The
painful conviction, tearing and gnawing at his vitals,
that it was necessary to bid farewell, finds full ex-
pression in the character of Tasso.
painful conviction, tearing and gnawing at his vitals,
that it was necessary to bid farewell, finds full ex-
pression in the character of Tasso.
Nietzsche - v07 - Human All-Too-Human - b
110 (#130) ############################################
IIO HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
circuitous routes and mountain paths, and, to the
astonishment of the non-subtle, rejoice exceedingly.
215-
Morals of Savants. —A regular and rapid
advance in the sciences is only possible when the
individual is compelled to be not so distrustful as
to test every calculation and assertion of others, in
fields which are remote from his own. A necessary
condition, however, is that every man should have
competitors in his own sphere, who are extremely
distrustful and keep a sharp eye upon him. From
this juxtaposition of " not too distrustful" and " ex-
tremely distrustful" arises sincerity in the republic
of learning.
216.
Reasons for Sterility. —There are highly
gifted minds which are always sterile only because,
from temperamental weakness, they are too impa-
tient to wait for their pregnancy.
217
The Perverted World of Tears. — The
manifold discomforts which the demands of higher
culture cause to man finally pervert his nature to
such an extent that he usually keeps himself stoical
and unbending. Thus he has tears in reserve only
for rare occasions of happiness, so that many must
weep even at the enjoyment of painlessness—only
when happy does his heart still beat.
## p. 111 (#131) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. Ill
218.
The Greeks as Interpreters. —When we
speak of the Greeks we unwittingly speak of to-day
and yesterday; their universally known history is
a blank mirror, always reflecting something that is
not in the mirror itself. We enjoy the freedom of
speaking about them in order to have the right
of being silent about others—so that these Greeks
themselves may whisper something in the ear of
the reflective reader. Thus the Greeks facilitate to
modern men the communication of much that is
debatable and hard to communicate.
219.
Of the Acquired Character of the Greeks.
—We are easily led astray by the renowned Greek
clearness,transparency,simplicity,and order,by their
crystal-like naturalness and crystal-like art, into be-
lieving that all these gifts were bestowed on the
Greeks—for instance, that they could not but write
well, as Lichtenberg expressed it on one occasion.
Yet no statement could be more hasty and more
untenable. The history of prose from Gorgias to
Demosthenes shows a course of toiling and wrest-
ling towards light from the obscure, overloaded,
and tasteless, reminding one of the labour of heroes
who had to construct the first roads through forest
and bog. The dialogue of tragedy was the real
achievement of the dramatist, owing to its uncom-
mon clearness and precision, whereas the national
tendency was to riot in symbolism and innuendo,
a tendency expressly fostered by the great choral
## p. 112 (#132) ############################################
112 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
lyric. Similarly it was the achievement of Homer
to liberate the Greeks from Asiatic pomp and
gloom, and to have attained the clearness of archi-
tecture in details great and small. Nor was it by any
means thought easy to say anything in a pure and
illuminating style. How else should we account for
the great admiration for the epigram of Simonides,
which shows itself so simple, with no gilded points
or arabesques of wit, but says all that it has to say
plainly and with the calm of the sun, not with the
straining after effect of the lightning. Since the
struggle towards light from an almost native twilight
is Greek, a thrill of jubilation runs through the people
when they hear a laconic sentence, the language of
elegy or the maxims of the Seven Wise Men. Hence
they were so fond of giving precepts in verse, a prac-
tice that we find objectionable. This was the true
Apolline task of the Hellenic spirit, with the aim
of rising superior to the perils of metre and the
obscurity which is otherwise characteristic of poetry.
Simplicity, flexibility, and sobriety were wrestled
for and not given by nature to this people. The
danger of a relapse into Asianism constantly hovered
over the Greeks, and really overtook them from time
to time like a murky, overflowing tide of mystical
impulses, primitive savagery and darkness. We
see them plunge in; we see Europe, as it were,
flooded, washed away—for Europe was very small
then; but they always emerge once more to the
light, good swimmers and divers that they are, those
fellow-countrymen of Odysseus.
## p. 113 (#133) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 113
220.
The Pagan Characteristic. —Perhaps there
is nothing more astonishing to the observer of the
Greek world than to discover that the Greeks from
time to time held festivals, as it were, for all their
passions and evil tendencies alike, and in fact even
established a kind of series of festivals, by order of
the State, for their "all-too-human. " This is the
pagan characteristic of their world, which Christianity-
has never understood and never can understand, and
has always combated and despised. —They accepted
this all-too-human as unavoidable, and preferred,
instead of railing at it, to give it a kind of secondary
right by grafting it on to the usages of society and
religion. All in man that has power they called
divine, and wrote it on the walls of their heaven.
They do not deny this natural instinct that expresses
itself in evil characteristics, but regulate and limit
it to definite cults and days, so as to turn those tur-
bulent streams into as harmless a course as possible,
after devising sufficient precautionary measures.
That is the root of all the moral broad-mindedness
of antiquity. To the wicked, the dubious, the back-
ward, the animal element, as to the barbaric, pre-
Hellenic and Asiatic, which still lived in the depths
of Greek nature, they allowed a moderate outflow,
and did not strive to destroy it utterly. The whole
system was under the domain of the State, which
was built up not on individuals or castes, but on
common human qualities. In the structure of the
State the Greeks show thatwonderful sense for typi-
cal facts which later on enabled them to become in-
vestigators of Nature, historians, geographers, and
vol. 11. H
## p. 114 (#134) ############################################
114 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
philosophers. It was not a limited moral law of
priests or castes, which had to decide about the
constitution of the State and State worship, but the
most comprehensive view of the reality of all that is
human. Whence do the Greeks derive this freedom,
this sense of reality? Perhaps from Homer and the
poets who preceded him. For just those poets whose
nature is generally not the most wise or just possess,
in compensation, that delight in reality and activity
of every kind, and prefer not to deny even evil. It
suffices for them if evil moderates itself, does not
kill or inwardly poison everything—in other words,
they have similar ideas to those of the founders of
Greek constitutions, and were their teachers and
forerunners.
