No More Learning

It was different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon
master, who, on account of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly
acquired admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful
EPISODE of German music. But with regard to Robert Schumann, who took
things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the first--he
was the last that founded a school,--do we not now regard it as a
satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this very Romanticism
of Schumann's has been surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the "Saxon
Switzerland" of his soul, with a half Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like
nature (assuredly not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron! )--his
MANFRED music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of
injustice; Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a PETTY
taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity--doubly dangerous among
Germans--for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going
constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who
revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning
a sort of girl and NOLI ME TANGERE--this Schumann was already merely a
GERMAN event in music, and no longer a European event, as Beethoven had
been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been; with Schumann German
music was threatened with its greatest danger, that of LOSING THE VOICE
FOR THE SOUL OF EUROPE and sinking into a merely national affair.

246. What a torture are books written in German to a reader who has a
THIRD ear! How indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp
of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance, which Germans call
a "book"! And even the German who READS books! How lazily, how
reluctantly, how badly he reads! How many Germans know, and consider it
obligatory to know, that there is ART in every good sentence--art which
must be divined, if the sentence is to be understood! If there is a
misunderstanding about its TEMPO, for instance, the sentence itself
is misunderstood! That one must not be doubtful about the
rhythm-determining syllables, that one should feel the breaking of the
too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm, that one should lend a
fine and patient ear to every STACCATO and every RUBATO, that one should
divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs, and how
delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of
their arrangement--who among book-reading Germans is complaisant enough
to recognize such duties and requirements, and to listen to so much art
and intention in language? After all, one just "has no ear for it";
and so the most marked contrasts of style are not heard, and the most
delicate artistry is as it were SQUANDERED on the deaf. --These were my
thoughts when I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in
the art of prose-writing have been confounded: one, whose words drop
down hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp cave--he counts
on their dull sound and echo; and another who manipulates his language
like a flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes feels the
dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-sharp blade, which wishes to
bite, hiss, and cut.

247. How little the German style has to do with harmony and with the
ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians themselves
write badly. The German does not read aloud, he does not read for the
ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for
the time. In antiquity when a man read--which was seldom enough--he read
something to himself, and in a loud voice; they were surprised when
any one read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a
loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and
variations of key and changes of TEMPO, in which the ancient PUBLIC
world took delight. The laws of the written style were then the same
as those of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on the
surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx;
partly on the strength, endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In
the ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch
as it is comprised in one breath. Such periods as occur in Demosthenes
and Cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath,
were pleasures to the men of ANTIQUITY, who knew by their own schooling
how to appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty
in the deliverance of such a period;--WE have really no right to the
BIG period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! Those
ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequently
connoisseurs, consequently critics--they thus brought their orators to
the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the last century, when all
Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song
(and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany,
however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began
shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings), there was
properly speaking only one kind of public and APPROXIMATELY artistical
discourse--that delivered from the pulpit. The preacher was the only one
in Germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a
sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone
had a conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons
are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be especially seldom
attained by a German, or almost always too late. The masterpiece of
German prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its
greatest preacher: the BIBLE has hitherto been the best German
book. Compared with Luther's Bible, almost everything else is merely
"literature"--something which has not grown in Germany, and therefore
has not taken and does not take root in German hearts, as the Bible has
done.

248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and
seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified
and brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are
those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the
secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the Greeks, for
instance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the French; and others
which have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life--like
the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the
Germans? --nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and
irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for
foreign races (for such as "let themselves be fructified"), and withal
imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force,
and consequently empowered "by the grace of God. " These two kinds of
geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand
each other--like man and woman.

249. Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," and calls that its
virtue. --One does not know--cannot know, the best that is in one.

250. What Europe owes to the Jews? --Many things, good and bad, and above
all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand
style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of
infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral
questionableness--and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring,
and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life,
in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening
sky, now glows--perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among the
spectators and philosophers, are--grateful to the Jews.

251. It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and
disturbances--in short, slight attacks of stupidity--pass over the
spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national
nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day
Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic
folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the
Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at
those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely
bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the
German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that
I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not
remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began
to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me--the first
symptom of political infection. About the Jews, for instance, listen
to the following:--I have never yet met a German who was favourably
inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual
anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this
prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the
sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially
against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of
sentiment;--on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany
has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood,
has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this
quantity of "Jew"--as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman
have done by means of a stronger digestion:--that is the unmistakable
declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen
and according to which one must act. "Let no more Jews come in! And shut
the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)! "--thus
commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and
uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by
a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest,
toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how
to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under
favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like
nowadays to label as vices--owing above all to a resolute faith which
does not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas", they alter only,
WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes
its conquest--as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of
yesterday--namely, according to the principle, "as slowly as possible"!
A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his
perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he
will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest
factors in the great play and battle of forces. That which is at present
called a "nation" in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA
(indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in
every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet
a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such
"nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and
hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired--or if they
were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish--COULD now have the
ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT
working and planning for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they
rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and
absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and
respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the
"wandering Jew",--and one should certainly take account of this impulse
and tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation
of the Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful
and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country. One
should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much
as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the more powerful
and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation
with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman
officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways
to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some
intellect and intellectuality--sadly lacking in the place referred to)
could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of
commanding and obeying--for both of which the country in question has
now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break off my festal
discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have already reached my
SERIOUS TOPIC, the "European problem," as I understand it, the rearing
of a new ruling caste for Europe.

