Chapter VI: Part 6

_The Distrustful and their Style._--We say the strongest things simply, provided people are about us who believe in our strength:--such an environment educates to "simplicity of style." The distrustful, on the other hand, speak emphatically; they make things emphatic.

227.

_Fallacy, Fallacy._--He cannot rule himself; therefore that woman concludes that it will be easy to rule him, and throws out her lines to catch him;--the poor creature, who in a short time will be his slave.

228.

_Against Mediators._--He who attempts to mediate between two decided thinkers is rightly called mediocre: he has not an eye for seeing the unique; similarising and equalising are signs of weak eyes.

229.

_Obstinacy and Loyalty._--Out of obstinacy he holds fast to a cause of which the questionableness has become obvious,--he calls that, however, his "loyalty."

230.

_Lack of Reserve._--His whole nature fails to _convince_--that results from the fact that he has never been reticent about a good action he has performed.

231.

_The "Plodders."_--Persons slow of apprehension think that slowness forms part of knowledge.

232.

_Dreaming._--Either one does not dream at all, or one dreams in an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same fashion:--either not at all, or in an interesting manner.

233.

_The most Dangerous Point of View._--What I now do, or neglect to do, is as important _for all that is to come,_ as the greatest event of the past: in this immense perspective of effects all actions are equally great and small.

234.

_Consolatory Words of a Musician._--"Your life does not sound into people's ears: for them you live a dumb life, and all refinements of melody, all fond resolutions in following or leading the way, are concealed from them. To be sure you do not parade the thoroughfares with regimental music,--but these good people have no right to say on that account that your life is lacking in music. He that hath ears let him hear."

235.

_Spirit and Character._--Many a one attains his full height of character, but his spirit is not adapted to the elevation,--and many a one reversely.

236.

_To Move the Multitude._--Is it not necessary for him who wants to move the multitude to give a stage representation of himself? Has he not first to translate himself into the grotesquely obvious, and then _set forth_ his whole personality and cause in that vulgarised and simplified fashion?

237.

_The Polite Man._--"He is so polite!"--Yes, he has always a sop for Cerberus with him, and is so timid that he takes everybody for Cerberus, even you and me,--that is his "politeness."

238.

_Without Envy._--He is wholly without envy, but there is no merit therein: for he wants to conquer a land which no one has yet possessed and hardly any one has even seen.

239.

_The Joyless Person._--A single joyless person is enough to make constant displeasure and a clouded heaven in a household; and it is only by a miracle that such a person is lacking!--Happiness is not nearly such a contagious disease;--how is that?

240.

_On the Sea-Shore._--I would not build myself a house (it is an element of my happiness not to be a house-owner!). If I had to do so, however, I should build it, like many of the Romans, right into the sea,--I should like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster.

241.

_Work and Artist._--This artist is ambitious and nothing more; ultimately, however, his work is only a magnifying-glass, which he offers to every one who looks in his direction.

242.

_Suum cuique._--However great be my greed of knowledge, I cannot appropriate aught of things but what already belongs to me,--the property of others still remains in the things. How is it possible for a man to be a thief or a robber?

243.

_Origin of "Good" and "Bad."_--He only will devise an improvement who can feel that "this is not good."

244.

_Thoughts and Words._--Even our thoughts we are unable to render completely in words.

245.

_Praise in Choice._--The artist chooses his subjects; that is his mode of praising.

246.

_Mathematics._--We want to carry the refinement and rigour of mathematics into all the sciences, as far as it is in any way possible, not in the belief that we shall apprehend things in this way, but in order thereby to _assert_ our human relation to things. Mathematics is only a means to general and ultimate human knowledge.

247.

_Habits._--All habits make our hand wittier and our wit unhandier.

248.

_Books._--Of what account is a book that never carries us away beyond all books?

249.

_The Sigh of the Seeker of Knowledge._--"Oh, my covetousness! In this soul there is no disinterestedness--but an all-desiring self, which, by means of many individuals, would fain see as with _its own_ eyes, and grasp as with _its own_ hands--a self bringing back even the entire past, and wanting to lose nothing that could in anyway belong to it! Oh, this flame of my covetousness! Oh, that I were reincarnated in a hundred individuals!"--He who does not know this sigh by experience, does not know the passion of the seeker of knowledge either.

250.

_Guilt._--Although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the guilt, nevertheless, was not there. So it is with all guilt.

251.

_Misunderstood Sufferers._--Great natures suffer otherwise than their worshippers imagine; they suffer most severely from the ignoble, petty emotions of certain evil moments; in short, from doubt of their own greatness;--not however from the sacrifices and martyrdoms which their tasks require of them. As long as Prometheus sympathises with men and sacrifices himself for them, he is happy and proud in himself; but on becoming envious of Zeus and of the homage which mortals pay him--then Prometheus suffers!

252.

_Better to be in Debt._--"Better to remain in debt than to pay with money which does not bear our stamp!"--that is what our sovereignty prefers.