221.
Exceptional Greeks. —In Greece, deep, thor-
ough, serious minds were the exception. The na-
tional instinct tended rather to regard the serious
and thorough as a kind of grimace. To borrow
forms from a foreign source, not to create but to
transform into the fairest shapes—that is Greek.
To imitate, not for utility but for artistic illusion,
ever and anon to gain the mastery over forced
seriousness, to arrange, beautify, simplify—that is
the continual task from Homer to the Sophists of
the third and fourth centuries of our era, who are all
outward show, pompous speech, declamatory ges-
tures, and address themselves to shallow souls that
care only for appearance, sound, and effect. And
now let us estimate the greatness of those exceptional
Greeks, who created science! Whoever tells of them,
tells the most heroic story of the human mind!
## p. 115 (#135) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 115
222.
Simplicity not the First nor the Last
Thing in Point of Time. —In the history of
religious ideas many errors about development
and false gradations are made in matters which
in reality are not consecutive outgrowths but con-
temporary yet separate phenomena. In particular,
simplicity has still far too much the reputation of
being the oldest, the initial thing. Much that is
human arises by subtraction and division, and not
merely by doubling, addition, and unification. —For
instance, men still believe in a gradual development
of the idea of God from those unwieldy stones and
blocks of wood up to the highest forms of anthropo-
morphism. Yet the fact is that so long as divinity
was attributed to and felt in trees, logs of wood,
stones, and beasts, people shrank from humanising
their forms as from an act of godlessness. First
of all, poets, apart from all considerations of cult
and the ban of religious shame, have had to make
the inner imagination of man accustomed and com-
pliant to this notion. Wherever more pious periods
and phases of thought gained the upper hand, this
liberating influence of poets fell into the back-
ground, and sanctity remained, after as before, on
the side of the monstrous, uncanny, quite peculiarly
inhuman. And then, much of what the inner im-
agination ventures to picture to itself would exert a
painful influence if externally and corporeally re-
presented. The inner eye is far bolder and more
shameless than the outer (whence the well-known
difficulty and, to some extent, impossibility, of
## p. 116 (#136) ############################################
Il6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
working epic material into dramatic form). The
religious imagination for a long time entirely refuses
to believe in the identity of God with an image:
the image is meant to fix the numen of the Deity,
actually and specifically, although in a mysterious
and not altogether intelligible way. The oldest
image of the Gods is meant to shelter and at the
same time to hide* the God—to indicate him but not
to expose him to view. No Greek really looked upon
his Apollo as a pointed pillar of wood, his Eros as
a lump of stone. These were symbols, which were
intended to inspire dread of the manifestation of the
God. It was the same with those blocks of wood
out of which individual limbs, generally in excessive
number, were fashioned with the scantiest of carv-
ing—as, for instance, a Laconian Apollo with four
hands and four ears. In the incomplete, symbolical,
or excessive lies a terrible sanctity, which is meant
to prevent us from thinking of anything human or
similar to humanity. It is not an embryonic stage
of art in which such things are made—as if they
were not able to speak more plainly and portray
more sensibly in the age when such images were
honoured! Rather, men are afraid of just one thing
—direct speaking out. Just as the cella hides and
conceals in a mysterious twilight, yet not completely,
the holy of holies, the real numen of the Deity; just
as, again, the peripteric temple hides the cella, pro-
tecting it from indiscreet eyes as with a screen and
a veil, yet not completely—so it is with the image of
the Deity, and at the same time the concealment of
* The play on bergen (shelter) and verbergen (hide) is un-
translateable. —Tr.
## p. 117 (#137) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 117
the Deity. —Only when outside the cult, in the pro-
fane world of athletic contest, the joy in the victor
had risen so high that the ripples thus started
reacted upon the lake of religious emotion, was
the statue of the victor set up before the temple.
Then the pious pilgrim had to accustom his eye
and his soul, whether he would or no, to the inevit-
able sight of human beauty and super-strength, so
that the worship of men and Gods melted into each
other from physical and spiritual contact. Then too
for the first time the fear of really humanising the
figures of the Gods is lost, and the mighty arena for
great plastic art is opened—even now with the limi-
tation that wherever there is to be adoration the
primitive form and ugliness are carefully preserved
and copied. But the Hellene, as he dedicates and
makes offerings, may now with religious sanction
indulge in his delight in making God become a man.
223.
Whither We must Travel. —Immediate self-
observation is not enough, by a long way, to enable
us to learn to know ourselves. We need history, for
the past continues to flow through us in a hundred
channels. We ourselves are, after all, nothing but
our own sensation at every moment of this continued j
flow. Even here, when we wish to step down into
the stream of our apparently most peculiar and per-
sonal development, Heraclitus' aphorism, "You can-
not step twice into the same river," holds good. —
This is a piece of wisdom which has, indeed, gradu-
ally become trite, but nevertheless has remained as
^
## p. 118 (#138) ############################################
Il8 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
strong and true as it ever was. It is the same with
the saying that, in order to understand history, we
must scrutinise the living remains of historical
periods; that we must travel, as old Herodotus tra-
velled, to other nations, especially to those so-called
savage or half-savage races in regions where man
has doffed or not yet donned European garb. For
they are ancient and firmly established steps of
culture on which we can stand. There is, however,
a more subtle art and aim in travelling, which does
not always necessitate our passing from place to
place and going thousands of miles away. Very
probably the last three centuries, in all their colour-
ings and refractions of culture, survive even in our
vicinity, only they have to be discovered. In some
families, or even in individuals, the strata are still
superimposed on each other, beautifully and per-
ceptibly; in other places there are dispersions and
displacements of the structure which are harder to
understand. Certainly in remote districts, in less
known mountain valleys, circumscribed communi-
ties have been able more easily to maintain an ad-
mirable pattern of a far older sentiment, a pattern
that must here be investigated. On the other hand,
it is improbable that such discoveries will be made
in Berlin, where man comes into the world washed-
out and sapless. He who after long practice of this
art of travel has become a hundred-eyed Argus will
accompany his Io—I mean his ego—everywhere, and
in Egypt and Greece, Byzantium and Rome, France
and Germany, in the age of wandering or settled
races, in Renaissance or Reformation, at home and
abroad, in sea, forest, plant, and mountain, will again
## p. 119 (#139) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 119
light upon the travel-adventure of this ever-growing,
ever-altered ego. —Thus self-knowledge becomes
universal knowledge as regards the entire past, and,
by another chain of observation, which can only be
indicated here, self-direction and self-training in the
freest and most far-seeing spirits might become uni-
versal direction as regards all future humanity.
o
224.