252. They are not a philosophical race--the English: Bacon represents an
ATTACK on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke,
an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a "philosopher" for more
than a century. It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself;
it was Locke of whom Schelling RIGHTLY said, "JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in the
struggle against the English mechanical stultification of the world,
Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one accord; the
two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who pushed in different
directions towards the opposite poles of German thought, and thereby
wronged each other as only brothers will do. --What is lacking in
England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician
knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head, Carlyle, who sought to conceal
under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was
LACKING in Carlyle--real POWER of intellect, real DEPTH of intellectual
perception, in short, philosophy. It is characteristic of such an
unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to Christianity--they NEED its
discipline for "moralizing" and humanizing. The Englishman, more gloomy,
sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German--is for that very
reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the
MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity
itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic
excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote--the
finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is
in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards
spiritualization. The English coarseness and rustic demureness is still
most satisfactorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by praying
and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and
differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who
formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism (and
more recently as the "Salvation Army"), a penitential fit may really be
the relatively highest manifestation of "humanity" to which they can
be elevated: so much may reasonably be admitted. That, however, which
offends even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of music, to speak
figuratively (and also literally): he has neither rhythm nor dance in
the movements of his soul and body; indeed, not even the desire for
rhythm and dance, for "music. " Listen to him speaking; look at the most
beautiful Englishwoman WALKING--in no country on earth are there more
beautiful doves and swans; finally, listen to them singing! But I ask
too much. . .

253. There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds,
because they are best adapted for them, there are truths which only
possess charms and seductive power for mediocre spirits:--one is pushed
to this probably unpleasant conclusion, now that the influence of
respectable but mediocre Englishmen--I may mention Darwin, John
Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer--begins to gain the ascendancy in the
middle-class region of European taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it
is a useful thing for SUCH minds to have the ascendancy for a time? It
would be an error to consider the highly developed and independently
soaring minds as specially qualified for determining and collecting many
little common facts, and deducing conclusions from them; as exceptions,
they are rather from the first in no very favourable position towards
those who are "the rules. " After all, they have more to do than merely
to perceive:--in effect, they have to BE something new, they have to
SIGNIFY something new, they have to REPRESENT new values! The gulf
between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also more
mysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grand style, the
creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant person;--while on the
other hand, for scientific discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain
narrowness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short, something
English) may not be unfavourable for arriving at them. --Finally, let
it not be forgotten that the English, with their profound mediocrity,
brought about once before a general depression of European intelligence.

What is called "modern ideas," or "the ideas of the eighteenth century,"
or "French ideas"--that, consequently, against which the GERMAN mind
rose up with profound disgust--is of English origin, there is no doubt
about it. The French were only the apes and actors of these ideas, their
best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first and profoundest VICTIMS;
for owing to the diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the AME
FRANCAIS has in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present
one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profound,
passionate strength, its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief.
One must, however, maintain this verdict of historical justice in
a determined manner, and defend it against present prejudices and
appearances: the European NOBLESSE--of sentiment, taste, and manners,
taking the word in every high sense--is the work and invention of
FRANCE; the European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas--is
ENGLAND'S work and invention.

254. Even at present France is still the seat of the most intellectual
and refined culture of Europe, it is still the high school of taste; but
one must know how to find this "France of taste. " He who belongs to it
keeps himself well concealed:--they may be a small number in whom it
lives and is embodied, besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon
the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in
part persons over-indulged, over-refined, such as have the AMBITION to
conceal themselves.

