START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN, PART II*** Friedrich Nietzsche Human All-Too-Human A Book For Free Spirits Part II Translated By Paul V. Cohn, B.A. New York The MacMillan Company 1913 CONTENTS Translatorâs Introduction. Preface. Part I. Miscellaneous Maxims And Opinions. Part II. The Wanderer And His Shadow. Footnotes TRANSLATORâS INTRODUCTION. The publication of _Human, all-too-Human_ extends over the period 1878-1880. Of the two divisions which constitute the Second Part, âMiscellaneous Maxims and Opinionsâ appeared in 1879, and âThe Wanderer and his Shadowâ in 1880, Nietzsche being then in his thirty-sixth year. The Preface was added in 1886. The whole book forms Nietzscheâs first lengthy contribution to literature. His previous works comprise only the philological treatises, _The Birth of Tragedy_, and the essays on Strauss, Schopenhauer, and Wagner in _Thoughts out of Season_. With the volumes of _Human, all-too-Human_ Nietzsche appears for the first time in his true colours as philosopher. His purely scholarly publications, his essays in literary and musical criticismâespecially the essay on Richard Wagner at Bayreuthâhad, of course, foreshadowed his work as a thinker. These efforts, however, had been mere fragments, from which hardly any one could observe that a new philosophical star had arisen on the horizon. But by 1878 the period of transition had definitely set in. Outwardly, the new departure is marked by Nietzscheâs resignation in that year of his professorship at BÃ¢leâa resignation due partly to ill-health, and partly to his conviction that his was a voice that should speak not merely to students of philology, but to all mankind. Nietzsche himself characterises _Human, all-too-Human_ as âthe monument of a crisis.â He might as fitly have called it the first-fruits of a new harvest. Now, for the first time, he practises the form which he was to make so peculiarly his own. We are toldâand we may well believeâthat the book came as a surprise even to his most intimate friends. Wagner had already seen how matters stood at the publication of the first part, and the gulf between the two probably widened on the appearance of the Second Part. Several aphorisms are here, varying in length as in subject, and ranging over the whole human provinceâthe emotions and aspirations, the religions and cultures and philosophies, the arts and literatures and politics of mankind. Equally varied is the range of style, the incisive epigram and the passage of pure poetry jostling each other on the same page. In this curious power of alternating between cynicism and lyricism, Nietzsche appears as the prose counterpart of Heine. One or two of the aphorisms are of peculiar interest to English readers. The essay (as it may almost be called) on Sterne (p. 60, No. 113) does ample justice, if not more than justice, to that wayward genius. The allusion to Milton (p. 77, No. 150) will come as somewhat of a shock to English readers, especially to those who hold that in Milton Art triumphed over Puritanism. It should be remembered, however, that Nietzscheâs view coincides with Goetheâs. The dictum that Shakespeareâs gold is to be valued for its quantity rather than its quality (p. 81, No. 162) also betrays a certain exclusivenessâa legacy from that eighteenth-century France which appealed so strongly to Nietzsche on its intellectual side. To Nietzsche, as to Voltaire, Shakespeare is after all âthe great barbarian.â The title of the book may be explained from a phrase in _Thus Spake Zarathustra_: âVerily, even the greatest I foundâall-too-human.â The keynote of these volumes is indeed disillusion and destruction. Nor is this to be wondered at, for all men must sweep away the rubbish before they can build. Hence we find here little of the constructive philosophy of Nietzscheâso far as he had a constructive philosophy. The Superman appears but faintly, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence not at all. For this very reason, _Human, all-too-Human_ is perhaps the best starting-point for the study of Nietzsche. The difficulties in style and thought of the later workâdifficulties that at times become well-nigh insuperable in _Thus Spake Zarathustra_âare here practically absent. The book may, in fact, almost be described as âpopular,â bearing the same relation to Nietzscheâs later productions as Wagnerâs _TannhÃ¤user_ and _Lohengrin_ bear to the _Ring_. The translatorâs thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Common for his careful revision of the manuscript and many valuable suggestions. P. V. C. PREFACE. 1. One should only speak where one cannot remain silent, and only speak of what one has _conquered_âthe rest is all chatter, âliterature,â bad breeding. My writings speak only of my conquests, âIâ am in them, with all that is hostile to me, _ego ipsissimus_, or, if a more haughty expression be permitted, _ego ipsissimum_. It may be guessed that I have many below me.... But first I always needed time, convalescence, distance, separation, before I felt the stirrings of a desire to flay, despoil, lay bare, ârepresentâ (or whatever one likes to call it) for the additional knowledge of the world, something that I had lived through and outlived, something done or suffered. Hence all my writings,âwith one exception, important, it is true,âmust be _ante-dated_âthey always tell of a âbehind-me.