genius
of the race overflowing out of every cornucopia of good and bad, spring and
autumn falling fatally together, full of novel charms and veils such as pertain
to youthful, still unexhausted, still unwearied
corruption. Danger is again present, the
mother of morality, great danger, only this time it comes from the individual,
from neighbour and friend, from the street, from one's own child, from one's
own heart, from the most personal and secret recesses of wish and will: what
will the moral philosophers who come up in this age now have to preach? They discover, these acute observers and
idlers, that the end is fast approaching, that everything around them is
corrupt and corrupting, that nothing can last beyond the day after tomorrow, one
species of man excepted, the incurably mediocre. The mediocre alone have the prospect of
continuing on and propagating themselves - they are the men of the future, the
sole survivors; 'be like them! become mediocre!' is
henceforth the only morality that has any meaning left, that still finds ears
to hear it. - But it is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! - for it can never admit what it is and what it wants! it has to speak of moderation and dignity and duty and love
of one's neighbour - it will scarcely be able to conceal its irony! -
263
There
is an instinct for rank which is more than anything else already the
sign of a high rank; there is a delight in the nuances of reverence,
which reveals a noble origin and noble habits.
The refinement, goodness and loftiness of a soul is put to a perilous
rest whenever something passes before it that is of the first rank but not yet
protected from importunate clumsiness and claws by the awe of authority:
something that goes its way unsignalized,
undiscovered, tempting, perhaps arbitrarily obscured and disguised, like a
living touchstone. He whose task and
practice it is to explore the soul will avail himself of precisely this art in
many forms in order to determine the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable
innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will test it for its instinct
of reverence. Différence
engendre haine: the
commonness of some natures suddenly spurts up like dirty water whenever some
sacred vessel, some precious object from a closed shrine, some book with the
marks of a great destiny is carried by; and on the other hand there is an
involuntary falling silent, a hesitation of the eye, a cessation of all
gestures, which reveal that a soul feels the proximity of something most
worthy of respect. The way in which
reverence for the Bible has hitherto been generally maintained in Europe
is perhaps the best piece of discipline and refinement of manners that Europe
owes to Christianity: such books of profundity and ultimate significance
require for their protection an external tyranny of authority, in order that
they may achieve those millennia of continued existence which are needed
if they are to be exhausted and unriddled. Much has been gained when the feeling has at
last been instilled into the masses (into the shallow-pates and greedy-guts of
every sort) that there are things they must not touch; that there are holy
experiences before which they have to take off their shoes and keep their
unclean hands away - it is almost their highest advance towards humanity. Conversely, there is perhaps nothing about
the so-called cultured, the believers in 'modern ideas', that arouses so much
disgust as their lack of shame, the self-satisfied insolence of eye and hand
with which they touch, lick and fumble with everything; and it is possible that
more relative nobility of taste and reverential tact is to be discovered
today among the people, among the lower orders and especially among peasants,
than among the newspaper-reading demi-monde of
the spirit, the cultured.
264
That
which his ancestors most liked to do and most constantly did cannot be erased
from a man's soul: whether, for instance, they were diligent savers and the
accessories of a desk and cash-box, modest and bourgeois in their desires,
modest also in their virtues; or whether they lived accustomed to commanding
from morn to night, fond of rough amusements and perhaps of even rougher duties
and responsibilities; or whether, finally, they at some time or other
sacrificed ancient privileges of birth and possessions in order to live
entirely for their faith - for their 'god' - as men of an inexorable and tender
conscience which blushes at all half-measures.