253.

_Always at Home._--One day we attain our _goal_--and then refer with pride to the long journeys we have made to reach it. In truth, we did not notice that we travelled. We got into the habit of thinking that we were _at home_ in every place.

254.

_Against Embarrassment._--He who is always thoroughly occupied is rid of all embarrassment.

255.

_Imitators._--A: "What? You don't want to have imitators?" B: "I don't want people to do anything _after_ me; I want every one to do something _before_ himself (as a pattern to himself)--just as _I_ do." A: "Consequently--?"

256.

_Skinniness._--All profound men have their happiness in imitating the flying-fish at times, and playing on the crests of the waves; they think that what is best of all in things is their surface: their skinniness--_sit venia verbo_.

257.

_From Experience._--A person often does not know how rich he is, until he learns from experience what rich men even play the thief on him.

258.

_The Deniers of Chance._--No conqueror believes in chance.

259.

_From Paradise._--"Good and Evil are God's prejudices"--said the serpent.

260.

_One times One._--One only is always in the wrong, but with two truth begins.--One only cannot prove himself right; but two are already beyond refutation.

261.

_Originality._--What is originality? To _see_ something that does not yet bear a name, that cannot yet be named, although it is before everybody's eyes. As people are usually constituted, it is the name that first makes a thing generally visible to them.--Original persons have also for the most part been the namers of things.

262.

_Sub specie æterni._--A: "You withdraw faster and faster from the living; they will soon strike you out of their lists!"--B: "It is the only way to participate in the privilege of the dead." A: "In what privilege?"--B: "No longer having to die."

263.

_Without Vanity._--When we love we want our defects to remain concealed,--not out of vanity, but lest the person loved should suffer therefrom. Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,--and not out of vanity either.

264.

_What we Do._--What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.

265.

_Ultimate Scepticism._--But what after all are man's truths?--They are his _irrefutable_ errors.

266.

_Where Cruelty is Necessary._--He who is great is cruel to his second-rate virtues and judgments.

267.

_With a high Aim._--With a high aim a person is superior even to justice, and not only to his deeds and his judges.

268.

_What makes Heroic?_--To face simultaneously one's greatest suffering and one's highest hope.

269.

_What dost thou Believe in?_--In this: That the weights of all things must be determined anew.

270.

_What Saith thy Conscience?_--"Thou shalt become what thou art."

271.

_Where are thy Greatest Dangers?_--In pity.

272.

_What dost thou Love in others?_--My hopes.

273.

_Whom dost thou call Bad?_--Him who always wants to put others to shame.

274.

_What dost thou think most humane?_--To spare a person shame.

275.

_What is the Seal of Attained Liberty?_--To be no longer ashamed of oneself.

BOOK FOURTH

SANCTUS JANUARIUS

Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from
its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea:
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,--
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint!

_Genoa,_ January 1882.

276.

_For the New Year._--I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,--a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:--I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. _Amor fati:_ let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. _Looking aside,_ let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!

277.

_Personal Providence._--There is a certain climax in life, at which, notwithstanding all our freedom, and however much we may have denied all directing reason and goodness in the beautiful chaos of existence, we are once more in great danger of intellectual bondage, and have to face our hardest test. For now the thought of a personal Providence first presents itself before us with its most persuasive force, and has the best of advocates, apparentness, in its favour, now when it is obvious that all and everything that happens to us always _turns out for the best._ The life of every day and of every hour seems to be anxious for nothing else but always to prove this proposition anew; let it be what it will, bad or good weather, the loss of a friend, a sickness, a calumny, the non-receipt of a letter, the spraining of one's foot, a glance into a shop-window, a counter-argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a deception:--it shows itself immediately, or very soon afterwards, as something "not permitted to be absent,"--it is full of profound significance and utility precisely _for us!_ Is there a more dangerous temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in the Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods, and believe in some anxious and mean Divinity, who knows personally every little hair on our heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most wretched services? Well--I mean in spite of all this! we want to leave the Gods alone (and the serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content ourselves with the assumption that our own practical and theoretical skilfulness in explaining and suitably arranging events has now reached its highest point. We do not want either to think too highly of this dexterity of our wisdom, when the wonderful harmony which results from playing on our instrument sometimes surprises us too much: a harmony which sounds too well for us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In fact, now and then there is one who plays _with_ us--beloved Chance: he leads our hand occasionally, and even the all-wisest Providence could not devise any finer music than that of which our foolish hand is then capable.

278.

_The Thought of Death._--It gives me a melancholy happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices: how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will soon be so still for all these shouting, lively, life-loving people! How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling-companion stands behind him! It is always as in the last moment before the departure of an emigrant-ship: people have more than ever to say to one another, the hour presses, the ocean with its lonely silence waits impatiently behind all the noise--so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all, all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this self-deafening and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be foremost in this future,--and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the _furthest_ from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would fain do something to make the idea of life even a hundred times _more worthy of their attention_.

