Chapter IX: Book IV (1)

208.

A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE.—“Now, _in summa_, tell me what this new thing is that you want.”—“We no longer wish causes to be sinners and effects to be executioners.”

209.

THE UTILITY OF THE STRICTEST THEORIES.—People are indulgent towards a man’s moral weaknesses, and in this connection they use a coarse sieve, provided that he always professes to hold the most strict moral theories. On the other hand, the lives of free-thinking moralists have always been examined closely through a microscope, in the tacit belief that an error in their lives would be the best argument against their disagreeable knowledge.(6)

210.

THE “THING IN ITSELF.”—We used to ask formerly: What is the ridiculous?—as if there were something above and beyond ourselves that possessed the quality of provoking laughter, and we exhausted ourselves in trying to guess what it was (a theologian even held that it might be “the _naïveté_ of sin”). At the present time we ask: What is laughter? how does it arise? We have considered the point, and finally reached the conclusion that there is nothing which is good, beautiful, sublime, or evil in itself; but rather that there are conditions of soul which lead us to attribute such qualities to things outside ourselves and in us. We have taken back their predicates from things; or we have at all events recollected that we have merely lent the things these predicates. Let us be careful that this insight does not cause us to lose the faculty of lending, and that we do not become at the same time wealthier and more avaricious.

211.

TO THOSE WHO DREAM OF IMMORTALITY.—So you desire the everlasting perpetuity of this beautiful consciousness of yourselves? Is it not shameful? Do you forget all those other things which would in their turn have to support _you_ for all eternity, just as they have borne with you up to the present with more than Christian patience? Or do you think that you can inspire them with an eternally pleasant feeling towards yourself? A single immortal man on earth would imbue everyone around him with such a disgust for him that a general epidemic of murder and suicide would be brought about. And yet, ye petty dwellers on earth, with your narrow conceptions of a few thousand little minutes of time, ye would wish to be an everlasting burden on this everlasting universal existence! Could anything be more impertinent? After all, however, let us be indulgent towards a being of seventy years: he has not been able to exercise his imagination in conceiving his own “eternal tediousness”—he had not time enough for that!

212.

WHEREIN WE KNOW OURSELVES.—As soon as one animal sees another it mentally compares itself with it; and men of uncivilised ages did the same. The consequence is that almost all men come to know themselves only as regards their defensive and offensive faculties.

213.

MEN WHOSE LIVES HAVE BEEN FAILURES.—Some men are built of such stuff that society is at liberty to do what it likes with them—they will do well in any case, and will not have to complain of having failed in life. Other men are formed of such peculiar material—it need not be a particularly noble one, but simply rarer—that they are sure to fare ill except in one single instance: when they can live according to their own designs,—in all other cases the injury has to be borne by society. For everything that seems to the individual to be a wasted or blighted life, his entire burden of discouragement, powerlessness, sickness, irritation, covetousness, is attributed by him to society—and thus a heavy, vitiated atmosphere is gradually formed round society, or, in the most favourable cases, a thundercloud.

214.

WHAT INDULGENCE!—You suffer, and call upon us to be indulgent towards you, even when in your suffering you are unjust towards things and men! But what does our indulgence matter! You, however, should take greater precautions for your own sake! That’s a nice way of compensating yourself for your sufferings, by imposing still further suffering on your own judgment! Your own revenge recoils upon yourselves when you start reviling something: you dim your own eyes in this way, and not the eyes of others; you accustom yourself to looking at things in the wrong way, and with a squint.

215.

THE MORALITY OF VICTIMS.—“Enthusiastic sacrifice,” “self-immolation”—these are the catch-words of your morality, and I willingly believe that you, as you say, “mean it honestly”: but I know you better than you know yourselves, if your “honesty” is capable of going arm in arm with such a morality. You look down from the heights of this morality upon that other sober morality which calls for self-control, severity, and obedience; you even go so far as to call it egoistic—and you are indeed frank towards yourselves in saying that it displeases you—it must displease you! For, in sacrificing and immolating yourselves with such enthusiasm, you delight in the intoxication of the thought that you are now one with the powerful being, God or man, to whom you are consecrating yourselves: you revel in the feeling of his power, which is again attested by this sacrifice.

In reality, however, you only _appear_ to sacrifice yourselves; for your imagination turns you into gods and you enjoy yourselves as such. Judged from the point of view of this enjoyment, how poor and feeble must that other “egoistic” morality of obedience, duty, and reason seem to you: it is displeasing to you because in this instance true self-sacrifice and self-surrender are called for, without the victim thinking himself to be transformed into a god, as you do. In a word, you want intoxication and excess, and this morality which you despise takes up a stand against intoxication and excess—no wonder it causes you some displeasure!

216.

EVIL PEOPLE AND MUSIC.—Should the full bliss of love, which consists in unlimited confidence, ever have fallen to the lot of persons other than those who are profoundly suspicious, evil, and bitter? For such people enjoy in this bliss the gigantic, unlooked-for, and incredible _exception_ of their souls! One day they are seized with that infinite, dreamy sensation which is entirely opposed to the remainder of their private and public life, like a delicious enigma, full of golden splendour, and impossible to be described by mere words or similes. Implicit confidence makes them speechless—there is even a species of suffering and heaviness in this blissful silence; and this is why souls that are overcome with happiness generally feel more grateful to music than others and better ones do: for they see and hear through music, as through a coloured mist, their love becoming, as it were, more distant, more touching, and less heavy. Music is the only means that such people have of observing their extraordinary condition and of becoming aware of its presence with a feeling of estrangement and relief. When the sound of music reaches the ears of every lover he thinks: “It speaks of me, it speaks in my stead; it knows everything!”

