feeling, has also the most noble storm and stress: and in this state he represents Nature in her state of savageness and beauty, and stands only one degree lower than Nature in her periods of greatness and serenity, which he usually represents. It is while in this state of passion, however, that men understand him better, and venerate him more highly at these moments—for then he is one step nearer and more akin to them. They feel at once delighted and horrified at such a sight and call it—divine.
503.
FRIENDSHIP.—The objection to a philosophic life that it renders us useless to our friends would never have arisen in a modern mind: it belongs rather to classical antiquity. Antiquity knew the stronger bonds of friendship, meditated upon it, and almost took it to the grave with it. This is the advantage it has over us: we, on the other hand, can point to our idealisation of sexual love. All the great excellencies of ancient humanity owed their stability to the fact that man was standing side by side with man, and that no woman was allowed to put forward the claim of being the nearest and highest, nay even sole object of his love, as the feeling of passion would teach. Perhaps our trees do not grow so high now owing to the ivy and the vines that cling round them.
504.
RECONCILIATION.—Should it then be the task of philosophy to reconcile what the child has learnt with what the man has come to recognise? Should philosophy be the task of young men because they stand midway between child and man and possess intermediate necessities? It would almost appear to be so if you consider at what ages of their life philosophers are now in the habit of setting forth their conceptions: at a time when it is too late for faith and too early for knowledge.
505.
PRACTICAL PEOPLE.—We thinkers have the right of deciding good taste in all things, and if necessary of decreeing it. The practical people finally receive it from us: their dependence upon us is incredibly great, and is one of the most ridiculous spectacles in the world, little though they themselves know it and however proudly they like to carp at us unpractical people. Nay, they would even go so far as to belittle their practical life if we should show a tendency to despise it—whereto at times we might be urged on by a slightly vindictive feeling.
506.
THE NECESSARY DESICCATION OF EVERYTHING GOOD.—What! must we conceive of a work exactly in the spirit of the age that has produced it? but we experience greater delight and surprise, and get more information out of it when we do not conceive it in this spirit! Have you not remarked that every new and good work, so long as it is exposed to the damp air of its own age is least valuable—just because it still has about it all the odour of the market, of opposition, of modern ideas, and of all that is transient from day to day? Later on, however, it dries up, its “actuality” dies away: and then only does it obtain its deep lustre and its perfume—and also, if it is destined for it, the calm eye of eternity.
507.
AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF TRUTH.—Even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions as truth, we should nevertheless not wish them alone to exist. I cannot see why we should ask for an autocracy and omnipotence of truth: it is sufficient for me to know that it is a great power. Truth, however, must meet with opposition and be able to fight, and we must be able to rest from it at times in falsehood—otherwise truth will grow tiresome, powerless, and insipid, and will render us equally so.
508.
NOT TO TAKE A THING PATHETICALLY.—What we do to benefit ourselves should not bring us in any moral praise, either from others or from ourselves, and the same remark applies to those things which we do to please ourselves. It is looked upon as _bon ton_ among superior men to refrain from taking things pathetically in such cases, and to refrain from all pathetic feelings: the man who has accustomed himself to this has retrieved his _naïveté_.
509.
THE THIRD EYE.—What! You are still in need of the theatre! are you still so young? Be wise, and seek tragedy and comedy where they are better acted, and where the incidents are more interesting, and the actors more eager. It is indeed by no means easy to be merely a spectator in these cases—but learn! and then, amid all difficult or painful situations, you will have a little gate leading to joy and refuge, even when your passions attack you. Open your stage eye, that big third eye of yours, which looks out into the world through the other two.
510.
ESCAPING FROM ONE’S VIRTUES.—Of what account is a thinker who does not know how to escape from his own virtues occasionally! Surely a thinker should be more than “a moral being”!
511.
THE TEMPTRESS.—Honesty is the great temptress of all fanatics.(15) What seemed to tempt Luther in the guise of the devil or a beautiful woman, and from which he defended himself in that uncouth way of his, was probably nothing but honesty, and perhaps in a few rarer cases even truth.