â Some even, like the first three _Thoughts out of Season_, must be thrown back before the period of creation and experience of a previously published book (_The Birth of Tragedy_ in the case cited, as any one with subtle powers of observation and comparison could not fail to perceive). That wrathful outburst against the Germanism, smugness, and raggedness of speech of old David Strauss, the contents of the first _Thought out of Season_, gave a vent to feelings that had inspired me long before, as a student, in the midst of German culture and cultured Philistinism (I claim the paternity of the now much used and misused phrase âcultured Philistinismâ). What I said against the âhistorical diseaseâ I said as one who had slowly and laboriously recovered from that disease, and who was not at all disposed to renounce âhistoryâ in the future because he had suffered from her in the past. When in the third _Thought out of Season_ I gave expression to my reverence for my first and only teacher, the _great_ Arthur SchopenhauerâI should now give it a far more personal and emphatic voiceâI was for my part already in the throes of moral scepticism and dissolution, that is, as much concerned with the criticism as with the study of all pessimism down to the present day. I already did not believe in âa blessed thing,â as the people say, not even in Schopenhauer. It was at this very period that an unpublished essay of mine, âOn Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-Moral Sense,â came into being. Even my ceremonial oration in honour of Richard Wagner, on the occasion of his triumphal celebration at Bayreuth in 1876âBayreuth signifies the greatest triumph that an artist has ever wonâa work that bears the strongest stamp of âindividuality,â was in the background an act of homage and gratitude to a bit of the past in me, to the fairest but most perilous calm of my sea-voyage ... and as a matter of fact a severance and a farewell. (Was Richard Wagner mistaken on this point? I do not think so. So long as we still love, we do not paint such pictures, we do not yet âexamine,â we do not place ourselves so far away as is essential for one who âexamines.â âExamining needs at least a secret antagonism, that of an opposite point of view,â it is said on page 46 of the above-named work itself, with an insidious, melancholy application that was perhaps understood by few.) The composure that gave me the _power_ to speak after many intervening years of solitude and abstinence, first came with the book, _Human, All-too Human_, to which this second preface and apologia(1) is dedicated. As a book for âfree spiritsâ it shows some trace of that almost cheerful and inquisitive coldness of the psychologist, who has _behind_ him many painful things that he keeps _under_ him, and moreover establishes them for himself and fixes them firmly as with a needle-point. Is it to be wondered at that at such sharp, ticklish work blood flows now and again, that indeed the psychologist has blood on his fingers and not _only_ on his fingers? 2. The _Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions_ were in the first place, like _The Wanderer and His Shadow_, published separately as continuations and appendices to the above-mentioned human, all-too human _Book for Free Spirits_: and at the same time, as a continuation and confirmation of an intellectual cure, consisting in a course of anti-romantic self-treatment, such as my instinct, which had always remained healthy, had itself discovered and prescribed against a temporary attack of the most dangerous form of romantics. After a convalescence of six years I may well be permitted to collect these same writings and publish them as a second volume of _Human, All-too Human_. Perhaps, if surveyed together, they will more clearly and effectively teach their lessonâa lesson of health that may be recommended as a _disciplina voluntatis_ to the more intellectual natures of the rising generation. Here speaks a pessimist who has often leaped out of his skin but has always returned into it, thus, a pessimist with goodwill towards pessimismâat all events a romanticist no longer. And has not a pessimist, who possesses this serpentine knack of changing his skin, the right to read a lecture to our pessimists of to-day, who are one and all still in the toils of romanticism? Or at least to show them how it isâdone? 3. It was then, in fact, high time to bid farewell, and I soon received proof. Richard Wagner, who seemed all-conquering, but was in reality only a decayed and despairing romantic, suddenly collapsed, helpless and broken, before the Christian Cross.... Was there not a single German with eyes in his head and sympathy in his heart for this appalling spectacle? Was I the only one whom he causedâsuffering? In any case, the unexpected event illumined for me in one lightning flash the place that I had abandoned, and also the horror that is felt by every one who is unconscious of a great danger until he has passed through it. As I went forward alone, I shuddered, and not long afterwards I was ill, or rather more than illâweary: weary from my ceaseless disappointment about all that remained to make us modern men enthusiastic, at the thought of the power, work, hope, youth, love, flung to all the winds: weary from disgust at the effeminacy and undisciplined rhapsody of this romanticism, at the whole tissue of idealistic lies and softening of conscience, which here again had won the day over one of the bravest of men: last, and not least, weary from the bitterness of an inexorable suspicionâthat after this disappointment I was doomed to mistrust more thoroughly, to despise more thoroughly, to be alone more thoroughly than ever before. My taskâwhither had it flown? Did it not look now as if my task were retreating from me and as if I should for a long future period have no more right to it? What was I to do to endure this most terrible privation?âI began by entirely forbidding myself all romantic music, that ambiguous, pompous, stifling art, which robs the mind of its sternness and its joyousness and provides a fertile soil for every kind of vague yearning and spongy sensuality. âCave musicamâ is even to-day my advice to all who are enough of men to cling to purity in matters of the intellect. Such music enervates, softens, feminises, its âeternal feminineâ draws usâ_down_!(2) My first suspicion, my most immediate precaution, was directed against romantic music. If I hoped for anything at all from music, it was in the expectation of the coming of a musician bold, subtle, malignant, southern, healthy enough to take an immortal revenge upon that other music. 