No More Learning

What Belongs to Greatness. —Who can attain to
anything great if he does not feel the force and
will in himself to inflict great pain? The ability
to suffer is a small matter : in that line, weak
women and even slaves often attain masterliness.
But not to perish from internal distress and doubt
when one inflicts great anguish and hears the cry
of this anguish—that is great, that belongs to
greatness.


## p. 243 (#333) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS
251
326.
Physicians of the Soul and Pain. —All preachers
of morality, as also all theologians, have a bad
habit in common: all of them try to persuade
man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final,
radical cure is necessary. And because mankind as
a whole has for centuries listened too eagerly to
those teachers, something of the superstition that
the human race is in a very bad way has actually
come over men: so that they are now far too ready
to sigh; they find nothing more in life and make
melancholy faces at each other, as if life were
indeed very hard to endure. In truth, they are
inordinately assured of their life and in love with
it, and full of untold intrigues and subtleties for
suppressing everything disagreeable and for ex-
tracting the thorn from pain and misfortune. It
seems to me that people always speak with ex-
aggeration about pain and misfortune, as if it were
a matter of good behaviour to exaggerate here:
on the other hand people are intentionally silent
in regard to the number of expedients for alleviat-
ing pain ; as for instance, the deadening of it, or
feverish furry of thought, or a peaceful position,
or good and bad reminiscences, intentions, hopes,
—also many kinds of pride and fellow-feeling which
have almost the effect of anæsthetics : while in the
greatest degree of pain fainting takes place of itself.
We understand very well how to pour sweetness
on our bitterness, especially on the bitterness of
our soul; we find a remedy in our bravery and
sublimity, as well as in the nobler delirium of sub-


## p. 244 (#334) ############################################

252
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
mission and resignation. A loss scarcely remains
a loss for an hour : in some way or other a gift from
heaven has always fallen into our lap at the same
moment-a new form of strength, for example:
be it but a new opportunity for the exercise of
strength! What have the preachers of morality
not dreamt concerning the inner “misery” of evil
men! What lies have they not told us about the
misfortunes of impassioned men! Yes, lying is here
the right word: they were only too well aware of
the overflowing happiness of this kind of man, but
they kept silent as death about it; because it was
a refutation of their theory, according to which
happiness only originates through the annihilation
of the passions and the silencing of the will! And
finally, as regards the recipe of all those physicians
of the soul and their recommendation of a severe
radical cure, we may be allowed to ask: Is our
life really painful and burdensome enough for us
to exchange it with advantage for a Stoical mode
of life, and Stoical petrification? We do not feel
sufficiently miserable to have to feel ill in the
Stoical fashion !
327.
Taking Things Seriously. —The intellect is with
most people an awkward, obscure and creaking
machine, which is difficult to set in motion : they
call it “taking a thing seriously” when they work
with this machine, and want to think well—oh,
how burdensome must good thinking be to them!
That delightful animal, man, seems to lose his good-
humour whenever he thinks well; he becomes
“ serious"! And “where there is laughing and


## p. 245 (#335) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 245
pictures. There are enough of sublime things
without its being necessary to seek sublimity where
it is linked with cruelty; moreover my ambition
would not be gratified in the least if I aspired to
be a sublime executioner.
314.
New Domestic Animals. —I want to have my
lion and my eagle about me, that I may always
have hints and premonitions concerning the amount
of my strength or weakness. Must I look down on
them to-day, and be afraid of them? And will
the hour come once more when they will look up
to me, and tremble ? —
315.
The Last Hour. —Storms are my danger. Shall
I have my storm in which I shall perish, just as
Oliver Cromwell perished in his storm? Or shall
I go out as a light does, not first blown out by
the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself—a
burnt-out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself
out, so as not to burn out?
316.
Prophetic Men. —Ye cannot divine how sorely
prophetic men suffer: ye think only that a fine
"gift" has been given to them, and would fain have it
yourselves,—but I will express my meaning by a
simile. How much may not the animals suffer from
the electricity of the atmosphere and the clouds!
Some of them, as we see, have a prophetic faculty
with regard to the weather, for example, apes


## p. 246 (#336) ############################################

246 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
(as one can observe very well even in Europe,—
and not only in menageries, but at Gibraltar). But
it never occurs to us that it is their sufferings—that
are their prophets! When strong positive elec-
tricity, under the influence of an approaching
cloud not at all visible, is suddenly converted
into negative electricity, and an alteration of the
weather is imminent, these animals then behave
as if an enemy were approaching them, and pre-
pare for defence, or flight: they generally hide
themselves,—they do not think of the bad weather
as weather, but as an enemy whose hand they
already feel!
317-
Retrospect. —We seldom become conscious of the
real pathos of any period of life as such, as long
as we continue in it, but always think it is
the only possible and reasonable thing for us
henceforth, and that it is altogether ethos and not
pathos *—to speak and distinguish like the Greeks.
A few notes of music to-day recalled a winter and
a house, and a life of utter solitude to my mind,
and at the same time the sentiments in which I
then lived: I thought I should be able to live
in such a state always. But now I understand
that it was entirely pathos and passion, something
comparable to this painfully bold and truly com-
forting music,—it is not one's lot to have these
* The distinction between ethos and pathos in Aristotle
is, broadly, that between internal character and external
circumstance. —P. V. C.