512.
BOLD TOWARDS THINGS.—The man who, in accordance with his character, is considerate and timid towards persons, but is courageous and bold towards things, is afraid of new and closer acquaintances, and limits his old ones in order that he may thus make his incognito and his inconsiderateness coincide with truth.
513.
LIMITS AND BEAUTY.—Are you looking for men with a fine culture? Then you will have to be satisfied with restricted views and sights, exactly as when you are looking for fine countries.—There are, of course, such panoramic men: they are like panoramic regions, instructive and marvellous: but not beautiful.
514.
TO THE STRONGER.—Ye stronger and arrogant intellects, we ask you for only one thing: throw no further burdens upon our shoulders, but take some of our burdens upon your own, since ye are stronger! but ye delight in doing the exact contrary: for ye wish to soar, so that we must carry your burden in addition to our own—we must crawl!
515.
THE INCREASE OF BEAUTY.—Why has beauty increased by the progress of civilisation? because the three occasions for ugliness appear ever more rarely among civilised men: first, the wildest outbursts of ecstasy; secondly, extreme bodily exertion, and, thirdly, the necessity of inducing fear by one’s very sight and presence—a matter which is so frequent and of so great importance in the lower and more dangerous stages of culture that it even lays down the proper gestures and ceremonials and makes ugliness a duty.
516.
NOT TO IMBUE OUR NEIGHBOURS WITH OUR OWN DEMON.—Let us in our age continue to hold the belief that benevolence and beneficence are the characteristics of a good man; but let us not fail to add “provided that in the first place he exhibits his benevolence and beneficence towards himself.” For if he acts otherwise—that is to say, if he shuns, hates, or injures himself—he is certainly not a good man. He then merely saves himself through others: and let these others take care that they do not come to grief through him, however well disposed he may appear to be to them!—but to shun and hate one’s own ego, and to live in and for others, this has up to the present, with as much thoughtlessness as conviction, been looked upon as “unselfish,” and consequently as “good.”
517.
TEMPTING INTO LOVE.—We ought to fear a man who hates himself; for we are liable to become the victims of his anger and revenge. Let us therefore try to tempt him into self-love.
518.
RESIGNATION.—What is resignation? It is the most comfortable position of a patient, who, after having suffered a long time from tormenting pains in order to find it, at last became tired—and then found it.
519.
DECEPTION.—When you wish to act you must close the door upon doubt, said a man of action.—And are you not afraid of being deceived in doing so?
replied the man of a contemplative mind.
520.
ETERNAL OBSEQUIES.—Both within and beyond the confines of history we might imagine that we were listening to a continual funeral oration: we have buried, and are still burying, all that we have loved best, our thoughts, and our hopes, receiving in exchange pride, _gloria mundi_—that is, the pomp of the graveside speech. It is thus that everything is made good!
Even at the present time the funeral orator remains the greatest public benefactor.
521.
EXCEPTIONAL VANITY.—Yonder man possesses one great quality which serves as a consolation for him: his look passes with contempt over the remainder of his being, and almost his entire character is included in this. But he recovers from himself when, as it were, he approaches his sanctuary; already the road leading to it appears to him to be an ascent on broad soft steps—and yet, ye cruel ones, ye call him vain on this account!
522.
WISDOM WITHOUT EARS.—To hear every day what is said about us, or even to endeavour to discover what people think of us, will in the end kill even the strongest man. Our neighbours permit us to live only that they may exercise a daily claim upon us! They certainly would not tolerate us if we wished to claim rights over them, and still less if we wished to be right!
In short, let us offer up a sacrifice to the general peace, let us not listen when they speak of us, when they praise us, blame us, wish for us, or hope for us—nay, let us not even think of it.
523.
A QUESTION OF PENETRATION.—When we are confronted with any manifestation which some one has permitted us to see, we may ask: what is it meant to conceal? What is it meant to draw our attention from? What prejudices does it seek to raise? and again, how far does the subtlety of the dissimulation go? and in what respect is the man mistaken?