They have all something in common: they keep their ears closed in
presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic
BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls
in the foreground--it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste,
and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo.
There is also something else common to them: a predilection to resist
intellectual Germanizing--and a still greater inability to do so!
In this France of intellect, which is also a France of pessimism,
Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and more indigenous than
he has ever been in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who has
long ago been re-incarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyrists
of Paris; or of Hegel, who at present, in the form of Taine--the FIRST
of living historians--exercises an almost tyrannical influence. As
regards Richard Wagner, however, the more French music learns to
adapt itself to the actual needs of the AME MODERNE, the more will it
"Wagnerite"; one can safely predict that beforehand,--it is already
taking place sufficiently! There are, however, three things which the
French can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession,
and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority
in Europe, in spite of all voluntary or involuntary Germanizing and
vulgarizing of taste. FIRSTLY, the capacity for artistic emotion, for
devotion to "form," for which the expression, L'ART POUR L'ART, along
with numerous others, has been invented:--such capacity has not been
lacking in France for three centuries; and owing to its reverence for
the "small number," it has again and again made a sort of chamber
music of literature possible, which is sought for in vain elsewhere
in Europe. --The SECOND thing whereby the French can lay claim to
a superiority over Europe is their ancient, many-sided, MORALISTIC
culture, owing to which one finds on an average, even in the petty
ROMANCIERS of the newspapers and chance BOULEVARDIERS DE PARIS, a
psychological sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one
has no conception (to say nothing of the thing itself! ) in Germany.
The Germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite
thereto, which, as we have said, France has not grudged: those who call
the Germans "naive" on that account give them commendation for a defect.
(As the opposite of the German inexperience and innocence IN VOLUPTATE
PSYCHOLOGICA, which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness
of German intercourse,--and as the most successful expression of
genuine French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate
thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and
forerunning man, who, with a Napoleonic TEMPO, traversed HIS Europe,
in fact, several centuries of the European soul, as a surveyor and
discoverer thereof:--it has required two generations to OVERTAKE him
one way or other, to divine long afterwards some of the riddles
that perplexed and enraptured him--this strange Epicurean and man of
interrogation, the last great psychologist of France). --There is yet
a THIRD claim to superiority: in the French character there is a
successful half-way synthesis of the North and South, which makes them
comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them other things, which an
Englishman can never comprehend. Their temperament, turned alternately
to and from the South, in which from time to time the Provencal and
Ligurian blood froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern
grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty of
blood--our GERMAN infirmity of taste, for the excessive prevalence
of which at the present moment, blood and iron, that is to say "high
politics," has with great resolution been prescribed (according to
a dangerous healing art, which bids me wait and wait, but not yet
hope). --There is also still in France a pre-understanding and
ready welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men, who are too
comprehensive to find satisfaction in any kind of fatherlandism, and
know how to love the South when in the North and the North when in the
South--the born Midlanders, the "good Europeans. " For them BIZET
has made music, this latest genius, who has seen a new beauty and
seduction,--who has discovered a piece of the SOUTH IN MUSIC.

255. I hold that many precautions should be taken against German music.
Suppose a person loves the South as I love it--as a great school
of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills, as a
boundless solar profusion and effulgence which o'erspreads a sovereign
existence believing in itself--well, such a person will learn to be
somewhat on his guard against German music, because, in injuring his
taste anew, it will also injure his health anew. Such a Southerner, a
Southerner not by origin but by BELIEF, if he should dream of the future
of music, must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the
North; and must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier, and
perhaps more perverse and mysterious music, a super-German music, which
does not fade, pale, and die away, as all German music does, at the
sight of the blue, wanton sea and the Mediterranean clearness of sky--a
super-European music, which holds its own even in presence of the brown
sunsets of the desert, whose soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can be
at home and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey. . . I
could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew
nothing more of good and evil; only that here and there perhaps some
sailor's home-sickness, some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might
sweep lightly over it; an art which, from the far distance, would see
the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensible MORAL world fleeing
towards it, and would be hospitable enough and profound enough to
receive such belated fugitives.

256. Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has
induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing also to the
short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this
craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the
disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude
policy--owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable
at present, the most unmistakable signs that EUROPE WISHES TO BE ONE,
are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all
the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general
tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prepare the way
for that new SYNTHESIS, and tentatively to anticipate the European of
the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in
old age perhaps, did they belong to the "fatherlands"--they only rested
from themselves when they became "patriots. " I think of such men as
Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it
must not be taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among them, about
whom one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings
(geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand themselves),
still less, of course, by the unseemly noise with which he is now
resisted and opposed in France: the fact remains, nevertheless, that
Richard Wagner and the LATER FRENCH ROMANTICISM of the forties, are
most closely and intimately related to one another. They are akin,
fundamentally akin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements;
it is Europe, the ONE Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly,
outwards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art--whither?
into a new light? towards a new sun? But who would attempt to express
accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not
express distinctly? It is certain that the same storm and stress
tormented them, that they SOUGHT in the same manner, these last great
seekers! All of them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears--the
first artists of universal literary culture--for the most part even
themselves writers, poets, intermediaries and blenders of the arts and
the senses (Wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters, as poet
among musicians, as artist generally among actors); all of them fanatics
for EXPRESSION "at any cost"--I specially mention Delacroix, the nearest
related to Wagner; all of them great discoverers in the realm of the
sublime, also of the loathsome and dreadful, still greater discoverers
in effect, in display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them talented
far beyond their genius, out and out VIRTUOSI, with mysterious accesses
to all that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of
logic and of the straight line, hankering after the strange, the
exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory; as men,
Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be
incapable of a noble TEMPO or of a LENTO in life and action--think
of Balzac, for instance,--unrestrained workers, almost destroying
themselves by work; antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and
insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finally
shattering and sinking down at the Christian cross (and with right
and reason, for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and
sufficiently original for an ANTI-CHRISTIAN philosophy? );--on the
whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and
aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their
century--and it is the century of the MASSES--the conception "higher
man. ". . . Let the German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to
whether there is anything purely German in the Wagnerian art, or whether
its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from SUPER-GERMAN
sources and impulses: in which connection it may not be underrated
how indispensable Paris was to the development of his type, which the
strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most
decisive time--and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his
self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sight of the French
socialistic original. On a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be
found, to the honour of Richard Wagner's German nature, that he has
acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation
than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could have done--owing to the
circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the
French;--perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is
not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and
inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried,
that VERY FREE man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too
cheerful, too healthy, too ANTI-CATHOLIC for the taste of old and mellow
civilized nations. He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this
anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old
sad days, when--anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into
politics--he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to
preach, at least, THE WAY TO ROME, if not to walk therein. --That
these last words may not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few
powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I
mean--what I mean COUNTER TO the "last Wagner" and his Parsifal music:--

--Is this our mode? --From German heart came this vexed ululating? From
German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation,
This incense-fuming exaltation? Is ours this faltering, falling,
shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling? This sly
nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured
heaven-o'erspringing? --Is this our mode? --Think well! --ye still wait for
admission--For what ye hear is ROME--ROME'S FAITH BY INTUITION!



CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE?


257. EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an
aristocratic society and so it will always be--a society believing in
a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human
beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the PATHOS
OF DISTANCE, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes,
out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on
subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant
practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a
distance--that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the
longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself,
the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more
comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type "man,"
the continued "self-surmounting of man," to use a moral formula in
a supermoral sense. To be sure, one must not resign oneself to
any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an
aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for
the elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge
unprejudicedly how every higher civilization hitherto has ORIGINATED!
Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of
the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will
and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more
peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon
old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering
out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. At the commencement,
the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did
not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical
power--they were more COMPLETE men (which at every point also implies
the same as "more complete beasts").

258. Corruption--as the indication that anarchy threatens to break out
among the instincts, and that the foundation of the emotions, called
"life," is convulsed--is something radically different according to
the organization in which it manifests itself. When, for instance, an
aristocracy like that of France at the beginning of the Revolution,
flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself
to an excess of its moral sentiments, it was corruption:--it was really
only the closing act of the corruption which had existed for centuries,
by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its
lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a FUNCTION of royalty (in
the end even to its decoration and parade-dress). The essential thing,
however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard
itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but
as the SIGNIFICANCE and highest justification thereof--that it should
therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion
of individuals, who, FOR ITS SAKE, must be suppressed and reduced to
imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must
be precisely that society is NOT allowed to exist for its own sake, but
only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class
of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and
in general to a higher EXISTENCE: like those sun-seeking climbing plants
in Java--they are called Sipo Matador,--which encircle an oak so
long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but
supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and
exhibit their happiness.

259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation,
and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a
certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary
conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals
in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one
organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle
more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF
SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will
to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one
must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental
weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest
of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of
peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest,
exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words
on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the
organization within which, as was previously supposed, the
individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every
healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying
organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals
within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the
incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground,
attract to itself and acquire ascendancy--not owing to any morality or
immorality, but because it LIVES, and because life IS precisely Will to
Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans
more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave
everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of
society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent--that sounds
to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should
refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a
depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of
the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence
of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to
Life--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is
the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of all history let us be so far honest towards
ourselves!