## p. 247 (#337) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 247
sensations for years, still less for eternities: other-
wise one would become too "ethereal" for this
planet.
318.
Wisdom in Pain. —In pain there is as much
wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of
the best self-preservatives of a species. Were it not
so, pain would long ago have been done away with;
that it is hurtful is no argument against it, for
to be hurtful is its very essence. In pain I hear
the commanding call of the ship's captain: "Take
in sail! " "Man," the bold seafarer, must have
learned to set his sails in a thousand different ways,
otherwise he could not have sailed long, for the
ocean would soon have swallowed him up. We
must also know how to live with reduced energy:
as soon as pain gives its precautionary signal, it is
time to reduce the speed—some great danger,
some storm, is approaching, and wc do well to
"catch" as little wind as possible. —It is true that
there are men who, on the approach of severe pain,
hear the very opposite call of command, and never
appear more proud, more martial, or more happy,
than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain
itself provides them with their supreme moments!
These are the heroic men, the great pain-bringers
of mankind: those few and rare ones who need
just the same apology as pain generally,—and
verily, it should not be denied them! They are
forces of the greatest importance for preserving and
advancing the species, were it only because they are
opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their
disgust at this kind of happiness.


## p. 248 (#338) ############################################

248 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
319-
As Interpreters of our Experiences. —One form of
honesty has always been lacking among founders
of religions and their kin :—they have never made
their experiences a matter of the intellectual con-
science. "What did I really experience? What
then took place in me and around me? Was my
understanding clear enough? Was my will
directly opposed to all deception of the senses,
and courageous in its defence against fan-
tastic notions ? " — None of them ever asked
these questions, nor to this day do any of the
good religious people ask them. They have rather
a thirst for things which are contrary to reason,
and they don't want to have too much difficulty
in satisfying this thirst,—so they experience
"miracles" and "regenerations," and hear the
voices of angels! But we who are different, who
are thirsty for reason, want to look as carefully into
our experiences, as in the case of a scientific ex-
periment, hour by hour, day by day! We our-
selves want to be our own experiments, and our
own subjects of experiment.
320.
On Meeting Again. —A: Do I quite understand
you? You are in search of something? Where,
in the midst of the present, actual world, is your
niche and star? Where can you lay yourself in
the sun, so that you also may have a surplus of
well-being, that your existence may justify itself?
Let everyone do that for himself—you seem to say,


## p. 249 (#339) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS
257
333.
What does Knowing Mean ? -Non ridere, non
lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! says Spinoza,
so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Neverthe-
less, what else is this intelligere ultimately, but just
the form in which the three other things become
perceptible to us all at once? A result of the
diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to
deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge
is possible each of these impulses must first have
brought forward its one-sided view of the object
or event. The struggle of these one-sided views
occurs afterwards, and out of it there occasionally
arises a compromise, a pacification, a recognition
of rights on all three sides, a sort of justice and
agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agree-
ment all those impulses can maintain themselves
in existence and retain their mutual rights. We, to
whose consciousness only the closing reconciliation
scenes and final settling of accounts of these long
processes manifest themselves, think on that account
that intelligere is something conciliating, just and
good, something essentially antithetical to the
impulses; whereas it is only a certain relation
of the impulses to one another. For a very
long time conscious thinking was regarded as
thinking proper : it is now only that the truth
dawns upon us that the greater part of our
intellectual activity goes on unconsciously and
unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the im-
pulses which are here in mutual conflict understand
right well how to make themselves felt by one
17


## p. 250 (#340) ############################################

250 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
for a time on the side of our adversaries. We are
thereby predestined to a great victory.
324-
In Media Vita. —No! Life has not deceived
me! On the contrary, from year to year I find it
richer, more desirable and more mysterious—from
the day on which the great liberator broke my
fetters, the thought that life may be an experiment
of the thinker—and not a duty, not a fatality, not
a deceit! —And knowledge itself may be for others
something different; for example, a bed of ease,
or the path to a bed of ease, or an entertainment,
or a course of idling,—for me it is a world of
dangers and victories, in which even the heroic
sentiments have their arena and dancing-floor.
"Life as a means to knowledge"—with this prin-
ciple in one's heart, one can not only be brave,
but can even live joyfully and laugh joyfully! And
who could know how to laugh well and live well,
who did not first understand the full meaning of
war and victory?
325-
What Belongs to Greatness. —Who can attain to
anything great if he does not feel the force and
will in himself to inflict great pain? The ability
to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak
women and even slaves often attain masterliness.
But not to perish from internal distress and doubt
when one inflicts great anguish and hears the cry
of this anguish—that is great, that belongs to
greatness.