It is quite impossible that a man should not have in his body the
qualities and preferences of his parents and forefathers: whatever appearances
may say to the contrary. This
constitutes the problem of race. If one
knows something about the parents, it is permissible to draw a conclusion about
the child: any sort of untoward intemperance, any sort of narrow enviousness, a
clumsy obstinate self-assertiveness - these three things together have at all
times constituted the characteristics of the plebeian type - qualities of this
sort must be transferred to the child as surely as bad blood; and the best
education and culture will succeed only in deceiving with regard to such
an inheritance. - And what else is the objective of education and culture
today? In our very democratic, that is
to say plebeian age, 'education' and 'culture' have to be in essence the
art of deceiving - of deceiving with regard to origins, to the inherited
plebeian in soul and body. An educator
who today preached truthfulness above all and continually cried to his pupils
'Be true! Be natural! Give yourselves out for what you are!' - even such a virtuous and simple ass would after a time learn
to reach for that furca of Horace to naturam expellere:
with what success? 'The
plebeian' usque recurret.
-
265
At
the risk of annoying innocent ears I set it down that egoism pertains to the
essence of the noble soul, I mean the immovable faith that to a being such as
'we are' other beings have to be subordinate by their nature, and sacrifice
themselves to us. The noble soul accepts
this fact of its egoism without any question-mark, also without feeling any
severity, constraint, caprice in it, but rather as something that may be
grounded in the primal law of things: - if it sought a name for it, it would
say 'it is justice itself'. Under certain circumstances
which make it hesitate at first, it will admit that there are others with
rights equal to its own; as soon as it is clear as to this question of rank, it
moves among these its equals and equal-in-rights with the same sure modesty and
tender reverence as it applies to itself - in accordance with an innate
celestial mechanism which all stars understand.
This refinement and self-limitation in traffic with its equals is one more
aspect of its egoism - every star is such an egoist - : it honours itself in
them and in the rights it concedes them, it is in no doubt that the exchange of
honours and rights, as the essence of social intercourse, is likewise
part of the natural condition of things.
The noble soul gives as it takes, out of the passionate and sensitive
instinct of requital which lies in its depths.
The concept 'favour' has no meaning or good odour inter pares;
there may be a sublime way of letting gifts from above as it were befall one
and drinking them up thirstily like drops: but for this sort of behaviour the
noble soul has no aptitude. Its egoism
hinders it here: it does not like to look 'up' at all - it prefers to look
either in front, horizontally and slowly, or down - it knows it is at
a height. -
266
'One
can truly respect only him who does not look out for himself.' - Goethe
to Rat Schlosser.
267
The
Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: siao-sin: 'Make your heart small!' This is the characteristic basic tendency in
late civilizations: I do not doubt that the first thing an ancient Greek would
remark in us Europeans of today would also be self-diminution - through that
alone we should be 'contrary to his taste'. -
268
What
ultimately is commonness? - Words are sounds designating concepts; concepts,
however, are more or less definite images designating frequently recurring and
associated sensations, groups of sensations.
To understand one another it is not sufficient to employ the same words;
we have also to employ the same words to designate the same species of inner
experiences, we must ultimately have our experience in common. That is why the members of one people
understand one another better than do members of differing peoples even when
they use the same language; or rather, when human beings have lived together
for a long time under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, needs,
work), there arises from this a group who 'understand one another', a
people. In every soul in this group an
equivalent number of frequently recurring experiences has gained the upper hand
over those which come more rarely: it is on the basis of these that people
understand one another, quickly and ever more quickly - the history of language
is the history of a process of abbreviation - ; it is on the basis of this
quick understanding that they unite together, closely and ever more
closely. The greater the danger, the
greater is the need to reach agreement quickly and easily as to what has to be
done; not to misunderstand one another in situations of danger is an absolute
necessity in human relations. One makes
this same test even in the case of friendships or love-affairs: nothing of that
sort can last once it is discovered that when one party uses words he connects
them with feelings, intentions, perceptions, desires, fears
different from those the other party connects them with. (Fear of the 'eternal misunderstanding': that
is the benevolent genius who so often keeps persons of differing sex from
over-hasty attachments to which senses and heart prompt them - and not
some Schopenhaueran 'genius of the species' - !) Exactly which groups of
sensations are awakened, begin to speak, issue commands most quickly within a
soul, is decisive for the whole order of ranks of its values and
ultimately determines its table of desiderata.