279.

_Stellar Friendship_.--We were friends, and have become strangers to each other. But this is as it ought to be, and we do not want either to conceal or obscure the fact, as if we had to be ashamed of it. We are two ships, each of which has its goal and its course; we may, to be sure, cross one another in our paths, and celebrate a feast together as we did before,--and then the gallant ships lay quietly in one harbour, and in one sunshine, so that it might have been thought they were already at their goal, and that they had had one goal. But then the almighty strength of our tasks forced us apart once more into different seas and into different zones, and perhaps we shall never see one another again,--or perhaps we may see one another, but not know one another again; the different seas and suns have altered us! That we had to become strangers to one another is the law to which we are _subject_: just by that shall we become more sacred to one another! Just by that shall the thought of our former friendship become holier! There is probably some immense, invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our courses and goals, so widely different, may be _comprehended_ as small stages of the way,--let us raise ourselves to this thought! But our life is too short, and our power of vision too limited for us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility.--And so we will _believe_ in our stellar friendship, though we should have to be terrestrial enemies to one another.

280.

_Architecture for Thinkers._--An insight is needed (and that probably very soon) as to what is specially lacking in our great cities--namely, quiet, spacious, and widely extended places for reflection, places with long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too sunny days, where no noise of wagons or of shouters would penetrate, and where a more refined propriety would prohibit loud praying even to the priest: buildings and situations which as a whole would express the sublimity of self-communion and seclusion from the world. The time is past when the Church possessed the monopoly of reflection, when the _vita contemplativa_ had always in the first place to be the _vita religiosa:_ and everything that the Church has built expresses this thought. I know not how we could content ourselves with their structures, even if they should be divested of their ecclesiastical purposes: these structures speak a far too pathetic and too biassed speech, as houses of God and places of splendour for supernatural intercourse, for us godless ones to be able to think _our thoughts_ in them. We want to have _ourselves_ translated into stone and plant, we want to go for a walk in _ourselves_ when we wander in these halls and gardens.

281.

_Knowing how to Find the End._--Masters of the first rank are recognised by knowing in a perfect manner how to find the end, in the whole as well as in the part; be it the end of a melody or of a thought, be it the fifth act of a tragedy or of a state affair. The masters of the second degree always become restless towards the end, and seldom dip down into the sea with such proud, quiet equilibrium as for example, the mountain-ridge at _Porto fino_--where the Bay of Genoa sings its melody to an end.

282.

_The Gait._--There are mannerisms of the intellect by which even great minds betray that they originate from the populace, or from the semi-populace--it is principally the gait and step, of their thoughts which betray them; they cannot _walk._ It was thus that even Napoleon, to his profound chagrin, could not walk "legitimately" and in princely fashion on occasions when it was necessary to do so properly, as in great coronation processions and on similar occasions: even there he was always just the leader of a column--proud and brusque at the same time, and very self-conscious of it all.--It is something laughable to see those writers who make the folding robes of their periods rustle around them: they want to cover their _feet_.

283.

_Pioneers._--I greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into honour! For it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age, and gather the force which the latter will one day require,--the age which will carry heroism into knowledge, and _wage war_ for the sake of ideas and their consequences. For that end many brave pioneers are now needed, who, however, cannot originate out of nothing,--and just as little out of the sand and slime of present-day civilisation and the culture of great cities: men silent, solitary and resolute, who know how to be content and persistent in invisible activity: men who with innate disposition seek in all things that which is _to be overcome_ in them: men to whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity, and contempt of the great vanities belong just as much as do magnanimity in victory and indulgence to the trivial vanities of all the vanquished: men with an acute and independent judgment regarding all victors, and concerning the part which chance has played in the winning of victory and fame: men with their own holidays, their own work-days, and their own periods of mourning; accustomed to command with perfect assurance, and equally ready, if need be, to obey, proud in the one case as in the other, equally serving their own interests: men more imperilled, more productive, more happy! For believe me!--the secret of realising the largest productivity and the greatest enjoyment of existence is _to live in danger!_ Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unexplored seas! Live in war with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and spoilers, ye knowing ones, as long as ye cannot be rulers and possessors! The time will soon pass when you can be satisfied to live like timorous deer concealed in the forests. Knowledge will finally stretch out her hand for that which belongs to her:--she means to _rule_ and _possess,_ and you with her!

284.

_Belief in Oneself_--In general, few men have belief in themselves:--and of those few some are endowed with it as a useful blindness or partial obscuration of intellect (what would they perceive if they could see _to the bottom of themselves!_). The others must first acquire the belief for themselves: everything good, clever, or great that they do, is first of all an argument against the sceptic that dwells in them: the question is how to convince or persuade _this sceptic,_ and for that purpose genius almost is needed. They are signally dissatisfied with themselves.

285.