## p. 251 (#341) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 251
326.
Physicians of the Soul and Pain. —All preachers
of morality, as also all theologians, have a bad
habit in common: all of them try to persuade
man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final,
radical cure is necessary. And because mankind as
a whole has for centuries listened too eagerly to
those teachers, something of the superstition that
the human race is in a very bad way has actually
come over men: so that they are now far too ready
to sigh; they find nothing more in life and make
melancholy faces at each other, as if life were
indeed very hard to endure. In truth, they are
inordinately assured of their life and in love with
it, and full of untold intrigues and subtleties for
suppressing everything disagreeable and for ex-
tracting the thorn from pain and misfortune. It
seems to me that people always speak with ex-
aggeration about pain and misfortune, as if it were
a matter of good behaviour to exaggerate here:
on the other hand people are intentionally silent
in regard to the number of expedients for alleviat-
ing pain; as for instance, the deadening of it, or
feverish flurry of thought, or a peaceful position,
or good and bad reminiscences, intentions, hopes,
—also many kinds of pride and fellow-feeling which
have almost the effect of anaesthetics: while in the
greatest degree of pain fainting takes place of itself.
We understand very well how to pour sweetness
on our bitterness, especially on the bitterness of
our soul; we find a remedy in our bravery and
sublimity, as well as in the nobler delirium of sub-


## p. 252 (#342) ############################################

252 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
mission and resignation. A loss scarcely remains
a loss for an hour: in some way or other a gift from
heaven has always fallen into our lap at the same
moment—a new form of strength, for example:
be it but a new opportunity for the exercise of
strength! What have the preachers of morality
not dreamt concerning the inner " misery" of evil
men! What lies have they not told us about the
misfortunes of impassioned men! Yes, lying is here
the right word: they were only too well aware of
the overflowing happiness of this kind of man, but
they kept silent as death about it; because it was
a refutation of their theory, according to which
happiness only originates through the annihilation
of the passions and the silencing of the will! And
finally, as regards the recipe of all those physicians
of the soul and their recommendation of a severe
radical cure, we may be allowed to ask: Is our
life really painful and burdensome enough for us
to exchange it with advantage for a Stoical mode
of life, and Stoical petrification? We do not feel
sufficiently miserable to have to feel ill in the
Stoical fashion!
327-
Taking Things Seriously. —The intellect is with
most people an awkward, obscure and creaking
machine, which is difficult to set in motion: they
call it "taking a thing seriously" when they work
with this machine, and want to think well—oh,
how burdensome must good thinking be to them!
That delightful animal, man, seems to lose his good-
humour whenever he thinks well; he becomes
"serious"! And "where there is laughing and


## p. 253 (#343) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 253
gaiety, thinking cannot be worth anything:"—so
speaks the prejudice of this serious animal against
all "Joyful Wisdom. "—Well, then! Let us show
that it is prejudice!
328.
Doing Harm to Stupidity. —It is certain that the
belief in the reprehensibility of egoism, preached
with such stubbornness and conviction, has on the
whole done harm to egoism (in favour of the herd-
instinct, as I shall repeat a hundred times! ), especi-
ally by depriving it of a good conscience, and bid-
ding us seek in it the true source of all misfortune.
"Thy selfishness is the bane of thy life "—so rang
the preaching for millenniums: it did harm, as we
have said, to selfishness, and deprived it of much
spirit, much cheerfulness, much ingenuity, and
much beauty; it stultified and deformed and
poisoned selfishness! —Philosophical antiquity, on
the other hand, taught that there was another
principal source of evil: from Socrates downwards,
the thinkers were never weary of preaching that
"your thoughtlessness and stupidity, your un-
thinking way of living according to rule, and
your subjection to the opinion of your neighbour,
are the reasons why you so seldom attain to
happiness,—we thinkers are, as thinkers, the
happiest of mortals. " Let us not decide here
whether this preaching against stupidity was more
sound than the preaching against selfishness; it
is certain, however, that stupidity was thereby
deprived of its good conscience:—these philoso-
phers did harm to stupidity.


## p. 254 (#344) ############################################

258
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
another, and how to cause pain :—the violent,
sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers,
may have its origin here (it is the exhaustion of
the battle-field). Aye, perhaps in our struggling
interior there is much concealed heroism, but
certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-
itself, as Spinoza supposed. Conscious thinking, and
especially that of the philosopher, is the weakest,
and on that account also the relatively mildest
and quietest mode of thinking: and thus it is
precisely the philosopher who is most easily misled
concerning the nature of knowledge.
334.
One must Learn to Love. —This is our experience
in music: we must first learn in general to hear,
to hear fully, and to distinguish a theme or a
melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by
itself; then we need to exercise effort and good-will
in order to endure it in spite of its strangeness, we
need patience towards its aspect and expression,
and indulgence towards what is odd in it:-in the
end there comes a moment when we are accustomed
to it, when we expect it, when it dawns upon us
that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then
it goes on to exercise its spell and charm more
and more, and does not cease until we have become
its humble and enraptured lovers, who want it, and
want it again, and ask for nothing better from the
world. It is thus with us, however, not only in
music: it is precisely thus that we have learned to
love all things that we now love. We are always
finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience,


## p. 255 (#345) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 255
shorter time than another person. And so there
are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted:
in them, however, people are tired, and would
not only like "to let themselves go," but to
stretch their legs out wide in awkward style.
The way people write their letters nowadays is
quite in keeping with the age; their style and
spirit will always be the true "sign of the times. "
If there be still enjoyment in society and in art,
it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide
for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of
our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this
increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work
is winning over more and more the good conscience
to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls
itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be
ashamed of itself. "One owes it to one's health,"
people say, when they are caught at a picnic. I ndeed,
it might soon go so far that one could not yield to
the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say,
excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-
contempt and a bad conscience. —Well! Formerly
it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered
from a bad conscience. A man of good family
concealed his work when need compelled him to
labour. The slave laboured under the weight of
the feeling that he did something contemptible :—
the "doing" itself was something contemptible.
"Only in otium and bellum is there nobility
and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient pre-
judice!