217.

THE ARTIST.—The Germans wish to be transported by the artist into a state of dreamy passion; by his aid the Italians wish to rest from their real passions; the French wish him to give them an opportunity of showing their judgment and of making speeches. So let us be just!

218.

TO DEAL LIKE AN ARTIST WITH ONE’S WEAKNESSES.—If we must positively have weaknesses and come in the end to look upon them as laws beyond ourselves, I wish that everybody may be possessed of as much artistic capacity as will enable him to set off his virtues by means of his weaknesses, and to make us, through his weaknesses, desirous of acquiring his virtues: a power which great musicians have possessed in quite an exceptional degree. How frequently do we notice in Beethoven’s music a coarse, dogmatic, and impatient tone; in Mozart, the joviality of an honest man, whose heart and mind have not overmuch to give us; in Richard Wagner, an abrupt and aggressive restlessness, in the midst of which, just as the most patient listener is on the point of losing his temper, the composer regains his powers, and likewise the others. Through their very weaknesses, these musicians have created in us an ardent desire for their virtues, and have given us a palate which is ten times more sensitive to every note of this tuneful intellect, tuneful beauty, and tuneful goodness.

219.

DECEIT IN HUMILIATION.—By your foolishness you have done a great wrong to your neighbour and destroyed his happiness irretrievably—and then, having overcome your vanity, you humble yourself before him, surrender your foolishness to his contempt, and fancy that, after this difficult scene, which is an exceedingly painful one for you, everything has been set right, that your own voluntary loss of honour compensates your neighbour for the injury you have done to his happiness. With this feeling you take your leave comforted, believing that your virtue has been re-established.

Your neighbour, however, suffers as intensely as before. He finds nothing to comfort him in the fact that you have been irrational and have told him so: on the contrary, he remembers the painful appearance you presented to him when you were disparaging yourself in his presence—it is as if another wound had been inflicted on him. He does not think of revenging himself, however; and cannot conceive how a proper balance can be struck between you and him. In point of fact, you have been acting that scene for yourself and before yourself: you invited a witness to be present, not on his account, but on your own—don’t deceive yourself!

220.

DIGNITY AND TIMIDITY.—Ceremonies, official robes and court dresses, grave countenances, solemn aspects, the slow pace, involved speech—everything, in short, known as dignity—are all pretences adopted by those who are timid at heart: they wish to make themselves feared (themselves or the things they represent). The fearless (_i.e._ originally those who naturally inspire others with awe) have no need of dignity and ceremonies: they bring into repute—or, still more, into ill-repute—honesty and straightforward words and bearing, as characteristics of their self-confident awefulness.

221.

THE MORALITY OF SACRIFICE.—The morality which is measured by the spirit of sacrifice is that of a semi-civilised state of society. Reason in this instance gains a hard-fought and bloody victory within the soul; for there are powerful contrary instincts to be overcome. This cannot be brought about without the cruelty which the sacrifices to cannibal gods demand.

222.

WHERE FANATICISM IS TO BE DESIRED.—Phlegmatic natures can be rendered enthusiastic only by being fanaticised.

223.

THE DREADED EYE.—Nothing is dreaded more by artists, poets, and writers than the eye which sees through their little deceptions and subsequently notices how often they have stopped at the boundary where the paths branch off either to innocent delight in themselves or to the straining after effect; the eye which checks them when they try to sell little things dear, or when they try to exalt and adorn without being exalted themselves; the eye which, despite all the artifices of their art, sees the thought as it first presented itself to them, perhaps as a charming vision of light, perhaps also, however, as a theft from the whole world, or as an everyday conception which they had to expand, contract, colour, wrap up, and spice, in order to make something out of it, instead of the thought making something out of them.—Oh, this eye, which sees in your work all your restlessness, inquisitiveness, and covetousness, your imitation and exaggeration (which is only envious imitation) which knows both your blush of shame and your skill in concealing it from others and interpreting it to yourselves!

224.

THE “EDIFYING” ELEMENT IN OUR NEIGHBOUR’S MISFORTUNE.—He is in distress, and straightway the “compassionate” ones come to him and depict his misfortune to him. At last they go away again, satisfied and elevated, after having gloated over the unhappy man’s misfortune and their own, and spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

225.

TO BE QUICKLY DESPISED.—A man who speaks a great deal, and speaks quickly, soon sinks exceedingly low in our estimation, even when he speaks rationally—not only to the extent that he annoys us personally, but far lower. For we conjecture how great a burden he has already proved to many other people, and we thus add to the discomfort which he causes us all the contempt which we presume he has caused to others.

226.

RELATIONS WITH CELEBRITIES.—_A._ But why do you shun this great man?—_B._ I should not like to misunderstand him. Our defects are incompatible with one another: I am short-sighted and suspicious, and he wears his false diamonds as willingly as his real ones.

227.

