thought; and all this was so modestly veiled by the ugly dialect and the zealous officiousness of the inhabitants that one hardly noticed that one here had to deal with the intellectual drill-sergeants of Germany, her teachers for good or evil.—The arrogance of the North Germans was kept in check by their tendency to obey, that of the South Germans by their tendency—to make themselves comfortable.—It appeared to him that in their women German men possessed awkward but self-opinionated housewives, who belauded themselves so perseveringly that they had almost persuaded the world, and at any rate their husbands, of their peculiarly German housewifely virtue.—When the conversation turned on Germany’s home and foreign policy, he used to say (he called it “betray the secret”) that Germany’s greatest statesman did not believe in great statesmen.—The future of Germany he found menaced and menacing, for Germans had forgotten how to enjoy themselves (an art that the Italians understood so well), but, by the great games of chance called wars and dynastic revolutions, had accustomed themselves to emotionalism, and consequently would one day have an _émeute_. For that is the strongest emotion that a nation can procure for itself.—The German Socialist was all the more dangerous because impelled by no definite necessity: his trouble lay in not knowing what he wanted; so, even if he attained many of his objects, he would still pine away from desire in the midst of delights, just like Faust, but presumably like a very vulgar Faust. “For the Faust-Devil,” he finally exclaimed, “by whom cultured Germans were so much plagued, was exorcised by Bismarck; but now the Devil has entered into the swine,(17) and is worse than ever!”
325.
OPINIONS.—Most men are nothing and count for nothing until they have arrayed themselves in universal convictions and public opinions. This is in accordance with the tailors’ philosophy, “The apparel makes the man.”
Of exceptional men, however, it must be said, “The wearer primarily makes the apparel.” Here opinions cease to be public, and become something else than masks, ornament, and disguise.
326.
TWO KINDS OF SOBRIETY.—In order not to confound the sobriety arising from mental exhaustion with that arising from moderation, one must remark that the former is peevish, the latter cheerful.
327.
DEBASEMENT OF JOY.—To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears to us good, and above all not a day earlier—that is the only way to keep joy pure. Otherwise, joy all too easily becomes insipid and rotten to the taste, and counts, for whole strata of the people, among the adulterated foodstuffs.
328.
THE SCAPEGOAT OF VIRTUE.—When a man does his very best, those who mean well towards him, but are not capable of appreciating him, speedily seek a scapegoat to immolate, thinking it is the scapegoat of sin—but it is the scapegoat of virtue.
329.
SOVEREIGNTY.—To honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it _pleases_ one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small.
330.
INFLUENCE A PHANTOM, NOT A REALITY.—The man of mark gradually learns that so far as he has influence he is a phantom in other brains, and perhaps he falls into a state of subtle vexation of soul, in which he asks himself whether he must not maintain this phantom of himself for the benefit of his fellow-men.
331.
GIVING AND TAKING.—When one takes away (or anticipates) the smallest thing that another possesses, the latter is blind to the fact that he has been given something greater, nay, even the greatest thing.
332.
GOOD PLOUGHLAND.—All rejection and negation betoken a deficiency in fertility. If we were good ploughland, we should allow nothing to be unused or lost, and in every thing, event, or person we should welcome manure, rain, or sunshine.
333.
INTERCOURSE AS AN ENJOYMENT.—If a man renounces the world and intentionally lives in solitude, he may come to regard intercourse with others, which he enjoys but seldom, as a special delicacy.
334.
TO KNOW HOW TO SUFFER IN PUBLIC.—We must advertise our misfortunes and from time to time heave audible sighs and show visible marks of impatience. For if we could let others see how assured and happy we are in spite of pain and privation, how envious and ill-tempered they would become at the sight!—But we must take care not to corrupt our fellow-men; besides, if they knew the truth, they would levy a heavy toll upon us. At any rate our public misfortune is our private advantage.
335.
WARMTH ON THE HEIGHTS.—On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognises the full import of this simile.
336.
TO WILL THE GOOD AND BE CAPABLE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.—It is not enough to practise the good one must have willed it, and, as the poet says, include the Godhead in our will. But the beautiful we must not will, we must be capable of it, in innocence and blindness, without any psychical curiosity. He that lights his lantern to find perfect men should remember the token by which to know them. They are the men who always act for the sake of the good and in so doing always attain to the beautiful without thinking of the beautiful. Many better and nobler men, from impotence or from want of beauty in their souls, remain unrefreshing and ugly to behold, with all their good will and good works. They rebuff and injure even virtue through the repulsive garb in which their bad taste arrays her.