A human being's evaluations betray something of the structure of
his soul and where it sees its conditions of life, its real needs. Now supposing that need has at all times
brought together only such human beings as could indicate similar requirements,
similar experiences by means of similar signs, it follows that on the whole the
easy communicability of needs, that is to say ultimately the
experiencing of only average and common experiences, must have been the
most powerful of all the powerful forces which have disposed of mankind hitherto. The more similar, more ordinary human beings
have had and still have the advantage, the more select, subtle, rare and harder
to understand are liable to remain alone, succumb to accidents in their
isolation and seldom propagate themselves.
Tremendous counter-forces have to be called upon to cross this natural,
all too natural progressus in simile,
the continuing development of mankind into the similar, ordinary, average, herdlike - into the common!
269
The
more a psychologist - a born, an unavoidable psychologist and reader of souls -
turns his attention to the more select cases and human beings, the greater
grows the danger of his suffocating from pity: he needs hardness and
cheerfulness more than other men. For
the corruption, the ruination of higher human beings, of more strangely
constituted souls, is the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always
before one's eyes. The manifold torment
of the psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers this whole
inner 'wretchedness' of the higher human being, this eternal 'too late!' in
every sense, first once and then almost always throughout the whole of
history - may perhaps one day make him turn against his whole lot and drive him
to attempt self-destruction - to his own 'ruination'. One will perceive in almost every
psychologist a telltale preference for and pleasure in associating with
everyday and well-ordered people: this betrays that he is in constant need of a
cure, that he requires a kind of flight and forgetting, away from that which
his insights and incisions, his 'trade', has laid upon his conscience. It is characteristic of him that he is afraid
of his memory. He is easily silenced by
the judgement of others: he listens with a straight face when people venerate,
admire, love, transfigure where he has seen - or he conceals even his
silence by expressly agreeing with some superficial opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situation is so
ghastly that precisely where he has learned great pity together with greater
contempt the mob, the cultured, the enthusiasts learn great veneration -
veneration for 'great men' and prodigies on whose account they bless the
fatherland, the earth, the dignity of mankind and themselves, in whose direction
they point the young and on whose model they educate them.... And who knows
whether what has happened hitherto in all great cases has not always been the
same thing: that the mob worshipped a god - and that the 'god' was only a poor
sacrificial beast! Success has always
been the biggest liar - and the 'work' itself a kind of success; the great
statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations to the
point of unrecognizability: the 'work', that of the
artist or the philosopher, invents him who created it, is supposed to have
created it; 'great men', as they are venerated, are bad little fictions
invented afterwards; in the world of historical values false coinage is the
rule. Great poets, for example, such
as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi,
Kleist, Gogol (I do not
dare to name greater names, but I mean them) - as they are and perhaps have to
be: men of moments, enthusiastic, sensual, childish, sudden and frivolous in
trust and mistrust; with souls in which some fracture is usually trying to
hide; often taking revenge with their works for an inner defilement, often
seeking with their exaggerations forgetfulness of an all too faithful memory,
often lost in the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like
will-o'-the-wisps around swamps and pretend to be stars - the people may
then call them idealists - often struggling against a protracted disgust, a
recurring spectre of unbelief which freezes them and compels them to languish
for gloria and to devour 'belief in
themselves' out of the hands of intoxicated adulators - what a torment
these great artists and higher human beings in general are for him who has once
divined what they are! It is so very
understandable that they should so easily receive precisely from woman - who is
clairvoyante in the world of suffering and
unfortunately also eager to help and save far beyond her power to do so - those
outbursts of boundless, most devoted pity which the mob, above all the
