No More Learning

The "Plodders. "—Persons slow of apprehension
think that slowness forms part of knowledge.
232.
Dreaming. —Either one does not dream at all,
or one dreams in an interesting manner. One
must learn to be awake in the same fashion:—
either not at all, or in an interesting manner.
233-
The most Dangerous Point of View. —What I
now do, or neglect to do, is as important for all
that is to come, as the greatest event of the past:
in this immense perspective of effects all actions
are equally great and small.
234-
Consolatory Words of a Musician. —"Your life
does not sound into people's ears: for them you
live a dumb life, and all refinements of melody,
all fond resolutions in following or leading the
way, are concealed from them. To be sure you do
not parade the thoroughfares with regimental
music,—but these good people have no right to
say on that account that your life is lacking in
music. He that hath ears let him hear. "
235-
Spirit and Character. —Many a one attains his
full height of character, but his spirit is not adapted
to the elevation,—and many a one reversely.


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 203
236.
To Move the Multitude. —Is it not necessary for
him who wants to move the multitude to give a
stage representation of himself? Has he not first
to translate himself into the grotesquely obvious,
and then set forth his whole personality and cause
in that vulgarised and simplified fashion?
237-
The Polite Man. —" He is so polite! "—Yes, he
has always a sop for Cerberus with him, and is
so timid that he takes everybody for Cerberus,
even you and me,—that is his " politeness. "
238.
Without Envy. —He is wholly without envy, but
there is no merit therein: for he wants to conquer
a land which no one has yet possessed and hardly
any one has even seen.
239-
The Joyless Person. —A single joyless person
is enough to make constant displeasure and a
clouded heaven in a household; and it is only
by a miracle that such a person is lacking! —
Happiness is not nearly such a contagious disease;
—how is that?
240.
On the Sea-Shore. —I would not build myself a
house (it is an element of my happiness not to be
a house-owner! ). If I had to do so, however, I
should build it, like many of the Romans, right


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202 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
231.
The "Plodders. "—Persons slow of apprehension
think that slowness forms part of knowledge.
232.
Dreaming. —Either one does not dream at all,
or one dreams in an interesting manner. One
must learn to be awake in the same fashion:—
either not at all, or in an interesting manner.
233-
The most Dangerous Point of View. —What I
now do, or neglect to do, is as important for all
that is to come, as the greatest event of the past:
in this immense perspective of effects all actions
are equally great and small.
234-
Consolatory Words of a Musician. —"Your life
does not sound into people's ears: for them you
live a dumb life, and all refinements of melody,
all fond resolutions in following or leading the
way, are concealed from them. To be sure you do
not parade the thoroughfares with regimental
music,—but these good people have no right to
say on that account that your life is lacking in
music. He that hath ears let him hear. "
235-
Spirit and Character. —Many a one attains his
full height of character, but his spirit is not adapted
to the elevation,—and many a one reversely.


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 203
.
236.
To Move the Multitude. —Is it not necessary for
him who wants to move the multitude to give a
stage representation of himself? Has he not first
to translate himself into the grotesquely obvious,
and then set forth his whole personality and cause
in that vulgarised and simplified fashion?
237-
The Polite Man. —" He is so polite! "—Yes, he
has always a sop for Cerberus with him, and is
so timid that he takes everybody for Cerberus,
even you and me,—that is his " politeness. "
238.
Without Envy. —He is wholly without envy, but
there is no merit therein: for he wants to conquer
a land which no one has yet possessed and hardly
any one has even seen.
239-
The Joyless Person. —A single joyless person
is enough to make constant displeasure and a
clouded heaven in a household; and it is only
by a miracle that such a person is lacking! —
Happiness is not nearly such a contagious disease;
—how is that?
240.
On the Sea-Shore. —I would not build myself a
house (it is an element of my happiness not to be
a house-owner! ). If I had to do so, however, I
should build it, like many of the Romans, right