Balm and Poison. —We cannot ponder too
deeply on this fact: Christianity is the religion of
antiquity grown old; it presupposes degenerate old
culture-stocks, and on them it had, and still has, power
to work like balm. There are periods when ears and
eyes are full of slime, so that they can no longer
hear the voice of reason and philosophy or see the
wisdom that walks in bodily shape, whether it bears
the name of Epictetus or of Epicurus. Then, per-
haps, the erection of the martyr's cross and the
"trumpet of the last judgment" may have the effect
of still inspiring such races to end their lives de-
cently. If we think of Juvenal's Rome, of that
poisonous toad with the eyes of Venus, we under-
stand what it means to make the sign of the Cross
before the world, we honour the silent Christian com-
munity and are grateful for its having stifled the
Greco-Roman Empire. If, indeed, most men were
then born in spiritual slavery, with the sensuality of
old men, what a pleasure to meet beings who were
more soul than body, and who seemed to realise the
Greek idea of the shades of the under-world—shy,
scurrying, chirping, kindly creatures, with a rever-
## p. 120 (#140) ############################################
120 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
sion on the "better life," and therefore so unassum-
ing, so secretly scornful, so proudly patient! —This
Christianity, as the evening chime of the good an-
tiquity, with cracked, weary and yet melodious bell,
is balm in the ears even to one who only now tra-
verses those centuries historically. What must it
have been to those men themselves! —To young and
fresh barbarian nations, on the other hand, Christi-
anity is a poison. For to implant the teaching of
sinfulness and damnation in the heroic, childlike,
and animal soul of the old Germans is nothing but
poisoning. An enormous chemical fermentation and
decomposition, a medley of sentiments and judg-
ments, a rank growth of adventurous legend, and
hence in the long run a fundamental weakening of
such barbarian peoples, was the inevitable result.
True, without this weakening what should we have
left of Greek culture, of the whole cultured past of
the human race? For the barbarians untouched by
Christianity knew very well how to make a clean
sweep of old cultures, as was only too clearly shown
by the heathen conquerors of Romanised Britain.
Thus Christianity, against its will, was compelled to
aid in making "the antique world " immortal. —There
remains, however, a counter-question and the possi-
bility of a counter-reckoning. Without this weaken-
ing through the poisoning referred to, would any of
those fresh stocks—the Germans, for instance—have
been in a position gradually to find by themselves a
higher, a peculiar, a new culture, of which the most
distant conception would therefore have been lost
to humanity? —In this, as in every case, we do not
know, Christianly speaking, whether God owes the
## p. 121 (#141) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 121
devil or the devil God more thanks for everything
having turned out as it has.
225.
Faith makes Holy and Condemns. — A
Christian who happened upon forbidden paths of
thought might well ask himself on some occasion
whether it is really necessary that there should be a
God, side by side with a representative Lamb, if
faith in the existence of these beings suffices to pro-
duce the same influences? If they do exist after
all, are they not superfluous beings? For all that
is given by the Christian religion to the human soul,
all that is beneficent, consoling, and edifying, just as
much as all that depresses and crushes, emanates
from that faith and not from the objects of that
faith. It is here as in another well-known case—
there were indeed no witches, but the terrible effects
of the belief in witches were the same as if they
really had existed. For all occasions where the
Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a
God, though in vain (for there is no God), his religion
is inventive enough to find subterfuges and reasons
for tranquillity. In so far Christianity is an ingenious
religion. —Faith, indeed, has up to the present not
been able to move real mountains, although I do
not know who assumed that it could. But it can
put mountains where there are none.
226.
The Tragi-Comedy of Regensburg. —Here
and there we see with terrible clearness the harle-
quinade of Fortune, how she fastens the rope, on
## p. 122 (#142) ############################################
122 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
which she wills that succeeding centuries should
dance, on to a few days, one place, the condition
and opinions of one brain. Thus the fate of modern
German history lies in the days of that disputation
at Regensburg: the peaceful settlement of ecclesi-
astical and moral affairs, without religious wars or a
counter-reformation, and also the unity of the Ger-
man nation, seemed assured: the deep, gentle spirit of
Contarini hovered for one moment over the theologi-
cal squabble, victorious, as representative of the riper
Italian piety, reflecting the morning glory of intel-
lectual freedom. But Luther's hard head, full of
suspicions and strange misgivings, showed resist-
ance. Because justification by grace appeared to
him his greatest motto and discovery, he did not
believe the phrase in the mouth of Italians; where-
as, in point of fact, as is well known, they had
invented it much earlier and spread it throughout
Italy in deep silence. In this apparent agreement
Luther saw the tricks of the devil, and hindered the
work of peace as well as he could, thereby advan-
cing to a great extent the aims of the Empire's foes.
—And now, in order to have a still stronger idea of
the dreadful farcicality of it all, let us add that none
of the principles about which men then disputed in
Regensburg—neither that of original sin, nor that of
redemption by proxy, nor that of justification by
faith—is in any way true or even has any connection
with truth: that they are now all recognised as in-
capable of being discussed. Yet on this account
the world was set on fire—that is to say, by opinions
which correspond to no things or realities; whereas
as regards purely philological questions—as, for in-
v
## p. 122 (#143) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 121
devil or the devil God more thanks for everything
having turned out as it has.
225.
