--Is there perhaps some
enigma therein?
enigma therein?
Nietzsche - v12 - Beyond Good and Evil
Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say
an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary
or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rear-
ing 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
superabundance, the protection are there lacking
under which variations are fostered; the species
needs itself as species, as something which, pre-
cisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and
## p. 235 (#257) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
235
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 princi-
pally 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 aristo-
cratic 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 de-
generating): 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 estab-
lished, 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 archaïsing taste. Varia-
## p. 236 (#258) ############################################
236
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
-
tions, whether they be deviations into the higher,
finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities,
appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuber-
ance 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 oppos-
ing 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 dan-
gerous and disquieting point has been reached
when the greater, more manifold, more compre-
hensive 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
## p. 237 (#259) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
237
to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied cor-
ruption. 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
to-morrow, except one species of man, the incur-
ably mediocre. The mediocre alone have a pro-
spect of continuing and propagating themselves-
they will be the men of the future, the sole sur-
vivors; "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 pro-
## p. 238 (#260) ############################################
238
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
tected by the awe of authority from obtrusive
touches and incivilities : something that goes its
way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, un-
discovered, 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. Différence 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 pro-
foundness 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
## p. 239 (#261) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
239
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 inso-
lence 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 demi-
monde 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 econo-
misers 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 com-
manding 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 oid privileges of
birth and possession, in order to live wholly for
their faith—for their “God,”—as men of an inexor-
able 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, what-
ever 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
a
## p. 240 (#262) ############################################
240
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
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 suc-
ceed 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. *
265.
At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I sub-
mit 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 harsh-
ness, 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
* Horace's “Epistles," I. X. 24.
## p. 241 (#263) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
241
а
he would say: "It is justice itself. ”
He ac-
knowledges 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 assur-
ance, 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.
Q
## p. 242 (#264) ############################################
242
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
:
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 civilisations. I have no
doubt that an ancient Greek, also, would first of
all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of to-
day-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 re-
turning 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 ex-
periences 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
## p. 243 (#265) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
243
abbreviation; on the basis of this quick com-
prehension 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 friend-
ships 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 some-
thing of the structure of his soul, and wherein it
sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Sup-
posing 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 ex-
periences, must have been the most potent of all
the forces which have hitherto operated upon man-
kind. The more similar, the more ordinary people,
## p. 244 (#266) ############################################
244
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
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
needssternness 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 ruina-
tion, 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,
4
## p. 245 (#267) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
245
"
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 marvellous
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 wor-
shipped 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 unrecognisable; 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
"
## p. 246 (#268) ############################################
246
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
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-re-
appearing 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 in-
toxicated 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 un-
fortunately 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 multi-
tude, do not understand, and overwhelm with
prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This
sympathising 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
## p. 247 (#269) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
247
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 neces-
sary to protect itself from contact with officious and
## p. 248 (#270) ############################################
248
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
sympathising 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. There 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 appear-
ance, and because scientificalness leads to the con-
clusion 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 spiritualisa-
## p. 249 (#271) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
249
tion of the instinct in question. Any kind of
cognisance of an indescribable excess in the joy of
the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which per-
petually 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 responsi-
bilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise
of them, among our duties.
1
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.
## p. 250 (#272) ############################################
250
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
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 tyrannise over the kaipós, “the
right time”-in order to take chance by the fore-
lock !
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.
## p. 251 (#273) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
251
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 pro-
bability 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 melan-
cholia of everything completed ! -
6
278.
-Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow
thy path without scorn, without love, with un-
fathomable 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
## p. 252 (#274) ############################################
252
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
theem-” 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 com-
plain 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
## p. 253 (#275) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
253
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 every-
body—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
## p. 254 (#276) ############################################
254
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
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, there-
fore 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 neighbour-
hood and friendship.
}
284.
To live in a vast and proud tranquillity; always
beyond . . . To have, or not to have, one's emo-
tions, 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 spec-
tacles : 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
## p. 255 (#277) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
255
makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime-
commonplace. "
(
-
are
1
285.
The greatest events and thoughts—the greatest
thoughts, however, are the greatest events
longest in being comprehended : the generations
which are contemporary with them do not experi-
ence such events—they live past them. Something
happens there as in the realm of the 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. ” *
But there is a reverse kind of man, who is also
upon a height, and has also a free prospect-but
looks downwards.
287.
- What is noble? What does the word "noble "
still mean for us nowadays? How does the noble
man betray himself, how is he recognised under
this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeian-
ism, by which everything is rendered opaque and
* Goethe's "Faust,” Part II. , Act V. The words of Dr
Marianus.
## p. 256 (#278) ############################################
256
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
leaden - It is not his actions which establish his
claim-actions are always ambiguous, always in-
scrutable; neither is it his "works. " One finds
nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of
those who betray by their works that a profound
longing for nobleness impels them; but this very
need of nobleness is radically different from the
needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the
eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof.