THE CHAIN-WEARERS.—Beware of all those intellects which are bound in chains! clever women, for example, who have been banished by fate to narrow and dull surroundings, amid which they grow old. True, there they lie in the sun, apparently lazy and half-blind; but at every unknown step, at everything unexpected, they start up to bite: they revenge themselves on everything that has escaped their kennel.

228.

REVENGE IN PRAISE.—Here we have a written page which is covered with praise, and you call it flat; but when you find out that revenge is concealed in this praise you will find it almost too subtle, and you will experience a great deal of pleasure in its numerous delicate and bold strokes and similes. It is not the man himself, but his revenge, which is so subtle, rich, and ingenious: he himself is scarcely aware of it.

229.

PRIDE.—Ah, not one of you knows the feeling of the tortured man after he has been put to the torture, when he is being carried back to his cell, and his secret with him!—he still holds it in a stubborn and tenacious grip. What know ye of the exultation of human pride?

230.

“UTILITARIAN.”—At the present time men’s sentiments on moral things run in such labyrinthic paths that, while we demonstrate morality to one man by virtue of its utility, we refute it to another on account of this utility.

231.

ON GERMAN VIRTUE.—How degenerate in its taste, how servile to dignities, ranks, uniforms, pomp, and splendour must a nation have been, when it began to consider the simple as the bad, the simple man (_schlicht_) as the bad man (_schlecht_)! We should always oppose the moral bumptiousness of the Germans with this one little word “bad,” and nothing else.

232.

FROM A DISPUTE.—_A._ Friend, you have talked yourself hoarse.—_B._ Then I am refuted, so let’s drop the subject.

233.

THE “CONSCIENTIOUS” ONES.—Have you noticed the kind of men who attach the greatest value to the most scrupulous conscientiousness? Those who are conscious of many mean and petty sentiments, who are anxiously thinking of and about themselves, are afraid of others, and are desirous of concealing their inmost feelings as far as possible. They endeavour to impose upon themselves by means of this strict conscientiousness and rigorousness of duty, and by the stern and harsh impression which others, especially their inferiors, cannot fail to receive of them.

234.

DREAD OF FAME.—_A._ The endeavour to avoid one’s renown, the intentional offending of one’s panegyrists, the dislike of hearing opinions about one’s self, and all through fear of renown: instances like these are to be met with; they actually exist—believe it or not!—_B._ They are found, no doubt! They exist! A little patience, Sir Arrogance!

235.

REFUSING THANKS.—We are perfectly justified in refusing a request, but it is never right to refuse thanks—or, what comes to the same thing, to accept them coldly and conventionally. This gives deep offence—and why?

236.

PUNISHMENT.—A strange thing, this punishment of ours! It does not purify the criminal; it is not a form of expiation; but, on the contrary, it is even more defiling than the crime itself.

237.

PARTY GRIEVANCES.—In almost every party there is a ridiculous, but nevertheless somewhat dangerous grievance. The sufferers from it are those who have long been the faithful and honourable upholders of the doctrine propagated by the party, and who suddenly remark that one day a much stronger figure than themselves has got the ear of the public. How can they bear being reduced to silence? So they raise their voices, sometimes changing their notes.

238.

STRIVING FOR GENTLENESS.—When a vigorous nature has not an inclination towards cruelty, and is not always preoccupied with itself; it involuntarily strives after gentleness—this is its distinctive characteristic. Weak natures, on the other hand, have a tendency towards harsh judgments—they associate themselves with the heroes of the contempt of mankind, the religious or philosophical traducers of existence, or they take up their position behind strict habits and punctilious “callings”: in this way they seek to give themselves a character and a kind of strength. This is likewise done quite involuntarily.

239.

A HINT TO MORALISTS.—Our musicians have made a great discovery. They have found out that interesting ugliness is possible even in their art; this is why they throw themselves with such enthusiastic intoxication into this ocean of ugliness, and never before has it been so easy to make music. It is only now that we have got the general, dark-coloured background, upon which every luminous ray of fine music, however faint, seems tinged with golden emerald lustre; it is only now that we dare to inspire our audience with feelings of impetuosity and indignation, taking away their breath, so to speak, in order that we may afterwards, in an interval of restful harmony, inspire them with a feeling of bliss which will be to the general advantage of a proper appreciation of music.

We have discovered the contrast: it is only now that the strongest effects are possible—and cheap. No one bothers any more about good music. But you must hurry up! When any art has once made this discovery, it has but a short space of time to live.—Oh, if only our thinkers could probe into the depths of the souls of our musicians when listening to their music! How long we must wait until we again have an opportunity of surprising the inward man in the very act of his evil doing, and his innocence of this act! For our musicians have not the slightest suspicion that it is their own history, the history of the disfigurement of the soul, which they are transposing into music. In former times a good musician was almost forced by the exigencies of his art to become a good man—and now!

240.