337.
DANGER OF RENUNCIATION.—We must beware of basing our lives on too narrow a foundation of appetite. For if we renounce all the joys involved in positions, honours, associations, revels, creature comforts, and arts, a day may come when we perceive that this repudiation has led us not to wisdom but to satiety of life.
338.
FINAL OPINION ON OPINIONS.—Either we should hide our opinions or hide ourselves behind our opinions. Whoever does otherwise, does not know the way of the world, or belongs to the order of pious fire-eaters.
339.
“_GAUDEAMUS IGITUR._”—Joy must contain edifying and healing forces for the moral nature of man. Otherwise, how comes it that our soul, as soon as it basks in the sunshine of joy, unconsciously vows to itself, “I will be good!” “I will become perfect!” and is at once seized by a premonition of perfection that is like a shudder of religious awe?
340.
TO ONE WHO IS PRAISED.—So long as you are praised, believe that you are not yet on your own course but on that of another.
341.
LOVING THE MASTER.—The apprentice and the master love the master in different ways.
342.
ALL-TOO-BEAUTIFUL AND HUMAN.—“Nature is too beautiful for thee, poor mortal,” one often feels. But now and then, at a profound contemplation of all that is human, in its fulness, vigour, tenderness, and complexity, I have felt as if I must say, in all humility, “Man also is too beautiful for the contemplation of man!” Nor did I mean the moral man alone, but every one.
343.
REAL AND PERSONAL ESTATE.—When life has treated us in true robber fashion, and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health, and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the airs of a mighty real estate owner.
344.
INVOLUNTARILY IDEALISED.—The most painful feeling that exists is finding out that we are always taken for something higher than we really are. For we must thereby confess to ourselves, “There is in you some element of fraud—your speech, your expression, your bearing, your eye, your dealings; and this deceitful something is as necessary as your usual honesty, but constantly destroys its effect and its value.”
345.
IDEALIST AND LIAR.—We must not let ourselves be tyrannised even by that finest faculty of idealising things: otherwise, truth will one day part company from us with the insulting remark: “Thou arch-liar, what have I to do with thee?”
346.
BEING MISUNDERSTOOD.—When one is misunderstood generally, it is impossible to remove a particular misunderstanding. This point must be recognised, to save superfluous expenditure of energy in self-defence.
347.
THE WATER-DRINKER SPEAKS.—Go on drinking your wine, which has refreshed you all your life—what affair is it of yours if I have to be a water-drinker? Are not wine and water peaceable, brotherly elements, that can live side by side without mutual recriminations?
348.
FROM CANNIBAL COUNTRY.—In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many. Choose which you prefer.
349.
THE FREEZING-POINT OF THE WILL.—“Some time the hour will come at last, the hour that will envelop you in the golden cloud of painlessness; when the soul enjoys its own weariness and, happy in patient playing with patience, resembles the waves of a lake, which on a quiet summer day, in the reflection of a many-hued evening sky, sip and sip at the shore and again are hushed—without end, without purpose, without satiety, without need—all calm rejoicing in change, all ebb and flow of Nature’s pulse.” Such is the feeling and talk of all invalids, but if they attain that hour, a brief period of enjoyment is followed by ennui. But this is the thawing-wind of the frozen will, which awakes, stirs, and once more begets desire upon desire.—Desire is a sign of convalescence or recovery.
350.
THE DISCLAIMED IDEAL.—It happens sometimes by an exception that a man only reaches the highest when he disclaims his ideal. For this ideal previously drove him onward too violently, so that in the middle of the track he regularly got out of breath and had to rest.
351.
A TREACHEROUS INCLINATION.—It should be regarded as a sign of an envious but aspiring man, when he feels himself attracted by the thought that with regard to the eminent there is but one salvation—love.
352.
STAIRCASE HAPPINESS.—Just as the wit of many men does not keep pace with opportunity (so that opportunity has already passed through the door while wit still waits on the staircase outside), so others have a kind of staircase happiness, which walks too slowly to keep pace with swift-footed Time. The best that it can enjoy of an experience, of a whole span of life, falls to its share long afterwards, often only as a weak, spicy fragrance, giving rise to longing and sadness—as if “it might have been possible”—some time or other—to drink one’s fill of this element: but now it is too late.
353.
WORMS.—The fact that an intellect contains a few worms does not detract from its ripeness.
354.
THE SEAT OF VICTORY.—A good seat on horseback robs an opponent of his courage, the spectator of his heart—why attack such a man? Sit like one who has been victorious!