venerating mob, fails to understand and loads with inquisitive and self-satisfied
interpretations. This pity habitually
deceives itself about its strength; woman would like to believe that love can
do everything - it is her characteristic faith. Alas, he who knows the heart divines how
poor, stupid, helpless, arrogant, blundering, more prone to destroy than save
is even the best and deepest love! - It is possible that within the holy
disguise and fable of Jesus' life there lies concealed one of the most painful
cases of the martyrdom of knowledge about love: the martyrdom of the
most innocent and longing heart which never had sufficient of human love, which
demanded love, to be loved and nothing else, demanded it with hardness,
with madness, with fearful outbursts against those who denied it love; the
story of a poor soul unsated and insatiable in love
who had to invent hell so as to send there those who did not want to
love him - and who, having become knowledgeable about human love, finally had
to invent a god who is wholly love, wholly ability to love - who has mercy
on human love because it is so very paltry and ignorant! He whose feelings are like this, he who knows
about love to this extent - seeks death. - But why reflect on such
painful things? As
long as one does not have to. -
270
The
spiritual haughtiness and disgust of every human being who has suffered deeply
- how deeply human beings can suffer almost determines their order of
rank - the harrowing certainty, with which he is wholly permeated and coloured,
that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than even the cleverest
and wisest can know, that he is familiar with, and was once 'at home' in, many
distant, terrible worlds of which 'you know nothing!' ... this
spiritual, silent haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of
knowledge, of the 'initiated', of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of
disguise necessary to protect itself against contact with importunate and
pitying hands and in general against everything which is not its equal in
suffering. Profound suffering ennobles;
it separates. One of the most subtle
forms of disguise is Epicureanism and a certain ostentatious bravery of taste
which takes suffering frivolously and arms itself against everything sorrowful
and profound. There are 'cheerful
people' who employ cheerfulness because they are misunderstood on account of it
- they want to be misunderstood.
There are 'men of science' who employ science because it produces a
cheerful appearance and because scientificality gives
the impression a person is superficial - they want to give a false
impression. There are free insolent
spirits who would like to conceal and deny that they are broken, proud,
incurable hearts (the cynicism of Hamlet - the case of Galiani);
and sometimes folly itself is the mask for an unhappy, all too certain
knowledge. - From which it follows that it is part of a more refined humanity
to have reverence 'for the mask' and not to practise psychology and
inquisitiveness in the wrong place.
271
That
which divides two people most profoundly is a differing sense and degree of
cleanliness. Of what good is all
uprightness and mutual usefulness, of what good is mutual good will: the fact
still remains - they 'cannot bear each other's odour!' The highest instinct of cleanliness places
him who is affected with it in the strangest and most perilous isolation, as a
saint: for precisely this is saintliness - the highest spiritualization of the
said instinct. To know an indescribable
pleasure in bathing, to feel an ardour and thirst which constantly drives the
soul out of night into morning, and out of gloom and 'gloominess' into
brightness, into the glittering, profound, refined - : such an inclination is distinguishing
- it is a noble inclination - but it also separates. - The saint's pity
is pity for the dirt of the human, all too human. And there are degrees and heights at which he
feels pity itself as defilement, as dirt ...
272
Signs
of nobility: never to think of degrading our duties into duties for everybody;
not to want to relinquish or share our own responsibilities; to count our
privileges and the exercising of them among our duties.
273
A
human being who strives for something great regards everybody he meets on his
way either as a means or as a delay and hindrance - or as a temporary
resting-place. The lofty goodness
towards his fellow men which is proper to him becomes possible only when he has
reached his height and he rules.
Impatience and his consciousness that until that time he is condemned to
comedy - for even war is a comedy and a concealment,
just as every means conceals the end - spoil all his association with others:
this kind of man knows solitude and what is most poisonous in it.