It is not the works, but the belief which is here.
decisive and determines the order of rank-to em-
ploy once more an old religious formula with a
new and deeper meaning, -it is some fundamental
certainty which a noble soul has about itself, some-
thing which is not to be sought, is not to be
found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. The
noble soul has reverence for itself. -
288.
There are men who are unavoidably intellectual,
let them turn and twist themselves as they will,
and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes
-as though the hand were not a betrayer; it
always comes out at last that they have something
which they hide-namely, intellect. One of the
subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as
possible, and of successfully representing oneself to
be stupider than one really is—which in everyday
life is often as desirable as an umbrella,-is called
enthusiasm, including what belongs to it, for in-
stance, virtue. For as Galiani said, who was
obliged to know it: vertu est enthousiasme,
## p. 257 (#279) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
257
а
289.
In the writings of a recluse one always hears
something of the echo of the wilderness, something
of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of soli-
tude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself,
there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of
silence, of concealment. He who has sat day and
.
night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his
soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has
become a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or a
treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave—it may
be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine-his
ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-
colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the
depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative
and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-
by. The recluse does not believe that a philo-
sopher-supposing that a philosopher has always
in the first place been a recluse-ever expressed
his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not
books written precisely to hide what is in us?
-indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher can
have “ultimate and actual” opinions at all; whether
behind every cave in him there is not, and must
necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler,
stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss
behind every bottom, beneath every “foundation. "
.
Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy—this
is a recluse's verdict: “There is something arbitrary
in the fact that the philosopher came to a stand
here, took a retrospect and looked around; that he
here laid his spade aside and did not dig any
R
## p. 258 (#280) ############################################
258
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
9)
deeper—there is also something suspicious in it. ”
Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy ; every
opinion is also a lurking-place, every word is also a
mask.
290.
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being
understood than of being misunderstood. The
latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former
wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says:
Ah, why would you also have as hard a time of it
as I have ? "
291.
Man, a complex, mendacious, artful, and inscrut-
able animal, uncanny to the other animals by his
artifice and sagacity, rather than by his strength,
has invented the good conscience in order finally
to enjoy his soul as something simple; and the
whole of morality is a long, audacious falsification,
by virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight
of the soul becomes possible. From this point of
view there is perhaps much more in the conception
of “art” than is generally believed.
>
292.
A philosopher : that is a man who constantly
experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams
extraordinary things; who is struck by his own
thoughts as if they came from the outside, from
above and below, as a species of events and lightning-
flashes peculiar to him; who is perhaps himself a
storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous
## p. 259 (#281) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE ?
259
man, around whom there is always rumbling and
mumbling and gaping and something uncanny
going on. A philosopher : alas, a being who often
runs away from himself, is often afraid of him-
self—but whose curiosity always makes him “come
to himself” again.
L
293.
A man who says: “I like that, I take it for
my own, and mean to guard and protect it from
every one”; a man who can conduct a case, carry
out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep
hold of a woman, punish and overthrow insolence;
a man who has his indignation and his sword, and
to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed,
and even the animals willingly submit and naturally
belong; in short, a man who is a master by nature
—when such a man has sympathy, well! that
sympathy has value! But of what account is the
sympathy of those who suffer! Or of those even
who preach sympathy! There is nowadays,
throughout almost the whole of Europe, a sickly
irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and also
a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an
effeminising, which, with the aid of religion and
philosophical nonsense, seeks to deck itself out as
something superior — there is a regular cult of
suffering. The unmanliness of that which is called
“sympathy” by such groups of visionaries, is
always, I believe, the first thing that strikes the
eye. —One must resolutely and radically taboo this
latest form of bad taste; and finally I wish people
to put the good amulet, "gai saber” (“gay science,”
## p. 260 (#282) ############################################
260
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as a pro-
tection against it.
294.
The Olympian Vice. Despite the philosopher
who, as a genuine Englishman, tried to bring
laughter into bad repute in all thinking minds-
“ Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature,
which every thinking mind will strive to overcome
(Hobbes),- I would even allow myself to rank
philosophers according to the quality of their
laughing-up to those who are capable of golden
laughter. And supposing that Gods also philo-
sophise, which I am strongly inclined to believe,
owing to many reasons—I have no doubt that they
also know how to laugh thereby in an overman-
like and new fashion—and at the expense of all
serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule: it
seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even
in holy matters.
295.
