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02 - The Free Spirit - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche · Logic Library

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Chapter two, The Free Spirit twenty four Osancta simplicatatus. In what strange simplification
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and falsification man lives? One can never cease wondering when once one has got
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eyes for beholding this marble. How we have made everything around us so clear
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and free and easy and simple. How we have been able to give our
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senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton pranks
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and wrong inferences. How from the beginning we have contrived to retain our ignorance
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in order to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness,
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and gaiety, in order to enjoy life. And only on this solidified,
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granite like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto the will to knowledge in
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the foundation of a far more powerful will, the will to ignorance, to
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the uncertain, to the untrue, not as its opposite, but as its
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refinement. It is to be hoped, indeed, that language here is elsewhere
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will not get over its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of
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opposites where there are only degrees. In many refinements of gradiation, it is
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equally to be hooped, that the incarnated tartuffery of morals, which now belongs
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to our unconquerable flesh and blood, will turn the words round in the mouths
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of us discerning ones. Here and there we understand it and laugh at the
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way in which precisely the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this simplified,
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thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and suitably falsified world, At the way
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in which, whether it will or not, it loves error, because as
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living itself, it loves life. Twenty five After such a cheerful commencement,
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a serious word would fain be heard. It appeals to the most serious minds.
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Take care of you, philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of
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martyrdom, of suffering for the truth's sake. Even in your own defense.
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It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience. It makes you
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headstrong against objections in red rags. It stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes.
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When in the struggle with dangersander's suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequence of
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enmity, ye have at last to play your last card, as protectors of
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truth upon earth, as though the truth were such an innocent and incompetent creature
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as to require protectors. And you of all people, ye knights of the
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sorrowful countenance, Monsieur Loufer and cobweb spinners of the spirit. Finally, ye
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know sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if ye just carry your
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point. Ye know that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that
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there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little interrogative mark which you place
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after your special words and favorite doctrines, and occasionally after yourselves, than in
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all the solemn pantomime and trumping games before accusers in law courts. Rather go
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out of the way, flee into concealment, and have your masks and your
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ruses, that ye may be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared,
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and pray, don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trelliswork,
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and have people around you who are as a garden or as musical the waters
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at eventide, when the day becomes a memory, Choose the good solitude,
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the free, wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the right still
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to remain good in any sense whatsoever, how poisonous, how crafty, how
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bad does every long war make one for which cannot be waged openly by means
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of force? How personal does a long fear make one? A long watching
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of enemies, of possible enemies, these pariahs of society, these long pursued,
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badly persecuted ones. Also the compulsory recklesses the Spinozas and Gordiano Bruno's,
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always become in the end, even under the most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps
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without being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance sickers and poison brewers just lay
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bare the foundations of Spinoza's ethics and theology, not to speak of the stupidity
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of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense
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of philosophical humor has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his sacrifice
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for the sake of truth, forces into the light whatever of the agitator.
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An actor lurks with within him, and if one has hitherto contemplated him only
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with artistic curiosity. With regard to many a philosopher, it is easy to
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understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration, deteriorated into a
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martyr, into a stage and tribune brawler, Only that it is necessary with
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such desire to be clear what spectacle one will see, in any case,
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merely a satiric play, merely an epilogue farce, and merely continued proof that
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the long real tragedy is at an end. Supposing that every philosophy has long
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been a tragedy in its origin twenty six, Every select man strives instinctively for
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a citadel and a privacy where he is free from the crowd, the many,
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the majority, where he may forget men who are the rule as their
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exception, exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such
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men by still stronger instinct as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense.
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Whoever, in intercourse with men does not occasionally glisten in all the green and
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gray colors of distress, owing to discuss satiety, sympathy, gloominess, and
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solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes. Supposing however, that
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he does not voluntarily take all this burden and discussed upon himself, that he
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persistently avoids it and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in
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his citadel. One thing is then certain. He was not made, He
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was not predestined for knowledge. For as such he would one day have to
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say to himself, the devil take my good taste. But the rule is
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more interesting than the exception, than myself the exception, and he would go
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down. And above all he would go inside the long and serious study of
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the average man, and consequently much disguise self, overcoming familiarity and bad intercourse.