## p. 204 (#272) ############################################

204 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
into the sea,—I should like to have some secrets
in common with that beautiful monster.
241.
Work and Artist. —This artist is ambitious and
nothing more; ultimately, however, his work is
only a magnifying glass, which he offers to every
one who looks in his direction.
242.
Suum cuique. —However great be my greed of
knowledge, I cannot appropriate aught of things
but what already belongs to me,—the property of
others still remains in the things. How is it
possible for a man to be a thief or a robber?
243-
Origin of "Good" and "Bad. "—He only will
devise an improvement who can feel that " this is
not good. "
244.
Thoughts and Words. —Even our thoughts we
are unable to render completely in words.
245.
Praise in Choice. —The artist chooses his subjects;
that is his mode of praising.
246.
Mathematics. —We want to carry the refinement
and rigour of mathematics into all the sciences, as
far as it is in any way possible, not in the belief that


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 205
we shall apprehend things in this way, but in order
thereby to assert our human relation to things.
Mathematics is only a means to general and
ultimate human knowledge.
247.
Habits. —All habits make our hand wittier and
our wit unhandier.
248.
Books. —Of what account is a book that never
carries us away beyond all books?
249.
The Sigh of the Seeker of Knowledge. —" Oh, my
covetousness! In this soul there is no disinterested-
ness—but an all-desiring self, which, by means of
many individuals, would fain see as with its own
eyes, and grasp as with its own hands—a self
bringing back even the entire past, and wanting
to lose nothing that could in any way belong to it!
Oh, this flame of my covetousness! Oh, that I
were reincarnated in a hundred individuals! "—He
who does not know this sigh by experience, does
not know the passion of the seeker of knowledge
either.
250.
Guilt. —Although the most intelligent judges of
the witches, and even the witches themselves, were
convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the guilt,
nevertheless, was not there. So it is with all
guilt.


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206 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
251.
Misunderstood Sufferers. —Great natures suffer
otherwise than their worshippers imagine; they
suffer most severely from the ignoble, petty emo-
tions of certain evil moments; in short, from doubt
of their own greatness;—not however from the
sacrifices and martyrdoms which their tasks require
of them. As long as Prometheus sympathises
with men and sacrifices himself for them, he is
happy and proud in himself; but on becoming
envious of Zeus and of the homage which mortals
pay him—then Prometheus suffers!
252.
Better to be in Debt. —" Better to remain in debt
than to pay with money which does not bear our
stamp! "—that is what our sovereignty prefers.
253-
Always at Home. —One day we attain our goal—
and then refer with pride to the long journeys we
have made to reach it. In truth, we did not notice
that we travelled. We got into the habit of think-
ing that we were at home in every place.
254.
Against Embarrassment. —He who is always
thoroughly occupied is rid of all embarrassment.
255-
Imitators. —A : "What? You don't want to have
imitators? " B: "I don't want people to do any-


## p. 207 (#275) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 207
thing after me; I want every one to do something
before himself (as a pattern to himself)—just as /
do. " A: "Consequently—? "
256.
Skinniness. —All profound men have their happi-
ness in imitating the flying-fish for once, and
playing on the crests of the waves; they think
that what is best of all in things is their surface:
their skinniness—sit venia verbo.
257.
From Experience. —A person often does not know
how rich he is, until he learns from experience what
rich men even play the thief on him.
258.
The Deniers of Chance. —No conqueror believes
in chance.
259.
From Paradise. —"Good and Evil are God's
prejudices "—said the serpent.
260.
One times One. —One only is always in the wrong,
but with two truth begins. —One only cannot
prove himself right; but two are already beyond
refutation.
261.
Originality. —What is originality? To see some-
thing that does not yet bear a name, that cannot
yet be named, although it is before everybody's


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208 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
eyes. As people are usually constituted, it is the
name that first makes a thing generally visible to
them. —Original persons have also for the most
part been the namers of things.
262.
Sub specie aeterni. —A: "You withdraw faster
and faster from the living; they will soon strike
you out of their lists ! "—B: "It is the only way
to participate in the privilege of the dead. " A:
"In what privilege ? "—B: "No longer having to
die. "
263.
Without Vanity. —When we love we want our
defects to remain concealed,—not out of vanity, but
lest the person loved should suffer therefrom.
Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,—
and not out of vanity either.
264.
What we Do. —What we do is never understood,
but only praised and blamed.
265.
Ultimate Scepticism. —But what after all are
man's truths ? —They are his irrefutable errors.
266.
Where Cruelty is Necessary. —He who is great is
cruel to his second-rate virtues and judgments.