FAITH MAKES HOLY AND CONDEMNS. - A
Christian who happened upon forbidden paths of
thought might well ask himself on some occasion
whether it is really necessary that there should be a
God, side by side with a representative Lamb, if
faith in the existence of these beings suffices to pro-
duce the same influences ? If they do exist after
all, are they not superfluous beings? For all that
is given by the Christian religion to the human soul,
all that is beneficent, consoling, and edifying, just as
much as all that depresses and crushes, emanates
from that faith and not from the objects of that
faith. It is here as in another well-known case-
there were indeed no witches, but the terrible effects
of the belief in witches were the same as if they
really had existed. For all occasions where the
Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a
God, though in vain (for there is no God), his religion
is inventive enough to find subterfuges and reasons
for tranquillity. In so far Christianity is an ingenious
religion. -Faith, indeed, has up to the present not
been able to move real mountains, although I do
not know who assumed that it could. But it can
put mountains where there are none.
226.
THE TRAGI-COMEDY OF REGENSBURG. —Here
and there we see with terrible clearness the harle-
quinade of Fortune, how she fastens the rope, on
## p. 122 (#144) ############################################
122
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
which she wills that succeeding centuries should
dance, on to a few days, one place, the condition
and opinions of one brain. Thus the fate of modern
German history lies in the days of that disputation
at Regensburg: the peaceful settlement of ecclesi-
astical and moral affairs, without religious wars or a
counter-reformation, and also the unity of the Ger-
man nation, seemed assured: the deep, gentle spirit of
Contarini hovered for one moment over the theologi-
cal squabble, victorious, as representative of the riper
Italian piety, reflecting the morning glory of intel-
lectual freedom. But Luther's hard head, full of
suspicions and strange misgivings, showed resist-
ance. Because justification by grace appeared to
him his greatest motto and discovery, he did not
believe the phrase in the mouth of Italians; where-
as, in point of fact, as is well known, they had
invented it much earlier and spread it throughout
Italy in deep silence. In this apparent agreement
Luther saw the tricks of the devil, and hindered the
work of peace as well as he could, thereby advan-
cing to a great extent the aims of the Empire's foes.
—And now, in order to have a still stronger idea of
the dreadful farcicality of it all, let us add that none
of the principles about which men then disputed in
Regensburg—neither that of original sin, nor that of
redemption by proxy, nor that of justification by
faith—is in any way true or even has any connection
with truth: that they are now all recognised as in-
capable of being discussed. Yet on this account
the world was set on fire—that is to say, by opinions
which correspond to no things or realities; whereas
as regards purely philological questions-as, for in-
-
--
## p. 123 (#145) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 123
stance, that of thesacramental words in the Eucharist
—discussion at any rate is permitted, because in this
case the truth can be said. But " where nothing is,
even truth has lost her right. " *—Lastly, it only re-
mains to be said that it is true these principles give
rise to sources of power so mighty that without them
all the mills of the modern world could not be driven
with such force. And it is primarily a matter of
force, only secondarily of truth (and perhaps not
even secondarily)—is it not so, my dear up-to-date
friends?
227.
Goethe's Errors. —Goethe is a signal excep-
tion among great artists in that he did not live
within the limited confines of his real capacity, as if
that must be the essential, the distinctive, the un-
conditional, and the last thing in him and for all the
world. Twice he intended to possess something
higher than he really possessed—and went astray
in the second half of his life, where he seems quite
convinced that he is one of the great scientific dis-
coverers and illuminators. So too in the first half
of his life he demanded of himself something higher
than the poetic art seemed to him—and here already
he made a mistake. That nature wished to make
him a plastic artist,—this was his inwardly glowing
and scorching secret, which finally drove him to
Italy, that he might give vent to his mania in this
direction and make to it every possible sacrifice.
At last, shrewd as he was, and honestly averse to
* Allusion to German proverb: "Where there is nothing,
the Emperor has lost his rights. "—Tr.
## p. 124 (#146) ############################################
124 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
any mental perversion in himself, he discovered that
a tricksy elf of desire had attracted him to the belief
in this calling, and that he must free himself of the
greatest passion of his heart and bid it farewell.
The
painful conviction, tearing and gnawing at his vitals,
that it was necessary to bid farewell, finds full ex-
pression in the character of Tasso. Over Tasso,
that Werther intensified, hovers the premonition of
something worse than death, as when one says:
"Now it is over, after this farewell: how shall I go
on living without going mad? " These two funda-
mental errors of his life gave Goethe, in face of a
purely literary attitude towards poetry (the only
attitude then known to the world), such an unem-
barrassed and apparently almost arbitrary position.
Not to speak of the period when Schiller (poor
Schiller, who had no time himself and left no time
to others) drove away his shy dread of poetry, his
fear of all literary life and craftsmanship, Goethe
appears like a Greek who now and then visits his
beloved, doubting whether she be not a Goddess
to whom he can give no proper name. In all his
poetry one notices the inspiring neighbourhood of
plastic art and Nature. The features of these figures
that floated before him—and perhaps he always
thought he was on the track of the metamorphoses
of one Goddess—became, without his will or know-
ledge, the features of all the children of his art.
Without the extravagances of error he would not
have been Goethe—that is, the only German artist
in writing who has not yet become out of date—just
because he desired as little to be a writer as a German
by vocation.
^—
## p. 125 (#147) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 125
228.
Travellers and their Grades. — Among
travellers we may distinguish five grades. The
first and lowest grade is of those who travel and
are seen—they become really travelled and are, as
it were, blind. Next come those who really see
the world. The third class experience the results
of their seeing. The fourth weave their experience
into their life and carry it with them henceforth.
Lastly, there are some men of the highest strength
who, as soon as they have returned home, must
finally and necessarily work out in their lives and
productions all the things seen that they have
experienced and incorporated in themselves. —Like
these five species of travellers, all mankind goes
through the whole pilgrimage of life, the lowest as
purely passive, the highest as those who act and
live out their lives without keeping back any re-
sidue of inner experiences.
229.
In Climbing Higher. —So soon as we climb
higher than those who hitherto admired us, we
appear to them as sunken and fallen. For they
imagined that under all circumstances they were on
the heights in our company (maybe also through
our agency).