524.
THE JEALOUSY OF THE LONELY ONES.—This is the difference between sociable and solitary natures, provided that both possess an intellect: the former are satisfied, or nearly satisfied, with almost anything whatever; from the moment that their minds have discovered a communicable and happy version of it they will be reconciled even with the devil himself! But the lonely souls have their silent rapture, and their speechless agony about a thing: they hate the ingenious and brilliant display of their inmost problems as much as they dislike to see the women they love too loudly dressed—they watch her mournfully in such a case, as if they were just beginning to suspect that she was desirous of pleasing others. This is the jealousy which all lonely thinkers and passionate dreamers exhibit with regard to the _esprit_.
525.
THE EFFECT OF PRAISE.—Some people become modest when highly praised, others insolent.
526.
UNWILLING TO BE A SYMBOL.—I sympathise with princes: they are not at liberty to discard their high rank even for a short time, and thus they come to know people only from the very uncomfortable position of constant dissimulation—their continual compulsion to represent something actually ends by making solemn ciphers of them.—Such is the fate of all those who deem it their duty to be symbols.
527.
THE HIDDEN MEN.—Have you never come across those people who check and restrain even their enraptured hearts, and who would rather become mute than lose the modesty of moderation? and have you never met those embarrassing, and yet so often good-natured people who do not wish to be recognised, and who time and again efface the tracks they have made in the sand? and who even deceive others as well as themselves in order to remain obscure and hidden?
528.
UNUSUAL FORBEARANCE.—It is often no small indication of kindness to be unwilling to criticise some one, and even to refuse to think of him.
529.
HOW MEN AND NATIONS GAIN LUSTRE.—How many really individual actions are left undone merely because before performing them we perceive or suspect that they will be misunderstood!—those actions, for example, which have some intrinsic value, both in good and evil. The more highly an age or a nation values its individuals, therefore, and the more right and ascendancy we accord them, the more will actions of this kind venture to make themselves known,—and thus in the long run a lustre of honesty, of genuineness in good and evil, will spread over entire ages and nations, so that they—the Greeks, for example—like certain stars, will continue to shed light for thousands of years after their sinking.
530.
DIGRESSIONS OF THE THINKER.—The course of thought in certain men is strict and inflexibly bold. At times it is even cruel towards such men, although considered individually they may be gentle and pliable. With well-meaning hesitation they will turn the matter ten times over in their heads, but will at length continue their strict course. They are like streams that wind their way past solitary hermitages: there are places in their course where the stream plays hide and seek with itself, and indulges in short idylls with islets, trees, grottos, and cascades—and then it rushes ahead once more, passes by the rocks, and forces its way through the hardest stones.
531.
DIFFERENT FEELINGS TOWARDS ART.—From the time when we begin to live as a hermit, consuming and consumed, our only company being deep and prolific thoughts, we expect from art either nothing more, or else something quite different from what we formerly expected—in a word, we change our taste.
For in former times we wished to penetrate for a moment by means of art into the element in which we are now living permanently: at that time we dreamt ourselves into the rapture of a possession which we now actually possess. Indeed, flinging away from us for the time being what we now have, and imagining ourselves to be poor, or to be a child, a beggar, or a fool, may now at times fill us with delight.
532.
“LOVE EQUALISES.”—Love wishes to spare the other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of strangeness: as a consequence it is permeated with disguise and simulation; it keeps on deceiving continuously, and feigns an equality which in reality does not exist. And all this is done so instinctively that women who love deny this simulation and constant tender trickery, and have even the audacity to assert that love equalises (in other words that it performs a miracle)!
This phenomenon is a simple matter if one of the two permits himself or herself to be loved, and does not deem it necessary to feign, but leaves this to the other. No drama, however, could offer a more intricate and confused instance than when both persons are passionately in love with one another; for in this case both are anxious to surrender and to endeavour to conform to the other, and finally they are both at a loss to know what to imitate and what to feign. The beautiful madness of this spectacle is too good for this world, and too subtle for human eyes.
