Perhaps more than one preface would be necessary for this book; and after all it might still be doubtful whether any one could be brought nearer to the _experiences_ in it by means of prefaces, without having himself experienced something similar. It seems to be written in the language of the thawing-wind: there is wantonness, restlessness, contradiction and April-weather in it; so that one is as constantly reminded of the proximity of winter as of the _victory_ over it: the victory which is coming, which must come, which has perhaps already come...Gratitude continually flows forth, as if the most unexpected thing had happened, the gratitude of a convalescent—for _convalescence_ was this most unexpected thing. "Joyful Wisdom": that implies the Saturnalia of a spirit which has patiently withstood a long, frightful pressure—patiently, strenuously, impassionately, without submitting, but without hope—and which is now suddenly o'erpowered with hope, the hope of health, the _intoxication_ of convalescence. What wonder that much that is unreasonable and foolish thereby comes to light: much wanton tenderness expended even on problems which have a prickly hide, and are not therefore fit to be fondled and allured. The whole book is really nothing but a revel after long privation and impotence: the frolicking of returning energy, of newly awakened belief in a to-morrow and after-to-morrow; of sudden sentience and prescience of a future, of near adventures, of seas open once more, and aims once more permitted and believed in. And what was now all behind me! This track of desert, exhaustion, unbelief, and frigidity in the midst of youth, this advent of grey hairs at the wrong time, this tyranny of pain, surpassed, however, by the tyranny of pride which repudiated the _consequences_ of pain—and consequences are comforts,—this radical isolation, as defence against the contempt of mankind become morbidly clairvoyant, this restriction upon principle to all that is bitter, sharp, and painful in knowledge, as prescribed by the _disgust_ which had gradually resulted from imprudent spiritual diet and pampering—it is called Romanticism,—oh, who could realise all those feelings of mine! He, however, who could do so would certainly forgive me everything, and more than a little folly, boisterousness and "Joyful Wisdom"—for example, the handful of songs which are given along with the book on this occasion,—songs in which a poet makes merry over all poets in a way not easily pardoned.—Alas, it is not only on the poets and their fine "lyrical sentiments" that this reconvalescent must vent his malignity: who knows what kind of victim he seeks, what kind of monster of material for parody will allure him ere long? _Incipit tragœdia_, it is said at the conclusion of this seriously frivolous book; let people be on their guard! Something or other extraordinarily bad and wicked announces itself: _incipit parodia_, there is no doubt...2.
——But let us leave Herr Nietzsche; what does it matter to people that Herr Nietzsche has got well again?...A psychologist knows few questions so attractive as those concerning the relations of health to philosophy, and in the case when he himself falls sick, he carries with him all his scientific curiosity into his sickness. For, granting that one is a person, one has necessarily also the philosophy of one's personality, there is, however, an important distinction here. With the one it is his defects which philosophise, with the other it is his riches and powers.
The former _requires_ his philosophy, whether it be as support, sedative, or medicine, as salvation, elevation, or self-alienation; with the latter it is merely a fine luxury, at best the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude, which must inscribe itself ultimately in cosmic capitals on the heaven of ideas. In the other more usual case, however, when states of distress occupy themselves with philosophy (as is the case with all sickly thinkers—and perhaps the sickly thinkers preponderate in the history of philosophy), what will happen to the thought itself which is brought under the _pressure_ of sickness? This is the important question for psychologists: and here experiment is possible. We philosophers do just like a traveller who resolves to awake at a given hour, and then quietly yields himself to sleep: we surrender ourselves temporarily, body and soul, to the sickness, supposing we become ill—we shut, as it were, our eyes on ourselves. And as the traveller knows that something _does not_ sleep, that something counts the hours and will awake him, we also know that the critical moment will find us awake—that then something will spring forward and surprise the spirit _in the very act_, I mean in weakness, or reversion, or submission, or obduracy, or obscurity, or whatever the morbid conditions are called, which in times of good health have the _pride_ of the spirit opposed to them (for it is as in the old rhyme: "The spirit proud, peacock and horse are the three proudest things of earthly source").