THE MORALITY OF THE STAGE.—The man who imagines that the effect of Shakespeare’s plays is a moral one, and that the sight of Macbeth irresistibly induces us to shun the evil of ambition, is mistaken, and he is mistaken once more if he believes that Shakespeare himself thought so. He who is truly obsessed by an ardent ambition takes delight in beholding this picture of himself; and when the hero is driven to destruction by his passion, this is the most pungent spice in the hot drink of this delight. Did the poet feel this in another way? How royally and with how little of the knave in him does his ambitious hero run his course from the moment of his great crime! It is only from this moment that he becomes “demoniacally” attractive, and that he encourages similar natures to imitate him.—There is something demoniacal here: something which is in revolt against advantage and life, in favour of a thought and an impulse. Do you think that Tristan and Isolde are warnings against adultery, merely because adultery has resulted in the death of both of them? This would be turning poets upside down, these poets who, especially Shakespeare, are in love with the passions in themselves, and not less so with the readiness for death which they give rise to: this mood in which the heart no more clings to life than a drop of water does to the glass. It is not the guilt and its pernicious consequences which interests these poets—Shakespeare as little as Sophocles (in the _Ajax_, _Philoctetes_, _Œdipus_)—however easy it might have been in the cases just mentioned to make the guilt the lever of the play, it was carefully avoided by the poets.

In the same way the tragic poet by his images of life does not wish to set us against life. On the contrary, he exclaims; “It is the charm of charms, this exciting, changing, and dangerous existence of ours, so often gloomy and so often bathed in sun! Life is an adventure—whichever side you may take in life it will always retain this character!”—Thus speaks the poet of a restless and vigorous age, an age which is almost intoxicated and stupefied by its superabundance of blood and energy, in an age more evil than our own: and this is why it is necessary for us to adapt and accommodate ourselves first to the purpose of a Shakespearian play, that is, by misunderstanding it.

241.

FEAR AND INTELLIGENCE.—If that which is now expressly maintained is true, viz. that the cause of the black pigment of the skin must not be sought in light, might this phenomenon perhaps be the ultimate effect of frequent fits of passion accumulated for century after century (and an afflux of blood under the skin)? while in other and more intelligent races the equally frequent spasms of fear and blanching may have resulted in the white colour of the skin?—For the degree of timidity is the standard by which the intelligence may be measured; and the fact that men give themselves up to blind anger is an indication that their animal nature is still near the surface, and is longing for an opportunity to make its presence felt once more. Thus a brownish-grey would probably be the primitive colour of man—something of the ape and the bear, as is only proper.

242.

INDEPENDENCE.—Independence (which in its weakest form is called “freedom of thought”) is the type of resignation which the tyrannical man ends by accepting—he who for a long time had been looking for something to govern, but without finding anything except himself.

243.

THE TWO COURSES.—When we endeavour to examine the mirror in itself we discover in the end that we can detect nothing there but the things which it reflects. If we wish to grasp the things reflected we touch nothing in the end but the mirror.—This is the general history of knowledge.

244.

DELIGHT IN REALITY.—Our present inclination to take delight in reality—for almost every one of us possesses it—can only be explained by the fact that we have taken delight in the unreal for such a long time that we have got tired of it. This inclination in its present form, without choice and without refinement, is not without danger—its least danger is its want of taste.

245.

THE SUBTLETY OF THE FEELING OF POWER.—Napoleon was greatly mortified at the fact that he could not speak well, and he did not deceive himself in this respect: but his thirst for power, which never despised the slightest opportunity of showing itself, and which was still more subtle than his subtle intellect, led him to speak even worse than he might have done. It was in this way that he revenged himself upon his own mortification (he was jealous of all his emotions because they possessed power) in order to enjoy his autocratic pleasure.

He enjoyed this pleasure a second time in respect to the ears and judgment of his audience, as if it were good enough for them to be addressed in this way. He even secretly enjoyed the thought of bewildering their judgment and good taste by the thunder and lightning of his highest authority—that authority which lies in the union of power and genius—while both his judgment and his good taste held fast proudly and indifferently to the truth that he did not speak well.—Napoleon, as the complete and fully developed type of a single instinct, belongs to ancient humanity, whose characteristic—the simple construction and ingenious development and realisation of a single motive or a small number of motives—may be easily enough recognised.

246.

ARISTOTLE AND MARRIAGE.—Insanity makes its appearance in the children of great geniuses, and stupidity in those of the most virtuous—so says Aristotle. Did he mean by this to invite exceptional men to marry?

247.

THE ORIGIN OF A BAD TEMPERAMENT.—Injustice and instability in the minds of certain men, their disordered and immoderate manner, are the ultimate consequences of the innumerable logical inexactitudes, superficialities, and hasty conclusions of which their ancestors have been guilty. Men of a good temperament, on the other hand, are descended from solid and meditative races which have set a high value upon reason—whether for praiseworthy or evil purposes is of no great importance.

248.

DISSIMULATION AS A DUTY.—Kindness has been best developed by the long dissimulation which endeavoured to appear as kindness: wherever great power existed the necessity for dissimulation of this nature was recognised—it inspires security and confidence, and multiplies the actual sum of our physical power. Falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. In the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity: in hereditary aristocracies. The persistent exercise of such a dissimulation ends by bringing about the actual nature of the thing itself: the dissimulation in the long run suppresses itself, and organs and instincts are the unexpected fruits in this garden of hypocrisy.

249.

WHO, THEN, IS EVER ALONE.—The faint-hearted wretch does not know what it means to be lonely. An enemy is always prowling in his tracks. Oh, for the man who could give us the history of that subtle feeling called loneliness!

250.

NIGHT AND MUSIC.—It was only at night time, and in the semi-obscurity of dark forests and caverns, that the ear, the organ of fear, was able to develop itself so well, in accordance with the mode of living of the timid—that is, the longest human epoch which has ever yet existed: when it is clear daylight the ear is less necessary. Hence the character of music, which is an art of night and twilight.