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 209
267.
With a high Aim. —With a high aim a person
is superior even to justice, and not only to his
deeds and his judges.
268.
What makes Heroic? —To face simultaneously
one's greatest suffering and one's highest hope.
269.
What dost thou Believe in ? —In this: That the
weights of all things must be determined anew.
270.
What Saith thy Conscience? —"Thou shalt become
what thou art. "
271.
Where are thy Greatest Dangers? —In pity.
272.
What dost thou Love in others ? —My hopes.
273-
Whom dost thou call Bad? —Him who always
wants to put others to shame.
274.
What dost thou think most humane ? —To spare
a person shame.
275.
What is the Seal of Liberty Attained? —To be
no longer ashamed of oneself.
14


## p. 210 (#278) ############################################



## p.
211 (#279) ############################################

BOOK FOURTH
SANCTUS JANUARIUS
Thou who with cleaving fiery
lances
The stream of my soul from
its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it
advances
To enter with glorious hoping
the sea:
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet
constraint,—
So it praises thy wondrous en-
deavour,
January, thou beauteous saint!
Genoa, January 1882.
V


## p. 212 (#280) ############################################



## p. 213 (#281) ############################################

276.
For the New Year. —I still live, I still think; I
must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo
cogito: cogito, ergo sum. To-day everyone takes
the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite
thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have
wished for myself to-day, and what thought first
crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought
to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of
all my future life! I want more and more to
perceive the necessary characters in things as the
beautiful: — I shall thus be one of those who
beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth
be my love! I do not want to wage war with the
ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even
to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be
my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I
wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!
277.
Personal Providence. —There is a certain climax
in life, at which, notwithstanding all our freedom,
and however much we may have denied all direct-
ing reason and goodness in the beautiful chaos
of existence, we are once more in great danger
of intellectual bondage, and have to face our


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214 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
hardest test. For now the thought of a personal
Providence first presents itself before us with
its most persuasive force, and has the best of
advocates, apparentness, in its favour, now when it
is obvious that all and everything that happens to
us always turns out for the best. The life of every
day and of every hour seems to be anxious for
nothing else but always to prove this proposition
anew; let it be what it will, bad or good weather,
the loss of a friend, a sickness, a calumny, the
non-receipt of a letter, the spraining of one's
foot, a glance into a shop-window, a counter-
argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a
deception :—it shows itself immediately, or very
soon afterwards as something "not permitted to
be absent,"—it is full of profound significance and
utility precisely for us! Is there a more dangerous
temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in the
Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods,
and believe in some anxious and mean Divinity,
who knows personally every little hair on our
heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most
wretched services? Well—I mean in spite of all
this! we want to leave the Gods alone (and the
serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content
ourselves with the assumption that our own
practical and theoretical skilfulness in explaining
and suitably arranging events has now reached its
highest point. We do not want either to think
too highly of this dexterity of our wisdom, when
the wonderful harmony which results from play-
ing on our instrument sometimes surprises us
too much; a harmony which sounds too well for


## p. 215 (#283) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 215
us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In fact, now
and then there is one who plays with us—beloved
Chance: he leads our hand occasionally, and even
the all-wisest Providence could not devise any finer
music than that of which our foolish hand is then
capable.
278.
The Thought of Death. —It gives me a melancholy
happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of
streets, of necessities, of voices: how much en-
joyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty
life and drunkenness of life comes to light here
every moment! And yet it will soon be so still
for all these shouting, lively, life-loving people!
How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling-
companion stands behind him! It is always as in
the last moment before the departure of an emi-
grant-ship: people have more than ever to say to
one another, the hour • presses, the ocean with its
lonely silence waits impatiently behind all the
noise—so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all,
all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a
small matter, that the near future is everything:
hence this haste, this crying, this self-deafening
and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be
foremost in this future,—and yet death and the
stillness of death are the only things certain and
common to all in this future! How strange that this
sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises
almost no influence on men, and that they are the
furthest from regarding themselves as the brother-
hood of death! It makes me happy to see that