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All intercourse is bad intercourse except with one's equals. That constitutes a necessary
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part of the life history of every philosopher, perhaps the most disagreeable, odious,
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and disappointing part. If he is fortunate, however, as a favorite
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child of knowledge should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten
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enlighten his task. I mean so called cynics, those who simply recognize the
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animal, the commonplace, and the rule in themselves, and at the same
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time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and
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their like before witnesses. Sometimes they wallow even in books as on their own.
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Dunghill cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called
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honesty, and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or
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finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him,
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or the scientific sator speaks out. There are even cases where enchantment mixes with
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the disgust, namely whereby freak of nature, genius is bound to some indiscreet
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billygoat and ape, as in the case of the Abbe Guiliani, the profoundest,
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acutest, and perhaps also the filthiest man of his century. He was
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far profounder than Voltaire, and consequently also a good deal more silent. It
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happens more frequently, as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed
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on an ape's body, a fine exceptional understanding in a base soul in occurrence
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by no means rare, especially among doctors and moral physiologists. And whenever anyone
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speaks without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man as a belly with
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two requirements and a head with one. Whenever anyone sees seeks and wants to
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see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the real and only motives
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of human actions. In short, when anyone speaks badly and not even ill
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of man, then ought the lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently.
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He ought in general to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation
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for the indignant man. And he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his
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own teeth or in place of himself, the world, god or society may
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indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self satisfied satyr,
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But in every other sense he is more ordinary, more indifferent, and less
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instructive case, and no one is such a liar as the indignant man.
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Twenty seven. It is different cult to be understood, especially when one thinks
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and lives ganghestragati footnote like the river Ganges presto. Among those who think and
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live otherwise, namely kromagati footnote like the tortoise lento, or at best frog
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like mandya Kegati footnote like the frogs taccato. I do everything to be difficultly
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understood myself, and one should be heartily grateful for the good will, and
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some refinement of interpretation. As regards the good friends, however, who are
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always too easy going and think that as friends they have a right to ease,
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one does well at the very first to grant them a playground in brompin
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place for misunderstanding. One can thus laugh still or get rid of them altogether
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these good friends and laugh then also twenty eight. What is most difficult to
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render from one language into another is the tempo of its style, which has
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its basis in the character of the race, or to speak more physiologically,
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in the average tempo of the assimi of its nutriment. There are honestly meant
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translations which, as in voluntary vogarizations, are almost falsifications of the original,
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merely because its lively and merry tempo, which overleaps and obviates all the dangers
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in word and expression, could not also be rendered. A German is almost
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incapacitated for presto in his language. Consequently, also he may be reasonably inferred
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for many of the most delightful and daring nuances of free, free spirited thought,
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and just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and
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conscience. So Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable. For him. Everything ponderous,
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viscous, and pompously clumsy, All long winded and weary species of style are
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developed in profuse variety among Germans. Part of me for stating the fact that
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even Gotha's prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception,
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as a reflection of the good old time to which it belongs, and
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an expression of German taste at a time when there was still a German taste,
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which was a rocucotate in moribus at Archibas. Blessing is an exception,
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owing to his histrionic nature, which understood much and was versed in many things.
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He who was not the translator of bail to no purpose, who took
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refuge willingly in the shadow of Diterat and Voltaire, and still more willingly among
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the Roman comedy writers. Lessing loved also free spiritism in the tempo and flight
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out of Germany. But how could the German language, even in the prose
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of Lessing, imitate the tempo of Machiavelli, who, in his principa makes
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us breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot help presenting the
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most serious events in a boisterous alagressimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense
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of the contrast, he ventures to present long, heavy, difficult, dangerous
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thoughts and a tempo of the gallop and of the best wantonous humor. Finally,
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who could venture on a German translation of Petronius, who, more than
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any great musician hitherto was a master of presto, in invention, ideas and
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words. What matter in the end about the swamps of the sick evie or
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of the ancient world, when like him one has the feet of the wind,
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the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a wind which makes
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everything healthy by making everything run. And with regard to Aristophanes, that transfiguring
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complimentary genius, for whose sake one pardons all Hellenism for having existed, provided
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one has understood in its whole profoundity, all that there requires pardon and transfiguration.