4. Lonely now and miserably self-distrustful, I took sides, not without resentment, _against_ myself and _for_ everything that hurt me and was hard to me. Thus I once more found the way to that courageous pessimism that is the antithesis of all romantic fraud, and, as it seems to me to-day, the way to âmyself,â to my task. That hidden masterful Something, for which we long have no name until at last it shows itself as our taskâthat tyrant in us exacts a terrible price for every attempt that we make to escape him or give him the slip, for every premature act of self-constraint, for every reconciliation with those to whom we do not belong, for every activity, however reputable, which turns us aside from our main purpose, yes, even for every virtue that would fain protect us from the cruelty of our most individual responsibility. âDiseaseâ is always the answer when we wish to have doubts of our rights to our own task, when we begin to make it easier for ourselves in any way. How strange and how terrible! It is our very alleviations for which we have to make the severest atonement! And if we want to return to health, we have no choice leftâwe must load ourselves _more heavily_ than we were ever laden before. 5. It was then that I learnt the hermitical habit of speech acquired only by the most silent and suffering. I spoke without witnesses, or rather indifferent to the presence of witnesses, so as not to suffer from silence, I spoke of various things that did not concern me in a style that gave the impression that they did. Then, too, I learnt the art of showing myself cheerful, objective, inquisitive in the presence of all that is healthy and evilâis this, in an invalid, as it seems to me, his âgood tasteâ? Nevertheless, a more subtle eye and sympathy will not miss what perhaps gives a charm to these writingsâthe fact that here speaks one who has suffered and abstained in such a way as if he had never suffered or abstained. Here equipoise, composure, even gratitude towards life _shall_ be maintained, here rules a stern, proud, ever vigilant, ever susceptible will, which has undertaken the task of defending life against pain and snapping off all conclusions that are wont to grow like poisonous fungi from pain, disappointment, satiety, isolation and other morasses. Perhaps this gives our pessimists a hint to self-examination? For it was then that I hit upon the aphorism, âa sufferer has as yet no right to pessimism,â and that I engaged in a tedious, patient campaign against the unscientific first principles of all romantic pessimism, which seeks to magnify and interpret individual, personal experiences into âgeneral judgments,â universal condemnationsâit was then, in short, that I sighted a new world. Optimism for the sake of restitution, in order at some time to have the right to become a pessimistâdo you understand that? Just as a physician transfers his patient to totally strange surroundings, in order to displace him from his entire âpast,â his troubles, friends, letters, duties, stupid mistakes and painful memories, and teaches him to stretch out hands and senses towards new nourishment, a new sun, a new future: so I, as physician and invalid in one, forced myself into an utterly different and untried zone of the soul, and particularly into an absorbing journey to a strange land, a strange atmosphere, into a curiosity for all that was strange. A long process of roaming, seeking, changing followed, a distaste for fixity of any kindâa dislike for clumsy affirmation and negation: and at the same time a dietary and discipline which aimed at making it as easy as possible for the soul to fly high, and above all constantly to fly away. In fact a minimum of life, an unfettering from all coarser forms of sensuality, an independence in the midst of all marks of outward disfavour, together with the pride in being able to live in the midst of all this disfavour: a little cynicism perhaps, a little of the âtub of Diogenes,â a good deal of whimsical happiness, whimsical gaiety, much calm, light, subtle folly, hidden enthusiasmâall this produced in the end a great spiritual strengthening, a growing joy and exuberance of health. Life itself rewards us for our tenacious will to life, for such a long war as I waged against the pessimistic weariness of life, even for every observant glance of our gratitude, glances that do not miss the smallest, most delicate, most fugitive gifts.... In the end we receive Lifeâs great gifts, perhaps the greatest it can bestowâwe regain _our_ task. 6. Should my experienceâthe history of an illness and a convalescence, for it resulted in a convalescenceâbe only my personal experience? and merely just my âHuman, All-too-humanâ? To-day I would fain believe the reverse, for I am becoming more and more confident that my books of travel were not penned for my sole benefit, as appeared for a time to be the case. May I, after six years of growing assurance, send them once more on a journey for an experiment?âMay I commend them particularly to the ears and hearts of those who are afflicted with some sort of a âpast,â and have enough intellect left to suffer even intellectually from their past? But above all would I commend them to you whose burden is heaviest, you choice spirits, most encompassed with perils, most intellectual, most courageous, who must be the _conscience_ of the modern soul and as such be versed in its _science_:(3) in whom is concentrated all of disease, poison or danger that can exist to-day: whose lot decrees that you must be more sick than any individual because you are not âmere individualsâ: whose consolation it is to know and, ah! to walk the path to a new health, a health of to-morrow and the day after: you men of destiny, triumphant, conquerors of time, the healthiest and the strongest, you _good Europeans_! 