355.
DANGER IN ADMIRATION.—From excessive admiration for the virtues of others one can lose the sense of one’s own, and finally, through lack of practice, lose these virtues themselves, without retaining the alien virtues as compensation.
356.
USES OF SICKLINESS.—He who is often ill not only has a far greater pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires a very keen sense of what is healthy or sickly in actions and achievements, both his own and others’. Thus, for example, it is just the writers of uncertain health—among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great writers must be classed—who are wont to have a far more even and assured tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and convalescence and in their teachers—morning, sunshine, forest, and fountain.
357.
DISLOYALTY A CONDITION OF MASTERY.—It cannot be helped—every master has but one pupil, and _he_ becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined for mastery.
358.
NEVER IN VAIN.—In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either you already reach a higher point to-day, or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher to-morrow.
359.
THROUGH GREY WINDOW-PANES.—Is what you see through this window of the world so beautiful that you do not wish to look through any other window—ay, and even try to prevent others from so doing?
360.
A SIGN OF RADICAL CHANGES.—When we dream of persons long forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have suffered radical changes, and that the soil on which we live has been completely undermined. The dead rise again, and our antiquity becomes modernity.
361.
MEDICINE OF THE SOUL.—To lie still and think little is the cheapest medicine for all diseases of the soul, and, with the aid of good-will, becomes pleasanter every hour that it is used.
362.
INTELLECTUAL ORDER OF PRECEDENCE.—You rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule.
363.
THE FATALIST.—You must believe in fate—science can compel you thereto. All that develops in you out of that belief—cowardice, devotion or loftiness, and uprightness—bears witness to the soil in which the grain was sown, but not to the grain itself, for from that seed anything and everything can grow.
364.
THE REASON FOR MUCH FRETFULNESS.—He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world.
365.
EXCESS AS A REMEDY.—We can make our own talent once more acceptable to ourselves by honouring and enjoying the opposite talent for some time to excess.—Using excess as a remedy is one of the more refined devices in the art of life.
366.
“WILL A SELF.”—Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, “Know thyself,” but as if always confronted with the command, “Will a self, so you will become a self.”—Fate seems always to have left them a choice. Inactive, contemplative natures, on the other hand, reflect on how they have chosen their self “once for all” at their entry into life.
367.
TO LIVE AS FAR AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT A FOLLOWING.—How small is the importance of followers we first grasp when we have ceased to be the followers of our followers.
368.
OBSCURING ONESELF.—We must understand how to obscure ourselves in order to get rid of the gnat-swarms of pestering admirers.
369.
ENNUI.—There is an ennui of the most subtle and cultured brains, to which the best that the world can offer has become stale. Accustomed to eat ever more and more recherché fare and to feel disgust at coarser diet, they are in danger of dying of hunger. For the very best exists but in small quantities, and has sometimes become inaccessible or hard as stone, so that even good teeth can no longer bite it.
370.
THE DANGER IN ADMIRATION.—The admiration of a quality or of an art may be so strong as to deter us from aspiring to possess that quality or art.
371.
WHAT IS REQUIRED OF ART.—One man wants to enjoy himself by means of art, another for a time to get out of or above himself.—To meet both requirements there exists a twofold species of artists.
372.
SECESSIONS.—Whoever secedes from us offends not us, perhaps, but certainly our adherents.
373.
AFTER DEATH.—It is only long after the death of a man that we find it inconceivable that he should be missed—in the case of really great men, only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when any one dies that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh.
374.
LEAVING IN HADES.—We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with cruel lust after our blood.
375.
NEAR TO BEGGARY.—Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to the room in which his hoarded treasures repose. He is then like the poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living.
376.
CHAIN-THINKERS.—To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought that he hears or reads at once assumes the form of a chain.
377.
PITY.—In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy.
378.
WHAT IS GENIUS?—To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.
379.
VANITY OF COMBATANTS.—He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting should be admired.
380.
THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE MISINTERPRETED.—At the moment when one is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing the reverse.
381.
IMITATION.—By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit—especially in art.
382.
FINAL TEACHING OF HISTORY.—“Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past, we shall rather cry out at the end, “Anything but a return to that! The spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pass the same verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under such conditions was intolerable. “And yet every one can endure his own times?” Yes, because the spirit of his age not only lies _upon_ him but is _in_ him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear itself.
383.