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There is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy and
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spinslike nature than the happily preserved pettit fate that under the pillow of his death
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bed, there was found no Bible, nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean or Platonic,
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but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life,
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a Greek life which he repudiated, without an Aristophanes twenty nine. It is
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the business of the very few to be independent. It is a privilege of
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the strong, And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but
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without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong,
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but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies
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a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it, not the
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least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his
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way, become isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience.
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Suppose such a one comes to grief. It is so far from the comprehension
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of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize with it. And he can
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no longer go back. He cannot even go back to the sympathy of men.
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Thirty Our deepest insights must and should appear as follies, and under certain
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circumstances as crimes when they are come unauthorizedly to the ears of those who are
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not disposed and predestined for them. The exoteric and the esoteric, as they
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were formally distinguished by philosophers among the Indians, as among the Greeks, Persians,
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and Mussulmans. In short, wherever people believed in gradiations of rank,
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not in equality and equal rights, are not so much in contradistinction to one
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another. In respect to the exoteric class, standing without and viewing, estimating,
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measuring, and judging from the outside and not from the inside. The
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more essential distinction is that the class in question views things from below upwards,
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while the esoteric class few things from above downwards. There are heights of the
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soul from which tragedy itself no longer appears to operate tragically. And if all
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the woe in the world were taken together, who would dare to decide whether
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the sight of it would necessarily seduce and constrain to sympathy, and thus to
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a doubling of the woe. That which serves the higher class of men for
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nourishment or refreshment must also be poisoned to an entirely different and lower order.
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Of human beings. The virtues of the common man would perhaps mean vice and
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weakness in the philosopher. It might be possible for a highly developed man,
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supposing him to degenerate and go to Ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone,
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for the sake of which he would have been honored as a saint in the
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lower world in which he had sunk. There are books which have an inverse
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value for the soul and the health, according as the inferior soul and the
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lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful make use of them. In
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the former case, they are dangerous, disturbing, and unsettling books. In
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the latter case there are herald calls which summon the bravest to their bravery.
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Books for the general reader are always ill smelling books. The odor of paltry
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people clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where
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they reverence, it is accustomed to stink. One should not go into churches
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if one wishes to breathe pure air. Thirty one, in our youthful years,
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we still venerate and despise without the art of nuance, which is the
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best gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance for having
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fallen upon men and things. With the A and A, everything is so
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arranged that the worst of all tastes. The taste for the unconditional is cruelly
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befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce a little art into a
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sentiments and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists
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of life. The angry and reverence spirit peculiar to youth, appears to allow
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itself no peace until it has suitably falsified men and things to be able to
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vent its passion upon them. Youth in itself even is something falsifying and deceptive.
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Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally
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turns suspiciously against itself, still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse
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of conscience, how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how
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it revenges itself for its long self blinding, as though it had been a
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voluntary blindness. In this transition, one punishes one's self by distrust of one's
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sentiments. When tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscience
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to be danger and if it were, the self concealment and lassitude of a
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more refined uprightness. And above all one espouses upon the principle the cause against
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youth. A decade later, and one comprehends that this was also still youth
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thirty two. Throughout the longest period of human history, one calls it the
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prehistoric period. The value or non value of an action was inferred from its
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consequence. The action in itself was not taken into consideration any more than its
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origin. But pretty much as in China at present, where the distinction or
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disgrace of a child redounds to its parents, the retro operating power of success
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or failure was what induced men to think well or ill of an action.