274
The
problem of those who wait - It requires luck
and much that is incalculable if a higher human being in whom there slumbers
the solution of a problem is to act - 'break out' one might say - at the right
time. Usually it does not happen,
and in every corner of the earth there are people waiting who hardly know to
what extent they are waiting but even less that they are waiting in vain. Sometimes the awakening call, that chance
event which gives 'permission' to acts, comes but too late - when the best part
of youth and the strength to act has already been used up in sitting still; and
how many a man has discovered to his horror when he 'rose up' that his limbs
had gone to sleep and his spirit was already too heavy! 'It is too late' - he has said to himself,
having lost faith in himself and henceforth for ever useless. Could it be that, in the realm of genius,
'Raphael without hands' is, taking the phrase in its widest sense, not the
exception but the rule? - Perhaps genius is not so very rare: perhaps what is rare is the five hundred hands needed to tyrannize
over the kairos, 'the right time' - to take
chance by the forelock!
275
He
who does not want to see what is elevated in a man looks all the more
keenly for what is low and foreground in him - and thereby gives himself away.
276
In
every kind of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the
nobler: the dangers facing the latter are bound to be greater, the probability
that it will come to grief and perish is, considering the multiplicity of the
conditions of its life, enormous. - When a lizard loses a finger that finger
grows again: not so in the case of man. -
277
-
Annoying! The same old story! When one
has finished one's house one realizes that while doing so one has learnt
unawares something one absolutely had to know before one - began to
build. The everlasting
pitiful 'too late!' - The melancholy of everything finished!...
278
-
Wanderer, who are you? I see you go your
way without scorn, without love, with unfathomable eyes; moist and sad as a
sounding-lead that has returned to the light unsated
from every deep - what was it looking for down there? - with
a breast that does not sigh, with a lip that hides its disgust, with a hand
which now reaches out but slowly: who are you? what
have you done? Repose here: this place
is hospitable to everyone - refresh yourself!
And whoever you may be: what would you like now? What will refresh you? You have only to name it: whatever I have I
offer you! - 'Refreshment? Refreshment?
O inquisitive man, what are you saying!
But please give me -
‘ What? What? Say it! - 'One more mask! A second mask!' ...
279
Men
of profound sorrow give themselves away when they are happy: they have a way of
grasping happiness as if they wanted to crush and smother it, from jealousy - alas,
they know too well that it will flee away.
280
'Bad!
Bad! What? Is he not going - backwards?' - Yes!
But you ill understand him if you complain about it. He goes backwards as everyone goes backwards
who wants to take a big jump. -
281
'Will
they believe me? but I insist they believe me: I have always thought little of
and about myself, only in very rare instances have I done so, only when
compelled, always without wanting "to go in for it", liable to
digress from "myself", never with any faith in the outcome, thanks to
an unconquerable mistrust of the possibility of self-knowledge which has
led me so far as to sense a contradictio in
adjecto even in the concept "immediate
knowledge" which theoreticians permit themselves - this whole fact is almost
the most certain thing I know about myself.
There must be a kind of aversion in me to believing anything
definite about myself. - Is there perhaps a riddle concealed here? Probably; but fortunately
not one for my own teeth. - Does it perhaps betray the species to which
I belong? - But not to me: which suits me well enough. - '
282
'But
whatever has happened to you?' - 'I don't know,' he said, hesitating; 'perhaps
the Harpies flew over my table.' - It sometimes happens today that a mild,
moderate, reserved man suddenly breaks out into a rage, smashes the plates,
throws the table over, screams, raves, insults everybody - and ends by going
off ashamed, furious with himself - where? why? To starve all alone? To choke on his
recollections? - He who has the desires of an elevated, fastidious soul,
and rarely finds his table laid and his food ready, will be in great danger at
all times: but today the danger he is in has become extraordinary. Thrown into a noisy and plebeian age with
which he has no wish to eat out of the same dish, he can easily perish of
hunger and thirst, or, if he does eventually 'set to' - of a sudden nausea. -
We have all no doubt eaten at tables where we did not belong; and precisely the
most spiritual of us who are most difficult to feed know that dangerous
dyspepsia which comes from a sudden insight and disappointment about our food
and table-companions - the after-dinner nausea.