7. To express finally in a single formula my opposition to the romantic pessimism of the abstinent, the unfortunate, the conquered: there is a will to the tragic and to pessimism, which is a sign as much of the severity as of the strength of the intellect (taste, emotion, conscience). With this will in our hearts we do not fear, but we investigate ourselves the terrible and the problematical elements characteristic of all existence. Behind such a will stand courage and pride and the desire for a really great enemy. That was _my_ pessimistic outlook from the firstâa new outlook, methinks, an outlook that even at this day is new and strange? To this moment I hold to it firmly and (if it will be believed) not only _for_ myself but occasionally _against_ myself.... You would prefer to have that proved first? Well, what else does all this long prefaceâprove? SILS-MARIA, UPPER ENGADINE, _September, 1886_. PART I. MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 1. TO THE DISILLUSIONED IN PHILOSOPHY.âIf you hitherto believed in the highest value of life and now find yourselves disillusioned, must you immediately get rid of life at the lowest possible price? 2. OVERNICE.âOne can even become overnice as regards the clearness of concepts. How disgusted one is then at having truck with the half-clear, the hazy, the aspiring, the doubting! How ridiculous and yet not mirth-provoking is their eternal fluttering and straining without ever being able to fly or to grasp! 3. THE WOOERS OF REALITY.âHe who realises at last how long and how thoroughly he has been befooled, embraces out of spite even the ugliest reality. So that in the long run of the worldâs history the best men have always been wooers of reality, for the best have always been longest and most thoroughly deceived. 4. ADVANCE OF FREETHINKING.âThe difference between past and present freethinking cannot better be characterised than by that aphorism for the recognition and expression of which all the fearlessness of the eighteenth century was needed, and which even then, if measured by our modern view, sinks into an unconscious naÃ¯vetÃ©. I mean Voltaireâs aphorism, âcroyez-moi, mon ami, lâerreur aussi a son mÃ©rite.â 5. A HEREDITARY SIN OF PHILOSOPHERS.âPhilosophers have at all times appropriated and _corrupted_ the maxims of censors of men (moralists), by taking them over without qualification and trying to prove as necessary what the moralists only meant as a rough indication or as a truth suited to their fellow-countrymen or fellow-townsmen for a single decade. Moreover, the philosophers thought that they were thereby raising themselves above the moralists! Thus it will be found that the celebrated teachings of Schopenhauer as to the supremacy of the will over the intellect, of the immutability of character, the negativity of pleasureâall errors, in the sense in which he understands themârest upon principles of popular wisdom enunciated by the moralists. Take the very word âwill,â which Schopenhauer twisted so as to become a common denotation of several human conditions and with which he filled a gap in the language (to his own great advantage, in so far as he was a moralist, for he became free to speak of the will as Pascal had spoken of it). In the hands of its creator, Schopenhauerâs âwill,â through the philosophic craze for generalisation, already turned out to be a bane to knowledge. For this will was made into a poetic metaphor, when it was held that all things in nature possess will. Finally, that it might be applied to all kinds of disordered mysticism, the word was misused by a fraudulent convention. So now all our fashionable philosophers repeat it and seem to be perfectly certain that all things have a will and are in fact One Will. According to the description generally given of this All-One-Will, this is much as if one should positively try to have the stupid Devil for oneâs God. 6. AGAINST VISIONARIES.âThe visionary denies the truth to himself, the liar only to others. 7. ENMITY TO LIGHT.âIf we make it clear to any one that, strictly, he can never speak of truth, but only of probability and of its degrees, we generally discover, from the undisguised joy of our pupil, how greatly men prefer the uncertainty of their intellectual horizon, and how in their heart of hearts they hate truth because of its definiteness.âIs this due to a secret fear felt by all that the light of truth may at some time be turned too brightly upon themselves? To their wish to be of some consequence, and accordingly their concealment from the world of what they are? Or is it to be traced to their horror of the all-too brilliant light, to which their crepuscular, easily dazzled, bat-like souls are not accustomed, so that hate it they must? 8. CHRISTIAN SCEPTICISM.âPilate, with his question, âWhat is Truth?â is now gleefully brought on the scene as an advocate of Christ, in order to cast suspicion on all that is known or knowable as being mere appearance, and to erect the Cross on the appalling background of the Impossibility of Knowledge. 9. âNATURAL LAW,â A PHRASE OF SUPERSTITION.âWhen you talk so delightedly of Nature acting according to law, you must either assume that all things in Nature follow their law from a voluntary obedience imposed by themselvesâin which case you admire the morality of Nature: or you are enchanted with the idea of a creative mechanician, who has made a most cunning watch with human beings as accessory ornaments.âNecessity, through the expression, âconformity to law,â then becomes more human and a coign of refuge in the last instance for mythological reveries. 10. FALLEN FORFEIT TO HISTORY.âAll misty philosophers and obscurers of the world, in other words all metaphysicians of coarse or refined texture are seized with eyeache, earache, and toothache when they begin to suspect that there is truth in the saying: âAll philosophy has from now fallen forfeit to history.â In view of their aches and pains we may pardon them for throwing stones and filth at him who talks like this, but this teaching may itself thereby become dirty and disreputable for a time and lose in effect. 11. THE PESSIMIST OF THE INTELLECT.