533.
WE BEGINNERS.—How many things does an actor see and divine when he watches another on the stage! He notices at once when a muscle fails in some gesture; he can distinguish those little artificial tricks which are so calmly practised separately before the mirror, and are not in conformity with the whole; he feels when the actor is surprised on the stage by his own invention, and when he spoils it amid this surprise.—How differently, again, does a painter look at some one who happens to be moving before him! He will see a great deal that does not actually exist in order to complete the actual appearance of the person, and to give it its full effect. In his mind he attempts several different illuminations of the same object, and divides the whole by an additional contrast.—Oh, that we now possessed the eyes of such an actor and such a painter for the province of the human soul!
534.
SMALL DOSES.—If we wish a change to be as deep and radical as possible, we must apply the remedy in minute doses, but unremittingly for long periods.
What great action can be performed all at once? Let us therefore be careful not to exchange violently and precipitately the moral conditions with which we are familiar for a new valuation of things,—nay, we may even wish to continue living in the old way for a long time to come, until probably at some very remote period we become aware of the fact that the new valuation has made itself the predominating power within us, and that its minute doses to which we must henceforth become accustomed have set up a new nature within us.—We now also begin to understand that the last attempt at a great change of valuations—that which concerned itself with political affairs (the “great revolution”)—was nothing more than a pathetic and sanguinary piece of quackery which, by means of sudden crises, was able to inspire a credulous Europe with the hope of a sudden recovery, and has therefore made all political invalids impatient and dangerous up to this very moment.
535.
TRUTH REQUIRES POWER.—Truth in itself is no power at all, in spite of all that flattering rationalists are in the habit of saying to the contrary.
Truth must either attract power to its side, or else side with power, for otherwise it will perish again and again. This has already been sufficiently demonstrated, and more than sufficiently!
536.
THE THUMBSCREW.—It is disgusting to observe with what cruelty every one charges his two or three private virtues to the account of others who may perhaps not possess them, and whom he torments and worries with them. Let us therefore deal humanely with the “sense of honesty,” although we may possess in it a thumbscrew with which we can worry to death all these presumptuous egoists who even yet wish to impose their own beliefs upon the whole world—we have tried this thumbscrew on ourselves!
537.
MASTERY.—We have reached mastery when we neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement.
538.
THE MORAL INSANITY OF GENIUS.—In a certain category of great intellects we may observe a painful and partly horrible spectacle: in their most productive moments their flights aloft and into the far distance appear to be out of harmony with their general constitution and to exceed their power in one way or another, so that each time there remains a deficiency, and also in the long run a defectiveness in the entire machinery, which latter is manifested among those highly intellectual natures by various kinds of moral and intellectual symptoms more regularly than by conditions of bodily distress.
Thus those incomprehensible characteristics of their nature—all their timidity, vanity, hatefulness, envy, their narrow and narrowing disposition—and that too personal and awkward element in natures like those of Rousseau and Schopenhauer, may very well be the consequences of a periodical attack of heart disease; and this in its turn may be the result of a nervous complaint, and this latter the consequence of ——(16) So long as genius dwells within us we are full of audacity, yea, almost mad, and heedless of health, life, and honour; we fly through the day as free and swift as an eagle, and in the darkness we feel as confident as an owl.—But let genius once leave us and we are instantly overcome by a feeling of the most profound despondency: we can no longer understand ourselves; we suffer from everything that we experience and do not experience; we feel as if we were in the midst of shelterless rocks with the tempest raging round us, and we are at the same time like pitiful childish souls, afraid of a rustle or a shadow.—Three-fourths of all the evil committed in the world is due to timidity; and this is above all a physiological process.