283
Supposing
one wants to praise at all, it is a refined and at the same time noble piece of
self-control to praise only where one does not agree - for in the other
case one would be praising oneself, which is contrary to good taste - but it is
a sort of self-control which offers a nice instigation and occasion for
constantly being misunderstood.
If one is to be able to afford this real luxury of taste and morality
one has to live, not among blockheads of the spirit, but rather among people in
whom misunderstandings and blunders are still amusing because of their subtlety
- or one will have to pay dearly for it! - 'He praises me: therefore he
thinks I am right' - this asinine conclusion spoils half the life of us
hermits, for it makes asses come along to be our friends and neighbours.
284
To live with a tremendous and proud self-possession; always beyond
- .
To have and not have one's emotions, one's for and against, at will, to
condescend to have them for a few hours; to seat oneself on them as on
horses, often as on asses - for one has to know how to employ their stupidity
as well as their fire. To keep one's
three hundred foregrounds; also one's dark glasses: for there are instances
where no-one may look into our eyes, still less into our 'grounds'. And to choose for company
that cheerful and roguish vice, politeness. And to remain master of
one's four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, solitude. For solitude is with us a virtue: it is a
sublime urge and inclination for cleanliness which divines that all contact
between man and man - 'in society' - must inevitably be unclean. All community makes somehow, somewhere,
sometime - 'common'.
285
The
greatest events and thoughts - but the greatest thoughts are the greatest
events - are comprehended last: the generations which are their contemporaries
do not experience such events - they live past them. What happens here is similar to what happens
in the realm of the stars. The light of
the furthest stars comes to men last; and before it has arrived man denies
that there are - stars there. 'How many
centuries does a spirit need to be comprehended?' - that
too is a standard, with that too there is created an order or rank and
etiquette such as is needed: for spirit and star. -
286
'Here
is the prospect free, the spirit exalted.' - But there is an opposite kind of
man who is also on the heights and for whom the prospect is also free - but who
looks down.
287
-
What is noble? What does the word
'noble' mean to us today? What, beneath
this heavy, overcast sky of the beginning rule of the rabble which makes
everything leaden and opaque, betrays and makes evident the noble human being?
- It is not his actions which reveal him - actions are always ambiguous, always
unfathomable - ; neither is it his 'works'.
One finds today among artists and scholars sufficient who reveal by
their works that they are driven on by a profound desire for the noble: but
precisely this need for the noble is fundamentally different from the
needs of the noble soul itself, and in fact an eloquent and dangerous sign of
its lack. It is not the works, it is the faith which is decisive here, which
determines the order or rank here, to employ an old religious formula in a new
and deeper sense: some fundamental certainty which a noble soul possesses in
regard to itself, something which may not be sought or found and perhaps may
not be lost either. - The noble soul has reverence for itself. -
288
There
are people unavoidable possessed of spirit, let them twist and turn how they
may and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes ( -
as if the hand were not also a traitor! - ): in the end it always comes out
that they have something they are hiding, namely spirit. One of the subtlest ways of deceiving, for as
long as possible at any rate, and of successfully posing as more stupid than
one is - which in everyday life is often as desirable as an umbrella - is
called enthusiasm: plus what belongs with it, for example virtue. For, as Galiani,
who ought to know, said - : vertu est enthousiasme.
289
One
always hears in the writings of a hermit something of the echo of the desert,
something of the whisper and shy vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words,
even in his cry, there still resounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence
and concealment. He who has sat alone
with his soul day and night, year in year out, in confidential discord and
discourse, and in his cave - it may be a labyrinth, but it may be a gold-mine -
becomes a cave-bear or treasure-hunter or a treasure-guardian and dragon, finds
that his concepts themselves at last acquire a characteristic twilight colour,
a smell of the depths and of must, something incommunicable and reluctant which
blows cold on every passer-by. The
hermit does not believe that a philosopher - supposing that a philosopher has
always been first of all a hermit - has ever expressed his real and final
opinions in books: does one write books precisely to conceal what lies within
us? - indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher could have 'final and
real' opinions at all, whether behind each of his caves there does not and must
not lie another, deeper cave - a stranger, more comprehensive world beyond the
surface, a abyss behind every ground, beneath every 'foundation'. Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy -
that is a hermit's judgement: 'there is something arbitrary in the fact that he
stopped, looked back, looked around here, that he stopped digging and laid his
spade aside here - there is also something suspicious about it.' Every philosophy also conceals a
philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding-place, every word also a mask.