âHe whose intellect is really free will think freely about the intellect itself, and will not shut his eyes to certain terrible aspects of its source and tendency. For this reason others will perhaps designate him the bitterest opponent of free thought and give him that dreadful, abusive name of âpessimist of the intellectâ: accustomed as they are to typify a man not by his strong point, his pre-eminent virtue, but by the quality that is most foreign to his nature. 12. THE METAPHYSICIANSâ KNAPSACK.âTo all who talk so boastfully of the scientific basis of their metaphysics it is best to make no reply. It is enough to tug at the bundle that they rather shyly keep hidden behind their backs. If one succeeds in lifting it, the results of that âscientific basisâ come to light, to their great confusion: a dear little âGod,â a genteel immortality, perhaps a little spiritualism, and in any case a complicated mass of poor-sinnersâ-misery and pharisee-arrogance. 13. OCCASIONAL HARMFULNESS OF KNOWLEDGE.âThe utility involved in the unchecked investigation of knowledge is so constantly proved in a hundred different ways that one must remember to include in the bargain the subtler and rarer damage which individuals must suffer on that account. The chemist cannot avoid occasionally being poisoned or burnt at his experiments. What applies to the chemist, is true of the whole of our culture. This, it may be added, clearly shows that knowledge should provide itself with healing balsam against burns and should always have antidotes ready against poisons. 14. THE CRAVING OF THE PHILISTINE.âThe Philistine thinks that his most urgent need is a purple patch or turban of metaphysics, nor will he let it slip. Yet he would look less ridiculous without this adornment. 15. ENTHUSIASTS.âWith all that enthusiasts say in favour of their gospel or their master they are defending themselves, however much they comport themselves as the judges and not the accused: because they are involuntarily reminded almost at every moment that they are exceptions and have to assert their legitimacy. 16. THE GOOD SEDUCES TO LIFE.âAll good things, even all good books that are written against life, are strong means of attraction to life. 17. THE HAPPINESS OF THE HISTORIAN.ââWhen we hear the hair-splitting metaphysicians and prophets of the after-world speak, we others feel indeed that we are the âpoor in spirit,â but that ours is the heavenly kingdom of change, with spring and autumn, summer and winter, and theirs the after-world, with its grey, everlasting frosts and shadows.â Thus soliloquised a man as he walked in the morning sunshine, a man who in his pursuit of history has constantly changed not only his mind but his heart. In contrast to the metaphysicians, he is happy to harbour in himself not an âimmortal soulâ but many _mortal_ souls. 18. THREE VARIETIES OF THINKERS.âThere are streaming, flowing, trickling mineral springs, and three corresponding varieties of thinkers. The layman values them by the volume of the water, the expert by the contents of the waterâin other words, by the elements in them that are not water. 19. THE PICTURE OF LIFE.âThe task of painting the picture of life, often as it has been attempted by poets and philosophers, is nevertheless irrational. Even in the hands of the greatest artist-thinkers, pictures and miniatures of one life onlyâtheir ownâhave come into being, and indeed no other result is possible. While in the process of developing, a thing that develops, cannot mirror itself as fixed and permanent, as a _definite object_. 20. TRUTH WILL HAVE NO GODS BEFORE IT.âThe belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed. 21. WHERE SILENCE IS REQUIRED.âIf we speak of freethinking as of a highly dangerous journey over glaciers and frozen seas, we find that those who do not care to travel on this track are offended, as if they had been reproached with cowardice and weak knees. The difficult, which we find to be beyond our powers, must not even be mentioned in our presence. 22. _Historia in Nuce._âThe most serious parody I ever heard was this: âIn the beginning was the nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.â(4) 23. INCURABLE.âThe idealist is incorrigible: if he be thrown out of his Heaven, he makes himself a suitable ideal out of Hell. Disillusion him, and lo! he will embrace disillusionment with no less ardour than he recently embraced hope. In so far as his impulse belongs to the great incurable impulses of human nature, he can bring about tragic destinies and later become a subject for tragedy himself, for such tragedies as deal with the incurable, implacable, inevitable in the lot and character of man. 24. APPLAUSE ITSELF AS THE CONTINUATION OF THE PLAY.âSparkling eyes and an amiable smile are the tributes of applause paid to all the great comedy of world and existenceâbut this applause is a comedy within a comedy, meant to tempt the other spectators to a _plaudite amici_. 25. COURAGE FOR TEDIUM.âHe who has not the courage to allow himself and his work to be considered tedious, is certainly no intellect of the first rank, whether in the arts or in the sciences.âA scoffer, who happened for once in a way to be a thinker, might add, with a glance at the world and at history: âGod did not possess this courage, for he wanted to make and he made all things so interesting.â 26. FROM THE MOST INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF THE THINKER.âNothing is harder for a man than to conceive of an object impersonally, I mean to see in it an object and not a person. One may even ask whether it is possible for him to dispense for a single moment with the machinery of his instinct to create and construct a personality. After all, he associates with his thoughts, however abstract they may be, as with individuals, against whom he must fight or to whom he must attach himself, whom he must protect, support and nourish. Let us watch or listen to ourselves at the moment when we hear or discover a new idea. Perhaps it displeases us because it is so defiant and so autocratic, and we unconsciously ask ourselves whether we cannot place a contradiction of it by its side as an enemy, or fasten on to it a âperhapsâ or a âsometimesâ: the mere little word âprobablyâ gives us a feeling of satisfaction, for it shatters the oppressive tyranny of the unconditional. If, on the other hand, the new idea enters in gentle shape, sweetly patient and humble, and falling at once into the arms of contradiction, we put our autocracy to the test in another way. Can we not come to the aid of this weak creature, stroke it and feed it, give it strength and fulness, and truth and even unconditionality? Is it possible for us to show ourselves parental or chivalrous or compassionate towards our idea?