230.
Measure and Moderation. —Of two quite'lofty
things, measure and moderation, it is best never to
speak. A few know their force and significance,
## p. 126 (#148) ############################################
126 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
J
from the mysterious paths of inner experiences
and conversions: they honour in them something
quite godlike, and are afraid to speak aloud. All
the rest hardly listen when they are spoken about,
and think the subjects under discussion are tedium
and mediocrity. We must perhaps except those
who have once heard a warning note from that
realm but have stopped their ears against the sound.
The recollection of it makes them angry and ex-
asperated.
231.
Humanity of Friendship and Comrade-
ship. —" If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will
go to the right," * that feeling is the hall-mark of
humanity in intimate intercourse, and without that
feeling every friendship, every band of apostles or
disciples, sooner or later becomes a fraud.
232.
The Profound. —Men of profound thought ap-
pear to themselves in intercourse with others like
comedians, for in order to be understood they must
always simulate superficiality.
233-
For the Scorners of " Herd-Humanity. "—
He who regards human beings as a herd, and flies
from them as fast as he can, will certainly be caught
up by them and gored upon their horns.
* Genesis xiii. 9. —Tr.
## p. 127 (#149) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 127
234- y
The Main Transgression against the
Vain. —In society, he who gives another an op-
portunity of favourably setting forth his knowledge,
sentiments, and experience sets himself above him.
Unless he is felt by the other to be a superior being
without limitation, he is guilty of an attack upon his
vanity, while what he aimed at was the gratification
of the other man's vanity.
235-
Disappointment. —When a long life of action
distinguished by speeches and writings gives pub-
licity to a man's personality, personal intercourse
with him is generally disappointing on two grounds.
Firstly, one expects too much from a brief period
of intercourse (namely, all that the thousand and
one opportunities of life can alone bring out).
Secondly, no recognised person gives himself the
trouble to woo recognition in individual cases. He
is too careless, and we are at too high a tension.
236.
Two Sources of Kindness. —To treat all men
with equal good-humour, and to be kind without
distinction of persons, may arise as much from a
profound contempt for mankind as from an in-
grained love of humanity.
237-
The Wanderer in the Mountains to Him-
self. —There are certain signs that you have gone
J
## p. 128 (#150) ############################################
128 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
farther and higher. There is a freer, wider prospect
before you, the air blows cooler yet milder in your
face (you have unlearned the folly of confounding
mildness with warmth), your gait is more firm and
vigorous, courage and discretion have waxed to-
gether. On all these grounds your journey may
now be more lonely and in any case more perilous
than heretofore, if indeed not to the extent be-
lieved by those who from the misty valley see you,
the roamer, striding on the mountains.
238.
With the Exception of Our Neighbour.
—I admit that my head is set wrong on my neck
only, for every other man, as is well known, knows
better than I what I should do or leave alone.
The only one who cannot help me is myself, poor
beggar! Are we not all like statues on which false
heads have been placed? Eh, dear neighbour ? —
Ah no; you, just you, are the exception!
239-
Caution. —We must either not go about at all
with people who are lacking in the reverence for
personalities, or inexorably fetter them beforehand
with the manacles of convention.
240.
The Wish to Appear Vain. —In conversation
with strangers or little-known acquaintances, to
express only selected thoughts, to speak of one's
famous acquaintances, and important experiences
## p. 129 (#151) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 129
and travels, is a sign that one is not proud, or at
least would not like to appear proud. Vanity is the
polite mask of pride.
241.
Good Friendship. —A good friendship arises
when the one man deeply respects the other, more
even than himself; loves him also, though not so
much as himself; and finally, to facilitate intercourse,
knows how to add the delicate bloom and veneer
of intimacy, but at the same time wisely refrains
from a true, real intimacy, from the confounding of
meum and tuum.
242.
Friends as Ghosts. —If we change ourselves
vitally, our friends, who have not changed, become
ghosts of our own past: their voice sounds shadowy
and dreadful to us, as if we heard our own voice
speaking, but younger, harder, less mellow.
243-
, OnejEye andTwo Glances. —The same people
whose eyes naturally plead for favours and indul-
gences are accustomed, from their frequent humilia-
tions and cravings for revenge, to assume a shame-
less glance as well.
244.
The Haze of Distance. —A child throughout
life—that sounds very touching, but is only the
verdict from the distance. Seen and known close
at hand, he is always called "puerile throughout
life. "
VOl. II. I
## p. 130 (#152) ############################################
130 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I
245.
Advantage and Disadvantage in the Same
Misunderstanding. — The mute perplexity of
the subtle brain is usually understood by the non-
subtle as a silent superiority, and is much dreaded
whereas the perception of perplexity would produce
good will.
246.
J The Sage giving Himself out to be a
Fool. —The philanthropy of the sage sometimes
makes him decide to pretend to be excited, enraged,
or delighted, so that he may not hurt his surround-
ings by the coldness and rationality of his true
nature.
247.
Forcing Oneself to Attention. —So soon
as we note that any one in intercourse and conver-
sation with us has to force himself to attention, we
have adequate evidence that he loves us not, or loves
us no longer.
248.
The Way to a Christian Virtue. —Learning
from one's enemies is the best way to love them, for
it inspires us with a grateful mood towards them.
249.
Stratagem of the Importunate. —The im-
portunate man gives us gold coins as change for
our convention coins, and thereby tries to force us
afterwards to treat our convention as an oversight
and him as an exception.
## p. 131 (#153) ############################################
MISCELLANEONFOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 131
250.
REASON FOR DISLIKE. —We become hostile to
many an artist or writer, not because we notice in
the end that he has duped us, but because he did
not find more subtle means necessary to entrap us.
251.
IN PARTING. — Not by the way one soul ap-
proaches another, but by the way it separates, do I
recognise its relationship and homogeneity with the
other.
252.
SILENTIUM. —We must not speak about our
friends, or we renounce the sentiment of friendship.
253.
IMPOLITENESS. --Impoliteness is often the sign
of a clumsy modesty, which when taken by surprise
loses its head and would fain hide the fact by means
of rudeness.