260. In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have
hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits
recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until
finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical
distinction was brought to light. There is MASTER-MORALITY and
SLAVE-MORALITY,--I would at once add, however, that in all higher and
mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of
the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and
mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close
juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions
of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly
conscious of being different from the ruled--or among the ruled class,
the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the first case, when it is
the rulers who determine the conception "good," it is the exalted, proud
disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that
which determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates
from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud
disposition displays itself he despises them. Let it at once be noted
that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad"
means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable",--the antithesis
"good" and "EVIL" is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the
insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised;
moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the
self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused,
the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:--it is a fundamental
belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. "We
truthful ones"--the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves. It is
obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first
applied to MEN; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied
to ACTIONS; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals
start with questions like, "Why have sympathetic actions been praised? "
The noble type of man regards HIMSELF as a determiner of values; he
does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is
injurious to me is injurious in itself;" he knows that it is he himself
only who confers honour on things; he is a CREATOR OF VALUES. He
honours whatever he recognizes in himself: such morality equals
self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude,
of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the
consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:--the noble
man also helps the unfortunate, but not--or scarcely--out of pity, but
rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The
noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power
over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who
takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has
reverence for all that is severe and hard. "Wotan placed a hard heart in
my breast," says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed
from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not
being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly:
"He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one. " The noble
and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality
which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others,
or in DESINTERESSEMENT, the characteristic of the moral; faith
in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards
"selflessness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless
scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart. "--It
is the powerful who KNOW how to honour, it is their art, their domain
for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition--all law
rests on this double reverence,--the belief and prejudice in favour of
ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of
the powerful; and if, reversely, men of "modern ideas" believe almost
instinctively in "progress" and the "future," and are more and more
lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas" has
complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of the ruling class,
however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste
in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's
equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all
that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or "as the heart desires,"
and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and
similar sentiments can have a place. The ability and obligation to
exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge--both only within the
circle of equals,--artfulness in retaliation, RAFFINEMENT of the idea
in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the
emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact, in order to be
a good FRIEND): all these are typical characteristics of the noble
morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modern
ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and also to
unearth and disclose. --It is otherwise with the second type of morality,
SLAVE-MORALITY. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering,
the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should
moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates?
Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of
man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with
his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the
powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a REFINEMENT of distrust of
everything "good" that is there honoured--he would fain persuade himself
that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand, THOSE
qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are
brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that
sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence,
humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most
useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of
existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility.
Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and
"evil":--power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil,
a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of
being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man
arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good"
man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is
regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when,
in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade
of depreciation--it may be slight and well-intentioned--at last attaches
itself to the "good" man of this morality; because, according to the
servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the SAFE
man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un
bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendancy, language
shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words "good"
and "stupid. "--A last fundamental difference: the desire for FREEDOM,
the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty
belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice and
enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an
aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating. --Hence we can understand
without further detail why love AS A PASSION--it is our European
specialty--must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its
invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant,
ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and
almost owes itself.

261. Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps most difficult for
a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny it, where another
kind of man thinks he sees it self-evidently. The problem for him is
to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of
themselves which they themselves do not possess--and consequently also
do not "deserve,"--and who yet BELIEVE in this good opinion
afterwards. This seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so
self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable,
that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful
about it in most cases when it is spoken of. He will say, for
instance: "I may be mistaken about my value, and on the other hand
may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others
precisely as I rate it:--that, however, is not vanity (but self-conceit,
or, in most cases, that which is called 'humility,' and also
'modesty'). " Or he will even say: "For many reasons I can delight in
the good opinion of others, perhaps because I love and honour them,
and rejoice in all their joys, perhaps also because their good opinion
endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion, perhaps
because the good opinion of others, even in cases where I do not share
it, is useful to me, or gives promise of usefulness:--all this, however,
is not vanity. " The man of noble character must first bring it home
forcibly to his mind, especially with the aid of history, that, from
time immemorial, in all social strata in any way dependent, the ordinary
man WAS only that which he PASSED FOR:--not being at all accustomed to
fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value than that
which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar RIGHT OF MASTERS to
create values). It may be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary
atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always WAITING
for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself
to it; yet by no means only to a "good" opinion, but also to a bad
and unjust one (think, for instance, of the greater part of the
self-appreciations and self-depreciations which believing women learn
from their confessors, and which in general the believing Christian
learns from his Church). In fact, conformably to the slow rise of the
democratic social order (and its cause, the blending of the blood
of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of
the masters to assign a value to themselves and to "think well" of
themselves, will now be more and more encouraged and extended; but
it has at all times an older, ampler, and more radically ingrained
propensity opposed to it--and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this older
propensity overmasters the younger. The vain person rejoices over EVERY
good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the point
of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or
falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: for he subjects
himself to both, he feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest
instinct of subjection which breaks forth in him. --It is "the slave"
in the vain man's blood, the remains of the slave's craftiness--and how
much of the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance! --which
seeks to SEDUCE to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, who
immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as
though he had not called them forth. --And to repeat it again: vanity is
an atavism.