âThen again, we see here a judgment and there a judgment, sundered from each other, never looking at or making any movement towards each other. So we are tickled by the thought, whether it be not here feasible to make a match, to draw a _conclusion_, with the anticipation that if a consequence follows this conclusion it is not only the two judgments united in wedlock but the matchmakers that will gain honour. If, however, we cannot acquire a hold upon that thought either on the path of defiance and ill-will or on that of good-will (if we hold it to be true)âthen we submit to it and do homage to it as a leader and a prince, give it a chair of honour, and speak not of it without a flourish of trumpets: for we are bright in its brightness. Woe to him who tries to dim this brightness! Perhaps we ourselves one day grow suspicious of our idea. Then we, the indefatigable âking-makersâ of the history of the intellect, cast it down from its throne and immediately exalt its adversary. Surely if this be considered and thought out a little further, no one will speak of an âabsolute impulse to knowledgeâ! Why, then, does man prefer the true to the untrue, in this secret combat with thought-personalities, in this generally clandestine match-making of thoughts, constitution-founding of thoughts, child-rearing of thoughts, nursing and almsgiving of thoughts? For the same reason that he practises honesty in intercourse with real persons: _now_ from habit, heredity, and training, _originally_ because the true, like the fair and the just, is more expedient and more reputable than the untrue. For in the realm of thought it is difficult to assume a power and glory that are built on error or on falsehood. The feeling that such an edifice might at some time collapse is humiliating to the self-esteem of the architectâhe is ashamed of the fragility of the material, and, as he considers himself more important than the rest of the world, he would fain construct nothing that is less durable than the rest of the world. In his longing for truth he embraces the belief in a personal immortality, the most arrogant and defiant idea that exists, closely allied as it is to the underlying thought, _pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim!_ His work has become his âego,â he transforms himself into the Imperishable with its universal challenge. It is his immeasurable pride that will only employ the best and hardest stones for the workâtruths, or what he holds for such. Arrogance has always been justly called the âvice of the sageâ; yet without this vice, fruitful in impulses, Truth and her status on earth would be in a parlous plight. In our propensity to fear our thoughts, concepts and words, and yet to honour ourselves in them, unconsciously to ascribe to them the power of rewarding, despising, praising, and blaming us, and so to associate with them as with free intellectual personalities, as with independent powers, as with our equalsâherein lie the roots of the remarkable phenomenon which I have called âintellectual conscience.â Thus something of the highest moral species has bloomed from a black root. 27. THE OBSCURANTISTS.âThe essential feature of the black art of obscurantism is not its intention of clouding the brain, but its attempt to darken the picture of the world and cloud our idea of existence. It often employs the method of thwarting all illumination of the intellect, but at times it uses the very opposite means, seeking by the highest refinement of the intellect to induce a satiety of the intellectâs fruits. Hair-splitting metaphysicians, who pave the way for scepticism and by their excessive acumen provoke a distrust of acumen, are excellent instruments of the more subtle form of obscurantism.âIs it possible that even Kant may be applied to this purpose? Did he even _intend_ something of the sort, for a time at least, to judge from his own notorious exposition: âto clear the way for belief by setting limitations to knowledgeâ?âCertainly he did not succeed, nor did his followers, on the wolf and fox tracks of this highly refined and dangerous form of obscurantismâthe most dangerous of all, for the black art here appears in the garb of light. 28. BY WHAT KIND OF PHILOSOPHY ART IS CORRUPTED.âWhen the mists of a metaphysical-mystical philosophy succeed in making all Ã¦sthetic phenomena _opaque_, it follows that these phenomena cannot be comparatively valued, inasmuch as each becomes individually inexplicable. But when once they cannot be compared for the sake of valuation, there arises an entire absence-of-criticism, a blind indulgence. From this source springs a continual diminution of the enjoyment of art (which is only distinguished from the crude satisfaction of a need by the highest refinement of taste and appreciation). The more taste diminishes, the more does the desire for art change and revert to a vulgar hunger, which the artist henceforth seeks to appease by ever coarser fare. 29. ON GETHSEMANE.âThe most painful thing a thinker can say to artists is: âCould ye not _watch_ with me one hour?â 30. AT THE LOOM.âThere are many (artists and women, for instance) who work against the few that take a pleasure in untying the knot of things and unravelling their woof. The former always want to weave the woof together again and entangle it and so turn the conceived into the unconceived and if possible inconceivable. Whatever the result may be, the woof and knot always look rather untidy, because too many hands are working and tugging at them. 31. IN THE DESERT OF SCIENCE.