## p. 215 (#284) ############################################



## p. 215 (#285) ############################################

mis- *z
f> k ie-
WSOTL-u
v,-: _


## p. 215 (#286) ############################################

214 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
hardest test. For now the thought of a personal
Providence first presents itself before us with
its most persuasive force, and has the best of
advocates, apparentness, in its favour, now when it
is obvious that all and everything that happens to
us always turns out for the best. The life of every
day and of every hour seems to be anxious for
nothing else but always to prove this proposition
anew; let it be what it will, bad or good weather,
the loss of a friend, a sickness, a calumny, the
non-receipt of a letter, the spraining of one's
foot, a glance into a shop-window, a counter-
argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a
deception :—it shows itself immediately, or very
soon afterwards as something "not permitted to
be absent,"—it is full of profound significance and
utility precisely for us! Is there a more dangerous
temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in the
Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods,
and believe in some anxious and mean Divinity,
who knows personally every little hair on our
heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most
wretched services? Well—I mean in spite of all
this! we want to leave the Gods alone (and the
serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content
ourselves with the assumption that our own
practical and theoretical skilfulness in explaining
and suitably arranging events has now reached its
highest point. We do not want either to think
too highly of this dexterity of our wisdom, when
the wonderful harmony which results from play-
ing on our instrument sometimes surprises us
too much: a harmony which sounds too well for


## p. 215 (#287) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 215
us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In fact, now
and then there is one who plays with us—beloved
Chance: he leads our hand occasionally, and even
the all-wisest Providence could not devise any finer
music than that of which our foolish hand is then
capable.
278.
The Thought of Death. —It gives me a melancholy
happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of
streets, of necessities, of voices: how much en-
joyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty
life and drunkenness of life comes to light here
every moment! And yet it will soon be so still
for all these shouting, lively, life-loving people!
How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling-
companion stands behind him! It is always as in
the last moment before the departure of an emi-
grant-ship: people have more than ever to say to
one another, the hour • presses, the ocean with its
lonely silence waits impatiently behind all the
noise—so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all,
all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a
small matter, that the near future is everything:
hence this haste, this crying, this self-deafening
and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be
foremost in this future,—and yet death and the
stillness of death are the only things certain and
common to all in this future! How strange that this
sole thing that is certain and common to all,exercises
almost no influence on men, and that they are the
furthest from regarding themselves as the brother-
hood of death! It makes me happy to see that


## p. 216 (#288) ############################################

2l6 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
men do not want to think at all of the idea of death!
I would fain do something to make the idea of life
even a hundred times more worthy of their atten-
tion.
279.
Stellar Friendship. —We were friends, and have
become strangers to each other. But this is as it
ought to be, and we do not want either to conceal
or obscure the fact, as if we had to be ashamed of
it. We are two ships, each of which has its goal
and its course; we may, to be sure, cross one
another in our paths, and celebrate a feast together
as we did before,—and then the gallant ships lay
quietly in one harbour, and in one sunshine, so
that it might have been thought they were
already at their goal, and that they had had one
goal. But then the almighty strength of our tasks
forced us apart once more into different seas and
into different zones, and perhaps we shall never
see one another again,—or perhaps we may see
one another, but not know one another again; the
different seas and suns have altered us! That we
had to become strangers to one another is the law
to which we are subject: just by that shall we
become more sacred to one another! Just by
that shall the thought of our former friendship
become holier! There is probably some immense,
invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our
courses and goals, so widely different, may be
comprehended as small stages of the way,—let us
raise ourselves to this thought! But our life is
too short, and our power of vision too limited for


## p. 217 (#289) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 217
us to be more than friends in the sense of that
sublime possibility. —And so we will believe in our
stellar friendship, though we should have to be
terrestrial enemies to one another.
280.
Architecture for Thinkers. —An insight is needed
(and that probably very soon) as to what is specially
lacking in our great cities—namely, quiet, spacious,
and widelyextended places for reflection, places with
long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too
sunny days, where no noise of wagons or of shouters
would penetrate, and where a more refined propriety
would prohibit loud praying even to the priest:
buildings and situations which as a whole would
express the sublimity of self-communion and
seclusion from the world. The time is past when
the Church possessed the monopoly of reflection,
when the vita contemplativa had always in the first
place to be the vita religiosa: and everything that
the Church has built expresses this thought. I
know not how we could content ourselves with
their structures, even if they should be divested
of their ecclesiastical purposes: these structures
speak a far too pathetic and too biassed speech, as
houses of God and places of splendour for super-
natural intercourse, for us godless ones to be able
to think our thoughts in them. We want to have
ourselves translated into stone and plant, we want
to go for a walk in ourselves when we wander in
these halls and gardens.