290
Every
profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being
misunderstood. The latter may perhaps
wound his vanity; but the former will wound his heart, his sympathy, which says
always: 'alas, why do you want to have as hard a time of it as I had?'
291
Man, a manifold, mendacious, artificial and untransparent animal, uncanny to the other animals less on
account of his strength than on account of his cunning and cleverness, invented
the good conscience so as to enjoy his soul for once as simple; and the
whole of morality is a protracted audacious forgery by virtue of which alone it
becomes possible to feel pleasure at the sight of the soul. From this point of view there is perhaps much
more in the concept 'art' than is generally believed.
292
A
philosopher: a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes,
dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if from
without, as if from above and below, as by his kind of events and
thunderclaps; who is himself perhaps a storm and pregnant with new lightnings; a fateful man around whom snarling,
quarrelling, discord and uncanniness is always going
on. A philosopher: alas, a creature
which often runs away from itself, is often afraid of itself - but which is too
inquisitive not to keep 'coming to itself' again ...
293
A
man who says: 'I like this, I take it for my own and mean to protect it and
defend it against everyone'; a man who can do something, carry out a decision,
remain true to an idea, hold on to a woman, punish and put down insolence; a
man who has his anger and his sword and to whom the weak, suffering, oppressed,
and the animals too are glad to submit and belong by nature, in short a man who
is by nature a master - when such a man has pity, well! that pity has value!
But of what account is the pity of those who suffer! Or, worse, of those who preach
pity! There exists almost everywhere in
Europe today a morbid sensitivity and susceptibility to pain, likewise a
repellent intemperance in lamentation, a tenderization which, with the aid of
religion and odds and ends of philosophy, would like to deck itself out as
something higher - there exists a downright cult of suffering. The unmanliness of that which is in
such fantastic circles baptized 'pity' is, I think, the first thing which leaps
to the eye. - This latest species of bad taste must be resolutely and radically
excommunicated; and I would like to see the good amulet 'gai
saber' worn around neck and hearts so as to ward
it off - 'gay science', to make the matter plain.
294
The
Olympian vice - In spite of that philosopher
who, being a real Englishman, sought to bring laughter into disrepute among all
thinking minds - 'laughter is a bad infirmity of human nature which every
thinking man will endeavour to overcome' (Hobbes) - I would go so far as to
venture an order or rank among philosophers according to the rank of their
laughter - rising to those capable of golden laughter. And if gods too philosophize, as many an
inference has driven me to suppose - I do not doubt that while doing so they
also know how to laugh in a new and superhuman way - and at the expense of all
serious things! Gods are fond of
mockery: it seems they cannot refrain from laughter even when sacraments are in
progress.
295
The
genius of the heart as it is possessed by that great hidden one, the tempter god
and born pied piper of conscience whose voice knows how to descend into the
underworld of every soul, who says no word and gives no glance in which there
lies no touch of enticement, to whose mastery belongs knowing how to seem - not
what he is but what to those who follow him is one constraint more to
press ever closer to him, to follow him every more inwardly and thoroughly -
the genius of the heart who makes everything loud and self-satisfied fall
silent and teaches it to listen, who smoothes rough souls and gives them a new
desire to savour - the desire to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may
mirror itself in them - ; the genius of the heart who teaches the stupid and
hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more delicately; who divines the hidden and
forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick and
opaque ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold which has lain long
in the prison of much mud and sand; the genius of the heart from whose touch
everyone goes away richer, not favoured and surprised, not as if blessed and
oppressed with the goods of others, but richer in himself, newer to himself
than before, broken open, blown upon and sounded out by a thawing wind, more
uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes
that as yet have no names, full of new will and current, full of new ill will
and counter-current ... but what am I doing, my friends? Of whom am I speaking to you? Have I so far forgot
myself that I have not even told you his name?