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Let us call this period the pre moral period of mankind. The imperative know
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thyself was then still unknown. In the last ten thousand years, on the
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other hand, on certain large portions of the earth, one has gradually got
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so far that one no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its
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origin decide with regards to its worth. A great achievement as a whole and
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important refinement of vision and criterion, the unconscious effort of the supremacy of aristocratic
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values and of the belief in origin the mark of a period which which may
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be designated in the narrower sense as the moral one. The first attempt at
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self knowledge is thereby made instead of the consequence. The origin what an inversion
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of perspective, and assuredly an inversion affected only after long struggle in wavering to
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be sure, an ominous new superstition, a peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained
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supremacy. Precisely thereby the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite
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sense possible, as origin out of intention. People were agreed in the belief
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that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention. The
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intention is the sole origin and antecedent history of an action. Under the influence
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of this prejudice, moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men have
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judged and even philosophized almost up to the present day. Is it not possible,
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however, that the necessity may now have arisen of again making up our
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minds with regards to the reversing and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a
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new self consciousness. And acuteness in man. Is it not possible that we
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may be standing on the threshold of a period which, to begin with,
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would be distinguished negatively as ultra moral nowadays, when at least among us immoralists,
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the suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in that
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which is not intentional, and that all its intentionalness, all that is seen,
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sensible, or sensed in it, belongs to its surface or skin,
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which, like every skin, betrays something but conceals still more. In short,
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we believe that the intention is only a sign or symptom, which first
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requires an explanation, a sign moreover, which has too many interpretations, and
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consequently hardly any meaning in itself alone. That morality in the sense in which
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it has been understood hitherto as intention morality, has been a prejudice, perhaps
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a prematureness or preliminariness, probably something of the same rank as astrology in alchemy.
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But in a case something which must be surmounted. There's surmounting of morality
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in certain sense, even the self mounting morality. Let that be the name
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for the long secret labor which has been reserved for the most refined the most
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upright and also the most wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones of
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the soul. Thirty three, It cannot be helped the sentiment of surrender of
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sacrifice for one's neighbor, and all self renunciation. Morality must be mercilessly called
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to account and brought to judgment, just as the aesthetics of disinterested contemplation under
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which the emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create it self good conscience.
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There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments for others and
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not for myself. For one not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and
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for one asking promptly, are they not perhaps deceptions? They that please him
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who has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also the mere
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spectator that is all no argument in their favor, but just calls for caution.
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Let us therefore be cautious at whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place one's
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self. Nowadays, seen from every position, the erroneousness of the world in
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which we think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can
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light upon. We find proof after proof thereof which would fain allure us into
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surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the nature of things. He, however,
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who makes thinking itself and consequently the spirit responsible for the falseness of the world,
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an honorable exit which every conscious or unconscious evacutus day avails himself of.
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He who regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement,
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as falsely deduced, would have at least good reason in the end to
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become distrustful. Also of all thinking. Has it not hitherto been playing upon
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us the worst of scurvy tricks? And what guarantee would it give that it
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would not continue to do what it has always been doing? In all seriousness,
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the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect inspiring about it, even
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nowadays, permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give
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them honest answers, for example, whether it be real or not, and
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why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions
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of the same description. The belief in immediate certainties is a moral ne avite,
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which does honor to his philosophers. But we have now ceased being merely
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moral men apart from morality. Such belief is a folly which does little honor
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to us. If in middle class life an ever ready distrusted is regarded as
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the sign of a bad character, and consequently as imprudence. Here among us
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beyond the middle class world, in its ads and nays, what should prevent
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our being imprudent? And saying the philosopher has at length a right to bad
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character. As the being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth, he
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is now under obligation to distrustfulness through the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of
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suspicion. Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression,
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For I myself have long ago learned to think can estimate differently with regard to
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deceiving and being deceived. And I keep at least a couple of pokes in
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the ReBs ready for the blind rage with which philosophers struggle against being deceived.
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Why not it is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more
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than semblance. It is, in fact the worst proof supposition in the world.
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So much must be conceded. There could have been no life at all
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except on the basis of prospective estimations and semblances. And if, with the
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virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away altogether with
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the seeming world, well, granted you could do that. At least nothing
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of your truth would thereby remain. Indeed, what is it that forces us,
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in general to the supposition that there is an essential opposition of true and
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false? Is it not enough to suppose degrees of seemingness? And, as
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it were, lighter and darker shades and tones of semblances, different values.