262. A SPECIES originates, and a type becomes established and strong in
the long struggle with essentially constant UNFAVOURABLE conditions. On
the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species
which receive super-abundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of
protection and care, immediately tend in the most marked way to develop
variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in
monstrous vices). Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say
an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary or involuntary
contrivance for the purpose of REARING human beings; there are there men
beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make
their species prevail, chiefly because they MUST prevail, or else
run the terrible danger of being exterminated.
The favour, the
super-abundance, the protection are there lacking under which variations
are fostered; the species needs itself as species, as something which,
precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of
structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in
constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or
rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experience teaches it
what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that
it still exists, in spite of all Gods and men, and has hitherto been
victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone
it develops to maturity. It does so with severity, indeed it desires
severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education
of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the
relations of old and young, in the penal laws (which have an eye only
for the degenerating): it counts intolerance itself among the virtues,
under the name of "justice. " A type with few, but very marked features,
a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved, and reticent
men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and
nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes
of generations; the constant struggle with uniform UNFAVOURABLE
conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming
stable and hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results, the
enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more enemies among the
neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment
of life, are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and
constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as
necessary, as a condition of existence--if it would continue, it can
only do so as a form of LUXURY, as an archaizing TASTE. Variations,
whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or
deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the
greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual
and detach himself. At this turning-point of history there manifest
themselves, side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a
magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a
kind of TROPICAL TEMPO in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary
decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly
exploding egoisms, which strive with one another "for sun and light,"
and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for
themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality. It was this
morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent
the bow in so threatening a manner:--it is now "out of date," it is
getting "out of date. " The dangerous and disquieting point has been
reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life IS
LIVED BEYOND the old morality; the "individual" stands out, and is
obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and
artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-deliverance.
Nothing but new "Whys," nothing but new "Hows," no common formulas any
longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay,
deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the
genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad,
a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms
and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied
corruption. Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great
danger; this time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and
friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart,
into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and
volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have
to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the
end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and
produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow,
except one species of man, the incurably MEDIOCRE. The mediocre alone
have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves--they will
be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become
mediocre! " is now the only morality which has still a significance,
which still obtains a hearing. --But it is difficult to preach this
morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it
desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly
love--it will have difficulty IN CONCEALING ITS IRONY!

263. There is an INSTINCT FOR RANK, which more than anything else is
already the sign of a HIGH rank; there is a DELIGHT in the NUANCES
of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and habits. The
refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test
when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not
yet protected by the awe of authority from obtrusive touches and
incivilities: something that goes its way like a living touchstone,
undistinguished, undiscovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled
and disguised. He whose task and practice it is to investigate souls,
will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the
ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which
it belongs: he will test it by its INSTINCT FOR REVERENCE. DIFFERENCE
ENGENDRE HAINE: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like
dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed shrines, any
book bearing the marks of great destiny, is brought before it; while
on the other hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of the
eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is indicated that a soul
FEELS the nearness of what is worthiest of respect. The way in which, on
the whole, the reverence for the BIBLE has hitherto been maintained
in Europe, is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of
manners which Europe owes to Christianity: books of such profoundness
and supreme significance require for their protection an external
tyranny of authority, in order to acquire the PERIOD of thousands of
years which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them. Much has been
achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses
(the shallow-pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are not
allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences before
which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand--it
is almost their highest advance towards humanity. On the contrary, in
the so-called cultured classes, the believers in "modern ideas," nothing
is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of
eye and hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it
is possible that even yet there is more RELATIVE nobility of taste, and
more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of
the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading
DEMIMONDE of intellect, the cultured class.

264. It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have
preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent
economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like
in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were
accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures
and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether,
finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of
birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith--for their
"God,"--as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes
at every compromise. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have
the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his
constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is
the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents,
it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind
of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy
self-vaunting--the three things which together have constituted the
genuine plebeian type in all times--such must pass over to the child, as
surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture
one will only succeed in DECEIVING with regard to such heredity. --And
what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very
democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" MUST
be essentially the art of deceiving--deceiving with regard to origin,
with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator
who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out
constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you
are! "--even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time
to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what
results? "Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET. [FOOTNOTE: Horace's "Epistles,"
I. x. 24. ]

265. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit that egoism
belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief
that to a being such as "we," other beings must naturally be in
subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the
fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of
harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something
that may have its basis in the primary law of things:--if he sought a
designation for it he would say: "It is justice itself. " He acknowledges
under certain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that
there are other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this
question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged
ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect,
which he enjoys in intercourse with himself--in accordance with an
innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand. It is an
ADDITIONAL instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-limitation
in intercourse with his equals--every star is a similar egoist; he
honours HIMSELF in them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he
has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the ESSENCE of
all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things. The
noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive
instinct of requital, which is at the root of his nature. The notion of
"favour" has, INTER PARES, neither significance nor good repute; there
may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from
above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those
arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him
here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly--he looks either FORWARD,
horizontally and deliberately, or downwards--HE KNOWS THAT HE IS ON A
HEIGHT.

266. "One can only truly esteem him who does not LOOK OUT FOR
himself. "--Goethe to Rath Schlosser.