## p. 218 (#290) ############################################

2l8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
28l.
Knowing how to Find the End. —Masters of the
first rank are recognised by knowing in a perfect
manner how to find the end, in the whole as well
as in the part; be it the end of a melody or of a
thought, be it the fifth act of a tragedy or of a state
affair. The masters of the second degree always
become restless towards the end, and seldom dip
down into the sea with such proud, quiet equilibrium
as, for example, the mountain-ridge at Porto fino—
where the Bay of Genoa sings its melody to an end.
282.
The Gait. —There are mannerisms of the intellect
by which even great minds betray that they
originate from the populace, or from the semi-
populace :—it is principally the gait and step
of their thoughts which betray them; they cannot
walk. It was thus that even Napoleon, to his
profound chagrin, could not walk "legitimately"
and in princely fashion on occasions when it was
necessary to do so properly, as in great coronation
processions and on similar occasions: even there he
was always just the leader of a column—proud and
brusque at the same time, and very self-conscious
of it all. —It is something laughable to see those
writers who make the folding robes of their periods
rustle around them: they want to cover their feet.
283.
Pioneers. —I greet all the signs indicating that a
more manly and warlike age is commencing, which
will, above all, bring heroism again into honour I


## p. 219 (#291) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS 219
For it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age,
and gather the force which the latter will one day
require,—the age which will carry heroism into know-
ledge, and wage war for the sake of ideas and their
consequences. For that end many brave pioneers
are now needed, who, however, cannot originate out
of nothing,—and just as little out of the sand and
slime of present-day civilisation and the culture of
great cities: men silent, solitary and resolute, who
know how to be content and persistent in invisible
activity: men who with innate disposition seek in all
things that which is to be overcome in them: men to
whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity, and con-
tempt of the great vanities belong just as much as
do magnanimity in victory and indulgence to the
trivial vanities of all the vanquished: men with
an acute and independent judgment regarding all
victors, and concerning the part which chance has
played in the winning of victory and fame: men
with their own holidays, their own work-days, and
their own periods of mourning; accustomed to
command with perfect assurance, and equally ready,
if need be, to obey, proud in the one case as in the
other, equally serving their own interests: men
more imperilled, more productive, more happy!
For believe me ! —the secret of realising the largest
productivity and the greatest enjoyment of existence
is to live in danger! Build your cities on the slope
of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unexplored
seas! Live in war with your equals and with
yourselves! Be robbers and spoilers, ye know-
ing ones, as long as ye cannot be rulers and
possessors | The time will soon pass when you


## p. 219 (#292) ############################################

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## p. 219 (#293) ############################################

SANCTUS JANUARIUS
221
: and no longer to seek, thou art opposed to any kind
of ultimate peace, thou desirest the eternal recur-
rence of war and peace :-man of renunciation,
wilt thou renounce in all these things? Who
will give thee the strength to do so ? No one has
yet had this strength! ”—There is a lake which one
day refused to flow away, and threw up a dam at
the place where it had hitherto flowed away: since
then this lake has always risen higher and higher.
Perhaps the very renunciation will also furnish us
with the strength with which the renunciation itself
can be borne; perhaps man will ever rise higher
and higher from that point onward, when he no
longer flows out into a God.
286.
A Digression. —Here are hopes; but what will
you see and hear of them, if you have not experi-
enced glance and glow and dawn of day in your
own souls? I can only suggest—I cannot do more!
To move the stones, to make animals men—would
you have me do that? Alas, if you are yet stones
and animals, seek first your Orpheus !
OM
287.
Love of Blindness. —"My thoughts,” said the
wanderer to his shadow, "ought to show me where
I stand, but they should not betray to me whither I
go. I love ignorance of the future, and do not
want to come to grief by impatience and antici-
patory tasting of promised things. ”


