Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 09 - What is Noble? - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
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- 0:00Chapter nine, What is Noble Paragraph two hundred fifty seven. Every elevation of
- 0:08the type man has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society, and so
- 0:14it will always be a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank
- 0:19and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or
- 0:25other, without the pathos of distance, such as grows out of the incarnated
- 0:31differences of classes, out of the constant outlooking and down looking of the ruling
- 0:36caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying
- 0:42and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance that other more mysterious
- 0:47pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of distance
- 0:52within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher rarer further more extended,
- 0:59more comprehensive states. In short, just the elevation of the type man,
- 1:03the continued self surmounting of man. To use a moral formula in a supermoral
- 1:08sense, to be sure, one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions
- 1:15about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society, that is to say,
- 1:21of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type man. The truth
- 1:26is hard. Let us acknowledge, unprejudicedly, how every higher civilization hitherto has
- 1:32originated men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of the
- 1:38word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will and
- 1:42desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peaceful races,
- 1:49perhaps trading or cattle rearing communities, or upon old, mellow civilizations in
- 1:55which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and gravity.
- 2:00At the commencement. The noble caste was always the barbarian cast Their superiority
- 2:06did not consist, first of all, in their physical but in their psychical
- 2:09power. They were more complete men, which at every point also implies the
- 2:14same as more complete beasts. Corruption, as the indication that anarchy threatens to
- 2:22break out among the instincts, and that the foundation of the emotions called life
- 2:25is convulsed, is something radically different according to the organization in which it manifests
- 2:31itself. When, for instance, an aristocracy like that of France at the
- 2:36beginning of the Revolution flung away its privileges with sublime disgust, and sacrificed itself
- 2:42to an excess of its moral sentiments. It was corruption. It was really
- 2:46only the closing act of the corruption that had existed for centuries, by virtue
- 2:52of which that aristocracy had abdicated, step by step its lordly prerogatives, and
- 2:57lowered itself to a function of royalty, in the end, even to its
- 3:00decoration and parade dress. The essential thing, however, in a good and
- 3:06healthy aristocracy, is that it should not regard itself as a function either of
- 3:10the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the significance and highest justification thereof That
- 3:17it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals,
- 3:23who, for its sake must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men,
- 3:28to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is not
- 3:35allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding,
- 3:39by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate
- 3:43themselves to their higher duties, and in general, to a higher existence.
- 3:47Like those sun seeking climbing plants, in Java, they are called sipomatador,
- 3:53which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms, until at
- 3:58last high above it, but so ported by it, they can unfold their
- 4:01tops in the open light and exhibit their happiness to refrain mutually from injury,
- 4:09from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that
- 4:13of others. This may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among
- 4:17individuals, when the necessary conditions are given, namely the actual similarity of the
- 4:23individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their correlation within one
- 4:28organization. As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more
- 4:32generally, and if possible, even as the fundamental principle of society, it
- 4:38would immediately disclose what it really is, namely, of will to the denial
- 4:43of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly
- 4:49to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness. Life itself is essentially appropriation,
- 4:58injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion
- 5:04of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the very least putting it mildest exploitation.
- 5:12But why should one forever use precisely these words on which for ages a
- 5:16disparaging purpose has been stamped. Even the organization within which, as was previously
- 5:23supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal it takes place in every healthy
- 5:27aristocracy, must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization,
- 5:32do all that towards other bodies that the individuals within it refrain from doing
- 5:38to each other. It will have to be the incarnated will to power.
- 5:43It will endeavor to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself, and
- 5:46acquire ascendency, not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives,
- 5:53and because life is precisely will to power. On no point, however,
- 5:58is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this
- 6:02matter. People now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about
- 6:06coming conditions of society in which the exploiting character is to be absent. That
- 6:13sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life that
- 6:16should refrain from all organic functions. Exploitation does not belong to a depraved or
- 6:23imperfect and primitive society. It belongs to the nature of the living being as
- 6:28a primary organic function. It is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power,
- 6:32which is precisely the will to life. Granting that as a theory this
- 6:36is a novelty, as a reality, it is the fundamental fact of all
- 6:41history. Let us be so far honest towards ourselves. In a tour through
- 6:46the many finer and coarser moralities, that if hitherto prevailed or still prevail on
- 6:51the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together and connected with one another,
- 6:57until finally two primary type apes revealed themselves to me, and a radical
- 7:01distinction was brought to light. There is master morality and slave morality. I
- 7:09would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilizations there
- 7:13are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities. But one finds still
- 7:17oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition,
- 7:25even in the same man within one soul. The distinctions of moral values have
- 7:30either originated in a ruling cast pleasantly conscious of being different from the rule,
- 7:35or among the ruled class the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the
- 7:40first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception good, it
- 7:45is the exalted, proud disposition that is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and
- 7:49that that determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates from
- 7:55himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself,
- 8:01he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first
- 8:05kind of morality, the antithesis good and bad means practically the same as noble
- 8:11and despicable. The antithesis good and evil is of a different origin. The
- 8:16cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility
- 8:22are despised. Moreover, also the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the
- 8:26self abasing, the doglike kind of men who let themselves be abused, the
- 8:31mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars. It is a fundamental belief of
- 8:37all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. We truthful ones the nobility in
- 8:43ancient Greece called themselves. It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value
- 8:48were at first applied to men, and were only derivatively and at a later
- 8:54period applied to actions. It is a gross mistake therefore, when historians of
- 8:58morals start with questions like why have sympathetic actions been praised? The noble type
- 9:05of man regards himself as a determiner of values. He does not require to
- 9:11be approved of. He passes the judgment what is injurious to me is injurious
- 9:16in itself. He knows that it is he himself only who confers honor on
- 9:22things. He is a creator of values. He honors whatever he recognizes in
- 9:26himself. Such morality equals self glorification. In the foreground, there is the
- 9:33feeling of plenitude, of power which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high
- 9:39tension, the consciousness of a wealth that would fain give and bestow. The
- 9:43noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not or scarcely out of pity,
- 9:48but rather from an impulse generated by the superabundance of power. The noble man
- 9:54honors in himself the powerful one him also, who has power over himself,
- 10:00who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in
- 10:03subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe
- 10:09and hard. Woton placed a hard heart in my breasts, ays an old
- 10:13Scandinavian saga. It is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking.