539.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT?—Have you never been troubled by the fear that you might not be at all fitted for recognising what is true? by the fear that your senses might be too dull, and even your delicacy of sight far too blunt? If you could only perceive, even once, to what extent your volition dominates your sight! How, for example, you wished yesterday to see more than some one else, while to-day you wish to see it differently!
and how from the start you were anxious to see something which would be in conformity with or in opposition to anything that people thought they had observed up to the present. Oh, those shameful cravings! How often you keep your eyes open for what is efficacious, for what is soothing, just because you happen to be tired at the moment! Always full of secret predeterminations of what truth should be like, so that you—you, forsooth!—might accept it! or do you think that to-day, because you are as frozen and dry as a bright winter morning, and because nothing is weighing on your mind, you have better eyesight! Are not ardour and enthusiasm necessary to do justice to the creations of thought?—and this indeed is what is called sight! as if you could treat matters of thought any differently from the manner in which you treat men. In all relations with thought there is the same morality, the same honesty of purpose, the same _arrière-pensée_, the same slackness, the same faint-heartedness—your whole lovable and hateful self! Your physical exhaustion will lend the things pale colours whilst your feverishness will turn them into monsters!
Does not your morning show the things in a different light from the evening? Are you not afraid of finding in the cave of all knowledge your own phantom, the veil in which truth is wrapped up and hidden from your sight? Is it not a dreadful comedy in which you so thoughtlessly wish to take part?
540.
LEARNING.—Michelangelo considered Raphael’s genius as having been acquired by study, and upon his own as a natural gift: learning as opposed to talent; though this is mere pedantry, with all due respect to the great pedant himself. For what is talent but a name for an older piece of learning, experience, exercise, appropriation, and incorporation, perhaps as far back as the times of our ancestors, or even earlier! And again: he who learns forms his own talents, only learning is not such an easy matter and depends not only upon our willingness, but also upon our being able to learn at all.
Jealousy often prevents this in an artist, or that pride which, when it experiences any strange feeling, at once assumes an attitude of defence instead of an attitude of scholarly receptiveness. Raphael, like Goethe, lacked this pride, on which account they were great learners, and not merely the exploiters of those quarries which had been formed by the manifold genealogy of their forefathers. Raphael vanishes before our eyes as a learner in the midst of that assimilation of what his great rival called _his_ “nature”: this noblest of all thieves daily carried off a portion of it; but before he had appropriated all the genius of Michelangelo he died—and the final series of his works, because it is the beginning of a new plan of study, is less perfect and good, for the simple reason that the great student was interrupted by death in the midst of his most difficult task, and took away with him that justifying and final goal which he had in view.
541.
HOW WE SHOULD TURN TO STONE.—By slowly, very, very slowly, becoming hard like a precious stone, and at last lie still, a joy to all eternity.
542.
THE PHILOSOPHER AND OLD AGE.—It is not wise to permit evening to act as a judge of the day; for only too often in this case weariness becomes the judge of success and good will. We should also take the greatest precautions in regard to everything connected with old age and its judgment upon life, more especially since old age, like the evening, is fond of assuming a new and charming morality, and knows well enough how to humiliate the day by the glow of the evening skies, twilight and a peaceful and wistful silence. The reverence which we feel for an old man, especially if he is an old thinker and sage, easily blinds us to the deterioration of his intellect, and it is always necessary to bring to light the hidden symptoms of such a deterioration and lassitude, that is to say, to uncover the physiological phenomenon which is still concealed behind the old man’s moral judgments and prejudices, in case we should be deceived by our veneration for him, and do something to the disadvantage of knowledge. For it is not seldom that the illusion of a great moral renovation and regeneration takes possession of the old man. Basing his views upon this, he then proceeds to express his opinions on the work and development of his life as if he had only then for the first time become clearsighted—and nevertheless it is not wisdom, but fatigue, which prompts his present state of well-being and his positive judgments.
The most dangerous indication of this weariness is above all the belief in genius, which as a rule only arises in great and semi-great men of intellect at this period of their lives: the belief in an exceptional position, and exceptional rights. The thinker who thus believes himself to be inspired by genius henceforth deems it permissible for him to take things more easily, and takes advantage of his position as a genius to decree rather than to prove. It is probable, however, that the need felt by the weary intellect for alleviation is the main source of this belief—it precedes it in time, though appearances may indicate the contrary.