251.

STOICAL.—The Stoic experiences a certain sense of cheerfulness when he feels oppressed by the ceremonial which he has prescribed for himself: he enjoys himself then as a ruler.

252.

CONSIDER.—The man who is being punished is no longer he who has done the deed. He is always the scapegoat.

253.

APPEARANCE.—Alas! what must be best and most resolutely proved is appearance itself; for only too many people lack eyes to observe it. But it is so tiresome!

254.

THOSE WHO ANTICIPATE.—What distinguishes poetic natures, but is also a danger for them, is their imagination, which exhausts itself in advance: which anticipates what will happen or what may happen, which enjoys and suffers in advance, and which at the final moment of the event or the action is already fatigued. Lord Byron, who was only too familiar with this, wrote in his diary: “If ever I have a son he shall choose a very prosaic profession—that of a lawyer or a pirate.”

255.

CONVERSATION ON MUSIC.—

_A._ What do you say to that music?

_B._ It has overpowered me, I can say nothing about it. Listen! there it is beginning again.

_A._ All the better! This time let us do our best to overpower it. Will you allow me to add a few words to this music? and also to show you a drama which perhaps at your first hearing you did not wish to observe?

_B._ Very well, I have two ears and even more if necessary; move up closer to me.

_A._ We have not yet heard what he wishes to say to us, up to the present he has only promised to say something—something as yet unheard, so he gives us to understand by his gestures, for they are gestures. How he beckons! How he raises himself up! How he gesticulates! and now the moment of supreme tension seems to have come to him: two more fanfares, and he will present us with his superb and splendidly-adorned theme, rattling, as it were, with precious stones.

Is it a handsome woman? or a beautiful horse? Enough, he looks about him as if enraptured, for he must assemble looks of rapture. It is only now that his theme quite pleases him: it is only now that he becomes inventive and risks new and audacious features. How he forces out his theme! Ah, take care!—he not only understands how to adorn, but also how to gloss it over! Yes, he knows what the colour of health is, and he knows how to make it up,—he is more subtle in his self-consciousness than I thought. And now he is convinced that he has convinced his hearers; he sets off his impromptus as if they were the most important things under the sun: he points to his theme with an insolent finger as if it were too good for this world.—Ah, how distrustful he is! He is afraid we may get tired!—that is why he buries his melody in sweet notes.—Now he even appeals to our coarser senses that he may excite us and thus get us once again into his power. Listen to him as he conjures up the elementary force of tempestuous and thundering rhythms!

And now that he sees that these things have captivated our attention, strangle us, and almost overwhelm us, he once again ventures to introduce his theme amidst this play of the elements in order to convince us, confused and agitated as we are, that our confusion and agitation are the effects of his miraculous theme. And from now onwards his hearers believe in him: as soon as the theme is heard once more they are reminded of its thrilling elementary effects. The theme profits by this recollection—now it has become demoniacal! What a connoisseur of the soul he is! He gains command over us by all the artifices of the popular orator. But the music has stopped again.

_B._ And I am glad of it; for I could no longer bear listening to your observations! I should prefer ten times over to let myself be deceived to knowing the truth once after your version.

_A._ That is just what I wished to hear from you. The best people now are just like you: you are quite content to let yourselves be deceived. You come here with coarse, lustful ears, and you do not bring with you your conscience of the art of listening. On the way here you have cast away your intellectual honesty, and thus you corrupt both art and artists. Whenever you applaud and cheer you have in your hands the conscience of the artists—and woe to art if they get to know that you cannot distinguish between innocent and guilty music! I do not indeed refer to “good” and “bad” music—we meet with both in the two kinds of music mentioned! but I call innocent music that which thinks only of itself and believes only in itself, and which on account of itself has forgotten the world at large—this spontaneous expression of the most profound solitude which speaks of itself and with itself, and has entirely forgotten that there are listeners, effects, misunderstandings and failures in the world outside. In short, the music which we have just heard is precisely of this rare and noble type; and everything I said about it was a fable—pardon my little trick if you will!

_B._ Oh, then you like _this_ music, too? In that case many sins shall be forgiven you!

256.

THE HAPPINESS OF THE EVIL ONES.—These silent, gloomy, and evil men possess a peculiar something which you cannot dispute with them—an uncommon and strange enjoyment in the _dolce far niente_; a sunset and evening rest, such as none can enjoy but a heart which has been too often devoured, lacerated, and poisoned by the passions.

257.

WORDS PRESENT IN OUR MINDS.—We always express our thoughts with those words which lie nearest to hand. Or rather, if I may reveal my full suspicion; at every moment we have only the particular thought for the words that are present in our minds.

258.

FLATTERING THE DOG.—You have only to stroke this dog’s coat once, and he immediately splutters and gives off sparks like any other flatterer—and he is witty in his own way. Why should we not endure him thus?

259.

THE QUONDAM PANEGYRIST.—“He has now become silent now in regard to me, although he knows the truth and could tell it; but it would sound like vengeance—and he values truth so highly, this honourable man!”

260.

THE AMULET OF DEPENDENT MEN.—He who is unavoidably dependent upon some master ought to possess something by which he can inspire his master with fear, and keep him in check: integrity, for example, or probity, or an evil tongue.