- 10:20Such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy.
- 10:24The hero of the saga therefore adds warningly, he who has not a
- 10:28hard heart when young, will never have one. The noble and brave who
- 10:31think thus are the furthest removed from the morality that sees precisely in sympathy or
- 10:37enacting for the good of others, or in desent terrassment, the characteristic of
- 10:41the moral faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony
- 10:48towards selflessness belong as definitely to noble morality as do a careless scorn and precaution.
- 10:54In presence of sympathy and the warm heart. It is the powerful who
- 10:58know how to honor. It is their art, their domain for invention,
- 11:03the profound reverence for age and for tradition. All law rests on this double
- 11:09reverence. The belief and prejudice in favor of ancestors and unfavorable to newcomers is
- 11:16typical in the morality of the powerful, and if reversely, men of modern
- 11:22ideas believe almost instinctively in progress and the future, and are more and more
- 11:26lacking in respect for old age. The ignoble origin of these ideas has complacently
- 11:33betrayed itself thereby. A morality of the ruling class, however, is more
- 11:37specifically foreign and irritating to present day taste, in the sternness of its principle
- 11:43that one has duties only to one's equals, that one may act towards beings
- 11:46of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good
- 11:50to one, or as the heart desires, and in any case beyond good
- 11:54and evil. It is here that sympathy and similar sentiments have a place,
- 12:01the ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge, both only within
- 12:07the circle of equals, artfulness and retaliation. Alfinmont the idea in friendship a
- 12:13certain necessity to have enemies as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness,
- 12:18arrogance. In fact, in order to be a good friend. All these
- 12:22are typical characteristics of the noble morality, which, as has been pointed out,
- 12:28is not the morality of modern ideas, and is therefore at present difficult
- 12:33to realize and also to on earth and disclose. It is otherwise with the
- 12:37second type of morality, slave morality. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed,
- 12:45the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves
- 12:50should moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates, probably
- 12:56a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation man will find expression, perhaps
- 13:01a condemnation of man together with his situation. The slave has an unfavorable eye
- 13:07for the virtues of the powerful. He has a skepticism and distrust, a
- 13:11refinement of distrust of everything good that is there honored. He would fain persuade
- 13:18himself that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand,
- 13:24those qualities that serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and
- 13:28flooded with light. It is here that sympathy, the kind helping hand,
- 13:33the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attained to honor.
- 13:39For here these the most useful qualities and almost the only means of supporting
- 13:45the burden of existence. Slave morality is essentially the morality of utility. Here
- 13:52is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis good and evil. Power
- 13:56and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil a certain dreadfulness, subtlety,
- 14:01and strength, which do not admit of being despised according to slave morality.
- 14:07Therefore, the evil man arouses fear. According to master morality, it is
- 14:13precisely the good man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the
- 14:16bad man is regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when
- 14:24in accordance with the logical consequences of slave morality. A shade of depreciation,
- 14:30it may be slight and well intentioned at last, attaches itself to the good
- 14:35man of this morality, because according to the servile mode of thought, the
- 14:39good man must in any case be the safe man. He is good natured,
- 14:43easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid. Ampunon everywhere that slave morality gains
- 14:48the ascendency. Language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the word good
- 14:54and stupid. A last fundamental difference. The desire for freeom, the instinct
- 15:01for happiness, and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to
- 15:05slave morals and morality as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular
- 15:11symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating. Hence we can understand without
- 15:16further detail why love, as a passion it is our European specialty, must
- 15:22absolutely be a noble origin. As is well known, its invention is due
- 15:28to the provence are poet cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the gay
- 15:33sabert to whom Europe owes so much and almost owes itself. Vanity is one
- 15:39of the things that are perhaps most difficult for a noble man to understand.
- 15:43He will be tempted to deny it where another kind of man thinks he sees
- 15:48itself. Evidently, the problem for him is to represent to his mind beings
- 15:54who seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves that they themselves do not possess,
- 15:58and consequence also do not deserve, and who yet believe in this good
- 16:03opinion afterwards. This seems to him, on the one hand, such bad
- 16:07taste and so self disrespectful, and on the other hand, so grotesquely unreasonable,
- 16:14that he would like to consider vanity and exception, and is doubtful about
- 16:18it. In most cases, when it is spoken of, he will say,
- 16:21for instance, I may be mistaken about my value, and on the
- 16:25other hand may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others precisely as
- 16:30I rate it. That, however, is not vanity, but self conceit
- 16:33or in most cases that which is called humility, and also modesty. Or
- 16:38he will even say, for many reasons, I can delight in the good
- 16:41opinion of others, perhaps because I love and honor them and rejoice in all
- 16:47their joys. Perhaps also because their good opinion endorses and strengthens my belief in
- 16:52my own good opinion. Perhaps because the good opinion of others, even in
- 16:55cases where I do not share it, is useful to me or gives promise
- 16:59of you ufulness. All this, however, is not vanity. The man
- 17:03of noble character must first bring it home forcibly to his mind, especially with
- 17:07the aid of history, that from time immemorial, in all social strata in
- 17:11any way dependent. The ordinary man was only that that he passed for.
- 17:18Not being at all accustomed to fix values, he did not assign even to
- 17:22himself, any other value than that that his master assigned to him. It
- 17:26is the peculiar right of masters to create values. It may be looked upon
- 17:32as an extraordinary activism that the ordinary man, even at present, is still
- 17:37always waiting for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself to it.