_Excelsior!_--"Thou wilt never more pray, never more worship, never more repose in infinite trust--thou refusest to stand still and dismiss thy thoughts before an ultimate wisdom, an ultimate virtue, an ultimate power,--thou hast no constant guardian and friend in thy seven solitudes--thou livest without the outlook on a mountain that has snow on its head and fire in its heart--there is no longer any requiter for thee, nor any amender with, his finishing touch--there is no longer any reason in that which happens, or any love in that which will happen to thee--there is no longer any resting-place for thy weary heart, where it has only to find and no longer to seek, thou art opposed to any kind of ultimate peace, thou desirest the eternal recurrence of war and peace:--man of renunciation, wilt thou renounce in all these things? Who will give thee the strength to do so? No one has yet had this strength!"--There is a lake which one day refused to flow away, and threw up a dam at the place where it had hitherto discharged: since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very renunciation will also furnish us with the strength with which the renunciation itself can be borne; perhaps man will ever rise higher and higher from that point onward, when he no longer _flows out_ into a God.

286.

_A Digression._--Here are hopes; but what will you see and hear of them, if you have not experienced glance and glow and dawn of day in your own souls? I can only suggest--I cannot do more! To move the stones, to make animals men--would you have me do that? Alas, if you are yet stones and animals, you must seek your Orpheus!

287.

_Love of Blindness._--"My thoughts," said the wanderer to his shadow, "ought to show me where I stand, but they should not betray to me _whither I go._ I love ignorance of the future, and do not want to come to grief by impatience and anticipatory tasting of promised things."

288.

_Lofty Moods._--It seems to me that most men do not believe in lofty moods, unless it be for the moment, or at the most for a quarter of an hour,--except the few who know by experience a longer duration of high feeling. But to be absolutely a man with a single lofty feeling, the incarnation of a single lofty mood--that has hitherto been only a dream and an enchanting possibility: history does not yet give us any trustworthy example of it Nevertheless one might also some day produce such men--when a multitude of favourable conditions have been created and established, which at present even the happiest chance is unable to throw together. Perhaps that very state which has hitherto entered into our soul as an exception, felt with horror now and then, may be the usual condition of those future souls: a continuous movement between high and low, and the feeling of high and low, a constant state of mounting as on steps, and at the same time reposing as on clouds.

289.

_Aboard Ship!_--When one considers how a full philosophical justification of his mode of living and thinking operates upon every individual--namely, as a warming, blessing, and fructifying sun, specially shining on him; how it makes him independent of praise and blame, self-sufficient, rich and generous in the bestowal of happiness and kindness; how it unceasingly transforms the evil to the good, brings all the energies to bloom and maturity, and altogether hinders the growth of the greater and lesser weeds of chagrin and discontent --one at last cries out importunately: Oh, that many such new suns were created! The evil man, also, the unfortunate man, and the exceptional man, shall each have his philosophy, his rights, and his sunshine! It is not sympathy with them that is necessary!--we must unlearn this arrogant fancy, notwithstanding that humanity has so long learned it and used it exclusively,--we have not to set up any confessor, exorcist, or pardoner for them! It is a new _justice,_ however, that is necessary! And a new solution! And new philosophers! The moral earth also is round! The moral earth also has its antipodes! The antipodes also have their right to exist! there is still another world to discover--and more than one! Aboard ship! ye philosophers!

290.

_One Thing is Needful_--To "give style" to one's character--that is a grand and a rare art! He who surveys all that his nature presents in its strength and in its weakness, and then fashions it into an ingenious plan, until everything appears artistic and rational, and even the weaknesses enchant the eye--exercises that admirable art. Here there has been a great amount of second nature added, there a portion of first nature has been taken away:--in both cases with long exercise and daily labour at the task. Here the ugly, which does not permit of being taken away, has been concealed, there it has been re-interpreted into the sublime. Much of the vague, which refuses to take form, has been reserved and utilised for the perspectives:--it is meant to give a hint of the remote and immeasurable. In the end, when the work has been completed, it is revealed how it was the constraint of the same taste that organised and fashioned it in whole and in part: whether the taste was good or bad is of less importance than one thinks,--it is sufficient that it was _a taste!_--It will be the strong imperious natures which experience their most refined joy in such constraint, in such confinement and perfection under their own law; the passion of their violent volition lessens at the sight of all disciplined nature, all conquered and ministering nature: even when they have palaces to build and gardens to lay out, it is not to their taste to allow nature to be free.--It is the reverse with weak characters who have not power over themselves, and _hate_ the restriction of style: they feel that if this repugnant constraint were laid upon them, they would necessarily become _vulgarised_ under it: they become slaves as soon as they serve, they hate service. Such intellects--they may be intellects of the first rank--are always concerned with fashioning and interpreting themselves and their surroundings as _free_ nature--wild, arbitrary, fantastic, confused and surprising: and it is well for them to do so, because only in this manner can they please themselves! For one thing is needful: namely, that man should _attain to_ satisfaction with himself--be it but through this or that fable and artifice: it is only then that man's aspect is at all endurable! He who is dissatisfied with himself is ever ready to avenge himself on that account: we others will be his victims, if only in having always to endure his ugly aspect. For the aspect of the ugly makes one mean and sad.