## p. 256 (#346) ############################################

260
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
judge either morally or immorally? Why do you
regard this, and just this, as right ? —“Because my
conscience tells me so; conscience never speaks
immorally, indeed it determines in the first place
what shall be moral! ”-But why do you listen to
the voice of your conscience? And in how far are
you justified in regarding such a judgment as true
and infallible? This belief—is there no further
conscience for it? Do you know nothing of an
intellectual conscience? A conscience behind your
“conscience”? Your decision, “this is right,” has
a previous history in your impulses, your likes and
dislikes, your experiences and non-experiences;
“ how has it originated ? " you must ask, and after-
wards the further question: "what really impels me
to give ear to it? ” You can listen to its command
like a brave soldier who hears the command of
his officer. Or like a woman who loves him who
commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid
of the commander. Or like a blockhead who follows
because he has nothing to say to the contrary. In
short, you can give ear to your conscience in a
hundred different ways. But that you hear this or
that judgment as the voice of conscience, conse-
quently, that you feel a thing to be right-may
have its cause in the fact that you have never
reflected about yourself, and have blindly accepted
from your childhood what has been designated to
you as right : or in the fact that hitherto bread and
honours have fallen to your share with that which
you call your duty,—it is "right” to you, because
it seems to be your "condition of existence" (that
you, however, have a right to existence appears to


## p. 257 (#347) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 257
333-
What does Knowing Mean ? —Non ridere, non
lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! says Spinoza,
so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Neverthe-
less, what else is this intelligere ultimately, but just
the form in which the three other things become
perceptible to us all at once? A result of the
diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to
deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge
is possible each of these impulses must first have
brought forward its one-sided view of the object
or event. The struggle of these one-sided views
occurs afterwards, and out of it there occasionally
arises a compromise, a pacification, a recognition
of rights on all three sides, a sort of justice and
agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agree-
ment all those impulses can maintain themselves
in existence and retain their mutual rights. We, to
whose consciousness only the closing reconciliation
scenes and final settling of accounts of these long
processes manifest themselves, think on that account
that intelligere is something conciliating, just and
good, something essentially antithetical to the
impulses; whereas it is only a certain relation
of the impulses to one another. For a very
long time conscious thinking was regarded as
thinking proper: it is now only that the truth
dawns upon us that the greater part of our
intellectual activity goes on unconsciously and
unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the im-
pulses which are here in mutual conflict understand
right well how to make themselves felt by one
17


## p. 258 (#348) ############################################

258 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
another, and how to cause pain:—the violent,
sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers,
may have its origin here (it is the exhaustion of
the battle-field). Aye, perhaps in our struggling
interior there is much concealed heroism, but
certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-
itself, as Spinoza supposed. Conscious thinking, and
especially that of the philosopher, is the weakest,
and on that account also the relatively mildest
and quietest mode of thinking: and thus it is
precisely the philosopher who is most easily misled
concerning the nature of knowledge.
334-
One must Learn to Love. —This is our experience
in music: we must first learn in general to hear,
to hear fully, and to distinguish a theme or a
melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by
itself; then we need to exercise effort and good-will
in order to endure it in spite of its strangeness, we
need patience towards its aspect and expression,
and indulgence towards what is odd in it:—in the
end there comes a moment when we are accustomed
to it, when we expect it, when it dawns upon us
that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then
it goes on to exercise its spell and charm more
and more, and does not cease until we have become
its humble and enraptured lovers, who want it, and
want it again, and ask for nothing better from the
world. —It is thus with us, however, not only in
music: it is precisely thus that we have learned to
love all things that we now love. We are always
finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience,


## p. 259 (#349) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS
263
morally ought to be opposed to our taste! Let
us leave this nonsense and this bad taste to those
who have nothing else to do, save to drag the past
a little distance further through time, and who are
never themselves the present, consequently to the
many, to the majority! We, however, would seek
to become what we are,—the new, the unique, the in-
comparable, making laws for ourselves and creating
ourselves! And for this purpose we must become
the best students and discoverers of all the laws
and necessities in the world. We must be physicists
in order to be creators in that sense,—whereas
hitherto all appreciations and ideals have been
based on ignorance of physics, or in contradiction to
it. And therefore, three cheers for physics! And
still louder cheers for that which impels us to it
our honesty.
336.
Avarice of Nature. —Why has nature been so
niggardly towards humanity that she has not let
human beings shine, this man more and that man
less, according to their inner abundance of light?
Why have not great men such a fine visibility in
their rising and setting as the sun? How much
less equivocal would life among men then be !
337.
Future “ Humanity. ”—When I look at this age
with the eye of a distant future, I find nothing
so remarkable in the man of the present day as his
peculiar virtue and sickness called “the historical
sense. ” It is a tendency to something quite new