- 17:42Yet by no means only to a good opinion, but also to a
- 17:45bad and unjust one. Think for instance, of the greater part of the
- 17:49self appreciations and self depreciations that believing women learn from their confessors, and which
- 17:56in general the believing Christian learns from his church. In fact, conformably to
- 18:02the slow rise of the democratic social order and its cause the blending of the
- 18:06blood of masters and slaves, the original noble and rare impulse of the masters
- 18:11to assign a value to themselves and to think well of themselves, will now
- 18:17be more and more encouraged and extended. But it has at all times an
- 18:22older, ampler, and more radically ingrained propensity opposed to it, and in
- 18:26the phenomenon of vanity, this older propensity overmasters the younger. The vain person
- 18:33rejoices over every good opinion that he hears about himself, quite apart from the
- 18:38point of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or falsehood,
- 18:44just as he suffers from every bad opinion, for he subjects himself to
- 18:48both. He feels himself subjected to both by the oldest instinct of subjection that
- 18:52breaks forth in him. It is the slave in the vain man's blood,
- 18:57the remains of the slave's craftiness, and how much of the slave is still
- 19:02left in woman, for instance, which seeks to seduce the good opinions of
- 19:06itself. It is the slave too, who immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before
- 19:11these opinions, as though he had not called them forth, and to repeat
- 19:15it again. Vanity is an atavism. A species originates and a type becomes
- 19:23established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavorable conditions. On the
- 19:30other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species that receive
- 19:36superabundant nourishment and in general a surplus of protection and care immediately tend in the
- 19:42most marked way to develop variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities,
- 19:48also in monstrous vices. Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say in ancient
- 19:53Greek polus or venice, as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of
- 20:00rearing human beings. There are there men, beside one another, thrown upon
- 20:04their own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chiefly because they
- 20:10must prevail or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated. The favor,
- 20:17the superabundance, the protection are their lacking, under which variations are fostered.
- 20:22The species needs itself as species, as something that precisely by virtue of its
- 20:26hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and
- 20:30make itself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbors or with rebellious or rebellion threatening
- 20:37vassals. The most varied experience teaches it what are the qualities to which it
- 20:42principally owes the fact that it still exists in spite of all gods and men,
- 20:47and has hitherto been victorious. These qualities it calls virtues, and these
- 20:52virtues alone it develops to maturity, it does so with severity. Indeed,
- 20:57it desires severity. Every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education of youth,
- 21:03in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the relations of
- 21:07old and young, in the penal laws, which have an eye only for
- 21:11the degenerating. It counts intolerance itself among the virtues under the name of justice.
- 21:18A type with few but very marked features, a species of severe warlike
- 21:22wisely silent, reserved, and reticent men, and as such with the most
- 21:27delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society, is thus established, unaffected
- 21:34by the vicissitudes of generations. The constant struggle with uniform unfavorable conditions is,
- 21:41as already remarked, the cause of a type's becoming stable and hard. Finally,
- 21:47however, a happy state of things results. The enormous tension is relaxed.
- 21:51There are perhaps no more enemies among the neighboring peoples, and the means
- 21:55of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are present in superabundance.
- 22:00With one stroke, the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs. It
- 22:03is no longer regarded as necessary as a condition of existence. If it would
- 22:08continue, it can only do so as a form of luxury. As an
- 22:11archaism. Taste variations, whether they be deviations into the higher, finer and
- 22:18rarer, or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest
- 22:23exuberance and splendor. The individual dares to be individual and detach himself. At
- 22:30this turning point of history, there manifest themselves, side by side and often
- 22:34mixed and entangled together, a magnificent manifold, virgin forest like upgrowth and upstriving,
- 22:41a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary
- 22:45decay and self destruction owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoisms, which
- 22:52strive with one another for sun and light, and can no longer assign any
- 22:56limit, restraint or forbearance for themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality.
- 23:03It is this morality itself that piled up the strength so enormously which bent the
- 23:07bow, and so threatening a manner. It is now out of date.
- 23:11It is getting out of date. The dangerous and disquieting point has been reached
- 23:15when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life is lived beyond the old
- 23:21morality. The individual stands out and is obliged to have recourse to his own
- 23:26law, giving his own arts and artifices for self preservation, self elevation,
- 23:32and self deliverance. Nothing but new, wise, nothing but new, hows,
- 23:37no common formulas any longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other,
- 23:44Decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled the genius of the
- 23:48race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, a portentous simultaneousness of
- 23:55spring and autumn, full of new charms and mysteries, peculiar to the fresh,
- 24:00still exhausted, still unwearied. Corruption danger is again present, the mother
- 24:06of morality, great danger, this time shifted into the individual, into the
- 24:11neighbor and friend, into the street, into their own child, into their
- 24:15own heart, into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and
- 24:19volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach?
- 24:26They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly
- 24:30approaching, that everything around them decays and produces decay that nothing will endure until
- 24:37the day after tomorrow except one species of man, the incurably mediocre. The
- 24:44mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves. They will be the
- 24:49men of the future. The sole survivors be like them become mediocre. Is
- 24:53now the only morality that has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.
- 25:00But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity. It can never
- 25:03avow what it is and what it desires. It has to talk of moderation
- 25:07and dignity, and duty and brotherly love. It will have difficulty in concealing
- 25:11its irony. There is an instinct for rank, which, more than anything
- 25:19else, is already the sign of a high rank. There is a delight
- 25:23in the nuances of reverence that leads one to infer noble origin and habits.
- 25:30The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous
- 25:33test when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not
- 25:37yet protected by the awe of the authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities. Something
- 25:44that goes its way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, undiscovered and tentative,
- 25:49perhaps voluntarily veiled and disguised. He whose task and practice is to investigate souls
- 25:56will avail himself of many varieties of this very are to determine the ultimate value
- 26:02of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which it belongs.
- 26:07He will test it by its instinct for reverence, differences and gender.
- 26:12N that's French hate. There the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly
- 26:19like dirty water when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed shrines, any
- 26:25book bearing the marks of great destiny, is brought before it, while on
- 26:30the other hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of the eye,
- 26:34a cessation of all gestures, by which it is indicated that a soul
- 26:38feels the nearness of what is worthiest of respect. The way in which on
- 26:42the whole the reverence for the Bible has hitherto been maintained in Europe is perhaps
- 26:48the best example of discipline and refinement of manners that Europe owes to Christianity.