254.
HONESTY'S MISCALCULATION. -Our newest ac-
quaintances are sometimes the first to learn what
we have hitherto kept dark. We have the foolish
notion that our proof of confidence is the strongest
fetter wherewith to hold them fast. But they do
not know enough about us to feel so strongly the
sacrifice involved in our speaking out, and betray
our secrets to others without any idea of betrayal.
Hereby we possibly lose our old friends.
## p. 132 (#154) ############################################
132 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
255.
In the Ante-Chamber of Favour. —All men
whom we let stand long in the ante-chamber of our
favour get into a state of fermentation or become
bitter.
256.
Warning to the Despised. —When we have
sunk unmistakably in the estimation of mankind
we should cling tooth and nail to modesty in inter-
course, or we shall betray to others that we have
sunk in our own estimation as well. Cynicism in
intercourse is a sign that a man, when alone, treats
himself too as a dog.
257.
Ignorance often Ennobles. —With regard to
the respect of those who pay respect, it is an ad-
vantage ostensibly not to understand certain things.
Ignorance, too, confers privileges.
258.
The Opponent of Grace. —The impatient and
arrogant man does not care for grace, feeling it
to be a corporeal, visible reproach against himself.
For grace is heartfelt toleration in movement and
gesture.
259.
On Seeing Again. —When old friends see each
other again after a long separation, it often happens
that they affect an interest in matters to which they
## p. 133 (#155) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 133
as
have long since become indifferent. Sometimes
both remark this, but dare not raise the veil—from
a mournful doubt. Hence arise conversations as
in the realm of the dead. By means d. Tuse lowepts
hey to be the Tyread merisuologio lunere
toddlere l authoricul il down to the presupun
MARING FRIENDS ONLY WITH THE INDUSTRI-
OUS. —The man of leisure is dangerous to his friends,
for, having nothing to do, he talks of what his friends
are doing or not doing, interferes, and finally makes
himself a nuisance. The clever man will only make
friends with the industrious.
261.
ONE WEAPON TWICE AS MUCH AS Two. It is
an unequal combat when one man defends his
cause with head and heart, the other with head
alone. The first has sun and wind against him, as
it were, and his two weapons interfere with each
other: he loses the prize—in the eyes of truth.
True, the victory of the second, with his one
weapon, is seldom a victory after the hearts of all
the other spectators, and makes him unpopular.
262.
DEPTH AND TROUBLED WATERS. —The public
easily confounds him who fishes in troubled waters
with him who pumps up from the depths.
263.
DEMONSTRATING ONE'S VANITY TO FRIEND
AND FOE. —Many a man, from vanity, maltreats
## p. 134 (#156) ############################################
134 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
even his friends, when in the presence of witnesses
to whom he wishes to make his own preponderance
clear. Others exaggerate the merits of their enemies,
in order to point proudly to the fact that they are
worthy of such foes.
264.
COOLINg Off. —The over-heating of the heart is
generally allied with illness of the head and judg-
ment. He who is concerned for a time with the
health of his head must know what he has to cool,
careless of the future of his heart. For if we are
capable at all of giving warmth, we are sure to
become warm again and then have our summer.
265.
Mingled Feelings. —Towards science women
and self-seeking artists entertain a feeling that is
composed of envy and sentimentality.
266.
Where Danger is Greatest. —We seldom
break our leg so long as life continues a toilsome
upward climb. The danger comes when we begin
to take things easily and choose the convenient
paths.
267.
Not TOO Early. —We must beware of becoming
sharp too early, or we shall also become thin too
early.
268.
Joy in Refractoriness. — The good teacher
knows cases where he is proud that his pupil re-
## p. 135 (#157) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 135
mains true to himself in opposition to him—at
times when the youth must not understand the man
or would be harmed by understanding him.
269.
The Experiment of Honesty. —Young men,
who wish to be more honest than they have been,
seek as victim some one acknowledged to be honest,
attacking him first with an attempt to reach his
height by abuse—with the underlying notion that
this first experiment at any rate is void of danger.
For just such a one has no right to chastise the
impudence of the honest man.
270.
The Eternal Child. —We think, short-sighted
that we are, that fairy-tales and games belong to
childhood. As if at any age we should care to live
without fairy-tales and games! Our words and
sentiments are indeed different, but the essential
fact remains the same, as is proved by the child
himself looking on games as his work and fairy-
tales as his truth. The shortness of life ought to
preserve us from a pedantic distinction between the
different ages^-as if every age brought something
new—and a poet ought one day to portray a man
of two hundred, who really lives without fairy-tales
and games.
271.
Every Philosophy is the Philosophy of a
Period of Life.
IIO HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
circuitous routes and mountain paths, and, to the
astonishment of the non-subtle, rejoice exceedingly.
215-
Morals of Savants. —A regular and rapid
advance in the sciences is only possible when the
individual is compelled to be not so distrustful as
to test every calculation and assertion of others, in
fields which are remote from his own. A necessary
condition, however, is that every man should have
competitors in his own sphere, who are extremely
distrustful and keep a sharp eye upon him. From
this juxtaposition of " not too distrustful" and " ex-
tremely distrustful" arises sincerity in the republic
of learning.
216.
Reasons for Sterility. —There are highly
gifted minds which are always sterile only because,
from temperamental weakness, they are too impa-
tient to wait for their pregnancy.
217
The Perverted World of Tears. — The
manifold discomforts which the demands of higher
culture cause to man finally pervert his nature to
such an extent that he usually keeps himself stoical
and unbending. Thus he has tears in reserve only
for rare occasions of happiness, so that many must
weep even at the enjoyment of painlessness—only
when happy does his heart still beat.
## p. 111 (#131) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. Ill
218.
The Greeks as Interpreters. —When we
speak of the Greeks we unwittingly speak of to-day
and yesterday; their universally known history is
a blank mirror, always reflecting something that is
not in the mirror itself. We enjoy the freedom of
speaking about them in order to have the right
of being silent about others—so that these Greeks
themselves may whisper something in the ear of
the reflective reader. Thus the Greeks facilitate to
modern men the communication of much that is
debatable and hard to communicate.