At this time too, as the result of the love which all weary and old people feel for enjoyment, such men as those I am speaking of wish to enjoy the results of their thinking instead of again testing them and scattering the seeds abroad once more. This leads them to make their thoughts palatable and enjoyable, and to take away their dryness, coldness, and want of flavour; and thus it comes about that the old thinker apparently raises himself above his life’s work, while in reality he spoils it by infusing into it a certain amount of fantasy, sweetness, flavour, poetic mists, and mystic lights. This is how Plato ended, as did also that great and honest Frenchman, Auguste Comte, who, as a conqueror of the exact sciences, cannot be matched either among the Germans or the Englishmen of this century.
There is a third symptom of fatigue: that ambition which actuated the great thinker when he was young, and which could not then find anything to satisfy it, has also grown old, and, like one that has no more time to lose, it begins to snatch at the coarser and more immediate means of its gratification, means which are peculiar to active, dominating, violent, and conquering dispositions. From this time onwards the thinker wishes to found institutions which shall bear his name, instead of erecting mere brain-structures. What are now to him the ethereal victories and honours to be met with in the realm of proofs and refutations, or the perpetuation of his fame in books, or the thrill of exultation in the soul of the reader? But the institution, on the other hand, is a temple, as he well knows—a temple of stone, a durable edifice, which will keep its god alive with more certainty than the sacrifices of rare and tender souls.(17) Perhaps, too, at this period of his life the old thinker will for the first time meet with that love which is fitted for a god rather than for a human being, and his whole nature becomes softened and sweetened in the rays of such a sun, like fruit in autumn. Yes, he grows more divine and beautiful, this great old man,—and nevertheless it is old age and weariness which permit him to ripen in this way, to grow more silent, and to repose in the luminous adulation of a woman. Now it is all up with his former desire—a desire which was superior even to his own ego—for real disciples, followers who would carry on his thought, that is, true opponents. This desire arose from his hitherto undiminished energy, the conscious pride he felt in being able at any time to become an opponent himself,—nay, even the deadly enemy of his own doctrine,—but now his desire is for resolute partisans, unwavering comrades, auxiliary forces, heralds, a pompous train of followers. He is now no longer able to bear that dreadful isolation in which every intellect that advances beyond the others is compelled to live. From this time forward he surrounds himself with objects of veneration, companionship, tenderness, and love; but he also wishes to enjoy the privileges of all religious people, and to worship what he venerates most highly in his little community—he will even go as far as to invent a religion for the purpose of having a community.
Thus lives the wise old man, and in living thus he falls almost imperceptibly into such a deplorable proximity to priestly and poetic extravagances that it is difficult to recollect all his wise and severe period of youth, the former rigid morality of his mind, and his truly virile dread of fancies and misplaced enthusiasm. When he was formerly in the habit of comparing himself with the older thinkers, he did so merely that he might measure his weakness against their strength, and that he might become colder and more audacious towards himself; but now he only makes this comparison to intoxicate himself with his own delusions.
Formerly he looked forward with confidence to future thinkers, and he even took a delight in imagining himself to be cast into the shade by their brighter light. Now, however, he is mortified to think that he cannot be the last: he endeavours to discover some way of imposing upon mankind, together with the inheritance which he is leaving to them, a restriction of sovereign thinking. He fears and reviles the pride and the love of freedom of individual minds: after him no one must allow his intellect to govern with absolute unrestriction: he himself wishes to remain for ever the bulwark on which the waves of ideas may break—these are his secret wishes, and perhaps, indeed, they are not always secret.
The hard fact upon which such wishes are based, however, is that he himself has come to a halt before his teaching, and has set up his boundary stone, his “thus far and no farther.” In canonising himself he has drawn up his own death warrant: from now on his mind cannot develop further. His race is run; the hour-hand stops. Whenever a great thinker tries to make himself a lasting institution for posterity, we may readily suppose that he has passed the climax of his powers, and is very tired, very near the setting of his sun.