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As the painters say, why might not the world which concerns us be a
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fiction? And to any one who suggested, but to who if fiction belongs
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an originator, might it not be bluntly replied, why may this belong also
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belong to the fiction? Why is it not at length permitted to be a
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little ironical towards the subject, just as towards the predicate an object? Might
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not the philosopher elevate himself above faith and grammar? All respect to governesses?
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But is it not time that philosophy should renounce governess faith? Thirty five O
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Voltaire, Oh humanity, Oh idiocy? There is something ticklish in the truth
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and the search for the truth. And if man goes about it too humanely,
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ernich cherie nevre qui pour Philippienne, I wager he finds nothing. Thirty
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six. Supposing that nothing else is given as real but our world of desires
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and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other reality, but
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just that of our impulses. For thinking is only a relation of these impulses
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to one another. Are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask
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the question whether this which is given does not suffice by means of our counterparts
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for the understanding of the so called mechanical or material world. I do not
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mean as an illusion, a semblance, a representation in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhaueren
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sense, but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves,
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as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, in which everything still
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lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards branches off and develops itself in
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organic processes, naturally also refines and debilitates as a kind of instinctive life,
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in which all organic functions, including self regulation, as simulation, nutrition,
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secretion, and change of matter are still synthetically united with one another as a
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primary form of life. In the end, is it not only permitted to
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make this attempt, It is commanded by the conscience of logical method not to
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assume several kinds of cause, so long as the attempt to get along with
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a single one has not been pushed to its furthest extent to absurdity. If
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I may be allowed to say so, that is morality of method, which
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one may not repudiate. Nowadays, it follows from its definition, as mathematicians
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say, the question is ultimately whether we recognize the will as operating, whether
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we believe in the causality of this will. If we do so, and
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fundamentally our belief in this is just our belief in causality itself, we must
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make an attempt to posit hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality.
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Will can naturally only operate on will, and not on matter, not
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on nerves, for instance. In short, the hypothesis must be hazarded whether
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will does not operate on will wherever effects are recognized, and whether all mechanical
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action, inasmuch as power operates therein is not the power of will, the
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effect of will. Granted finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive
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life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will, namely the
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will to power. As my thesis puts it, granted that all organic functions
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could be traced back to this will to power, and that the solution of
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this problem of generation and nutrition, it is one problem, could also be
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found therein. One would thus have acquired the right to define all active force
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unequivocally as will to power, the world seen from within, the world,
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defined and designated according to its intelligible character, it would simply be will to
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power and nothing else. Thirty seven. What does not that mean? In
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popular language? God has disproved, but not the devil. On the contrary,
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On the contrary, my friends, and who the devil also compels you
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to speak popularly? Thirty eight? As happened finally, in all the enlightenment
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of modern times with the French Revolution, that terrible farce, quite superfluous when
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judged close to hand, into which, however, the noble and visionary spectators
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of all Europe have interpreted from a distance their own indignation and enthusiasm so long
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and passionately until the text has disappeared under the interpretation, so a noble posterity
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might once more misunderstand the whole of the part, and perhaps only thereby make
27:12
its aspect endurable. Or rather, has not this already happened? Have we
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not ourselves been that noble posterity? And in so far as we now comprehend
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this, is it not thereby already past thirty nine? Nobody will very readily
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regard a doctrine as true merely because it makes the people happy or virtuous,
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excepting perhaps the amiable idealists, who are enthusiastic about the good, true,
27:37
and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley course and good natured desirabilities swim
27:42
about promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. It is
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willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that to
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make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter arguments. A thing
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could be true although it were the highest degree injury and dangerous. Indeed,
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the fundamental constitution of existence might be such that once is succumbed by a full
28:06
knowledge of it, so that the strength of a mind might be measured by
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the amount of truth that could endure or speak, more plainly, by the
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extent to which it required truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, dampened, and
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falsified. But there is no doubt for the discovery of certain portions of truth.