219.
Of the Acquired Character of the Greeks.
—We are easily led astray by the renowned Greek
clearness,transparency,simplicity,and order,by their
crystal-like naturalness and crystal-like art, into be-
lieving that all these gifts were bestowed on the
Greeks—for instance, that they could not but write
well, as Lichtenberg expressed it on one occasion.
Yet no statement could be more hasty and more
untenable. The history of prose from Gorgias to
Demosthenes shows a course of toiling and wrest-
ling towards light from the obscure, overloaded,
and tasteless, reminding one of the labour of heroes
who had to construct the first roads through forest
and bog. The dialogue of tragedy was the real
achievement of the dramatist, owing to its uncom-
mon clearness and precision, whereas the national
tendency was to riot in symbolism and innuendo,
a tendency expressly fostered by the great choral
## p. 112 (#132) ############################################
112 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
lyric. Similarly it was the achievement of Homer
to liberate the Greeks from Asiatic pomp and
gloom, and to have attained the clearness of archi-
tecture in details great and small. Nor was it by any
means thought easy to say anything in a pure and
illuminating style. How else should we account for
the great admiration for the epigram of Simonides,
which shows itself so simple, with no gilded points
or arabesques of wit, but says all that it has to say
plainly and with the calm of the sun, not with the
straining after effect of the lightning. Since the
struggle towards light from an almost native twilight
is Greek, a thrill of jubilation runs through the people
when they hear a laconic sentence, the language of
elegy or the maxims of the Seven Wise Men. Hence
they were so fond of giving precepts in verse, a prac-
tice that we find objectionable. This was the true
Apolline task of the Hellenic spirit, with the aim
of rising superior to the perils of metre and the
obscurity which is otherwise characteristic of poetry.
Simplicity, flexibility, and sobriety were wrestled
for and not given by nature to this people. The
danger of a relapse into Asianism constantly hovered
over the Greeks, and really overtook them from time
to time like a murky, overflowing tide of mystical
impulses, primitive savagery and darkness. We
see them plunge in; we see Europe, as it were,
flooded, washed away—for Europe was very small
then; but they always emerge once more to the
light, good swimmers and divers that they are, those
fellow-countrymen of Odysseus.
## p. 113 (#133) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 113
220.
The Pagan Characteristic. —Perhaps there
is nothing more astonishing to the observer of the
Greek world than to discover that the Greeks from
time to time held festivals, as it were, for all their
passions and evil tendencies alike, and in fact even
established a kind of series of festivals, by order of
the State, for their "all-too-human. " This is the
pagan characteristic of their world, which Christianity-
has never understood and never can understand, and
has always combated and despised. —They accepted
this all-too-human as unavoidable, and preferred,
instead of railing at it, to give it a kind of secondary
right by grafting it on to the usages of society and
religion. All in man that has power they called
divine, and wrote it on the walls of their heaven.
They do not deny this natural instinct that expresses
itself in evil characteristics, but regulate and limit
it to definite cults and days, so as to turn those tur-
bulent streams into as harmless a course as possible,
after devising sufficient precautionary measures.
That is the root of all the moral broad-mindedness
of antiquity. To the wicked, the dubious, the back-
ward, the animal element, as to the barbaric, pre-
Hellenic and Asiatic, which still lived in the depths
of Greek nature, they allowed a moderate outflow,
and did not strive to destroy it utterly. The whole
system was under the domain of the State, which
was built up not on individuals or castes, but on
common human qualities. In the structure of the
State the Greeks show thatwonderful sense for typi-
cal facts which later on enabled them to become in-
vestigators of Nature, historians, geographers, and
vol. 11. H
## p. 114 (#134) ############################################
114 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
philosophers. It was not a limited moral law of
priests or castes, which had to decide about the
constitution of the State and State worship, but the
most comprehensive view of the reality of all that is
human. Whence do the Greeks derive this freedom,
this sense of reality? Perhaps from Homer and the
poets who preceded him. For just those poets whose
nature is generally not the most wise or just possess,
in compensation, that delight in reality and activity
of every kind, and prefer not to deny even evil. It
suffices for them if evil moderates itself, does not
kill or inwardly poison everything—in other words,
they have similar ideas to those of the founders of
Greek constitutions, and were their teachers and
forerunners.
221.
Exceptional Greeks. —In Greece, deep, thor-
ough, serious minds were the exception. The na-
tional instinct tended rather to regard the serious
and thorough as a kind of grimace. To borrow
forms from a foreign source, not to create but to
transform into the fairest shapes—that is Greek.
To imitate, not for utility but for artistic illusion,
ever and anon to gain the mastery over forced
seriousness, to arrange, beautify, simplify—that is
the continual task from Homer to the Sophists of
the third and fourth centuries of our era, who are all
outward show, pompous speech, declamatory ges-
tures, and address themselves to shallow souls that
care only for appearance, sound, and effect. And
now let us estimate the greatness of those exceptional
Greeks, who created science! Whoever tells of them,
tells the most heroic story of the human mind!
## p. 115 (#135) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 115
222.