- 26:53Books of such profoundness and supreme significance require for their protection and external tear yuranny
- 27:00of authority in order to acquire the period of thousands of years that is necessary
- 27:04to exhaust and unriddle them. Much has been achieved when the sentiment has been
- 27:10at last instilled into the masses, the shallow pates, and the boobies of
- 27:12every kind, that they are not allowed to touch everything, that there are
- 27:17holy experiences before which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean
- 27:22hand. It is almost their highest advance towards humanity. On the contrary,
- 27:26and the so called cultured classes, the believers in modern ideas, nothing is
- 27:32perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, their easy insolence of eye and
- 27:37hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything. And it is
- 27:41possible that even yet there is more relative nobility of taste, and more tact
- 27:47for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people, especially
- 27:51among peasants, than among the newspaper reading de memundees of intellect the cultured class.
- 27:57It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have preferably and
- 28:02most constantly done, Whether they were perhaps diligent economizers attached to a desk and
- 28:07a cash box, modest and citizen like in their desires, modest also in
- 28:12their virtues, or whether they were accustomed to commanding from morning till night,
- 28:17fond of rude pleasures and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities, or whether
- 28:22finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of birth
- 28:26and possession in order to live wholly for their faith for their God. As
- 28:32men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes at every compromise, it
- 28:37is quite possible for a man not to have the qualities and predilections of his
- 28:41parents and ancestors in his constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary.
- 28:47This is the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents,
- 28:51it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child any kind of offensive
- 28:55incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy self vaunting, three
- 29:00things that together have constituted the genuine plebeian type. In all times. Such
- 29:04must pass over to the child as surely as bad blood. And with the
- 29:08help of the best education and culture, one will only succeed in deceiving.
- 29:12With regard to such eretity. And what else do education and culture try to
- 29:18do nowadays in our very democratic, or rather very Plebeian age, education and
- 29:23culture must be essentially the art of deceiving, deceiving with regard to origin,
- 29:30with regard to the inherited Plebeianism in body and soul. An educator who nowadays
- 29:36preaches truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils, be
- 29:41true, be natural, show yourselves as you are. Even such a virtuous
- 29:45and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the furka
- 29:51of Horace, not rum experre with what results Plebeianism usque recurret footnote Horace's Epistles
- 30:03one ten twenty four. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit
- 30:10that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul. I mean the unalterable
- 30:15belief that to a being such as we, other beings must naturally be in
- 30:19subjection and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the fact of his
- 30:25egoism without question, and also without consciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness
- 30:30therein, but rather is something that may have its basis in the primary law
- 30:34of things. If he sought a designation for it, he would say it
- 30:40is justice itself. He acknowledges under certain circumstances which made him hesitate at first,
- 30:47that there are other equally privileged ones. As soon as he has settled
- 30:52this question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged ones with
- 30:56the same assurance as regards modesty and delicate respect that he enjoys in intercourse with
- 31:02himself, in accordance with an innate, heavenly mechanism, that all the stars
- 31:07understand. It is an additional instance of his egoism. This artfulness and self
- 31:11limitation in intercourse with his equals. Every star is a similar egoist. He
- 31:17honors himself in them, and in the rite that he concedes to them.
- 31:19He has no doubt that the exchange of honors and rights, as the essence
- 31:23of all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things. The noble
- 31:30soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive instinct of recquittal,
- 31:34which is at the root of his nature. The notion of favor has
- 31:38interparis neither significance nor good repute. There may be a sublime way of letting
- 31:44gifts, as it were, light upon one from above, and of drinking
- 31:48them thirstily like dew drops. But for those arts and displays, the noble
- 31:53soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him here. In general, he
- 31:59looks aloft unwillingly. He looks either forward, horizontally and deliberately, or downwards.
- 32:05He knows that he is on a height. One can only truly esteem
- 32:09him who does not look out for himself. Gooda to hart Schlosso. The
- 32:15Chinese have a proverb that mothers even teach their children Shao shin, make thy
- 32:22heart small. This is the essentially fundamental tendency in latter day civilizations. I
- 32:29have no doubt that an ancient Greek also would first of all remark the self
- 32:32dwarfing in us Europeans of to day in this respect alone, should we immediately
- 32:37be distasteful to him? What, after all, is nobleness. Words are
- 32:44vocal symbols for ideas. Ideas, however, are more or less definite mental
- 32:49symbols for frequently returning and concurring sensations. For groups of sensations, it is
- 32:54not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another. We
- 32:59must also so employ the same words for the same kind of internal experiences.
- 33:05We must, in the end, have experiences in common. On this account,
- 33:09the people of one nation understand one another better than those belonging to different
- 33:14nations, even when they use the same language, or rather when people have
- 33:19lived long together under similar conditions of climate, soil, danger, requirement toil.
- 33:24There originates therefrom an entity that understands itself, namely a nation. In
- 33:32all souls, a like number of frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand
- 33:37over those occurring more rarely. About these matters, people understand one another rapidly,
- 33:43and always more rapidly. The history of language is the history of a
- 33:47process of abbreviation. On the basis of this quick comprehension, people always unite
- 33:52closer and closer the greater the danger. The greater is the need of agreeing
- 33:58quickly and readily about what is necessary not to misunderstand one another in danger,
- 34:04that is, what cannot at all be dispensed with in intercourse. Also,
- 34:07in all loves and friendships, one has the experience that nothing of the kind
- 34:12continues when the discovery has been made that in using the same words. One
- 34:16of the two parties has feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes or fears different
- 34:22from those of the other. The fear of the eternal misunderstanding, that is,
- 34:28the good genius that so often keeps persons of different sexes from too hasty
- 34:31attachments to which sense and heart prompt them, and not some SCHOPENHAUERI and genius
- 34:37of the species. Whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily begin
- 34:43to speak and give the word of command. These decide as to the general
- 34:47order of rank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things.