After such self-questioning and self-testing, one learns to look with a sharper eye at all that has hitherto been philosophised; one divines better than before the arbitrary by-ways, side-streets, resting-places, and _sunny_ places of thought, to which suffering thinkers, precisely as sufferers, are led and misled: one knows now in what direction the sickly _body_ and its requirements unconsciously press, push, and allure the spirit—towards the sun, stillness, gentleness, patience, medicine, refreshment in any sense whatever. Every philosophy which puts peace higher than war, every ethic with a negative grasp of the idea of happiness, every metaphysic and physic that knows a _finale_, an ultimate condition of any kind whatever, every predominating, æsthetic or religious longing for an aside, a beyond, an outside, an above—all these permit one to ask whether sickness has not been the motive which inspired the philosopher. The unconscious disguising of physiological requirements under the cloak of the objective, the ideal, the purely spiritual, is carried on to an alarming extent,—and I have often enough asked myself, whether, on the whole, philosophy hitherto has not generally been merely an interpretation of the body, and a _misunderstanding of the body_. Behind the loftiest estimates of value by which the history of thought has hitherto been governed, misunderstandings of the bodily constitution, either of individuals, classes, or entire races are concealed. One may always primarily consider these audacious freaks of metaphysic, and especially its answers to the question of the _worth_ of existence, as symptoms of certain bodily constitutions; and if, on the whole, when scientifically determined, not a particle of significance attaches to such affirmations and denials of the world, they nevertheless furnish the historian and psychologist with hints so much the more valuable (as we have said) as symptoms of the bodily constitution, its good or bad condition, its fullness, powerfulness, and sovereignty in history; or else of its obstructions, exhaustions, and impoverishments, its premonition of the end, its will to the end. I still expect that a philosophical _physician_, in the exceptional sense of the word—one who applies himself to the problem of the collective health of peoples, periods, races, and mankind generally—will some day have the courage to follow out my suspicion to its ultimate conclusions, and to venture on the judgment that in all philosophising it has not hitherto been a question of "truth" at all, but of something else,—namely, of health, futurity, growth, power, life...3.
It will be surmised that I should not like to take leave ungratefully of that period of severe sickness, the advantage of which is not even yet exhausted in me: for I am sufficiently conscious of what I have in advance of the spiritually robust generally, in my changeful state of health. A philosopher who has made the tour of many states of health, and always makes it anew, has also gone through just as many philosophies: he really _cannot_ do otherwise than transform his condition on every occasion into the most ingenious posture and position,—this art of transfiguration _is_ just philosophy. We philosophers are not at liberty to separate soul and body, as the people separate them; and we are still less at liberty to separate soul and spirit. We are not thinking frogs, we are not objectifying and registering apparatuses with cold entrails,—our thoughts must be continually born to us out of our pain, and we must, motherlike, share with them all that we have in us of blood, heart, ardour, joy, passion, pang, conscience, fate and fatality. Life—that means for us to transform constantly into light and flame all that we are, and also all that we meet with; we _cannot_ possibly do otherwise. And as regards sickness, should we not be almost tempted to ask whether we could in general dispense with it? It is great pain only which is the ultimate emancipator of the spirit; for it is the teacher of the _strong suspicion_ which makes an X out of every U[1], a true, correct X, _i.e._, the ante-penultimate letter...It is great pain only, the long slow pain which takes time, by which we are burned as it were with green wood, that compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly installed our humanity. I doubt whether such pain "improves" us; but I know that it _deepens_ us. Be it that we learn to confront it with our pride, our scorn, our strength of will, doing like the Indian who, however sorely tortured, revenges himself on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be it that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental nothingness—it is called Nirvana,—into mute, benumbed, deaf self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, and self-effacement: one emerges from such long, dangerous exercises in self-mastery as another being, with several additional notes of interrogation, and above all, with the _will_ to question more than ever, more profoundly, more strictly, more sternly, more wickedly, more quietly than has ever been questioned hitherto.
Confidence in life is gone: life itself has become a _problem_.—Let it not be imagined that one has necessarily become a hypochondriac thereby!
Even love of life is still possible—only one loves differently. It is the love of a woman of whom one is doubtful...The charm, however, of all that is problematic, the delight in the X, is too great in those more spiritual and more spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty, and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know a new happiness...4.