291.

_Genoa._--I have looked upon this city, its villas and pleasure-grounds, and the wide circuit of its inhabited heights and slopes, for a considerable time: in the end I must say that I see _countenances_ out of past generations,--this district is strewn with the images of bold and autocratic men. They have _lived_ and have wanted to live on--they say so with their houses, built and decorated for centuries, and not for the passing hour: they were well disposed to life, however ill-disposed they may often have been towards themselves. I always see the builder, how he casts his eye on all that is built around him far and near, and likewise on the city, the sea, and the chain of mountains; how he expresses power and conquest with his gaze: all this he wishes to fit into _his_ plan, and in the end make it his _property,_ by its becoming a portion of the same. The whole district is overgrown with this superb, insatiable egoism of the desire to possess and exploit; and as these men when abroad recognised no frontiers, and in their thirst for the new placed a new world beside the old, so also at home everyone rose up against everyone else, and devised some mode of expressing his superiority, and of placing between himself and his neighbour his personal illimitableness. Everyone won for himself his home once more by over-powering it with his architectural thoughts, and by transforming it into a delightful sight for his race. When we consider the mode of building cities in the north, the law and the general delight in legality and obedience, impose upon us: we thereby divine the propensity to equality and submission which must have ruled in those builders. Here, however, on turning every corner you find a man by himself, who knows the sea, knows adventure, and knows the Orient, a man who is averse to law and to neighbour, as if it bored him to have to do with them, a man who scans all that is already old and established, with envious glances: with a wonderful craftiness of fantasy, he would like, at least in thought, to establish all this anew, to lay his hand upon it, and introduce his meaning into it--if only for the passing hour of a sunny afternoon, when for once his insatiable and melancholy soul feels satiety, and when only what is his own, and nothing strange, may show itself to his eye.

292.

_To the Preachers of Morality._--I do not mean to moralise, but to those who do, I would give this advice: if you mean ultimately to deprive the best things and the best conditions of all honour and worth, continue to speak of them in the same way as heretofore! Put them at the head of your morality, and speak from morning till night of the happiness of virtue, of repose of soul, of righteousness, and of reward and punishment in the nature of things: according as you go on in this manner, all these good things will finally acquire a popularity and a street-cry for themselves: but then all the gold on them will also be worn off, and more besides: all the gold _in them_ will have changed into lead. Truly, you understand the reverse art of alchemy, the depreciating of the most valuable things! Try, just for once, another recipe, in order not to realise as hitherto the opposite of what you mean to attain: _deny_ those good things, withdraw from them the applause of the populace and discourage the spread of them, make them once more the concealed chastities of solitary souls, and say: _morality is something forbidden!_ Perhaps you will thus attract to your cause the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the _heroic._ But then there must be something formidable in it, and not as hitherto something disgusting I Might one not be inclined to say at present with reference to morality what Master Eckardt says: "I pray God to deliver me from God!"

293.

_Our Atmosphere._--We know it well: in him who only casts a glance now and then at science, as when taking a walk (in the manner of women, and alas! also like many artists), the strictness in its service, its inexorability in small matters as well as in great, its rapidity in weighing, judging and condemning, produce something of a feeling of giddiness and fright. It is especially terrifying to him that the hardest is here demanded, that the best is done without the reward of praise or distinction; it is rather as among soldiers--almost nothing but blame and sharp reprimand _is heard_; for doing well prevails here as the rule, doing ill as the exception; the rule, however, has, here as everywhere, a silent tongue. It is the same with this "severity of science" as with the manners and politeness of the best society: it frightens the uninitiated. He, however, who is accustomed to it, does not like to live anywhere but in this clear, transparent, powerful, and highly electrified atmosphere, this _manly_ atmosphere. Anywhere else it is not pure and airy enough for him: he suspects that _there_ his best art would neither be properly advantageous to anyone else, nor a delight to himself, that through misunderstandings half of his life would slip through his fingers, that much foresight, much concealment, and reticence would constantly be necessary,--nothing but great and useless losses of power! In _this_ keen and clear element, however, he has his entire power: here he can fly! Why should he again go down into those muddy waters where he has to swim and wade and soil his wings!--No! There it is too hard for us to live! we cannot help it that we are born for the atmosphere, the pure atmosphere, we rivals of the ray of light; and that we should like best to ride like it on the atoms of ether, not away from the sun, but _towards the sun_! That, however, we cannot do:--so we want to do the only thing that is in our power: namely, to bring light to the earth, we want to be "the light of the earth!" And for that purpose we have our wings and our swiftness and our severity, on that account we are manly, and even terrible like the fire. Let those fear us, who do not know how to warm and brighten themselves by our influence!