- 34:52A man's estimates of value betray something of the structure of his soul,
- 34:58and wherein its seas ease its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing
- 35:04now that necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could express
- 35:08similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols, it results on the whole that
- 35:15the easy communicability of need, which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and
- 35:21common experiences, must have been the most potent of all the forces that have
- 35:25hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary people have always
- 35:30had and are still having the advantage. The more select, more refined,
- 35:36more unique, and difficultly comprehensible are liable to stand alone. They succumb to
- 35:40accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense
- 35:46opposing forces in order to thwart this natural, all too natural progressusincimilee, the
- 35:52evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the gregarious,
- 36:00to the ignoble. The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has
- 36:06suffered deeply. It almost determines the order of rank how deeply men can suffer.
- 36:10The chilling certainty with which he is thoroughly imbued and colored, that by
- 36:15virtue of his suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know.
- 36:20That he has been familiar with and at home in many distant, dreadful
- 36:23worlds of which you know nothing. This silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer,
- 36:30this pride of the elective knowledge, of the initiated, of the almost sacrificed,
- 36:35finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and
- 36:39sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal. In
- 36:45suffering. Profound suffering makes noble, it separates. One of the most refined
- 36:52forms of disguise is epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste,
- 36:58which takes suffering lightly and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful
- 37:02and profound. They are gay men who make use of gayety because they are
- 37:07misunderstood. On account of it, they wish to be misunderstood. There are
- 37:13scientific minds who make use of science because it gives a gay appearance, and
- 37:17because scientificness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial, they wish to
- 37:22mislead to a false conclusion. There are free, insolent minds which would fain,
- 37:28conceal, and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts,
- 37:32the cynicism of Hamlet, the case of Galiani, and occasionally folly itself as
- 37:37the mask of an unfortunate, over assured knowledge, from which it follows that
- 37:42it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence for the mask,
- 37:46and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.
- 37:52That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity.
- 37:59What does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, What does
- 38:02it matter about all their mutual good will? The fact still remains they cannot
- 38:07smell each other. The highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with
- 38:13it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation as a saint, For it is
- 38:17just holiness, the highest spiritualization of the instinct. In question any kind of
- 38:23cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of
- 38:29ardor or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning,
- 38:32and out of gloom, out of affliction, into clearness, brightness, depth,
- 38:37and refinement. Just as much as such a tendency distinguishes, it is
- 38:42a notable tendency, it also separates. The pity of the saint is pity
- 38:46for the filth of the human all too human. And there are grades and
- 38:52heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth signs of
- 38:58nobility. Never to think of lowering our duties to the rank of duties.
- 39:02For everybody to be unwilling to renounce, or to share our responsibilities, to
- 39:07count our prerogatives and the exercise of them among our duties. A man who
- 39:13strives after great things looks upon every one whom he encounters on his way,
- 39:17either as a means of advance or a delay and hindrance, or a temporary
- 39:22resting place, or as a temporary resting place. His peculiar, lofty bounty
- 39:28to his fellow men is only possible when he attains his elevation and dominates impatience
- 39:32and the consciousness of being always condemned to comedy up to that time, For
- 39:37even strife is a comedy and conceals the end, as every means does spoil
- 39:43all intercourse with him. This kind of man is acquainted with solitude, and
- 39:46what is most poisonous in it the problem of those who wait. Happy chances
- 39:52are necessary and many incalculable elements in order that a hire man in whom the
- 39:58solution of a problem is dormant, and may yet take action or break forth,
- 40:01as one might say, at the right moment. On an average it
- 40:06does not happen. And in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones
- 40:09sitting who hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that
- 40:15they wait in vain. Occasionally to the waking call comes too late, the
- 40:20chance which gives permission to take action, when their best youth and strength for
- 40:24action have been used up in sitting still. And how many a one,
- 40:29just as he sprang up, has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed,
- 40:32and his spirits are now too heavy. It is too late, he
- 40:37has said to himself, and has become self distrustful, and henceforth forever useless
- 40:43in the domain of genius. May not the raphael without hands, taking the
- 40:46expression in its widest sense, perhaps not be the exception, but the rule.
- 40:52Perhaps genius is by no means so rare, but rather the five hundred
- 40:55hands which it requires in order to tyrannize over the right time, in order
- 41:00to take chance by the forelock, he who does not wish to see the
- 41:05height of a man looks all the more sharply at what is low in him
- 41:07and in the foreground, and thereby betrays himself in all kinds of injury and
- 41:13loss. The lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul.
- 41:17The dangers of the latter must be greater. The probability that it will come
- 41:22to grief and perish is in fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions
- 41:27of its existence. In a lizard, a finger grows again which has been
- 41:31lost. Not so in man. It is too bad, always the old
- 41:37story. When a man has finished building his house, he finds that he
- 41:39has learnt unawares, something which he ought absolutely to have known before he began
- 41:45to build, The eternal fatal too late, the melancholia of everything completed.
- 41:52Wanderer, Who art thou? I see THEE follow thy path without scorn,
- 41:57without love, without unfathomable eyes, wet and sad, as a plummet which
- 42:00is returned to the light, insatiated out of every depth? What did it
- 42:05seek? Down there? With a bosom that never sighs, with lips that
- 42:07conceal their loathing, with a head which only slowly grasps. Who art thou?
- 42:13What hast thou done? Rest thee? Here? This place has hospitality
- 42:17for everyone. Refresh thyself, and whoever thou art, What is it that
- 42:22now pleasest thee? What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it?
- 42:27Whatever I have I offer THEE to refresh me to refresh me. Oh thou
- 42:31prying one? What sayest thou? But give me? I pray thee what
- 42:35what speak out? Another mask? A second mask. Men of profound sadness
- 42:40betray themselves when they are happy. They have a mode of seizing upon happiness,
- 42:45as though they would choke and strangle it out of jealousy. Ah,
- 42:50they know only too well that it will flee from them, bad, bad.
- 42:53What does he not go back? Yes, but you misunderstand him.