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of strong suspicion—_new-born_, with the skin cast; more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good things, with a merrier disposition, with a second and more dangerous innocence in joy; more childish at the same time, and a hundred times more refined than ever before. Oh, how repugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured" classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually understand it! How malignantly we now listen to the great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people" and city-men at present allow themselves to be forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love become (together with their aspirations after the exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if we convalescents need an art at all, it is _another_ art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene, divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art for artists, only for artists! We at last know better what is first of all necessary _for it_—namely, cheerfulness, _every_ kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists:—I should like to prove it. We now know something too well, we men of knowledge: oh, how well we are now learning to forget and _not_ know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not likely to be found again in the tracks of those Egyptian youths who at night make the temples unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil, uncover, and put in clear light, everything which for good reasons is kept concealed.[2] No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth, to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for that...We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and "know" everything. "Is it true that the good God is everywhere present?" asked a little girl of her mother: "I think that is indecent":—a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the _shamefacedness_ with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo, to speak in Greek?...Oh, those Greeks! They knew how _to live_: for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial—_from profundity_! And are we not coming back precisely to this point, we dare-devils of the spirit, who have scaled the highest and most dangerous peak of contemporary thought, and have looked around us from it, have _looked down_ from it? Are we not precisely in this respect—Greeks? Worshippers of forms, of tones, and of words? And precisely on that account—artists?
RUTA, near GENOA _Autumn, 1886._ ----- Footnote 1: This means literally to put the numeral X instead of the numeral V (formerly U); hence it means to double a number unfairly, to exaggerate, humbug, cheat.—TR.
Footnote 2: An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of Sais."—TR.
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE.
A PRELUDE IN RHYME.
1.
_Invitation._ Venture, comrades, I implore you, On the fare I set before you, You will like it more to-morrow, Better still the following day: If yet more you're then requiring, Old success I'll find inspiring, And fresh courage thence will borrow Novel dainties to display.
2.
_My Good Luck._ Weary of Seeking had I grown, So taught myself the way to Find: Back by the storm I once was blown, But follow now, where drives the wind.
3.
_Undismayed._ Where you're standing, dig, dig out: Down below's the Well: Let them that walk in darkness shout: "Down below—there's Hell!"
4.
_Dialogue._ _A._ Was I ill? and is it ended?
Pray, by what physician tended?
I recall no pain endured!
_B._ Now I know your trouble's ended: He that can forget, is cured.
5.
_To the Virtuous._ Let our virtues be easy and nimble-footed in motion, Like unto Homer's verse ought they to come _and to go_.
6.
_Worldly Wisdom._ Stay not on level plain, Climb not the mount too high, But half-way up remain— The world you'll best descry!
7.
Attracted by my style and talk You'd follow, in my footsteps walk?
Follow yourself unswervingly, So—careful!—shall you follow me.
8.
My skin bursts, breaks for fresh rebirth, And new desires come thronging: Much I've devoured, yet for more earth The serpent in me's longing.
'Twixt stone and grass I crawl once more, Hungry, by crooked ways, To eat the food I ate before, Earth-fare all serpents praise!
9.
_My Roses._ My luck's good—I'd make yours fairer, (Good luck ever needs a sharer), Will you stop and pluck my roses?
Oft mid rocks and thorns you'll linger, Hide and stoop, suck bleeding finger— Will you stop and pluck my roses?
For my good luck's a trifle vicious, Fond of teasing, tricks malicious— Will you stop and pluck my roses?
10.
_The Scorner._ Many drops I waste and spill, So my scornful mood you curse: Who to brim his cup doth fill, Many drops _must_ waste and spill— Yet he thinks the wine no worse.
11.
Harsh and gentle, fine and mean, Quite rare and common, dirty and clean, The fools' and the sages' go-between: All this I will be, this have been, Dove and serpent and swine, I ween!
12.
That eye and sense be not fordone E'en in the shade pursue the sun!
13.
_For Dancers._ Smoothest ice, A paradise To him who is a dancer nice.
14.
_The Brave Man._ A feud that knows not flaw nor break, Rather then patched-up friendship, take.
15.
_Rust._ Rust's needed: keenness will not satisfy!
"He is too young!" the rabble loves to cry.
16.
_Excelsior._ "How shall I reach the top?" No time For thus reflecting! Start to climb!
17.
_The Man of Power Speaks._ Ask never! Cease that whining, pray!
Take without asking, take alway!
18.
_Narrow Souls._ Narrow souls hate I like the devil, Souls wherein grows nor good nor evil.
19.
He shot an empty word Into the empty blue; But on the way it met A woman whom it slew.
20.