GREATNESS AS A MASK.—By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes; by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us. For envy levels and makes equal; it is an unconscious, plaintive variety of modesty.—It may be indeed that here and there, for the sake of the above-named advantage, envy has been assumed as a mask by those who are not envious. Certainly, however, greatness in comportment is often used as the mask of envy by ambitious men who would rather suffer drawbacks and embitter their foes than let it be seen that they place them on an equal footing with themselves.
384.
UNPARDONABLE.—You gave him an opportunity of displaying the greatness of his character, and he did not make use of the opportunity. He will never forgive you for that.
385.
CONTRASTS.—The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, “The ego is always hateful,” the most childish in the still more famous saying, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”—With the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun.
386.
A DEFECTIVE EAR.—“We still belong to the mob so long as we always shift the blame on to others; we are on the track of wisdom when we always make ourselves alone responsible; but the wise man finds no one to blame, neither himself nor others.”—Who said that? Epictetus, eighteen hundred years ago.—The world has heard but forgotten the saying.—No, the world has not heard and not forgotten it: everything is not forgotten. But we had not the necessary ear, the ear of Epictetus.—So he whispered it into his own ear?—Even so: wisdom is the whispering of the sage to himself in the crowded market-place.
387.
A DEFECT OF STANDPOINT, NOT OF VISION.—We always stand a few paces too near ourselves and a few paces too far from our neighbour. Hence we judge him too much in the lump, and ourselves too much by individual, occasional, insignificant features and circumstances.
388.
IGNORANCE ABOUT WEAPONS.—How little we care whether another knows a subject or not!—whereas he perhaps sweats blood at the bare idea that he may be considered ignorant on the point. Yes, there are exquisite fools, who always go about with a quiverful of mighty, excommunicatory utterances, ready to shoot down any one who shows freely that there are matters in which their judgment is not taken into account.
389.
AT THE DRINKING-TABLE OF EXPERIENCE.—People whose innate moderation leads them to drink but the half of every glass, will not admit that everything in the world has its lees and sediment.
390.
SINGING-BIRDS.—The followers of a great man often put their own eyes out, so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.
391.
BEYOND OUR KEN.—The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our ken.
392.
RULE AS MOTHER OR AS CHILD.—There is one condition that gives birth to rules, another to which rules give birth.
393.
COMEDY.—We sometimes earn honour or love for actions and achievements which we have long since sloughed as the snake sloughs his skin. We are hereby easily seduced into becoming the comic actors of our own past, and into throwing the old skin once more about our shoulders—and that not merely from vanity, but from good-will towards our admirers.
394.
A MISTAKE OF BIOGRAPHERS.—The small force that is required to launch a boat into the stream must not be confounded with the force of the stream that carries the boat along. Yet this mistake is made in nearly all biographies.
395.
NOT BUYING TOO DEAR.—The things that we buy too dear we generally turn to bad use, because we have no love for them but only a painful recollection.
Thus they involve a twofold drawback.
396.
THE PHILOSOPHY THAT SOCIETY ALWAYS NEEDS.—The pillars of the social structure rest upon the fundamental fact that every one cheerfully contemplates all that he is, does, and attempts, his sickness or health, his poverty or affluence, his honour or insignificance, and says to himself, “After all, I would not change places with any one!”—Whoever wishes to add a stone to the social structure should always try to implant in mankind this cheerful philosophy of contentment and refusal to change places.
397.
THE MARK OF A NOBLE SOUL.—A noble soul is not that which is capable of the highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living always in a free and bright atmosphere and altitude.
398.
GREATNESS AND ITS CONTEMPLATOR.—The noblest effect of greatness is that it gives the contemplator a power of vision that magnifies and embellishes.
399.
BEING SATISFIED.—We show that we have attained maturity of understanding when we no longer go where rare flowers lurk under the thorniest hedges of knowledge, but are satisfied with gardens, forests, meadows, and ploughlands, remembering that life is too short for the rare and uncommon.
400.
ADVANTAGE IN PRIVATION.—He who always lives in the warmth and fulness of the heart, and, as it were, in the summer air of the soul, cannot form an idea of that fearful delight which seizes more wintry natures, who for once in a way are kissed by the rays of love and the milder breath of a sunny February day.
401.
RECIPE FOR THE SUFFERER.—You find the burden of life too heavy? Then you must increase the burden of your life. When the sufferer finally thirsts after and seeks the river of Lethe, then he must become a _hero_ to be certain of finding it.
402.
THE JUDGE.—He who has seen another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge, and as it were his evil conscience.
403.