294.

_Against the Disparagers of Nature._--They are disagreeable to me, those men in whom every natural inclination forthwith becomes a disease, something disfiguring, or even disgraceful. _They_ have seduced us to the opinion that the inclinations and impulses of men are evil; _they_ are the cause of our great injustice to our own nature, and to all nature! There are enough of men who _may_ yield to their impulses gracefully and carelessly: but they do not do so, for fear of that imaginary "evil thing" in nature! _That is the cause_ why there is so little nobility to be found among men: the indication of which will always be to have no fear of oneself, to expect nothing disgraceful from oneself, to fly without hesitation whithersoever we are impelled--we free-born birds! Wherever we come, there will always be freedom and sunshine around us.

295.

_Short-lived Habits._--I love short-lived habits, and regard them as an invaluable means for getting a knowledge of _many_ things and various conditions, to the very bottom of their sweetness and bitterness; my nature is altogether arranged for short-lived habits, even in the needs of its bodily health, and in general, _as far as_ I can see, from the lowest up to the highest matters. I always think that _this_ will at last satisfy me permanently (the short-lived habit has also this characteristic belief of passion, the belief in everlasting duration; I am to be envied for having found it and recognised it), and then it nourishes me at noon and at eve, and spreads a profound satisfaction around me and in me, so that I have no longing for anything else, not needing to compare, or despise, or hate. But one day the habit has had its time: the good thing separates from me, not as something which then inspires disgust in me--but peaceably, and as though satisfied with me, as I am with it; as if we had to be mutually thankful, and _thus_ shook hands for farewell. And already the new habit waits at the door, and similarly also my belief--indestructible fool and sage that I am!--that this new habit will be the right one, the ultimate right one. So it is with me as regards foods, thoughts, men, cities, poems, music, doctrines, arrangements of the day, and modes of life.--On the other hand, I hate _permanent_ habits, and feel as if a tyrant came into my neighbourhood, and as if my life's breath _condensed,_ when events take such a form that permanent habits seem necessarily to grow out of them: for example, through an official position, through constant companionship with the same persons, through a settled abode, or through a uniform state of health. Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I am gratefully disposed to all my misery and sickness, and to whatever is imperfect in me, because such things leave me a hundred back-doors through which I can escape from permanent habits. The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation:--that would be my banishment and my Siberia.

296.

_A Fixed Reputation._--A fixed reputation was formerly a matter of the very greatest utility; and wherever society continues to be ruled by the herd-instinct, it is still most suitable for every individual _to give_ to his character and business _the appearance_ of unalterableness,--even when they are not so in reality. "One can rely on him, he remains the same"--that is the praise which has most significance in all dangerous conditions of society. Society feels with satisfaction that it has a reliable _tool_ ready at all times in the virtue of this one, in the ambition of that one, and in the reflection and passion of a third one,--it honours this _tool-like nature,_ this self-constancy, this unchangeableness in opinions, efforts, and even in faults, with the highest honours. Such a valuation, which prevails and has prevailed everywhere simultaneously with the morality of custom, educates "characters," and brings all changing, re-learning, and self-transforming into _disrepute._ Be the advantage of this mode of thinking ever so great otherwise, it is in any case the mode of judging which is most injurious _to knowledge:_ for precisely the good-will of the knowing one ever to declare himself unhesitatingly as _opposed_ to his former opinions, and in general to be distrustful of all that wants to be fixed in him--is here condemned and brought into disrepute. The disposition of the thinker, as incompatible with a "fixed reputation," is regarded as _dishonourable,_ while the petrifaction of opinions has all the honour to itself:--we have at present still to live under the interdict of such rules! How difficult it is to live when one feels that the judgment of many millenniums is around one and against one. It is probable that for many millenniums knowledge was afflicted with a bad conscience, and there must have been much self-contempt and secret misery in the history of the greatest intellects.

297.

_Ability to Contradict_--Everyone knows at present that the ability, to endure contradiction is a good indication of culture. Some people even know that the higher man courts opposition, and provokes it, so as to get a cue to his hitherto unknown partiality. But the _ability_ to contradict, the attainment of a _good_ conscience in hostility to the accustomed, the traditional and the hallowed,--that is more than both the above-named abilities, and is the really great, new and astonishing thing in our culture, the step of all steps of the emancipated intellect: who knows that?--

298.

_A Sigh._--I caught this notion on the way, and rapidly took the readiest, poor words to hold it fast, so that it might not again fly away. But it has died in these dry words, and hangs and flaps about in them--and now I hardly know, when I look upon it, how I could have had such happiness when I caught this bird.

299.