261.

WHY SO SUBLIME!—Oh, I know them well this breed of animals! Certainly it pleases them better to walk on two legs “like a god”—but it pleases me better when they fall back on their four feet. This is incomparably more natural for them!

262.

THE DEMON OF POWER.—Neither necessity nor desire, but the love of power, is the demon of mankind. You may give men everything possible—health, food, shelter, enjoyment—but they are and remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits; and must be satisfied. Let everything else be taken away from men, and let this demon be satisfied, and then they will nearly be happy—as happy as men and demons can be; but why do I repeat this? Luther has already said it, and better than I have done, in the verses:

“And though they take our life,
Goods, honour, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small,
These things shall vanish all,
The Kingdom it remaineth.”

The Kingdom! there it is again!(7)

263.

CONTRADICTION INCARNATE AND ANIMATED.—There is a physiological contradiction in what is called genius: genius possesses on the one hand a great deal of savage disorder and involuntary movement, and on the other hand a great deal of superior activity in this movement. Joined to this a genius possesses a mirror which reflects the two movements beside one another, and within one another, but often opposed to one another. Genius in consequence of this sight is often unhappy, and if it feels its greatest happiness in creating, it is because it forgets that precisely then, with the highest determinate activity, it does something fantastic and irrational (such is all art) and cannot help doing it.

264.

DECEIVING ONE’S SELF.—Envious men with a discriminating intuition endeavour not to become too closely acquainted with their rivals in order that they may feel themselves superior to them.

265.

THERE IS A TIME FOR THE THEATRE.—When the imagination of a people begins to diminish, there arises the desire to have its legends represented on the stage: it then tolerates the coarse substitutes for imagination. In the age of the epic rhapsodist, however, the theatre itself, and the actor dressed up as a hero, form an obstacle in the path of the imagination instead of acting as wings for it—too near, too definite, too heavy, and with too little of dreamland and the flights of birds about them.

266.

WITHOUT CHARM.—He lacks charm and knows it. Ah, how skilful he is in masking this defect! He does it by a strict virtue, gloomy looks, and acquired distrust of all men, and of existence itself; by coarse jests, by contempt for a more refined manner of living, by pathos and pretensions, and by a cynical philosophy—yea, he has even developed into a character through the continual knowledge of his deficiency.

267.

WHY SO PROUD?—A noble character is distinguished from a vulgar one by the fact that the latter has not at ready command a certain number of habits and points of view like the former: fate willed that they should not be his either by inheritance or by education.

268.

THE ORATOR’S SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.—How difficult it was in Athens to speak in such a way as to win over the hearers to one’s cause without repelling them at the same time by the form in which one’s speech was cast, or withdrawing their attention from the cause itself by this form! How difficult it still is to write thus in France!

269.

SICK PEOPLE AND ART.—For all kinds of sadness and misery of soul we should first of all try a change of diet and severe manual labour; but in such cases men are in the habit of having recourse to mental intoxicants, to art for example—which is both to their own detriment and that of art! Can you not see that when you call for art as sick people you make the artists themselves sick?

270.

APPARENT TOLERATION.—Those are good, benevolent, and rational words on and in favour of science, but, alas! I see behind these words your toleration of science. In a corner of your inmost mind you think, in spite of all you say, that _it is not necessary for you_, that it shows magnanimity on your part to admit and even to advocate it, more especially as science on its part does not exhibit this magnanimity in regard to your opinion! Do you know that you have no right whatever to exercise this toleration? that this condescension of yours is an even coarser disparagement of science than any of that open scorn which a presumptuous priest or artist might allow himself to indulge in towards science? What is lacking in you is a strong sense for everything that is true and actual, you do not feel grieved and worried to find that science is in contradiction to your own sentiments, you are unacquainted with that intense desire for knowledge ruling over you like a law, you do not feel a duty in the need of being present with your own eyes wherever knowledge exists, and to let nothing that is “known” escape you. You do not know that which you are treating with such toleration! and it is only because you do not know it that you can succeed in adopting such a gracious attitude towards it. You, forsooth, would look upon science with hatred and fanaticism if it for once cast its shining and illuminating glance upon you! What does it matter to us, then, if you do exhibit toleration—and towards a phantom! and not even towards us!—and what do we matter!

271.

FESTIVE MOODS.—It is exactly those men who aspire most ardently towards power who feel it indescribably agreeable to be overpowered! to sink suddenly and deeply into a feeling as into a whirlpool! To suffer the reins to be snatched out of their hand, and to watch a movement which takes them they know not where! Whatever or whoever may be the person or thing that renders us this service, it is nevertheless a great service: we are so happy and breathless, and feel around us an exceptional silence, as if we were in the most central bowels of the earth. To be for once entirely powerless! the plaything of the elementary forces of nature! There is a restfulness in this happiness, a casting away of the great burden, a descent without fatigue, as if one had been given up to the blind force of gravity.

This is the dream of the mountain climber, who, although he sees his goal far above him, nevertheless falls asleep on the way from utter exhaustion, and dreams of the happiness of the contrast—this effortless rolling down hill. I describe happiness as I imagine it to be in our present-day society, the badgered, ambitious society of Europe and America. Now and then they _wish_ to fall back into impotence—this enjoyment is offered them by wars, arts, religions, and geniuses. When a man has temporarily abandoned himself to a momentary impression which devours and crushes everything—and this is the modern festive mood—he afterwards becomes freer, colder, more refreshed, and more strict, and again strives tirelessly after the contrary of all this: power.