- 42:59When you complain of it, he goes back like everyone who is about to
- 43:02make a big spring? Will people believe it of me? But I insist
- 43:07that they believe it of me. I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself,
- 43:12and about myself only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without
- 43:15delight in the subject, ready to digress from myself, and always without faith
- 43:21in the result, owing to the unconquerable distrust of the possibility of self knowledge,
- 43:25which has led me so far to feel a contradictio in adetto even in
- 43:30the idea of direct knowledge which theorists allow themselves. This matter of fact is
- 43:35almost the most certain thing I know about myself. There must be a sort
- 43:38of repugnance in me to believe anything definite about myself? Is there perhaps some
- 43:43enigma therein? Probably, but fortunately nothing for my own teeth. Perhaps it
- 43:50betrays the species to which I belong, but not to myself, as it
- 43:54is sufficiently agreeable to me. But what has happened to you? I do
- 43:59not know, he said hesitatingly. Perhaps the harpies have flown over my table.
- 44:04It sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes suddenly
- 44:08mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves and shocks
- 44:14everybody, and finally withdraws, ashamed and raging at himself. Whither for what
- 44:20purpose to famish a part, to suffocate with his memories, To him who
- 44:24has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul, and only seldom finds his
- 44:29table laid and his food prepared, the danger will always be great nowadays,
- 44:35however, it is extraordinarily so thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian
- 44:39age with which he does not like to eat out of the same dish,
- 44:44he may readily perish of hunger and thirst, or should he nevertheless finally fall
- 44:49to of sudden nausea. We have probably all sat at tables to which we
- 44:55did not belong, and precisely the most spiritual of us who are most difficult
- 45:00to nourish though the dangerous dyspepsia that originates from a sudden insight in disillusionment about
- 45:07our food and our messmates the after dinner nausea. If one wishes to praise
- 45:13at all, it is a delicate and at the same time a noble self
- 45:16control who praise only where one does not agree otherwise, In fact, one
- 45:21would praise oneself, which is contrary to good taste, a self control,
- 45:25to be sure, which offers excellent opportunity and provocation to constant misunderstanding. To
- 45:31be able to allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must
- 45:36not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse
- 45:42by their refinement, or one will have to pay dearly for it. He
- 45:46praises me, therefore he acknowledges me to be right. This asinine method of
- 45:51inference spoils half of the life of us recluses, for it brings the asses
- 45:54into our neighborhood and friendship to live in a vast and proud tranquility, always
- 46:00beyond to have or not to have one's emotions, one's fore and against according
- 46:07to choice, to lower one's self to them for hours, to seat one's
- 46:12self on them as upon horses, and often as upon asses. For one
- 46:16must know how to make use of their stupidity as well as of their fire.
- 46:21To conserve one's three hundred foregrounds, also one's black spectacles. For there
- 46:25are circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our motives,
- 46:30and to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice, politeness, And
- 46:36to remain master of one's four virtues courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude.
- 46:40For solitude is a virtue with us as a sublime, bent and biased
- 46:45to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man in society,
- 46:49it must be unavoidably impure. All society makes one, somehow, somewhere
- 46:54or sometime commonplace the greatest events and thoughts. The greatest thoughts, however,
- 47:01are the greatest events, are longest in being comprehended. The generations which are
- 47:07contemporary with them do not experience such events. They live past them. Something
- 47:14happens. There is in the realm of stars. The light of the furthest
- 47:16stars is longest in reaching man, and before it has arrived man denies that
- 47:22there are stars there? How many centuries does mind require to be understood?
- 47:27That is also a standard. One also makes a gradation of rank and an
- 47:30etiquette therewith such as is necessary for mind and for star. Here is the
- 47:36prospect, free, the mind exalted footnote good as Faust, Part two,
- 47:40Act five, the words of doctor Marianus. But there is a reverse kind
- 47:45of man, who is also upon a height, and has also a free
- 47:49prospect, but looks downwards? What is noble? What does the word noble
- 47:54still mean for us? Nowadays? How does the noble man betray himself?
- 48:00How is he recognized it? Under this heavy, overcast sky of the commencing
- 48:04Plebeianism, by which everything is rendered opaque and leaden. It is not his
- 48:08actions which establish his claim. Actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable. Neither
- 48:15is it his works. One finds nowadays among artists and scholars putty of those
- 48:20who betray by their works, that a profound longing for nobleness impels them.
- 48:23But this very need of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble
- 48:28soul itself, and it is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of the
- 48:32lack thereof. It is not the works, but the belief, which is
- 48:37here decisive and determines the order of rank. And to employ once more an
- 48:42old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning. It is some fundamental certainty
- 48:46which a noble soul has about itself. Something which is not to be sought,
- 48:51is not to be found, and perhaps also is not to be lost.
- 48:54The noble soul has reverence for itself. There are men who are unavoidably
- 49:01intellectual. Let them turn and twist themselves as they will, and hold their
- 49:06hands before their treacherous eyes, as though the hand were not a betrayer.
- 49:09It always comes out at last that they have something which they hide, namely
- 49:14intellect. One of the subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as
- 49:17possible, and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider than one really is,
- 49:22which in every day life is often as desirable as an umbrella. Is called
- 49:27enthusiasm, including what belongs to it, for instance, virtue. For as
- 49:31Galiani said, ertu est enthusiasmy. In the writings of a recluse, one
- 49:37always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones
- 49:43and timid vigilance of solitude in his strongest words, even in his cry itself,
- 49:49their sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment.
- 49:54He who has sat day and night from year's end to year's end alone with
- 50:00his soul and familiar discord and discourse, He who has become a cave bear,
- 50:05or a treasure seeker, or a treasure guardian and dragon. In his
- 50:08cave it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold mine.