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The wicked and unfortunate are more favorably situated and have greater likelihood of success,
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not to speak of the wicked who are happy, a species about whom
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moralists are silent. Perhaps severity and craft are more favorable conditions for the development
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of strong, independent spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, yielding good
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nature and habit of taking things easily which are prized and rightly prized in a
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learned man. Presupposing always to begin with that the term philosopher be not confined
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to the philosopher who writes books or even introduces his philosophy into books, Stenthall
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furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the free spirited philosopher, for which
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the sake of German taste I will not omit to underline, for it is
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opposed to German taste pour tre bround philosophy says this last great psychologist. If
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foltetrisec Claire soon de lejon umbonquisque fiochun e un parti de queratiriqui peufeverre des couvertis
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In philosophy ciestidia pouvot claire Tons seques forty. Everything that is profound loves the
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mass. The profoundest things have a hatred, even of figure and likeness.
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Should not the contrary only be the right disguise for the shame of a god
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to go about in a question worth asking? It would be strange if some
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mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing. There are proceedings
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of such a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with a coarseness
29:49
and make them unrecognizable their actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimy, after
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which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly,
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when thereby oscures his recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and
30:04
abuse his own memory in order to at least have vengeance on this sole party
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in the secret shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which
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one is most ashamed. There is not only deceit behind a mask, there
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is so much goodness and craft. I could imagine that a man with something
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costly and fragile to conceal would roll through life clumsily and rotoundly like an old
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green heavily hooped wine cask, the refinement of his shame requiring it to be
30:30
so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his
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delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, and with regard to the existence
30:38
of which his nearest and most intimate friends may be ignorant, his mortal danger
30:44
conceals itself from their eyes, and equally so has regained security. Such a
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hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible
30:53
an evasion of communication, desires and insists that a mask of himself shall ought
30:59
to by his place in the hearts and heads of his friends. And supposing
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he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be open to the
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fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there, and that it is
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well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask, nay more around
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every profound spirit. There continually grows a mask owing to the constantly false,
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that is to say, superficial interpretation of every word he utters, every step
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he takes, every sign of life he manifests Forty one. One must subject
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one's self to one's own tests that one is destined for independence and command,
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and do so at the right time. One must not avoid one's tests,
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although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in
31:45
the end, tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge. Not
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to cleave any person, but it even the dearest. Every person is a
31:55
prison and also a recess. Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it
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even the most suffering and necessitous. It is even less difficult to detach one's
32:04
heart from a victorious fatherland. Not to cleave to sympathy, be it even
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for higher men, in whose peculiar torture and helplessness chance has given us an
32:14
insight. Not to cleave to a science, though attempt one with the most
32:17
valuable discoveries apparently specially reserved for us. Not to cleave to one's own liberation,
32:23
to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which always flies further
32:28
aloft in order to theme. More under it the danger of the flier not
32:32
to cleave to our own virtues, nor become as a whole victim to any
32:37
of our specialties, to our hospitality, for instance, which is the danger
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of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls who deal prodigally, almost indifferently with
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themselves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes a vice.
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One must know how to conserve one's self the best test of independence.
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Forty two. A new order of philosophers as appear, I shall venture to
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baptize them by a name not without danger, as far as I understand them,
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as far as they allow themselves to be understood. For it is their
33:08
nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle. These philosophers of the future
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might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as tempters. This
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name itself is, after all, only an attempt, or, if it
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be preferred, a temptation. Forty three Will they be new friends of truth?
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These coming philosophers, very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their
33:32
truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to
33:37
their pride and also contrary to their taste, that their truths should still be
33:43
truth for everyone, that which has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose
33:47
of all dogmatic efforts. My opinion is my opinion. Another person has not
33:52
easily a right to it. Such a philosopher of the future will say,
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perhaps one must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people.