THE UTILITY OF GREAT RENUNCIATION.—The useful thing about great renunciation is that it invests us with that youthful pride through which we can thenceforth easily demand of ourselves small renunciations.
404.
HOW DUTY ACQUIRES A GLAMOUR.—You can change a brazen duty into gold in the eyes of all by always performing something more than you have promised.
405.
PRAYER TO MANKIND.—“Forgive us our virtues”—so should we pray to mankind.
406.
THEY THAT CREATE AND THEY THAT ENJOY.—Every one who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.
407.
THE GLORY OF ALL GREAT MEN.—What is the use of genius if it does not invest him who contemplates and reveres it with such freedom and loftiness of feeling that he no longer has need of genius?—To make themselves superfluous is the glory of all great men.
408.
THE JOURNEY TO HADES.—I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus, and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say, conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those eight and see their eyes fastened on mine.—May the living forgive me if I look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and, alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point: what matters “eternal life,” or indeed life at all?
PART II. THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW.
_The Shadow_: It is so long since I heard you speak that I should like to give you an opportunity of talking.
myself speaking, but with a voice yet weaker than my own.
_The Shadow_ (after a pause): Are you not glad to have an opportunity of speaking?
_The Wanderer_: By God and everything else in which I disbelieve, it is my shadow that speaks. I hear it, but I do not believe it.
_The Shadow_: Let us assume that it exists, and think no more about it. In another hour all will be over.
_The Wanderer_: That is just what I thought when in a forest near Pisa I saw first two and then five camels.
_The Shadow_: It is all the better if we are both equally forbearing towards each other when for once our reason is silent. Thus we shall avoid losing our tempers in conversation, and shall not at once apply mutual thumb-screws in the event of any word sounding for once unintelligible to us. If one does not know exactly how to answer, it is enough to say _something_. Those are the reasonable terms on which I hold conversation with any person. During a long talk the wisest of men becomes a fool once and a simpleton thrice.
_The Wanderer_: Your moderation is not flattering to those to whom you confess it.
_The Shadow_: Am I, then, to flatter?
_The Wanderer_: I thought a man’s shadow was his vanity. Surely vanity would never say, “Am I, then, to flatter?”
_The Shadow_: Nor does human vanity, so far as I am acquainted with it, ask, as I have done twice, whether it may speak. It simply speaks.
_The Wanderer_: Now I see for the first time how rude I am to you, my beloved shadow. I have not said a word of my supreme _delight_ in hearing and not merely seeing you. You must know that I love shadows even as I love light. For the existence of beauty of face, clearness of speech, kindliness and firmness of character, the shadow is as necessary as the light. They are not opponents—rather do they hold each other’s hands like good friends; and when the light vanishes, the shadow glides after it.
_The Shadow_: Yes, and I hate the same thing that you hate—night. I love men because they are votaries of life. I rejoice in the gleam of their eyes when they recognise and discover, they who never weary of recognising and discovering. That shadow which all things cast when the sunshine of knowledge falls upon them—that shadow too am I.
_The Wanderer_: I think I understand you, although you have expressed yourself in somewhat shadowy terms. You are right. Good friends give to each other here and there, as a sign of mutual understanding, an obscure phrase which to any third party is meant to be a riddle. And we are good friends, you and I. So enough of preambles! Some few hundred questions oppress my soul, and the time for you to answer them is perchance but short. Let us see how we may come to an understanding as quickly and peaceably as possible.
_The Shadow_: But shadows are more shy than men. You will not reveal to any man the manner of our conversation?
_The Wanderer_: _The manner_ of our conversation? Heaven preserve me from wire-drawn, literary dialogues! If Plato had found less pleasure in spinning them out, his readers would have found more pleasure in Plato. A dialogue that in real life is a source of delight, when turned into writing and read, is a picture with nothing but false perspectives.
Everything is too long or too short.—Yet perhaps I may reveal the _points on which_ we have come to an understanding?
_The Shadow_: With that I am content. For every one will only recognise your views once more, and no one will think of the shadow.
_The Wanderer_: Perhaps you are wrong, my friend! Hitherto they have observed in my views more of the shadow than of me.
_The Shadow_: More of the shadow than of the light? Is that possible?
_The Wanderer_: Be serious, dear fool! My very first question demands seriousness.
1.
OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.—Probability, but no truth; the semblance of freedom, but no freedom—these are the two fruits by virtue of which the tree of knowledge cannot be confounded with the tree of life.
2.