- 50:13His ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight color of their own, and an odor
- 50:16as much of the depth as of the mold, something uncommunicative and repulsive,
- 50:22which blows chilly upon every passer by. The recluse does not believe that a
- 50:27philosopher, supposing that a philosopher has always, in the first place been a
- 50:30recluse, ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books, are not books
- 50:37written precisely to hide what is in us. Indeed, he will doubt whether
- 50:40a philosopher can have ultimate and actual opinions at all, Whether behind every cave
- 50:46in him there is not, and must necessarily be a still deeper cave,
- 50:52an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every
- 50:58bottom, beneath every fare foundation. Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy. This
- 51:04is a reclusive verdict. There is something arbitrary in the fact that the philosopher
- 51:08came to a stand here, took a retrospect and looked around, that he
- 51:14here laid his spade aside, and did not dig any deeper. There is
- 51:17also something suspicious in it. Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy. Every opinion
- 51:23is also a lurking place. Every word is also a mask. Every deep
- 51:30thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood. The latter perhaps
- 51:37wounds his vanity, but the former wounds his heart, his sympathy, which
- 51:43always says, ah, why would you also have as hard a time of
- 51:45it as I have? Man a complex, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable
- 51:52animal, uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity rather than by
- 51:58his strength. As an invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his
- 52:02soul as something simple, and the whole of morality is a long, audacious
- 52:07falsification by virtue, of which generally employment at the sight of the soul becomes
- 52:13impossible. From this point of view, there is perhaps much more in the
- 52:17conception of art than is generally believed. A philosopher, that is, a
- 52:22man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams
- 52:28extraordinary things, who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from
- 52:31the outside, from above and below, as a species of events, and
- 52:36lightning flashes peculiar to him, who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new
- 52:40lightnings. A portentous man around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping,
- 52:45and something uncanny going on. A philosopher alas a being who often runs
- 52:51away from himself, is often afraid of himself, but whose curiosity always makes
- 52:57him come to himself again. A man who says, I like that,
- 53:02I take it for my own, and mean to guard and protect it from
- 53:06every one. A man who can conduct a case, carry out a resolution,
- 53:10remain true to an opinion, keep hold of a woman, punish and
- 53:15overthrow insolence, a man who has his indignation and his sword, and to
- 53:19whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressive, and even the animals willingly
- 53:22submit and naturally belong. In short, a man who is in master by
- 53:27nature. When such a man has sympathy, well, that sympathy has value.
- 53:32But of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer, or of
- 53:36those even who preach sympathy? There is nowadays, throughout almost the whole of
- 53:40Europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and a repulsive irrestrainableness in
- 53:47complaining, an effeminizing which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense,
- 53:53seeks to deck itself out as something superior. There is a regular cult of
- 53:59suffering, the unmanliness of that which is called sympathy by such groups of visionaries.
- 54:04As always, I believe the first thing that strikes the eye one must
- 54:07resolutely and radically taboo this latest form of bad taste. And finally, I
- 54:13wish people to put the good amulet, guise, abert gay science in ordinary
- 54:19language on heart and neck as a protection against it. The olympian vice.
- 54:28Despite the philosopher who, as a genuine Englishman, tried to bring laughter into
- 54:32bad repute in all thinking minds. Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature,
- 54:37which every thinking mind will strive to overcome. Hobbes. I would even
- 54:42allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing, up to
- 54:46those who are capable of golden laughter. And supposing that gods also philosophies,
- 54:52which I am strongly inclined to believe, owing to many reasons, I have
- 54:55no doubt that they also know how to laugh. Thereby and an overman like
- 55:00in new fashion, and at the expense of all serious things. Gods are
- 55:05fond of ridicule. It seems that they cannot refrain from laughter, even in
- 55:08holy matters. The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious one possesses
- 55:15it, the tempter god and born rat catcher of consciences, whose voice can
- 55:20descend into the nether world of every soul who neither speaks a word nor casts
- 55:24a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch of allurement,
- 55:29to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to appear not as he is,
- 55:32but in a guise which acts as an additional constraint on his followers,
- 55:37to press ever closer to him, to follow him more cordially and thoroughly.
- 55:40The genius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and
- 55:45self conceited, which smooths rough souls and makes them taste a new longing,
- 55:50to lie placid, as a mirror that the deep heavens may be reflected in
- 55:53them. The genius of the heart, and to grasp more delicately, which
- 55:58sends the hidden and forgotten trea measure the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under
- 56:02thick dark ice, and is a divining rod for every grain of gold long
- 56:07buried and imprisoned in mud and sand. The genius of the heart, from
- 56:12contact with which everyone goes away richer, not favored or surprised, not as
- 56:16though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others, but richer in himself,
- 56:21newer than before, broken up, blown upon and sounded by a thawing
- 56:24wind, more uncertain, perhaps more delicate, more fragile, more bruised,
- 56:30but full of hopes, which is yet lack names, full of a new
- 56:32will and current, full of a new ill will and countercurrent. But what
- 56:37am I doing, my friends? Of whom am I talking to you?
- 56:42Have I forgotten myself so far that I have not even told you his name,
- 56:46unless it be that you have already divined of your own accord, who
- 56:50this questionable god and spirit is that wishes to be praised in such a manner.
- 56:55For, as it happens to everyone who, from childhood onward has always
- 56:59been on his legs and in foreign lands, I have also encountered on my
- 57:04path many strange and dangerous spirits. Above all, however, and again and
- 57:08again, the one whom I have just spoken, in fact no less a
- 57:13personage than the God Dionysus, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom,
- 57:19as you know, I once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first fruits,
- 57:22the last, as it seems to me, who has offered a sacrifice
- 57:25to him, For I have found no one who could understand what I was
- 57:29then doing. In the meantime, however, I have learned much, far
- 57:32too much about the philosophy of this God. And as I said from mouth
- 57:37to mouth, I the last disciple and initiate of the God Dionysus. And
- 57:42perhaps I might at last begin to give you, my friends, as far
- 57:45as I am allowed, a little taste of this philosophy in a hushed voice,
- 57:51as is but seemly, for it has to do with much that is
- 57:53secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. The very fact that
- 57:59Dionysia is a philosopher, and that therefore gods also philosophize, seems to me
- 58:05a novelty that is not unensnaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers.