## p. 260 (#350) ############################################

2<5o THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
judge either morally or immorally? Why do you
regard this, and just this, as right? —" Because my
conscience tells me so; conscience never speaks
immorally, indeed it determines in the first place
what shall be moral! "—But why do you listen to
the voice of your conscience? And in how far are
you justified in regarding such a judgment as true
and infallible? This belief—is there no further
conscience for it? Do you know nothing of an
intellectual conscience? A conscience behind your
"conscience "? Your decision, "this is right," has
a previous history in your impulses, your likes and
dislikes, your experiences and non-experiences;
"how has it originated? " you must ask, and after-
wards the further question: "what really impels me
to give ear to it? " You can listen to its command
like a brave soldier who hears the command of
his officer. Or like a woman who loves him who
commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid
of the commander. Or like a blockhead who follows
because he has nothing to say to the contrary. In
short, you can give ear to your conscience in a
hundred different ways. But that you hear this or
that judgment as the voice of conscience, conse-
quently, that you feel a thing to be right—may
have its cause in the fact that you have never
reflected about yourself, and have blindly accepted
from your childhood what has been designated to
you as right: or in the fact that hitherto bread and
honours have fallen to your share with that which
you call your duty,—it is " right" to you, because
it seems to be your " condition of existence" (that
you, however, have a right to existence appears to



## p. 261 (#351) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 261
you as irrefutable! ). The persistency of your moral
judgment might still be just a proof of personal
wretchedness or impersonality; your "moral force"
might have its source in your obstinacy—or in
your incapacity to perceive new ideals! And to
be brief: if you had thought more acutely, observed
more accurately, and had learned more, you would
no longer under all circumstances call this and that
your "duty" and your "conscience ": the know-
ledge how moral judgments have in general always
originated, would make you tired of these pathetic
words,—as you have already grown tired of other
pathetic words, for instance "sin," "salvation," and
"redemption. "—And now, my friend, do not talk to
me about the categorical imperative! That word
tickles my ear, and I must laugh in spite of your
presence and your seriousness. In this connection
I recollect old Kant, who, as a punishment for having
gained possession surreptitiously of the "thing in
itself"—also a very ludicrous affair! —was imposed
upon by the categorical imperative, and with that in
his heart strayed back again to " God," the " soul,"
"freedom," and "immortality," like a fox which
strays back into its cage: and it had been his strength
and shrewdness which had broken open this cage! —
What? You admire the categorical imperative in
you? This "persistency" of your so-called moral
judgment? This absoluteness of the feeling that
"as I think on this matter, so must everyone think"?
Admire rather your selfishness therein! And the
blindness, paltriness, and modesty of your selfish-
ness! For it is selfishness in a person to regard
his judgment as universal law, and a blind, paltry


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252 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
mission and resignation. A loss scarcely remains
a loss for an hour: in some way or other a gift from
heaven has always fallen into our lap at the same
moment—a new form of strength, for example:
be it but a new opportunity for the exercise of
strength! What have the preachers of morality
not dreamt concerning the inner " misery" of evil
men! What lies have they not told us about the
misfortunes of impassioned men! Yes, lying is here
the right word: they were only too well aware of
the overflowing happiness of this kind of man, but
they kept silent as death about it; because it was
a refutation of their theory, according to which
happiness only originates through the annihilation
of the passions and the silencing of the will! And
finally, as regards the recipe of all those physicians
of the soul and their recommendation of a severe
radical cure, we may be allowed to ask: Is our
life really painful and burdensome enough for us
to exchange it with advantage for a Stoical mode
of life, and Stoical petrification? We do not feel
sufficiently miserable to have to feel ill in the
Stoical fashion!
327-
Taking Things Seriously. —The intellect is with
most people an awkward, obscure and creaking
machine, which is difficult to set in motion: they
call it "taking a thing seriously" when they work
with this machine, and want to think well—oh,
how burdensome must good thinking be to them!
That delightful animal, man, seems to lose his good-
humour whenever he thinks well; he becomes
"serious"! And "where there is laughing and


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS
267
man, you comfortable and good-natured ones ! —for
happiness and misfortune are brother and sister,
and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with
you, remain small together! But now let us
return to the first question. —How is it at all
possible for a person to keep to his path! Some
cry or other is continually calling one aside : our
eye then rarely lights on anything without it
becoming necessary for us to leave for a moment
our own affairs and rush to give assistance. I
know there are hundreds of respectable and laud-
able methods of making me stray from my course,
and in truth the most "moral" of methods !
Indeed, the opinion of the present-day preachers
of the morality of compassion goes so far as to
imply that just this, and this alone is moral:—to
stray from our course to that extent and to run
to the assistance of our neighbour. I am equally
certain that I need only give myself over to the
sight of one case of actual distress, and I, too,
am lost! And if a suffering friend said to me,
“See, I shall soon die, only promise to die with
me”-I might promise it, just as—to select for
once bad examples for good reasons—the sight of
a small, mountain people struggling for freedom,
would bring me to the point of offering them my
hand and my life. Indeed, there is even a secret
seduction in all this awakening of compassion, and
calling for help : our “own way” is a thing too
hard and insistent, and too far removed from the
love and gratitude of others, we escape from it
and from our most personal conscience, not at all
unwillingly, and, seeking security in the conscience