A twofold pain is easier far to bear Than one: so now to suffer wilt thou dare?
21.
_Against Pride._ Brother, to puff thyself up ne'er be quick: For burst thou shalt be by a tiny prick!
22.
_Man and Woman._ "The woman seize, who to thy heart appeals!"
Man's motto: woman seizes not, but steals.
23.
_Interpretation._ If I explain my wisdom, surely 'Tis but entangled more securely, I can't expound myself aright: But he that's boldly up and doing, His own unaided course pursuing, Upon my image casts more light!
24.
_A Cure for Pessimism._ Those old capricious fancies, friend!
You say your palate naught can please, I hear you bluster, spit and wheeze, My love, my patience soon will end!
Pluck up your courage, follow me— Here's a fat toad! Now then, don't blink, Swallow it whole, nor pause to think!
From your dyspepsia you'll be free!
25.
_A Request._ Many men's minds I know full well, Yet what mine own is, cannot tell.
And falsely to myself appear.
'Twould be to me a benefit Far from myself if I could sit, Less distant than my enemy, And yet my nearest friend's too nigh— 'Twixt him and me, just in the middle!
What do I ask for? Guess my riddle!
26.
_My Cruelty._ I must ascend an hundred stairs, I must ascend: the herd declares I'm cruel: "Are we made of stone?"
I must ascend an hundred stairs: All men the part of stair disown.
27.
_The Wanderer._ "No longer path! Abyss and silence chilling!"
Thy fault! To leave the path thou wast too willing!
Now comes the test! Keep cool—eyes bright and clear!
Thou'rt lost for sure, if thou permittest—fear.
28.
See the infant, helpless creeping— Swine around it grunt swine-talk— Weeping always, naught but weeping, Will it ever learn to walk?
Never fear! Just wait, I swear it Soon to dance will be inclined, And this babe, when two legs bear it, Standing on its head you'll find.
29.
_Planet Egoism._ Did I not turn, a rolling cask, Ever about myself, I ask, How could I without burning run Close on the track of the hot sun?
30.
_The Neighbour._ Too nigh, my friend my joy doth mar, I'd have him high above and far, Or how can he become my star?
31.
Lest we for thy bliss should slay thee, In devil's wiles thou dost array thee, Devil's wit and devil's dress.
But in vain! Thy looks betray thee And proclaim thy holiness.
32.
_The Slave._ _A._ He stands and listens: whence his pain?
What smote his ears? Some far refrain?
Why is his heart with anguish torn?
_B._ Like all that fetters once have worn, He always hears the clinking—chain!
33.
_The Lone One._ I hate to follow and I hate to lead.
Obedience? no! and ruling? no, indeed!
Wouldst fearful be in others' sight?
Then e'en _thyself_ thou must affright: The people but the Terror's guidance heed.
I hate to guide myself, I hate the fray.
Like the wild beasts I'll wander far afield.
In Error's pleasing toils I'll roam Awhile, then lure myself back home, Back home, and—to my self-seduction yield.
34.
_Seneca et hoc Genus omne._ They write and write (quite maddening me) Their "sapient" twaddle airy, As if 'twere _primum scribere, Deinde philosophari_.
35.
_Ice._ Yes! I manufacture ice: Ice may help you to digest: If you _had_ much to digest, How you would enjoy my ice!
36.
My wisdom's A and final O Was then the sound that smote mine ear.
Yet now it rings no longer so, My youth's eternal Ah! and Oh!
Is now the only sound I hear.[4] 37.
_Foresight._ In yonder region travelling, take good care!
An hast thou wit, then be thou doubly ware!
They'll smile and lure thee; then thy limbs they'll tear: Fanatics' country this where wits are rare!
38.
_The Pious One Speaks._ God loves us, _for_ he made us, sent us here!— "Man hath made God!" ye subtle ones reply.
His handiwork he must hold dear, And _what he made_ shall he deny?
There sounds the devil's halting hoof, I fear.
39.
_In Summer._ In sweat of face, so runs the screed, We e'er must eat our bread, Yet wise physicians if we heed "Eat naught in sweat," 'tis said.
The dog-star's blinking: what's his need?
What tells his blazing sign?
In sweat of face (so runs _his_ screed) We're meant to drink our wine!
40.
_Without Envy._ His look bewrays no envy: and ye laud him?
He cares not, asks not if your throng applaud him!