- 58:12Among you, my friends, there is less to be said against it,
- 58:15except that it comes too late and not at the right time. For
- 58:19as it has been disclosed to me, you are loath nowadays to believe in
- 58:22God and gods. It may happen too, that, in the frankness of
- 58:27my story I must go further than is agreeable to the strict usages of your
- 58:30ears. Certainly, the god in question went further, very much further in
- 58:36such dialogs, and was always many paces ahead of me. Indeed, if
- 58:42it were allowed, I should have to give him, according to human usage,
- 58:45fine ceremonious tides of luster and merit. I should have to extol his
- 58:51courage as investigator and discoverer, his fearless honesty, truthfulness, and love of
- 58:55wisdom. But such a god does not know what to do with all that
- 59:00respectable trumpery and pomp keep that he would say, for thyself and those like
- 59:06THEE, and whoever else require it, I have no reason to cover my
- 59:10nakedness. One suspects that this kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame.
- 59:17He once said, under certain circumstances, I love mankind, and referred thereby
- 59:23to Ariadne, who is present. In my opinion, man is an agreeable,
- 59:27brave, inventive animal that is not his equal upon earth. He makes
- 59:31his way even through all labyrinths. I like man, and often think how
- 59:36I can still further advance him, and make him stronger, more evil and
- 59:39more profound. Stronger, more evil, and more profound, I asked,
- 59:43in horror. Yes, he said again, stronger, more evil, and
- 59:45more profound, also more beautiful. And thereby the tempter God smiled with his
- 59:52halcyon smile, as though he had just paid some charming compliment. One here
- 59:58sees at once that it is not only shame that this divinity lacks, And
- 1:00:02in general there are good grounds for supposing that in some things the gods could
- 1:00:07all of them come to us men for instruction? We men are more human
- 1:00:15Alas what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts? Not
- 1:00:20long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns
- 1:00:23and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh. And now you
- 1:00:30have already doffed your novelty. And some of you, I fear, are
- 1:00:32ready to become truths so immortal do they look so pathetically honest, so tedious?
- 1:00:38And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint,
- 1:00:43we mandarins with Chinese brush, We immortalizers of things which lend themselves to writing?
- 1:00:50What are we alone capable of painting? Alas only that which is just
- 1:00:54about to fade and begins to lose its odor? Alas only exhausted and departing
- 1:01:00storms and belated yellow sentiments, Alas only birds strayed and fatigued by flight,
- 1:01:06which now let themselves be captured with the hand. With our hand, we
- 1:01:10immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and
- 1:01:16mellow. And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and
- 1:01:21painted thoughts, for which alone I have colors, many colors, perhaps many
- 1:01:24variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns, and greens and reds. But
- 1:01:30nobody will divine thereby. How ye look'd in your mourning, you sudden sparks
- 1:01:36and marvels of my solitude, you, my old beloved evil Thoughts from the
- 1:01:45Heights by f. Ve Nietzsche, translated by L. A. Manus.
- 1:01:52Mid Day of life, O season of delight, my summer's park, unceaseful
- 1:01:59joy, to look, to, lurk, to hark, I peer for
- 1:02:01friends, and ready day and night where linger, ye, my friends,
- 1:02:06the time is right? Is not the glaciers gray to day for you?
- 1:02:09Rose garlanded, the brooklet seeks you, wind cloud with longing thread, and
- 1:02:15thrust themselves yet higher to the blue to spy for you from farthest eagle's view.
- 1:02:21My table was spread out for you on high Who dwelleth so star near
- 1:02:24so near the grisly pit below my realm? What realm hath wider boundary?
- 1:02:30My honey, who hath sipped its fragrancy? Friends, he are there,
- 1:02:35woe me? Yet I am not he whom ye seek. Ye stare and
- 1:02:39stop better your wrath could speak. I am not I hand gait, face
- 1:02:45changed, and what I am to you? My friends? Now? Am
- 1:02:49I not? Am I another? Strange? Am I to me? Yet
- 1:02:55from me sprung a wrestler by himself too oft, self wrung, hindering too
- 1:03:01oft, my own self's potency wounded and hampered by self victory. I sought
- 1:03:07whereso the wind's blow keenest There I learned to dwell where no man dwells,
- 1:03:14unlonesome, icelorn fell and unlearned man, and God and curse and prayer became
- 1:03:21a ghost haunting the glacier's bear. Yes, my old friend's look ye turned
- 1:03:27pale, filled oar with love and fear. Go, Yet not in wrath,
- 1:03:31ye could ne'er live here here in the farthest realm of ice and scar
- 1:03:36A huntsman. Must one be like Chamis Sore, an evil huntsman? Was
- 1:03:43I see how taut my bow was bent? Strongest was he by whom such
- 1:03:47bolt were sent? Woe? Now that arrow is with peril, fraught,
- 1:03:53perilous as none have yon safe home. Ye sought ye go thou didst endure
- 1:03:59in n o heart? Strong was thy hope unto new friends, thy portals
- 1:04:03widely ope, let old ones be bid, memory depart, whilst thou young
- 1:04:12then now better young? Thou art what linked us once together? One hope's
- 1:04:17tie? Who now doth con those lines? Now fading? Love once wrote
- 1:04:21thereon is like a parchment which the hand is shy to touch, Like crackling
- 1:04:28leaves, all seared, all dry, Oh friends, no more? They
- 1:04:34are? What name for those friend's phantom flight knocking at my heart's window pane
- 1:04:39at night, gazing on me, that speaks we were and goes, oh
- 1:04:44withered words, once fragrant as the rose pinings of youth that might not understand,
- 1:04:49for which I pined, which I deemed changed with me, kin of
- 1:04:54my kind. But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned,
- 1:04:58none but new kith, native of my land, mid day of life,
- 1:05:02my second youth's delight, my summer's park, unrestful joy, to long,
- 1:05:06to lurk, to hark, I peer for friends, am ready day and
- 1:05:11night for my new friends, Come come. The time is right, This
- 1:05:14song is done. The sweet sad cry of rue sang out its end.
- 1:05:18A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend, the mid day, friend,
- 1:05:21No, do not ask me who at mid day. Twas when one
- 1:05:26became us two, we keep our feast of feasts, sure of our born,
- 1:05:30our aims self saying the guest of guests, friend, Zarathustra came the
- 1:05:35world now laughs. The grisly veil was torn, and light and dark were
- 1:05:42one that wedding morn, end of Frederic nietzsche'z Beyond Good and Evil