_What one should Learn from Artists._--What means have we for making things beautiful, attractive, and desirable, when they are not so?--and I suppose they are never so in themselves! We have here something to learn from physicians, when, for example, they dilute what is bitter, or put wine and sugar into their mixing-bowl; but we have still more to learn from artists, who in fact, are continually concerned in devising such inventions and artifices. To withdraw from things until one no longer sees much of them, until one has even to see things into them, _in order to see them at all_--or to view them from the side, and as in a frame--or to place them so that they partly disguise themselves and only permit of perspective views--or to look at them through coloured glasses, or in the light of the sunset--or to furnish them with a surface or skin which is not fully transparent: we should learn all this from artists, and moreover be wiser than they. For this fine power of theirs usually ceases with them where art ceases and life begins; _we,_ however, want to be the poets of our lives, and first of all in the smallest and most commonplace matters.

300.

_Prelude to Science._--Do you believe then that the sciences would have arisen and grown up if the sorcerers, alchemists, astrologers and witches had not been their forerunners; those who, with their promisings and foreshadowings, had first to create a thirst, a hunger, and a taste for _hidden and forbidden_ powers? Yea, that infinitely more had to be _promised_ than could ever be fulfilled, in order that something might be fulfilled in the domain of knowledge? Perhaps the whole of _religion,_ also, may appear to some distant age as an exercise and a prelude, in like manner as the prelude and preparation of science here exhibit themselves, though _not_ at all practised and regarded as such. Perhaps religion may have been the peculiar means for enabling individual men to enjoy but once the entire self-satisfaction of a God and all his self-redeeming power. Indeed!--one may ask--would man have learned at all to get on the tracks of hunger and thirst for _himself,_ and to extract satiety and fullness out of _himself,_ without that religious schooling and preliminary history? Had Prometheus first to _fancy_ that he had _stolen_ the light, and that he did penance for the theft,--in order finally to discover that he had created the light, _in that he had longed for the light,_ and that not only man, but also _God,_ had been the work of _his_ hands and the clay in his hands? All mere creations of the creator?--just as the illusion, the theft, the Caucasus, the vulture, and the whole tragic Prometheia of all thinkers?

301.

_Illusion of the Contemplative._--Higher men are distinguished from lower, by seeing and hearing immensely more, and in a thoughtful manner--and it is precisely this that distinguishes man from the animal, and the higher animal from the lower. The world always becomes fuller for him who grows up to the full stature of humanity; there are always more interesting fishing-hooks, thrown out to him; the number of his stimuli is continually on the increase, and similarly the varieties of his pleasure and pain,--the higher man becomes always at the same time happier and unhappier. An _illusion,_ however, is his constant accompaniment all along: he thinks he is placed as a _spectator_ and _auditor_ before the great pantomime and concert of life; he calls his nature a _contemplative nature,_ and thereby overlooks the fact that he himself is also a real creator, and continuous poet of life,--that he no doubt differs greatly from the _actor_ in this drama, the so-called practical man, but differs still more from a mere onlooker or spectator _before_ the stage. There is certainly _vis contemplativa,_ and re-examination of his work peculiar to him as poet, but at the same time, and first and foremost, he has the _vis creativa,_ which the practical man or doer _lacks,_ whatever appearance and current belief may say to the contrary. It is we, who think and feel, that actually and unceasingly _make_ something which did not before exist: the whole eternally increasing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, gradations, affirmations and negations. This composition of ours is continually learnt, practised, and translated into flesh and actuality, and even into the commonplace, by the so-called practical men (our actors, as we have said). Whatever has _value_ in the present world, has not it in itself, by its nature,--nature is always worthless:--but a value was once given to it, bestowed upon it and it was _we_ who gave and bestowed! We only have created the world _which is of any account to man!_--But it is precisely this knowledge that we lack, and when we get hold of it for a moment we have forgotten it the next: we misunderstand our highest power, we contemplative men, and estimate ourselves at too low a rate,--we are neither as _proud nor as happy_ as we might be.

302.

_The Danger of the Happiest Ones._--To have fine senses and a fine taste; to be accustomed to the select and the intellectually best as our proper and readiest fare; to be blessed with a strong, bold, and daring soul; to go through life with a quiet eye and a firm step, ever ready for the worst as for a festival, and full of longing for undiscovered worlds and seas, men and Gods; to listen to all joyous music, as if there perhaps brave men, soldiers and seafarers, took a brief repose and enjoyment, and in the profoundest pleasure of the moment were overcome with tears and the whole purple melancholy of happiness: who would not like all this to be _his_ possession, his condition! It was the _happiness of Homerr_! The condition of him who invented the Gods for the Greeks,--nay, who invented _his_ Gods for himself! But let us not conceal the fact that with this happiness of Homer in one's soul, one is more liable to suffering than any other creature under the sun! And only at this price do we purchase the most precious pearl that the waves of existence have hitherto washed ashore! As its possessor one always becomes more sensitive to pain, and at last too sensitive: a little displeasure and loathing sufficed in the end to make Homer disgusted with life. He was unable to solve a foolish little riddle which some young fishers proposed to him! Yes, the little riddles are the dangers of the happiest ones!--

303.