272.

THE PURIFICATION OF RACES.—It is probable that there are no pure races, but only races which have become purified, and even these are extremely rare.(8) We more often meet with crossed races, among whom, together with the defects in the harmony of the bodily forms (for example when the eyes do not accord with the mouth) we necessarily always find defects of harmony in habits and appreciations. (Livingstone heard some one say, “God created white and black men, but the devil created the half-castes.”)

Crossed races are always at the same time crossed cultures and crossed moralities: they are, as a rule, more evil, cruel, and restless. Purity is the final result of innumerable adjustments, absorptions, and eliminations; and progress towards purity in a race is shown by the fact that the latent strength in the race is more and more restricted to a few special functions, whilst it formerly had to carry out too many and often contradictory things. Such a restriction will always have the appearance of an impoverishment, and must be judged with prudence and moderation. In the long run, however, when the process of purification has come to a successful termination, all those forces which were formerly wasted in the struggle between the disharmonious qualities are at the disposal of the organism as a whole, and this is why purified races have always become stronger and more beautiful.—The Greeks may serve us as a model of a purified race and culture!—and it is to be hoped that some day a pure European race and culture may arise.

273.

PRAISE.—Here is some one who, you perceive, wishes to praise you: you bite your lips and brace up your heart: Oh, that _that_ cup might go hence! But it does not, it comes! let us therefore drink the sweet impudence of the panegyrist, let us overcome the disgust and profound contempt that we feel for the innermost substance of his praise, let us assume a look of thankful joy—for he wished to make himself agreeable to us! And now that it is all over we know that he feels greatly exalted; he has been victorious over us. Yes, and also over himself, the villain!—for it was no easy matter for him to wring this praise from himself.

274.

THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF MAN.—We human beings are the only creatures who, when things do not go well with us, can blot ourselves out like a clumsy sentence,—whether we do so out of honour for humanity or pity for it, or on account of the aversion we feel towards ourselves.

275.

THE TRANSFORMED BEING.—Now he becomes virtuous; but only for the sake of hurting others by being so. Don’t pay so much attention to him.

276.

HOW OFTEN! HOW UNEXPECTED!—How may married men have some morning awakened to the fact that their young wife is dull, although she thinks quite the contrary! not to speak of those wives whose flesh is willing but whose intellect is weak!

277.

WARM AND COLD VIRTUES.—Courage is sometimes the consequence of cold and unshaken resolution, and at other times of a fiery and reckless élan. For these two kinds of courage there is only the one name!—but how different, nevertheless, are cold virtues and warm virtues! and the man would be a fool who could suppose that “goodness” could only be brought about by warmth, and no less a fool he who would only attribute it to cold. The truth is that mankind has found both warm and cold courage very useful, yet not often enough to prevent it from setting them both in the category of precious stones.

278.

THE GRACIOUS MEMORY.—A man of high rank will do well to develop a gracious memory, that is, to note all the good qualities of people and remember them particularly; for in this way he holds them in an agreeable dependence. A man may also act in this way towards himself: whether or not he has a gracious memory determines in the end the superiority, gentleness, or distrust with which he observes his own inclinations and intentions, and finally even the nature of these inclinations and intentions.

279.

WHEREIN WE BECOME ARTISTS.—He who makes an idol of some one endeavours to justify himself in his own eyes by idealising this person: in other words, he becomes an artist that he may have a clear conscience. When he suffers he does not suffer from his ignorance, but from the lie he has told himself to make himself ignorant. The inmost misery and desire of such a man—and all passionate lovers are included in this category—cannot be exhausted by normal means.

280.

CHILDLIKE.—Those who live like children—those who have not to struggle for their daily bread, and do not think that their actions have any ultimate signification—remain childlike.

281.

OUR EGO DESIRES EVERYTHING.—It would seem as if men in general were only inspired by the desire to possess: languages at least would permit of this supposition, for they view past actions from the standpoint that we have been put in possession of something—“I _have_ spoken, struggled, conquered”—as if to say, I am now in possession of my word, my struggle, my victory. How greedy man appears in this light! he cannot even let the past escape him: he even wishes to _have_ it still!

282.

DANGER IN BEAUTY.—This woman is beautiful and intelligent: alas, how much more intelligent she would have become if she had not been beautiful!

283.

DOMESTIC AND MENTAL PEACE.—Our habitual mood depends upon the mood in which we maintain our habitual entourage.

284.

NEW THINGS AS OLD ONES.—Many people seem irritated when something new is told them: they feel the ascendancy which the news has given to the person who has learnt it first.

285.

WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF THE EGO.—The majority of people take under their protection, as it were, something that they know, as if the fact of knowing it was sufficient in itself to make it their property. The acquisitiveness of the egoistic feeling has no limits: Great men speak as if they had behind them the whole of time, and had placed themselves at the head of this enormous host; and good women boast of the beauty of their children, their clothes, their dog, their physician, or their native town, but the only thing they dare not say is, “I am all that.” _Chi non ha non è_—as they say in Italy.

286.