Unless you have already yourselves divined who this questionable god and
spirit is who wants to be praised in such a fashion. For as happens to everyone who has always
been on the move and in foreign lands from his childhood up, so many a strange
and not undangerous spirit has crossed my path too,
but above all he of whom I was just speaking, and he again and again, no less a
personage in fact than the god Dionysus, that great ambiguous and
tempter god to whom, as you know, once I brought in all secrecy and reverence
for my first-born - being, as it seems to me, the last to have brought him a sacrifice:
for I have found no one who could have understood what I was then doing. Meanwhile, I have learned much, all too much
more about the philosophy of this god and, as I have said, from mouth to mouth
- I, the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus: and perhaps I might at
last begin to give you, my friends, a little taste of this philosophy, insofar
as I am permitted to? In a hushed voice,
as is only proper: for it involves much that is secret, new, unfamiliar,
strange, uncanny.
The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that gods too
therefore philosophize, seems a by no means harmless novelty and one calculated
to excite suspicion precisely among philosophers - among you, my friends, it
will meet with a friendlier reception, unless it comes too late and not at the
right time: for, as I have discovered, you no longer like to believe in God and
gods now. Perhaps I shall also have to
go further in the frankness of my story than may always be agreeable to the
strict habits of your ears? Certainly
the above-named god went further, very much further, in conversations of this
sort, and was always many steps ahead of me.... Indeed, if it were permitted to
follow the human custom of applying to him beautiful, solemn titles of pomp and
virtue, I would have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer, his
daring honesty, truthfulness and love of wisdom. But such a god has nothing to do with all
this venerable lumber and pomp. 'Keep
that', he would say, 'for yourself and your like and for anyone else who needs
it! I - have no reason to cover my
nakedness!' - One will see that this species of divinity and philosopher is
perhaps lacking in shame? - Thus he once said: 'Under certain circumstances I
love mankind' - alluding to Ariadne, who was present
- : 'Man is to me an agreeable, brave, ingenious animal without equal on earth, he knows how to make his way through every
labyrinth. I like him: I often ponder
how I might advance him and make him stronger, more evil and profound than he
is.' - 'Stronger, more evil and more profound?' I
asked in alarm. 'Yes,' he repeated,
'stronger, more evil and more profound; also more beautiful' - and as he said
that the tempter god smiled his halcyon smile, as though he had just paid a
charming compliment. Here one will also
see that this divinity is lacking not only in shame - ; and there is in general
good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from
instruction by us human beings. We human
beings are - more humane ...
296
Alas, and yet what are you, my
written and painted thoughts! It is not
long ago that you were still so many-coloured, young and malicious, so full of
thorns and hidden spices you made me sneeze and laugh - and now? You have already taken off your novelty and
some of you, I fear, are on the point of becoming truths: they already look so
immortal, so pathetically righteous, so boring!
And has it ever been otherwise?
For what things do we write and paint, we mandarins with Chinese
brushes, we immortalizers of things which let themselves be written, what alone are we capable of painting? Alas, only that which is about to wither and is
beginning to lose its fragrance! Alas,
only storms departing exhausted and feelings grown old and yellow! Alas, only birds strayed and grown weary in
flight who now let themselves be caught in the hand -
in our hand! We immortalize that
which cannot live and fly much longer, weary and mellow things alone! And it is only your afternoon, my
written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have the colours, many colours
perhaps, many many-coloured tendernesses and fifty
yellows and browns and greens and reds: - but no-one will divine from these how
you looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and wonders of my solitude, you
my old beloved - wicked thoughts!