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Good is no longer good when one's neighbor takes it into his mouth, And
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how could there be a common good? The expression contradicts itself, that which
34:09
can be common is always of small value. In the end, things must
34:14
be as they are and always have been. The great things remain for the
34:16
great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined,
34:22
And to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare. Forty four
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need I say expressly after all this, that they will be free, very
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free spirits, these philosophers of the future. As certainly also they will not
34:34
merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different,
34:38
which does not wish to be misunderstood and mistaken. But while I say
34:43
this, I feel under obligation almost as much to them as to ourselves,
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we free spirits, who are their heralds and forerunners, to sweep away from
34:51
ourselves altogether a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like a fog,
34:57
has too long made the conception of a free spirit obscure in every country of
35:00
Europe, and the same in America. There is at present something which makes
35:05
an abuse of this name, a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of
35:08
spirits who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt not to
35:15
mention that, in respect to the new philosophers who are appearing, they must
35:19
still more be closed windows and bolted doors. Briefly, and regrettably they belong
35:23
to levelers. These wrongly named free spirits as glib, tongued and scribe fingered
35:29
slaves of the democratic taste in its modern ideals, all of them men without
35:34
solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honorable
35:38
contact ought to be denied. Only they are not free, and are ludicrously
35:43
superficial, especially in their innate partiality. Foreseeing the cause of almost all human
35:49
misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed, a
35:52
notion which happily inverts the truth entirely. What they would fain attain with all
35:59
their strength is the universal, green meadowed happiness of the herd, together with
36:02
security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for everyone. Their two
36:07
most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called equality of rights and sympathy with all
36:12
sufferers. And suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which much be
36:16
done away with. We opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye
36:22
and conscience to the question how and where the plant man has hitherto grown,
36:27
most vigorously believed that this has always taken place under the opposite conditions, that
36:31
for this end, the dangerousness of his situation has to be increased enormously,
36:37
his inventive faculty and dissembling power. His spirit had to develop into subtlety and
36:42
daring under long oppression and compulsion, and his will to life had to be
36:45
increased to the unconditioned will to power. We believe that severity, violent slavery,
36:51
danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempters,
36:53
art, and devilry of every kind that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical,
36:59
predatory, and so serpentine in man serves as well for the elevation of
37:01
the human species as its opposite. We do not even say enough, when
37:07
we only say this much. And in any case we find ourselves here,
37:09
both with our speech and our silence, at the other extreme of all modern
37:14
ideology and gregarious desirability as their antipodes. Perhaps what wonder that we free spirits
37:21
are not the exactly the most communicative spirits, that we do not wish to
37:24
betray in every respect what a spirit can free itself from and where perhaps it
37:30
will then be driven. And as to the import of the dangerous formula beyond
37:34
good and evil, with which we at least avoid confusion, we are something
37:37
else than librepensur, libin pensitory freethinkers, and whatever else these honest advocates of
37:45
modern ideas like to call themselves, having been at home, or at least
37:49
guests in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the
37:52
gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth origin and accident of
37:59
men in books, or even the weariness of travels seem to confine us full
38:02
of malice against the seductions of dependence, which he concealed in honors, money,
38:07
positions, or exaltations of the senses. Grateful even for the distress and
38:13
vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule and its prejudice.
38:17
Grateful to the God, Devil's sheep and worm in us, inquisitive to
38:22
a fault. Investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the
38:25
intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, Ready for any business
38:30
that requires sageiacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an
38:36
excess of free will, with anterior and posterior souls into the ultimate intentions of
38:42
which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of
38:45
which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light. Appropriators,
38:50
although we resemble errors and spread thrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till
38:54
night, mises of our wealth and full cramp drawers, economical in learning and
38:59
forgetting, invented and scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pendants,
39:05
sometimes night owls of work even in full day. Yea, if necessary,
39:08
even scarecrows, and it is necessary nowadays. That is to say,
39:12
inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of solitude, of
39:15
our own profoundest midnight and mid day solitude. Such kind of men are we,
39:21
we free spirits, And perhaps ye are also something of the same kind,
39:24
Ye coming ones, ye New Philosophers, end Chapter two,