DOMESTIC ANIMALS, PETS AND THE LIKE.—Could there be anything more repugnant than the sentimentality which is shown to plants and animals—and this on the part of a creature who from the very beginning has made such ravages among them as their most ferocious enemy,—and who ends by even claiming affectionate feelings from his weakened and mutilated victims! Before this kind of “nature” man must above all be serious, if he is any sort of a thinking being.

287.

TWO FRIENDS.—They were friends once, but now they have ceased to be so, and both of them broke off the friendship at the same time, the one because he believed himself to be too greatly misunderstood, and the other because he thought he was known too intimately—and both were wrong! For neither of them knew himself well enough.

288.

THE COMEDY OF THE NOBLE SOULS.—Those who cannot succeed in exhibiting a noble and cordial familiarity endeavour to let the nobleness of their nature be seen by their exercise of reserve and strictness, and a certain contempt for familiarity, as if their strong sense of confidence were ashamed to show itself.

289.

WHERE WE MAY SAY NOTHING AGAINST VIRTUE.—Among cowards it is thought bad form to say anything against bravery, for any expression of this kind would give rise to some contempt; and unfeeling people are irritated when anything is said against pity.(9)

290.

A WASTE.—We find that with irritable and abrupt people their first words and actions generally afford no indication of their actual character—they are prompted by circumstances, and are to some extent simply reproductions of the spirit of these circumstances. Because, however, as the words have been uttered and the deeds done, the subsequent words and deeds, indicating the real nature of such people, have often to be used to reconcile, amend, or extinguish the former.

291.

ARROGANCE.—Arrogance is an artificial and simulated pride; but it is precisely the essential nature of pride to be incapable of artifice, simulation, or hypocrisy—and thus arrogance is the hypocrisy of the incapacity for hypocrisy, a very difficult thing, and one which is a failure in most cases. But if we suppose that, as most frequently happens, the presumptuous person betrays himself, then a treble annoyance falls to his lot: people are angry with him because he has endeavoured to deceive them, and because he wished to show himself superior to them, and finally they laugh at him because he failed in both these endeavours. How earnestly, therefore, should we dissuade our fellow-men from arrogance!

292.

A SPECIES OF MISCONCEPTION.—When we hear somebody speak it is often sufficient for his pronunciation of a single consonant (the letter r, for example) to fill us with doubts as to the honesty of his feelings: we are not accustomed to this particular pronunciation, and should have to make it ourselves as it were arbitrarily—it sounds “forced” to us. This is the domain of the greatest possible misconception: and it is the same with the style of a writer who has certain habits which are not the habits of everybody. His “artlessness” is felt as such only by himself, and precisely in regard to that which he himself feels to be “forced” (because he has yielded in this matter to the prevailing fashion and to so called “good taste”), he may perhaps give pleasure and inspire confidence.

293.

THANKFUL.—One superfluous grain of gratitude and piety makes one suffer as from a vice—in spite of all one’s independence and honesty one begins to have a bad conscience.

294.

SAINTS.—It is the most sensual men who find it necessary to avoid women and to torture their bodies.

295.

THE SUBTLETY OF SERVING.—One of the most subtle tasks in the great art of serving is that of serving a more than usually ambitious man, who, indeed, is excessively egoistic in all things, but is entirely adverse to being thought so (this is part of his ambition). He requires that everything shall be according to his own will and humour, yet in such a way as to give him the appearance of always having sacrificed himself, and of rarely desiring anything for himself alone.

296.

DUELLING.—I think it a great advantage, said some one, to be able to fight a duel—if, of course, it is absolutely necessary; for I have at all times brave companions about me. The duel is the last means of thoroughly honourable suicide left to us; but it is unfortunately a circuitous means, and not even a certain one.

297.

PERNICIOUS.—A young man can be most surely corrupted when he is taught to value the like-minded more highly than the differently minded.

298.

HERO-WORSHIP AND ITS FANATICS.—The fanatic of an ideal that possesses flesh and blood is right as a rule so long as he assumes a negative attitude, and he is terrible in his negation: he knows what he denies as well as he knows himself, for the simple reason that he comes thence, that he feels at home there, and that he has always the secret fear of being forced to return there some day. He therefore wishes to make his return impossible by the manner of his negation. As soon as he begins to affirm, however, he partly shuts his eyes and begins to idealise (frequently merely for the sake of annoying those who have stayed at home). We might say that there was something artistic about this—agreed, but there is also something dishonest about it.

The idealist of a person imagines this person to be so far from him that he can no longer see him distinctly, and then he travesties that which he can just perceive into something “beautiful”—that is to say, symmetrical, vaguely outlined, uncertain. Since he wishes to worship from afar that ideal which floats on high in the distance, he finds it essential to build a temple for the object of his worship as a protection from the _profanum vulgus_. He brings into this temple for the object of his worship all the venerable and sanctified objects which he still possesses, so that his ideal may benefit by their charm, and that, nourished in this way, it may grow more and more divine. In the end he really succeeds in forming his God, but, alas for him! there is some one who knows how all this has been done, viz. his intellectual conscience; and there is also some one who, quite unconsciously, begins to protest against these things, viz. the deified one himself, who, in consequence of all this worship, praise, and incense, now becomes completely unbearable and shows himself in the most obvious and dreadful manner to be non-divine, and only too human.