The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious
one possesses it, the tempter-god and born rat-
catcher of consciences, whose voice can descend
into the nether-world of every soul, who neither
speaks a word nor casts a glance in which there
may not be some motive or touch of allurement,
to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how
to appear,-not as he is, but in a guise which
acts as an additional constraint on his followers to
press ever closer to him, to follow him more cordially
and thoroughly ;--the genius of the heart, which
## p. 261 (#283) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
261
imposes silence and attention on everything loud
and self-conceited, which smooths rough souls and
makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as a
mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in
them ;—the genius of the heart, which teaches the
clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp
more delicately; which scents the hidden and for-
gotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet
spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining-
rod for every grain of gold, long buried and im-
prisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart,
from contact with which every one goes away richer ;
not favoured or surprised, not as though gratified
and oppressed by the good things of others; but
richer in himself, newer than before, broken up,
blown upon, and sounded by a thawing wind; more
uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more
bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names,
full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will
and counter-current . . . but what am I doing, my
friends ? Of whom am I talking to you? Have
I forgotten myself so far that I have not even told
you his name? Unless it be that you have already
divined of your own accord who this questionable
God and spirit is, that wishes to be praised in such
a manner? For, as it happens to every one who
from childhood onward has always been on his
legs, and in foreign lands, I have also encountered
on my path many strange and dangerous spirits ;
above all, however, and again and again, the one
of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no less a
personage than the God Dionysus, the great equi-
vocator and tempter, to whom, as you know, I once
## p. 262 (#284) ############################################
262
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
:
offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits
-the last, as it seems to me, who has offered a
sacrifice to him, for I have found no one who could
understand what I was then doing. In the mean-
time, however, I have learned much, far too much,
about the philosophy of this God, and, as I said,
from mouth to mouth—1, the last disciple and
initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might
at last begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am
allowed, a little taste of this philosophy? In a
hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do
with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful,
and uncanny. The very fact that Dionysus is a
philosopher, and that therefore Gods also philo-
sophise, seems to me a novelty which is not unen-
snaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion pre-
cisely amongst philosophers ;-amongst you, my
friends, there is less to be said against it, except
that it comes too late and not at the right time;
for, as it has been disclosed to me, you are loth now-
adays to believe in God and gods. It may happen,
too, that in the frankness of my story I must go
further than is agreeable to the strict usages of your
ears ? Certainly the God in question went further,
very much further, in such dialogues, and was
always many paces ahead of me. . . . Indeed, if it
were allowed, I should have to give him, according
to human usage, fine ceremonious titles of lustre
and merit, I should have to extol his courage as
investigator and discoverer, his fearless honesty,
truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a God
does not know what to do with all that respectable
trumpery and pomp. “Keep that,” he would say,
## p. 263 (#285) ############################################
WHAT IS NOBLE?
263
"for thyself and those like thee, and whoever else
require it! I—have no reason to cover my naked-
ness ! ” One suspects that this kind of divinity and
philosopher perhaps lacks shame? —He once said:
“ Under certain circumstances I love mankind ”_
and referred thereby to Ariadne, who was present;
"in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave, in-
ventive animal, that has not his equal upon earth,
he makes his way even through all labyrinths. I
like man, and often think how I can still further
advance him, and make him stronger, more evil,
and more profound. ”—“Stronger, more evil, and
more profound ? " I asked in horror. “Yes," he said
again, “stronger, more evil, and more profound;
also more beautiful”—and thereby the tempter-god
smiled with his halcyon smile, as though he had
just paid some charming compliment. One here
sees at once that it is not only shame that this
divinity lacks ;-and in general there are good
grounds for supposing that in some things the
Gods could all of them come to us men for in-
struction. We men are—more human. -
296.
Alas! what are you, after all, my written and
painted thoughts ! Not long ago you were so
variegated, young, and malicious, so full of thorns
and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and
laugh—and now? You have already doffed your
novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to
become truths, so immortal do they look, so
pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever
otherwise ? What then do we write and paint, we
## p. 264 (#286) ############################################
264
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of
things which lend themselves to writing, what are
we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that
which is just about to fade and begins to lose its
odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms
and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds
strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let
themselves be captured with the hand—with our
hand! We immortalise what cannot live and fly
much longer, things only which are exhausted and
mellow! And it is only for your afternoon, you,
my written and painted thoughts, for which alone
I have colours, many colours perhaps, many varie-
gated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and
greens and reds ;-but nobody will divine thereby
how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks
and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved-
evil thoughts!
## p. 265 (#287) ############################################
FROM THE HEIGHTS.
By F. W. NIETZSCHE.
TRANSLATED BY L. A. MAGNUS.
I.
MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
My summer's park!
Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark :-
I peer for friends, am ready day and night,-
Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!
2.
Is not the glacier's grey to-day for you
Rose-garlanded ?
The brooklet seeks you; wind, cloud, with longing
thread
And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.
3.
My table was spread out for you on high :-
Who dwelleth so
Star-near, so near the grisly pit below ? -
My realm—what realm hath wider boundary?
My honey-who hath sipped its fragrancy?
S
## p. 266 (#288) ############################################
266
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
4.
Friends, ye are there! Woe me,-yet I am not
He whom ye seek ?
Ye stare and stop-better your wrath could speak!
I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And
what
I am, to you my friends, now am I not?
5.
Am I an other ? Strange am I to Me?
Yet from Me sprung?
A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?
Hindering too oft my own self's potency
Wounded and hampered by self-victory?
!
6.
I sought where-so the wind blow keenest. There
I learned to dwell
Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,
And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer ?
Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?
7.
Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled
o'er
With love and fear!
Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.
## p. 267 (#289) ############################################
FROM THE HEIGHTS.
267
8.
An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
My bow was bent!
Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent-
Woe now!