He has the eagle's eye for distance far, He sees you not, he sees but star on star!
41.
_Heraclitism._ Brethren, war's the origin Of happiness on earth: Witness friendship's birth!
Friendship means three things, you know,— Kinship in luckless plight, Equality before the foe 42.
_Maxim of the Over-refined._ "Rather on your toes stand high Than crawl upon all fours, Rather through the keyhole spy Than through open doors!"
43.
_Exhortation._ Renown you're quite resolved to earn?
My thought about it Is this: you need not fame, must learn To do without it!
44.
_Thorough._ I an Inquirer? No, that's not my calling And through the waters I keep falling, falling, Till on the ocean's deepest bed I bump.
45.
_The Immortals._ "To-day is meet for me, I come to-day," Such is the speech of men foredoomed to stay.
"Thou art too soon," they cry, "thou art too late," What care the Immortals what the rabble say?
46.
_Verdicts of the Weary._ The weary shun the glaring sun, afraid, And only care for trees to gain the shade.
47.
_Descent._ "He sinks, he falls," your scornful looks portend: The truth is, to your level he'll descend.
His Too Much Joy is turned to weariness, His Too Much Light will in your darkness end.
48.
Around my neck, on chain of hair, The timepiece hangs—a sign of care.
For me the starry course is o'er, No sun and shadow as before, No cockcrow summons at the door, For nature tells the time no more!
Too many clocks her voice have drowned, And droning law has dulled her sound.
49.
_The Sage Speaks._ Strange to the crowd, yet useful to the crowd, I still pursue my path, now sun, now cloud, But always pass above the crowd!
50.
_He lost his Head..._ She now has wit—how did it come her way?
A man through her his reason lost, they say.
His head, though wise ere to this pastime lent, Straight to the devil—no, to woman went!
51.
_A Pious Wish._ "Oh, might all keys be lost! 'Twere better so And in all keyholes might the pick-lock go!"
Who thus reflects ye may as—picklock know.
52.
_Foot Writing._ I write not with the hand alone, My foot would write, my foot that capers, Firm, free and bold, it's marching on Now through the fields, now through the papers.
53.
"_Human, All-too-Human._"...Shy, gloomy, when your looks are backward thrust, Trusting the future where yourself you trust, Are you an eagle, mid the nobler fowl, Or are you like Minerva's darling owl?
54.
_To my Reader._ Good teeth and a digestion good I wish you—these you need, be sure!
And, certes, if my book you've stood, Me with good humour you'll endure.
55.
"To nature true, complete!" so he begins.
Who complete Nature to his canvas _wins_?
Her tiniest fragment's endless, no constraint Can know: he paints just what his _fancy_ pins: What does his fancy pin? What he _can_ paint!
56.
_Poets' Vanity._ Glue, only glue to me dispense, The wood I'll find myself, don't fear!
To give four senseless verses sense— That's an achievement I revere!
57.
If to choose my niche precise Freedom I could win from fate, I'd be in midst of Paradise— Or, sooner still—before the gate!
58.
_The Crooked Nose._ Wide blow your nostrils, and across The land your nose holds haughty sway: So you, unhorned rhinoceros, Proud mannikin, fall forward aye!
The one trait with the other goes: A straight pride and a crooked nose.
59.
_The Pen is Scratching..._ The pen is scratching: hang the pen!
To scratching I'm condemned to sink!
I grasp the inkstand fiercely then And write in floods of flowing ink.
How broad, how full the stream's career!
What luck my labours doth requite!
'Tis true, the writing's none too clear— What then? Who reads the stuff I write?
60.
_Loftier Spirits._ This man's climbing up—let us praise him— But that other we love From aloft doth eternally move, So above even praise let us raise him, He _comes_ from above!
61.
Your life is half-way o'er; The clock-hand moves; your soul is thrilled with fear, It roamed to distant shore And sought and found not, yet you—linger here!
Your life is half-way o'er; That hour by hour was pain and error sheer: _Why stay?_ What seek you more?
62.
_Ecce Homo._ Yes, I know where I'm related, Like the flame, unquenched, unsated, I consume myself and glow: All's turned to light I lay my hand on, All to coal that I abandon, Yes, I am a flame, I know!
63.
_Star Morality._[6] Foredoomed to spaces vast and far, What matters darkness to the star?
Roll calmly on, let time go by,