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224
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
into the sublime. Much of the vague, which is
fuses to take form, has been reserved and uties
for the perspectives it is meant to give a !
of the remote and immeasurable. In the e
when the work has been completed, it is reveat
how it was the constraint of the same taste 3
organised and fashioned it in whole or in
whether the taste was good or bad is of
importance than one thinks,-it is sufficient
it was a taste ! —It will be the strong imperi
natures which experience their most refined
in such constraint, in such confinement and a
fection under their own law; the passion of the
violent volition lessens at the sight of all disciple
nature, all conquered and ministering nature:
when they have palaces to build and gardens ;
lay out, it is not to their taste to allow nature :
be free. —It is the reverse with weak characte
who have not power over themselves, and a
the restriction of style: they feel that if
repugnant constraint were laid upon them, they
would necessarily become vulgarised under :
they become slaves as soon as they serve, the
hate service. Such intellects—they may be inte
lects of the first rank—are always concerned
fashioning or interpreting themselves and the
surroundings as free nature—wild, arbitrary, far
tastic, confused and surprising : and it is wel 1
them to do so, because only in this manner and
they please themselves! For one thing is need
namely, that man should attain to satisfaction w
himself—be it but through this or that fable as
artifice: it is only then that man's aspect is at a


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS
225
indurable! He who is dissatisfied with himself is
ver ready to avenge himself on that account: we
thers will be his victims, if only in having always
199 o endure his ugly aspect. For the aspect of the
igly makes one mean and sad.
servers
291.
: Genoa. —I have looked upon this city, its villas
ind pleasure-grounds, and the wide circuit of its
Paramedic nhabited heights and slopes, for a considerable
** ime: in the end I must say that I see countenances
ere but of past generations,—this district is strewn with
the images of bold and autocratic men. They have
ar "lived and have wanted to live on—they say so
at the es with their houses, built and decorated for centuries,
ideas and not for the passing hour: they were well
to disposed to life, however ill-disposed they may
? 2st * soften have been towards themselves. I always see
Se the builder, how he casts his eye on all that is
tee the built around him far and near, and likewise on
thers is the city, the sea, and the chain of mountains; how
said she expresses power and conquest in his gaze:
all this he wishes to fit into his plan, and in the
in as trend make it his property, by its becoming a
beri portion of the same. The whole district is over-
1215 w grown with this superb, insatiable egoism of the
hemozit desire to possess and exploit; and as these men
do when abroad recognised no frontiers, and in their
ap: thirst for the new placed a new world beside the
sthiss old, so also at home everyone rose up against
To this everyone else, and devised some mode of expressing
out his superiority, and of placing between himself and
his neighbour his personal illimitableness. Everyone
's 2572
15


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214 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
hardest test. For now the thought of a personal
Providence first presents itself before us with
its most persuasive force, and has the best of
advocates, apparentness, in its favour, now when it
is obvious that all and everything that happens to
us always turns out for the best. The life of every
day and of every hour seems to be anxious for
nothing else but always to prove this proposition
anew; let it be what it will, bad or good weather,
the loss of a friend, a sickness, a calumny, the
non-receipt of a letter, the spraining of one's
foot, a glance into a shop-window, a counter-
argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a
deception :—it shows itself immediately, or very
soon afterwards as something "not permitted to
be absent,"—it is full of profound significance and
utility precisely for us! Is there a more dangerous
temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in the
Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods,
and believe in some anxious and mean Divinity,
who knows personally every little hair on our
heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most
wretched services? Well—I mean in spite of all
this! we want to leave the Gods alone (and the
serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content
ourselves with the assumption that our own
practical and theoretical skilfulness in explaining
and suitably arranging events has now reached its
highest point. We do not want either to think
too highly of this dexterity of our wisdom, when
the wonderful harmony which results from play-
ing on our instrument sometimes surprises us
too much: a harmony which sounds too well for