543.
WE MUST NOT MAKE PASSION AN ARGUMENT FOR TRUTH.—Oh, you kind-hearted and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You wish to seem right in our eyes as well as in your own, but especially in your own!—and an irritable and subtle evil conscience so often spurs you on against your very enthusiasm!
How ingenious you then become in deceiving your conscience, and lulling it to sleep! How you hate honest, simple, and clean souls; how you avoid their innocent glances! That better knowledge whose representatives they are, and whose voice you hear only too distinctly within yourselves when it questions your belief,—how you try to cast suspicion upon it as a bad habit, as a disease of the age, as the neglect and infection of your own intellectual health! It drives you on to hate even criticism, science, reason! You must falsify history to make it testify in your favour; you must deny virtues in case they should obscure those of your own idols and ideals.
Coloured images where arguments are needed! Ardour and power of expression! Silver mists! Ambrosian nights! well do you know how to enlighten and to darken—to darken by means of light! and indeed when your passion can no longer be kept within bounds the moment comes when you say to yourselves, “Now I have won for myself a good conscience, now I am exalted, courageous, self-denying, magnanimous; now I am honest!” How you long for these moments when your passion will confer upon you full and absolute rights, and also, as it were, innocence. How happy you are when engaged in battle and inspired with ecstasy or courage, when you are elated beyond yourself, when gnawing doubt has left you, and when you can even decree: “Any man who is not in ecstasy as we are cannot by any chance know what or where truth is.” How you long to meet with those who share your belief in this state—which is a state of intellectual depravity—and to set your own fire alight with their flames! Oh, for your martyrdom, your victory of the sanctified lie! Must you really inflict so much pain upon yourselves?—_Must_ you?
544.
HOW PHILOSOPHY IS NOW PRACTISED.—I can see quite well that our philosophising youths, women, and artists require from philosophy exactly the opposite of what the Greeks derived from it. What does he who does not hear the continual exultation that resounds through every speech and counter-argument in a Platonic dialogue, this exultation over the new invention of rational thinking, know about Plato or about ancient philosophy? At that time souls were filled with enthusiasm when they gave themselves up to the severe and sober sport of ideas, generalisations, refutations,—that enthusiasm which perhaps those old, great, severe, and prudent contrapuntists in music have also known. At that time the Greek palate still possessed that older and formerly omnipotent taste: and by the side of this taste their new taste appeared to be enveloped in so much charm that the divine art of dialectic was sung by hesitating voices as if its followers were intoxicated with the frenzy of love. That old form of thinking, however, was thought within the bounds of morality, and for it nothing existed but fixed judgments and established facts, and it had no reasons but those of authority. Thinking, therefore, was simply a matter of repetition, and all the enjoyment of speech and dialogue could only lie in their form.
Wherever the substance of a thing is looked upon as eternal and universally approved, there is only one great charm, the charm of variable forms, that is, of fashion. Even in the poets ever since the time of Homer, and later on in the case of the sculptors, the Greeks did not enjoy originality, but its contrary. It was Socrates who discovered another charm, that of cause and effect, of reason and sequence, and we moderns have become so used to it, and have been brought up to the necessity of logic that we look upon it as the normal taste, and as such it cannot but be repugnant to ardent and presumptuous people. Such people are pleased by whatever stands out boldly from the normal: their more subtle ambition leads them to believe only too readily that they are exceptional souls, not dialectic and rational beings, but, let us say, “intuitive” beings gifted with an “inner sense,” or with a certain “intellectual perception.”
Above all, however, they wish to be “artistic natures” with a genius in their heads, and a demon in their bodies, and consequently with special rights in this world and in the world to come—especially the divine privilege of being incomprehensible.
And people like these are “going in for” philosophy nowadays! I fear they will discover one day that they have made a mistake—what they are looking for is religion!
545.
BUT WE DO NOT BELIEVE YOU.—You would fain pass for psychologists, but we shall not allow it! Are we not to notice that you pretend to be more