267. The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children:
"SIAO-SIN" ("MAKE THY HEART SMALL"). This is the essentially fundamental
tendency in latter-day civilizations. I have no doubt that an ancient
Greek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans
of today--in this respect alone we should immediately be "distasteful"
to him.

268. What, after all, is ignobleness? --Words are vocal symbols for
ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols
for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of
sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to
understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same
kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences IN
COMMON. On this account the people of one nation understand one another
better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use
the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under
similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there
ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that "understands itself"--namely, a
nation. In all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences
have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about
these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more
rapidly--the history of language is the history of a process of
abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension people always
unite closer and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the
need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary; not to
misunderstand one another in danger--that is what cannot at all be
dispensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friendships one has
the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery
has been made that in using the same words, one of the two parties has
feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears different from those of
the other. (The fear of the "eternal misunderstanding": that is the good
genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from too
hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them--and NOT some
Schopenhauerian "genius of the species"! ) Whichever groups of sensations
within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of
command--these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and
determine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man's estimates of
value betray something of the STRUCTURE of his soul, and wherein it
sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing now that
necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could
express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols,
it results on the whole that the easy COMMUNICABILITY of need,
which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and COMMON
experiences, must have been the most potent of all the forces which
have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary
people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more
select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are
liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and
seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces,
in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE,
the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the
gregarious--to the IGNOBLE--!

269. The more a psychologist--a born, an unavoidable psychologist
and soul-diviner--turns his attention to the more select cases and
individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy:
he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For
the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually
constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a
rule always before one's eyes. The manifold torment of the psychologist
who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then
discovers ALMOST repeatedly throughout all history, this universal
inner "desperateness" of higher men, this eternal "too late! " in every
sense--may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with
bitterness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at
self-destruction--of his "going to ruin" himself. One may perceive
in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delightful
intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men; the fact is thereby
disclosed that he always requires healing, that he needs a sort
of flight and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and
incisiveness--from what his "business"--has laid upon his conscience.
The fear of his memory is peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the
judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour,
admire, love, and glorify, where he has PERCEIVED--or he even conceals
his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. Perhaps
the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely
where he has learnt GREAT SYMPATHY, together with great CONTEMPT, the
multitude, the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learnt
great reverence--reverence for "great men" and marvelous animals, for
the sake of whom one blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the
dignity of mankind, and one's own self, to whom one points the young,
and in view of whom one educates them. And who knows but in all great
instances hitherto just the same happened: that the multitude worshipped
a God, and that the "God" was only a poor sacrificial animal! SUCCESS
has always been the greatest liar--and the "work" itself is a success;
the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in
their creations until they are unrecognizable; the "work" of the artist,
of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is REPUTED
to have created it; the "great men," as they are reverenced, are poor
little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values
spurious coinage PREVAILS. Those great poets, for example, such as
Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention
much greater names, but I have them in my mind), as they now appear, and
were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous,
and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust;
with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking
revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking
forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in
the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the
Will-o'-the-Wisps around the swamps, and PRETEND TO BE stars--the people
then call them idealists,--often struggling with protracted disgust,
with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold,
and obliges them to languish for GLORIA and devour "faith as it is"
out of the hands of intoxicated adulators:--what a TORMENT these great
artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once
found them out! It is thus conceivable that it is just from woman--who
is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunately eager
to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers--that THEY have
learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted SYMPATHY, which
the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand,
and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This
sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would
like to believe that love can do EVERYTHING--it is the SUPERSTITION
peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor,
helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love
is--he finds that it rather DESTROYS than saves! --It is possible that
under the holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden
one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LOVE:
the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that
never had enough of any human love, that DEMANDED love, that demanded
inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible
outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor
soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send
thither those who WOULD NOT love him--and that at last, enlightened
about human love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire
CAPACITY for love--who takes pity on human love, because it is so
paltry, so ignorant! He who has such sentiments, he who has such
KNOWLEDGE about love--SEEKS for death! --But why should one deal with
such painful matters? Provided, of course, that one is not obliged to do
so.

270. The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has
suffered deeply--it almost determines the order of rank HOW deeply men
can suffer--the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued
and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he KNOWS MORE than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with,
and "at home" in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which "YOU know
nothing"! --this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this
pride of the elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost
sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from
contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all
that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble:
it separates. --One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism,
along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes
suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that
is sorrowful and profound. They are "gay men" who make use of gaiety,
because they are misunderstood on account of it--they WISH to be
misunderstood. There are "scientific minds" who make use of science,
because it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to
the conclusion that a person is superficial--they WISH to mislead to a
false conclusion. There are free insolent minds which would fain conceal
and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of
Hamlet--the case of Galiani); and occasionally folly itself is the mask
of an unfortunate OVER-ASSURED knowledge. --From which it follows that it
is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask,"
and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

271. That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense
and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and
reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual
good-will: the fact still remains--they "cannot smell each other! " The
highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the
most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just
holiness--the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any
kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath,
any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out
of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into
clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:--just as much as such a
tendency DISTINGUISHES--it is a noble tendency--it also SEPARATES. --The
pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human.
And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as
impurity, as filth.

272. Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the
rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share
our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of
them, among our DUTIES.

273. A man who strives after great things, looks upon every one whom
he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and
hindrance--or as a temporary resting-place. His peculiar lofty BOUNTY
to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his elevation and
dominates. Impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemned
to comedy up to that time--for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the
end, as every means does--spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of
man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous in it.

274. THE PROBLEM OF THOSE WHO WAIT. --Happy chances are necessary, and
many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the
solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or "break forth,"
as one might say--at the right moment. On an average it DOES NOT happen;
and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who
hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they
wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late--the
chance which gives "permission" to take action--when their best youth,
and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many
a one, just as he "sprang up," has found with horror that his limbs are
benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! "It is too late," he has
said to himself--and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever
useless. --In the domain of genius, may not the "Raphael without
hands" (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the
exception, but the rule? --Perhaps genius is by no means so rare: but
rather the five hundred HANDS which it requires in order to tyrannize
over the [GREEK INSERTED HERE], "the right time"--in order to take
chance by the forelock!

275. He who does not WISH to see the height of a man, looks all the
more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground--and thereby
betrays himself.

276. In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is
better off than the nobler soul: the dangers of the latter must be
greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in
fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its
existence. --In a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost; not so
in man. --

277. It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man has finished
building his house, he finds that he has learnt unawares something
which he OUGHT absolutely to have known before he--began to build. The
eternal, fatal "Too late! " The melancholia of everything COMPLETED--!

278. --Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow thy path without scorn,
without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has
returned to the light insatiated out of every depth--what did it seek
down there? --with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their
loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what
hast thou done? Rest thee here: this place has hospitality for every
one--refresh thyself! And whoever thou art, what is it that now pleases
thee? What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it, whatever I have
I offer thee! "To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thou prying one,
what sayest thou! But give me, I pray thee---" What? what? Speak out!
"Another mask! A second mask! "

279. Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they
have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and
strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will
flee from them!

280. "Bad! Bad! What? Does he not--go back? " Yes! But you misunderstand
him when you complain about it. He goes back like every one who is about
to make a great spring.

281. --"Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it
of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about
myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without
delight in 'the subject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' and always
without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the
POSSIBILITY of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a
CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' which
theorists allow themselves:--this matter of fact is almost the most
certain thing I know about myself. There must be a sort of repugnance
in me to BELIEVE anything definite about myself. --Is there perhaps
some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own
teeth. --Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong? --but not to
myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me. "

282. --"But what has happened to you? "--"I do not know," he said,
hesitatingly; "perhaps the Harpies have flown over my table. "--It
sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes
suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves,
and shocks everybody--and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at
himself--whither? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with
his memories? --To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul,
and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger
will always be great--nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so.
Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does
not like to eat out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger
and thirst--or, should he nevertheless finally "fall to," of sudden
nausea. --We have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong;
and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult to
nourish, know the dangerous DYSPEPSIA which originates from a sudden
insight and disillusionment about our food and our messmates--the
AFTER-DINNER NAUSEA.

283. If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the
same time a noble self-control, to praise only where one DOES NOT
agree--otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is contrary
to good taste:--a self-control, to be sure, which offers excellent
opportunity and provocation to constant MISUNDERSTANDING. To be able to
allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must
not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose
misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement--or one will
have to pay dearly for it! --"He praises me, THEREFORE he acknowledges me
to be right"--this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life
of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and
friendship.

284. To live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond. . . To have,
or not to have, one's emotions, one's For and Against, according to
choice; to lower oneself to them for hours; to SEAT oneself on them as
upon horses, and often as upon asses:--for one must know how to make
use of their stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserve one's
three hundred foregrounds; also one's black spectacles: for there are
circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our
"motives. " And to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice,
politeness. And to remain master of one's four virtues, courage,
insight, sympathy, and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as
a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of
man and man--"in society"--it must be unavoidably impure. All society
makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime--"commonplace. "

285. The greatest events and thoughts--the greatest thoughts, however,
are the greatest events--are longest in being comprehended: the
generations which are contemporary with them do not EXPERIENCE such
events--they live past them. Something happens there as in the realm of
stars. The light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; and
before it has arrived man DENIES--that there are stars there. "How
many centuries does a mind require to be understood? "--that is also a
standard, one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith,
such as is necessary for mind and for star.

286. "Here is the prospect free, the mind exalted. " [FOOTNOTE: Goethe's
"Faust," Part II, Act V. The words of Dr.