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS
227
all these good things will finally acquire a popu-
larity and a street-cry for themselves : but then
all the gold on them will also be worn off, and
more besides : all the gold in them will have
changed into lead. Truly, you understand the
reverse art of alchemy, the depreciating of the
most valuable things ! Try, just for once, another
recipe, in order not to realise as hitherto the
opposite of what you mean to attain: deny those
good things, withdraw from them the applause of
the populace and discourage the spread of them,
make them once more the concealed chastities of
solitary souls, say that morality is something for-
bidden! Perhaps you will thus win over for those
things the sort of men who are only of any ac-
count, I mean the heroic. But then there must be
something formidable in them, and not as hitherto
something disgusting! Might one not be in-
clined to say at present with reference to morality
what Master Eckardt says: “I pray God to deliver
me from God! "
293.
Our Atmosphere. —We know it well: to him who
only casts a glance now and then at science, as
in taking a walk (in the manner of women, and
alas! also like many artists), the strictness in its
service, its inexorability in small matters as well
as in great, its rapidity in weighing, judging and
condemning, produce something of a feeling of
giddiness and fright. It is especially terrifying to
him that the hardest is here demanded, that the
best is done without the reward of praise or dis-
tinction; it is rather as among soldiers-almost


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2l6 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
men do not want to think at all of the idea of death!
I would fain do something to make the idea of life
even a hundred times more worthy of their atten-
tion.
279.
Stellar Friendship. —We were friends, and have
become strangers to each other. But this is as it
ought to be, and we do not want either to conceal
or obscure the fact, as if we had to be ashamed of
it. We are two ships, each of which has its goal
and its course; we may, to be sure, cross one
another in our paths, and celebrate a feast together
as we did before,—and then the gallant ships lay
quietly in one harbour, and in one sunshine, so
that it might have been thought they were
already at their goal, and that they had had one
goal. But then the almighty strength of our tasks
forced us apart once more into different seas and
into different zones, and perhaps we shall never
see one another again,—or perhaps we may see
one another, but not know one another again; the
different seas and suns have altered us! That we
had to become strangers to one another is the law
to which we are subject: just by that shall we
become more sacred to one another! Just by
that shall the thought of our former friendship
become holier! There is probably some immense,
invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our
courses and goals, so widely different, may be
comprehended as small stages of the way,—let us
raise ourselves to this thought! But our life is
too short, and our power of vision too limited for


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 217
us to be more than friends in the sense of that
sublime possibility. —And so we will believe in our
stellar friendship, though we should have to be
terrestrial enemies to one another.
280.
Architecture for Thinkers. —An insight is needed
(and that probably very soon) as to what is specially
lacking in our great cities—namely, quiet, spacious,
and widelyextended places for reflection, places with
long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too
sunny days, where no noise of wagons or of shouters
would penetrate, and where a more refined propriety
would prohibit loud praying even to the priest:
buildings and situations which as a whole would
express the sublimity of self-communion and
seclusion from the world. The time is past when
the Church possessed the monopoly of reflection,
when the vita contemplativa had always in the first
place to be the vita religiosa: and everything that
the Church has built expresses this thought. I
know not how we could content ourselves with
their structures, even if they should be divested
of their ecclesiastical purposes: these structures
speak a far too pathetic and too biassed speech, as
houses of God and places of splendour for super-
natural intercourse, for us godless ones to be able
to think our thoughts in them. We want to have
ourselves translated into stone and plant, we want
to go for a walk in ourselves when we wander in
these halls and gardens.


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THE OFTL WISDOM, IV
characteristic behef of passion, the belief in ever-
lasting gurazion; I am to be envied for having
jound it and recognised it), and then it nourishes
me a: 2500 aně at eve, and spreads a profound
satisfaction around me and in me, so that I have
Do longing for anything else, not needing to
compare, or despise, or hate. But one day the
habt has had its time: the good thing separates
from me, not as something which then inspires
disgust is me—bat peaceably and as though satis.
bied with me, as I am with it; as if we had to be
mutually thankful, and thus shook hands for
farewe! ! And already the new habit waits at the
door, and similarly also my belief-indestructible
fool and sage that I am that this new habit will
be the right one, the ultimate right one. So it is
with me as regards foods, thoughts, men, cities,
poems, music, doctrines, arrangements of the day,
and modes of life. —On the other hand, I hate
permanent habits, and feel as if a tyrant came
into my neighbourhood, and as if my life's breath
condensed, when events take such a form that per-
manent habits seem necessarily to grow out of them:
for example, through an official position, through
constant companionship with the same persons,
through a settled abode, or through a uniform state
of health. Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I
am gratefully disposed to all my misery and sick-
ness, and to whatever is imperfect in me, because such
things leave me a hundred back-doors through which
I can escape from permanent habits. The most
unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible
thing, would be a life without habits, a life which


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 2IO.