_Two Happy Ones._--Certainly this man, notwithstanding his youth, understands the _improvisation of life,_ and astonishes even the acutest observers. For it seems that he never makes a mistake, although he constantly plays the most hazardous games. One is reminded of the improvising masters of the musical art, to whom even the listeners would fain ascribe a divine _infallibility_ of the hand, notwithstanding that they now and then make a mistake, as every mortal is liable to do. But they are skilled and inventive, and always ready in a moment to arrange into the structure of the score the most accidental tone (where the jerk of a finger or a humour brings it about), and to animate the accident with a fine meaning and soul.--Here is quite a different man: everything that he intends and plans fails with him in the long run. That on which he has now and again set his heart has already brought him several times to the abyss, and to the very verge of ruin; and if he has as yet got out of the scrape, it certainly has not been merely with a "black eye." Do you think he is unhappy over it? He resolved long ago not to regard his own wishes and plans as of so much importance. "If this does not succeed with me," he says to himself, "perhaps that will succeed; and on the whole I do not know but that I am under more obligation to thank my failures than any of my successes. Am I made to be headstrong, and to wear the bull's horns? That which constitutes the worth and the sum of life _for me,_ lies somewhere else; I know more of life, because I have been so often on the point of losing it; and just on that account I _have_ more of life than any of you!"

304.

_In Doing we Leave Undone._--In the main all those moral systems are distasteful to me which say: "Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome thyself!" On the other hand I am favourable to those moral systems which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning till evening, to dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to do it _well,_ as well as is possible for _me_ alone! From him who so lives there fall off one after the other the things that do not pertain to such a life: without hatred or antipathy, he sees _this_ take leave of him to-day, and _that_ to-morrow, like the yellow leaves which every livelier breeze strips from the tree: or he does not see at all that they take leave of him, so firmly is his eye fixed upon his goal, and generally forward, not sideways, backward, or downward. "Our doing must determine what we leave undone; in that we do, we leave undone"--so it pleases me, so runs _my placitum._ But I do not mean to strive with open eyes for my impoverishment; I do not like any of the negative virtues whose very essence is negation and self-renunciation.

305.

_Self-control--_Those moral teachers who first and foremost order man to get himself into his own power, induce thereby a curious infirmity in him--namely, a constant sensitiveness with reference to all natural strivings and inclinations, and as it were, a sort of itching. Whatever may henceforth drive him, draw him, allure or impel him, whether internally or externally--it always seems to this sensitive being as if his self-control were in danger: he is no longer at liberty to trust himself to any instinct, to any free flight, but stands constantly with defensive mien, armed against himself, with sharp distrustful eye, the eternal watcher of his stronghold, to which office he has appointed himself. Yes, he can be _great_ in that position! But how unendurable he has now become to others, how difficult even for himself to bear, how impoverished and cut off from the finest accidents of his soul! Yea, even from all further _instruction! _ For we must be able to lose ourselves at times, if we want to learn something of what we have not in ourselves.

306.

_Stoic and Epicurean._--The Epicurean selects the situations, the persons, and even the events which suits his extremely sensitive, intellectual constitution; he renounces the rest--that is to say, by far the greater part of experience--because it would be too strong and too heavy fare for him. The Stoic, on the contrary, accustoms himself to swallow stones and vermin, glass-splinters and scorpions, without feeling any disgust: his stomach is meant to become indifferent in the end to all that the accidents of existence cast into it:--he reminds one of the Arabic sect of the Assaua, with which the French became acquainted in Algiers; and like those insensible persons, he also likes well to have an invited public at the exhibition of his insensibility, the very thing the Epicurean willingly dispenses with:--he has of course his "garden"! Stoicism may be quite advisable for men with whom fate improvises, for those who live in violent times and are dependent on abrupt and changeable individuals. He, however, who _anticipates_ that fate will permit him to spin "a long thread," does well to make his arrangements in Epicurean fashion; all men devoted to intellectual labour have done it hitherto! For it would be a supreme loss to them to forfeit their fine sensibility, and to acquire the hard, stoical hide with hedgehog prickles in exchange.

307.

_In Favour of Criticism._--Something now appears to thee as an error which thou formerly lovedst as a truth, or as a probability: thou pushest it from thee and imaginest that thy reason has there gained a victory. But perhaps that error was then, when thou wast still another person--thou art always another person,--just as necessary to thee as all thy present "truths," like a skin, as it were, which concealed and veiled from thee much which thou still mayst not see. Thy new life, and not thy reason, has slain that opinion for thee: _thou dost not require it any longer,_ and now it breaks down of its own accord, and the irrationality crawls out of it as a worm into the light. When we make use of criticism it is not something arbitrary and impersonal,--it is, at least very often, a proof that there are lively, active forces in us, which cast a skin. We deny, and must deny, because something in us _wants_ to live and affirm itself, something which we perhaps do not as yet know, do not as yet see!--So much in favour of criticism.

308.