âAs the man of science proceeds on his modest and toilsome wanderings, which must often enough be journeys in the desert, he is confronted with those brilliant mirages known as âphilosophic systems.â With magic powers of deception they show him that the solution of all riddles and the most refreshing draught of true water of life are close at hand. His weary heart rejoices, and he well-nigh touches with his lips the goal of all scientific endurance and hardship, so that almost unconsciously he presses forward. Other natures stand still, as if spellbound by the beautiful illusion: the desert swallows them up, they become lost to science. Other natures, again, that have often experienced these subjective consolations, become very disheartened and curse the salty taste which these mirages leave behind in the mouth and from which springs a raging thirstâwithout oneâs having come one step nearer to any sort of a spring. 32. THE SO-CALLED âREAL REALITY.ââWhen the poet depicts the various callingsâsuch as those of the warrior, the silk-weaver, the sailorâhe feigns to know all these things thoroughly, to be an expert. Even in the exposition of human actions and destinies he behaves as if he had been present at the spinning of the whole web of existence. In so far he is an impostor. He practises his frauds on pure ignoramuses, and that is why he succeeds. They praise him for his deep, genuine knowledge, and lead him finally into the delusion that he really knows as much as the individual experts and creators, yes, even as the great world-spinners themselves. In the end, the impostor becomes honest, and actually believes in his own sincerity. Emotional people say to his very face that he has the âhigherâ truth and sincerityâfor they are weary of reality for the time being, and accept the poetic dream as a pleasant relaxation and a nightâs rest for head and heart. The visions of the dream now appear to them of more value, because, as has been said, they find them more beneficial, and mankind has always held that what is apparently of more value is more true, more real. All that is generally called reality, the poets, conscious of this power, proceed with intention to disparage and to distort into the uncertain, the illusory, the spurious, the impure, the sinful, sorrowful, and deceitful. They make use of all doubts about the limits of knowledge, of all sceptical excesses, in order to spread over everything the rumpled veil of uncertainty. For they desire that when this darkening process is complete their wizardry and soul-magic may be accepted without hesitation as the path to âtrue truthâ and âreal reality.â 33. THE WISH TO BE JUST AND THE WISH TO BE A JUDGE.âSchopenhauer, whose profound understanding of what is human and all-too-human and original sense for facts was not a little impaired by the bright leopard-skin of his metaphysic (the skin must first be pulled off him if one wants to find the real moralist genius beneath)âSchopenhauer makes this admirable distinction, wherein he comes far nearer the mark than he would himself dare to admit: âInsight into the stern necessity of human actions is the boundary line that divides philosophic from other brains.â He worked against that wonderful insight of which he was sometimes capable by the prejudice that he had in common with the moral man (not the moralist), a prejudice that he expresses quite guilelessly and devoutly as follows: âThe ultimate and true explanation of the inner being of the entirety of things must of necessity be closely connected with that about the ethical significance of human actions.â This connection is not ânecessaryâ at all: such a connection must rather be rejected by that principle of the stern necessity of human actions, that is, the unconditioned non-freedom and non-responsibility of the will. Philosophic brains will accordingly be distinguished from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical significance of morality. This must create between the two kinds of brain a gulf of a depth and unbridgeableness of which the much-deplored gulf between âculturedâ and âunculturedâ scarcely gives a conception. It is true that many back doors, which the âphilosophic brains,â like Schopenhauerâs own, have left for themselves, must be recognised as useless. None leads into the open, into the fresh air of the free will, but every door through which people had slipped hitherto showed behind it once more the gleaming brass wall of fate. For we are in a prison, and can only dream of freedom, not make ourselves free. That the recognition of this fact cannot be resisted much longer is shown by the despairing and incredible postures and grimaces of those who still press against it and continue their wrestling-bout with it. Their attitude at present is something like this: âSo no one is responsible for his actions? And all is full of guilt and the consciousness of guilt? But some one _must_ be the sinner. If it is no longer possible or permissible to accuse and sentence the individual, the one poor wave in the inevitable rough-and-tumble of the waves of developmentâwell, then, let this stormy sea, this development itself, be the sinner. Here is free will: this totality can be accused and sentenced, can atone and expiate. _So let God be the sinner and man his redeemer._ Let the worldâs history be guilt, expiation, and self-murder. Let the evil-doer be his own judge, the judge his own hangman.â This Christianity strained to its limitsâfor what else is it?âis the last thrust in the fencing-match between the teaching of unconditioned morality and the teaching of unconditioned non-freedom. It would be quite horrible if it were anything more than a logical pose, a hideous grimace of the underlying thought, perhaps the death-convulsion of the heart that seeks a remedy in its despair, the heart to which delirium whispers: âBehold, thou art the lamb which taketh away the sin of God.â This error lies not only in the feeling, âI am responsible,â but just as much in the contradiction, âI am not responsible, but some one must be.