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254 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
329.
Leisure and Idleness. — There is an Indian
savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood,
in the manner in which the Americans strive after
gold: and the breathless hurry of their work—
the characteristic vice of the new world—already
begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage
also, spreading over it a strange lack of intel-
lectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even
long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience.
Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining
is done with the eyes fixed on the financial
newspaper; we live like men who are continually
"afraid of letting opportunities slip. " "Better do
anything whatever, than nothing"—this principle
also is a noose with which all culture and all
higher taste may be strangled. And just as all
form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers,
so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for
the melody of movement, also disappear. The
proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now
everywhere demanded in all positions where a
person would like to be sincere with his fellows,
in intercourse with friends, women, relatives,
children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,—one
has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies,
for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conver-
sation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the
hunt for gain continually compels a person to
consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in con-
stant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling:
the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 255
shorter time than another person. And so there
are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted:
in them, however, people are tired, and would
not only like "to let themselves go," but to
stretch their legs out wide in awkward style.
The way people write their letters nowadays is
quite in keeping with the age; their style and
spirit will always be the true "sign of the times. "
If there be still enjoyment in society and in art,
it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide
for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of
our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this
increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work
is winning over more and more the good conscience
to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls
itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be
ashamed of itself. "One owes it to one's health,"
people say,when theyare caught at a picnic. Indeed,
it might soon go so far that one could not yield to
the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say,
excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-
contempt and a bad conscience. —Well! Formerly
it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered
from a bad conscience. A man of good family
concealed his work when need compelled him to
labour. The slave laboured under the weight of
the feeling that he did something contemptible:—
the "doing" itself was something contemptible.
"Only in otium and bellum is there nobility
and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient pre-
judice!


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256 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
330.
Applause. —The thinker does not need applause
nor the clapping of hands, provided he be sure of
the clapping of his own hands: the latter, however,
he cannot do without. Are there men who could
also do without this, and in general without any
kind of applause? I doubt it: and even as regards
the wisest, Tacitus, who is no calumniator of the
wise, says: quando etiam sapientibns gloria cupido
novissima exuitur—that means with him: never.
331-
Better Deaf than Deafened. —Formerly a person
wanted to have a calling, but that no longer suffices
to-day, for the market has become too large,—
there has now to be bawling. The consequence
is that even good throats outcry each other, and
the best wares are offered for sale with hoarse voices;
without market-place bawling and hoarseness there
is now no longer any genius. —It is, sure enough,
an evil age for the thinker: he has to learn to find
his stillness betwixt two noises, and has to pretend
to be deaf until he finally becomes so. As long as
he has not learned this, he is in danger of perishing
from impatience and headaches.
332.
The Evil Hour. —There has perhaps been an
evil hour for every philosopher, in which he thought:
What do I matter, if people should not believe my
poor arguments! —And then some malicious bird
has flown past him and twittered: "What do you
matter? What do you matter? "


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 257
333-
What does Knowing Mean ? —Non ridere, non
lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! says Spinoza,
so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Neverthe-
less, what else is this intelligere ultimately, but just
the form in which the three other things become
perceptible to us all at once? A result of the
diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to
deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge
is possible each of these impulses must first have
brought forward its one-sided view of the object
or event. The struggle of these one-sided views
occurs afterwards, and out of it there occasionally
arises a compromise, a pacification, a recognition
of rights on all three sides, a sort of justice and
agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agree-
ment all those impulses can maintain themselves
in existence and retain their mutual rights. We, to
whose consciousness only the closing reconciliation
scenes and final settling of accounts of these long
processes manifest themselves, think on that account
that intelligere is something conciliating, just and
good, something essentially antithetical to the
impulses; whereas it is only a certain relation
of the impulses to one another. For a very
long time conscious thinking was regarded as
thinking proper: it is now only that the truth
dawns upon us that the greater part of our
intellectual activity goes on unconsciously and
unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the im-
pulses which are here in mutual conflict understand
right well how to make themselves felt by one
17


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258 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
another, and how to cause pain:—the violent,
sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers,
may have its origin here (it is the exhaustion of
the battle-field). Aye, perhaps in our struggling
interior there is much concealed heroism, but
certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-
itself, as Spinoza supposed. Conscious thinking, and
especially that of the philosopher, is the weakest,
and on that account also the relatively mildest
and quietest mode of thinking: and thus it is
precisely the philosopher who is most easily misled
concerning the nature of knowledge.
334-
One must Learn to Love. —This is our experience
in music: we must first learn in general to hear,
to hear fully, and to distinguish a theme or a
melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by
itself; then we need to exercise effort and good-will
in order to endure it in spite of its strangeness, we
need patience towards its aspect and expression,
and indulgence towards what is odd in it:—in the
end there comes a moment when we are accustomed
to it, when we expect it, when it dawns upon us
that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then
it goes on to exercise its spell and charm more
and more, and does not cease until we have become
its humble and enraptured lovers, who want it, and
want it again, and ask for nothing better from the
world. —It is thus with us, however, not only in
music: it is precisely thus that we have learned to
love all things that we now love. We are always
finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience,