THE WORLD’S REASON.—That the world is _not_ the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that _bit of the world_ which we know—I mean our human reason—is none too reasonable. And if _this_ is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable, the rest of the world will not be so either. Here the conclusion _a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum_ holds good, and that with decisive force.
3.
“IN THE BEGINNING WAS.”—To glorify the origin—that is the metaphysical after-shoot which sprouts again at the contemplation of history, and absolutely makes us imagine that _in the beginning_ of things lies all that is most valuable and essential.
4.
STANDARD FOR THE VALUE OF TRUTH.—The difficulty of climbing mountains is no gauge of their height. Yet in the case of science it is different!—we are told by certain persons who wish to be considered “the initiated,”—the difficulty in finding truth is to determine the value of truth! This insane morality originates in the idea that “truths” are really nothing more than gymnastic appliances, with which we have to exercise ourselves until we are thoroughly tired. It is a morality for the athletes and gymnasts of the intellect.
5.
USE OF WORDS AND REALITY.—There exists a simulated contempt for all the things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. For instance, we say “we only eat to live”—an abominable _lie_, like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for “the most important things” is hardly ever quite genuine. The priests and metaphysicians have indeed accustomed us to a hypocritically exaggerated _use of words_ regarding these matters, but they have not altered the feeling that these most important things are not so important as those despised “everyday matters.” A fatal consequence of this twofold hypocrisy is that we never make these everyday matters (such as eating, housing, clothes, and intercourse) the object of a constant unprejudiced and _universal_ reflection and revision, but, as such a process appears degrading, we divert from them our serious intellectual and artistic side. Hence in such matters habit and frivolity win an easy victory over the thoughtless, especially over inexperienced youth. On the other hand, our continual transgressions of the simplest laws of body and mind reduce us all, young and old, to a disgraceful state of dependence and servitude—I mean to that fundamentally superfluous dependence upon physicians, teachers and clergymen, whose dead-weight still lies heavy upon the whole of society.
6.
EARTHLY INFIRMITIES AND THEIR MAIN CAUSE.—If we look about us, we are always coming across men who have eaten eggs all their lives without observing that the oblong-shaped taste the best; who do not know that a thunder-storm is beneficial to the stomach; that perfumes are most fragrant in cold, clear air; that our sense of taste varies in different parts of our mouths; that every meal at which we talk well or listen well does harm to the digestion. If we are not satisfied with these examples of defective powers of observation, we shall concede all the more readily that the everyday matters are very imperfectly seen and rarely observed by the majority. Is this a matter of indifference?—Let us remember, after all, that from this defect are derived _nearly all the bodily and spiritual infirmities_ of the individual. Ignorance of what is good and bad for us, in the arrangement of our mode of life, the division of our day, the selection of our friends and the time we devote to them, in business and leisure, commanding and obeying, our feeling for nature and for art, our eating, sleeping, and meditation; ignorance and lack of keen perceptions _in the smallest and most ordinary details_—this it is that makes the world “a vale of tears” for so many. Let us not say that here as everywhere the fault lies with human _unreason_. Of reason there is enough and to spare, but it is _wrongly directed_ and _artificially diverted_ from these little intimate things. Priests and teachers, and the sublime ambition of all idealists, coarser and subtler, din it even into the child’s ears that the means of serving mankind at large depend upon altogether different _things_—upon the salvation of the soul, the service of the State, the advancement of science, or even upon social position and property; whereas the needs of the individual, his requirements great and small during the twenty-four hours of the day, are quite paltry or indifferent.—Even Socrates attacked with all his might this arrogant neglect of the human for the benefit of humanity, and loved to indicate by a quotation from Homer the true sphere and conception of all anxiety and reflection: “All that really matters,” he said, “is the good and evil hap I find at home.”
7.
TWO MEANS OF CONSOLATION.—Epicurus, the soul-comforter of later antiquity, said, with that marvellous insight which to this very day is so rarely to be found, that for the calming of the spirit the solution of the final and ultimate theoretical problems is by no means necessary. Hence, instead of raising a barren and remote discussion of the final question, whether the Gods existed, it sufficed him to say to those who were tormented by “fear of the Gods”: “If there are Gods, they do not concern themselves with us.”
The latter position is far stronger and more favourable, for, by conceding a few points to the other, one makes him readier to listen and to take to heart. But as soon as he sets about proving the opposite (that the Gods do concern themselves with us), into what thorny jungles of error must the poor man fall, quite of his own accord, and without any cunning on the part of his interlocutor! The latter must only have enough subtlety and