â That is simply not true. Hence the philosopher must say, like Christ, âJudge not,â and the final distinction between the philosophic brains and the others would be that the former wish to be just and the latter wish to be judges. 34. _Sacrifice._âYou hold that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?âJust consider whether in every action that is done with deliberation, in the best as in the worst, there be not a sacrifice. 35. AGAINST THE âTRIERS OF THE REINSâ OF MORALITY.âOne must know the best and the worst that a man is capable of in theory and in practice before one can judge how strong his moral nature is and can be. But this is an experiment that one can never carry out. 36. SERPENTâS TOOTH.âWhether we have a serpentâs tooth or not we cannot know before some one has set his heel upon our necks. A wife or a mother could say: until some one has put his heel upon the neck of our darling, our child.âOur character is determined more by the absence of certain experiences than by the experiences we have undergone. 37. DECEPTION IN LOVE.âWe forget and purposely banish from our minds a good deal of our past. In other words, we wish our picture, that beams at us from the past, to belie us, to flatter our vanityâwe are constantly engaged in this self-deception. And you who talk and boast so much of âself-oblivion in love,â of the âabsorption of the ego in the other personââyou hold that this is something different? So you break the mirror, throw yourselves into another personality that you admire, and enjoy the new portrait of your ego, though calling it by the other personâs nameâand this whole proceeding is not to be thought self-deception, self-seeking, you marvellous beings?âIt seems to me that those who hide something of themselves from themselves, or hide their whole selves from themselves, are alike committing a theft from the treasury of knowledge. It is clear, then, against what transgression the maxim âKnow thyselfâ is a warning. 38. TO THE DENIER OF HIS VANITY.âHe who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself. 39. WHY THE STUPID SO OFTEN BECOME MALIGNANT.âTo those arguments of our adversary against which our head feels too weak our heart replies by throwing suspicion on the motives of his arguments. 40. THE ART OF MORAL EXCEPTIONS.âAn art that points out and glorifies the exceptional cases of moralityâwhere the good becomes bad and the unjust justâshould rarely be given a hearing: just as now and again we buy something from gipsies, with the fear that they are diverting to their own pockets much more than their mere profit from the purchase. 41. ENJOYMENT AND NON-ENJOYMENT OF POISONS.âThe only decisive argument that has always deterred men from drinking a poison is not that it is deadly, but that it has an unpleasant taste. 42. THE WORLD WITHOUT CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN.âIf men only committed such deeds as do not give rise to a bad conscience, the human world would still look bad and rascally enough, but not so sickly and pitiable as at present.âEnough wicked men without conscience have existed at all times, and many good honest folk lack the feeling of pleasure in a good conscience. 43. THE CONSCIENTIOUS.âIt is more convenient to follow oneâs conscience than oneâs intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and so few intelligent people. 44. OPPOSITE MEANS OF AVOIDING BITTERNESS.âOne temperament finds it useful to be able to give vent to its disgust in words, being made sweeter by speech. Another reaches its full bitterness only by speaking out: it is more advisable for it to have to gulp down somethingâthe restraint that men of this stamp place upon themselves in the presence of enemies and superiors improves their character and prevents it from becoming too acrid and sour. 45. NOT TO BE TOO DEJECTED.âTo get bed-sores is unpleasant, but no proof against the merits of the cure that prescribes that you should take to your bed. Men who have long lived outside themselves, and have at last devoted themselves to the inward philosophic life, know that one can also get sores of character and intellect. This, again, is on the whole no argument against the chosen way of life, but necessitates a few small exceptions and apparent relapses. 46. THE HUMAN âTHING IN ITSELF.ââThe most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity: nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions. 47. THE FARCE OF MANY INDUSTRIOUS PERSONS.âBy an excess of effort they win leisure for themselves, and then they can do nothing with it but count the hours until the tale is ended. 48. THE POSSESSION OF JOY ABOUNDING.âHe that has joy abounding must be a good man, but perhaps he is not the cleverest of men, although he has reached the very goal towards which the cleverest man is striving with all his cleverness. 49. IN THE MIRROR OF NATURE.âIs not a man fairly well described, when we are told that he likes to walk between tall fields of golden corn: that he prefers the forest and flower colours of sere and chilly autumn to all others, because they point to something more beautiful than Nature has ever attained: that he feels as much at home under big broad-leaved walnut trees as among his nearest kinsfolk: that in the mountains his greatest joy is to come across those tiny distant lakes from which the very eyes of solitude seem to peer at him: that he loves that grey calm of the misty twilight that steals along the windows on autumn and early winter evenings and shuts out all soulless sounds as with velvet curtains: that in unhewn stones he recognises the last remaining traces of the primeval age, eager for speech, and honours them from childhood upwards: that, lastly, the sea with its shifting serpent skin and wild-beast beauty is, and remains to him, unfamiliar?âYes, something of the man is described herewith, but the mirror of Nature does
{'title': 'Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2 by Nietzsche', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}