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 259
reasonableness and gentleness towards what is
unfamiliar, by the unfamiliar slowly throwing off
its veil and presenting itself to us as a new, ineffable
beauty :—that is its thanks for our hospitality. He
also who loves himself must have learned it in this
way: there is no other way. Love also has to be
learned.
335-
Cheers for Physics ! —How many men are there
who know how to observe? And among the few
who do know,—how many observe themselves?
"Everyone is furthest from himself"—all the "triers
of the reins" know that to their discomfort; and
the saying, " Know thyself," in the mouth of a God
and spoken to man, is almost a mockery. But
that the case of self-observation is so desperate,
is attested best of all by the manner in which
almost everybody talks of the nature of a moral
action, that prompt, willing, convinced, loquacious
manner, with its look, its smile, and its pleasing
eagerness! Everyone seems inclined to say to
you: "Why, my dear Sir, that is precisely my affair!
You address yourself with your question to him
who is authorised to answer, for I happen to be wiser
with regard to this matter than in anything else.
Therefore, when a man decides that'this is right,'
when he accordingly concludes that ' it must there-
fore be done,' and thereupon does what he has thus
recognised as right and designated as necessary—
then the nature of his action is moral! " But, my
friend, you are talking to me about three actions
instead of one: your deciding, for instance, that
"this is right," is also an action,—could one not


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260 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
judge either morally or immorally? Why do you
regard this, and just this, as right? —"Because my
conscience tells me so; conscience never speaks
immorally, indeed it determines in the first place
what shall be moral! "—But why do you listen to
the voice of your conscience? And in how far are
you justified in regarding such a judgment as true
and infallible? This belief-—is there no further
conscience for it? Do you know nothing of an
intellectual conscience? A conscience behind your
"conscience "? Your decision, "this is right," has
a previous history in your impulses, your likes and
dislikes, your experiences and non-experiences;
"how has it originated? " you must ask, and after-
wards the further question: "what really impels me
to give ear to it? " You can listen to its command
like a brave soldier who hears the command of
his officer. Or like a woman who loves him who
commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid
of the commander. Or like a blockhead who follows
because he has nothing to say to the contrary. In
short, you can give ear to your conscience in a
hundred different ways. But that you hear this or
that judgment as the voice of conscience, conse-
quently, that you feel a thing to be right—may
have its cause in the fact that you have never
reflected about yourself, and have blindly accepted
from your childhood what has been designated to
you as right: or in the fact that hitherto bread and
honours have fallen to your share with that which
you call your duty,—it is "right" to you, because
it seems to be your " condition of existence" (that
you, however, have a right to existence appears to


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 261
you as irrefutable! ). The persistency of your moral
judgment might still be just a proof of personal
wretchedness or impersonality; your "moral force"
might have its source in your obstinacy—or in
your incapacity to perceive new ideals! And to
be brief: if you had thought more acutely, observed
more accurately, and had learned more, you would
no longer under all circumstances call this and that
your "duty" and your "conscience ": the know-
ledge how moral judgments have in general always
originated, would make you tired of these pathetic
words,—as you have already grown tired of other
pathetic words, for instance "sin," "salvation," and
"redemption. "—And now, my friend, do not talk to
me about the categorical imperative! That word
tickles my ear, and I must laugh in spite of your
presence and your seriousness. In this connection
I recollect old Kant, who, as a punishment for having
gained possession surreptitiously of the "thing in
itself"—also a very ludicrous affair! —was imposed
upon by the categorical imperative, and with that in
his heart strayed back again to " God," the " soul,"
"freedom," and "immortality," like a fox which
strays back into its cage: and it had been his strength
and shrewdness which had broken open this cage! —
What? You admire the categorical imperative in
you? This " persistency" of your so-called moral
judgment? This absoluteness of the feeling that
"as I think on this matter, so must everyone think"?
Admire rather your selfishness therein! And the
blindness, paltriness, and modesty of your selfish-
ness! For it is selfishness in a person to regard
his judgment as universal law, and a blind, paltry


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262 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
and modest selfishness besides, because it betrays
that you have not yet discovered yourself, that you
have not yet created for yourself any individual,
quite individual ideal:—for this could never be the
ideal of another, to say nothing of all, of every
one! He who still thinks that "each would
have to act in this manner in this case," has not yet
advanced half a dozen paces in self-knowledge:
otherwise he would know that there neither are nor
can be similar actions,—that every action that has
been done, has been done in an entirely unique and
inimitable manner, and that it will be the same
with regard to all future actions; that all precepts
of conduct (and even the most esoteric and subtle
precepts of all moralities up to the present), apply
only to the coarse exterior,—that by means of them,
indeed, a semblance of equality can be attained,
but only a semblance,—that in outlook or retrospect,
every action is and remains an impenetrable affair,—
that our opinions of " good," " noble" and "great"
can never be demonstrated by our actions, because
no action is cognisable,—that our opinions, esti-
mates, and tables of values are certainly among
the most powerful levers in the mechanism of our
actions, that in every single case, nevertheless, the
law of their mechanism is untraceable. Let us
confine ourselves, therefore, to the purification of our
opinions and appreciations, and to the construction
of new tables of value of our own :—we will, how-
ever, brood no longer over the " moral worth of our
actions"! Yes, my friends! As regards the whole
moral twaddle of people about one another, it is
time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment


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WE FEARLESS ONES
277
conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of
an hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experi-
ment, or a regulative fiction, that its access to the
realm of knowledge, and a certain value therein,
can be conceded,--always, however, with the re-
striction that it must remain under police super-
vision, under the police of our distrust. —Regarded
more accurately, however, does not this imply that
only when a conviction ceases to be a conviction
can it obtain admission into science? Does not
the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence
when one no longer harbours any conviction? . . .
It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked
whether, in order that this discipline may comience,
it is not necessary that there should already be a
conviction, and in fact one so imperative and
absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other
convictions. One sees that science also rests
on a belief: there is no science at all “without
premises. ” The question whether truth is neces-
sary, must not merely be affirmed beforehand,
but must be affirmed to such an extent that
the principle, belief, or conviction finds expres-
sion, that "there is nothing more necessary than
truth, and in comparison with it everything else
has only a secondary value. ”—This absolute will
to truth: what is it? Is it the will not to allow
ourselves to be deceived ? Is it the will not to de-
ceive? For the will to truth could also be inter-
preted in this fashion, provided one includes under
the generalisation, “I will not deceive," the
special case, “I will not deceive myself. ” But
why not deceive? Why not allow oneself to be


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264 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
and foreign in history: if this embryo were given
several centuries and more, there might finally
evolve out of it a marvellous plant, with a smell
equally marvellous, on account of which our old
earth might be more pleasant to live in than it has
been hitherto. We moderns are just beginning
to form the chain of a very powerful, future senti-
ment, link by link,—we hardly know what we are
doing. It almost seems to us as if it were not the
question of a new sentiment, but of the decline of all
old sentiments :—the historical sense is still some-
thing so poor and cold, and many are attacked by it
as by a frost, and are made poorer and colder by it.
To others it appears as the indication of stealthily
approaching age, and our planet is regarded by
them as a melancholy invalid, who, in order to
forget his present condition, writes the history of
his youth. In fact, this is one aspect of the new
sentiment. He who knows how to regard the
history of man in its entirety as his own history,
feels in the immense generalisation all the grief
of the invalid who thinks of health, of the old
man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of the
lover who is robbed of his beloved, of the martyr
whose ideal is destroyed, of the hero on the
evening of the indecisive battle which has
brought him wounds and the loss of a friend.
But to bear this immense sum of grief of all
kinds, to be able to bear it, and yet still be
the hero who at the commencement of a second
day of battle greets the dawn and his happiness,
as one who has an horizon of centuries before
and behind him, as the heir of all nobility, of all


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 265
past intellect, and the obligatory heir (as the
noblest) of all the old nobles; while at the same
time the first of a new nobility, the equal of which
has never been seen nor even dreamt of: to
take all this upon his soul, the oldest, the newest,
the losses, hopes, conquests, and victories of man-
kind: to have all this at last in one soul, and to
comprise it in one feeling:—this would necessarily
furnish a happiness which man has not hitherto
known,—a God's happiness, full of power and love,
full of tears and laughter, a happiness which, like
the sun in the evening, continually gives of its
inexhaustible riches and empties into the sea,—
and like the sun, too, feels itself richest when even
the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! This
divine feeling might then be called—humanity!
338.
The Will to Suffering and the Compassionate. —Is
it to your advantage to be above all compassionate?
And is it to the advantage of the sufferers when
you are so? But let us leave the first question for
a moment without an answer. —That from which
we suffer most profoundly and personally is almost
incomprehensible and inaccessible to every one else:
in this matter we are hidden from our neighbour
even when he eats at the same table with us.
Everywhere, however, where we are noticed as
sufferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow
way; it belongs to the nature of the emotion of
pity to divest unfamiliar suffering of its properly
personal character :—our "benefactors" lower our
value and volition more than our enemies. In


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266 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
most benefits which are conferred on the unfor-
tunate there is something shocking in the intellec-
tual levity with which the compassionate person
plays the role of fate: he knows nothing of all the
inner consequences and complications which are
called misfortune for me or for you! The entire
economy of my soul and its adjustment by "mis-
fortune," the uprising of new sources and needs, the
closing up of old wounds, the repudiation of whole
periods of the past—none of these things which
may be connected with misfortune preoccupy the
dear sympathiser. He wishes to succour, and does
not reflect that there is a personal necessity for mis-
fortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight
watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as
necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea,
that, to speak mystically, the path to one's own
heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of
one's own hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. The
"religion of compassion " (or " the heart") bids him
help, and he thinks he has helped best when he has
helped most speedily! If you adherents of this
religion actually have the same sentiments towards
yourselves which you have towards your fellows,
if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering
even for an hour, and continually forestall all
possible misfortune, if you regard suffering and
pain generally as evil, as detestable, as deserving
of annihilation, and as blots on existence, well, you
have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet
another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps
the mother of the former)—the religion of smug ease.