Simplicity not the First nor the Last
Thing in Point of Time. —In the history of
religious ideas many errors about development
and false gradations are made in matters which
in reality are not consecutive outgrowths but con-
temporary yet separate phenomena. In particular,
simplicity has still far too much the reputation of
being the oldest, the initial thing. Much that is
human arises by subtraction and division, and not
merely by doubling, addition, and unification. —For
instance, men still believe in a gradual development
of the idea of God from those unwieldy stones and
blocks of wood up to the highest forms of anthropo-
morphism. Yet the fact is that so long as divinity
was attributed to and felt in trees, logs of wood,
stones, and beasts, people shrank from humanising
their forms as from an act of godlessness. First
of all, poets, apart from all considerations of cult
and the ban of religious shame, have had to make
the inner imagination of man accustomed and com-
pliant to this notion. Wherever more pious periods
and phases of thought gained the upper hand, this
liberating influence of poets fell into the back-
ground, and sanctity remained, after as before, on
the side of the monstrous, uncanny, quite peculiarly
inhuman. And then, much of what the inner im-
agination ventures to picture to itself would exert a
painful influence if externally and corporeally re-
presented. The inner eye is far bolder and more
shameless than the outer (whence the well-known
difficulty and, to some extent, impossibility, of
## p. 116 (#136) ############################################
Il6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
working epic material into dramatic form). The
religious imagination for a long time entirely refuses
to believe in the identity of God with an image:
the image is meant to fix the numen of the Deity,
actually and specifically, although in a mysterious
and not altogether intelligible way. The oldest
image of the Gods is meant to shelter and at the
same time to hide* the God—to indicate him but not
to expose him to view. No Greek really looked upon
his Apollo as a pointed pillar of wood, his Eros as
a lump of stone. These were symbols, which were
intended to inspire dread of the manifestation of the
God. It was the same with those blocks of wood
out of which individual limbs, generally in excessive
number, were fashioned with the scantiest of carv-
ing—as, for instance, a Laconian Apollo with four
hands and four ears. In the incomplete, symbolical,
or excessive lies a terrible sanctity, which is meant
to prevent us from thinking of anything human or
similar to humanity. It is not an embryonic stage
of art in which such things are made—as if they
were not able to speak more plainly and portray
more sensibly in the age when such images were
honoured! Rather, men are afraid of just one thing
—direct speaking out. Just as the cella hides and
conceals in a mysterious twilight, yet not completely,
the holy of holies, the real numen of the Deity; just
as, again, the peripteric temple hides the cella, pro-
tecting it from indiscreet eyes as with a screen and
a veil, yet not completely—so it is with the image of
the Deity, and at the same time the concealment of
* The play on bergen (shelter) and verbergen (hide) is un-
translateable. —Tr.
## p. 117 (#137) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 117
the Deity. —Only when outside the cult, in the pro-
fane world of athletic contest, the joy in the victor
had risen so high that the ripples thus started
reacted upon the lake of religious emotion, was
the statue of the victor set up before the temple.
Then the pious pilgrim had to accustom his eye
and his soul, whether he would or no, to the inevit-
able sight of human beauty and super-strength, so
that the worship of men and Gods melted into each
other from physical and spiritual contact. Then too
for the first time the fear of really humanising the
figures of the Gods is lost, and the mighty arena for
great plastic art is opened—even now with the limi-
tation that wherever there is to be adoration the
primitive form and ugliness are carefully preserved
and copied. But the Hellene, as he dedicates and
makes offerings, may now with religious sanction
indulge in his delight in making God become a man.
223.
Whither We must Travel. —Immediate self-
observation is not enough, by a long way, to enable
us to learn to know ourselves. We need history, for
the past continues to flow through us in a hundred
channels. We ourselves are, after all, nothing but
our own sensation at every moment of this continued j
flow. Even here, when we wish to step down into
the stream of our apparently most peculiar and per-
sonal development, Heraclitus' aphorism, "You can-
not step twice into the same river," holds good. —
This is a piece of wisdom which has, indeed, gradu-
ally become trite, but nevertheless has remained as
^
## p. 118 (#138) ############################################
Il8 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
strong and true as it ever was. It is the same with
the saying that, in order to understand history, we
must scrutinise the living remains of historical
periods; that we must travel, as old Herodotus tra-
velled, to other nations, especially to those so-called
savage or half-savage races in regions where man
has doffed or not yet donned European garb. For
they are ancient and firmly established steps of
culture on which we can stand. There is, however,
a more subtle art and aim in travelling, which does
not always necessitate our passing from place to
place and going thousands of miles away. Very
probably the last three centuries, in all their colour-
ings and refractions of culture, survive even in our
vicinity, only they have to be discovered. In some
families, or even in individuals, the strata are still
superimposed on each other, beautifully and per-
ceptibly; in other places there are dispersions and
displacements of the structure which are harder to
understand. Certainly in remote districts, in less
known mountain valleys, circumscribed communi-
ties have been able more easily to maintain an ad-
mirable pattern of a far older sentiment, a pattern
that must here be investigated. On the other hand,
it is improbable that such discoveries will be made
in Berlin, where man comes into the world washed-
out and sapless. He who after long practice of this
art of travel has become a hundred-eyed Argus will
accompany his Io—I mean his ego—everywhere, and
in Egypt and Greece, Byzantium and Rome, France
and Germany, in the age of wandering or settled
races, in Renaissance or Reformation, at home and
abroad, in sea, forest, plant, and mountain, will again
## p. 119 (#139) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 119
light upon the travel-adventure of this ever-growing,
ever-altered ego. —Thus self-knowledge becomes
universal knowledge as regards the entire past, and,
by another chain of observation, which can only be
indicated here, self-direction and self-training in the
freest and most far-seeing spirits might become uni-
versal direction as regards all future humanity.
o
224.
Balm and Poison. —We cannot ponder too
deeply on this fact: Christianity is the religion of
antiquity grown old; it presupposes degenerate old
culture-stocks, and on them it had, and still has, power
to work like balm. There are periods when ears and
eyes are full of slime, so that they can no longer
hear the voice of reason and philosophy or see the
wisdom that walks in bodily shape, whether it bears
the name of Epictetus or of Epicurus. Then, per-
haps, the erection of the martyr's cross and the
"trumpet of the last judgment" may have the effect
of still inspiring such races to end their lives de-
cently. If we think of Juvenal's Rome, of that
poisonous toad with the eyes of Venus, we under-
stand what it means to make the sign of the Cross
before the world, we honour the silent Christian com-
munity and are grateful for its having stifled the
Greco-Roman Empire. If, indeed, most men were
then born in spiritual slavery, with the sensuality of
old men, what a pleasure to meet beings who were
more soul than body, and who seemed to realise the
Greek idea of the shades of the under-world—shy,
scurrying, chirping, kindly creatures, with a rever-
## p. 120 (#140) ############################################
120 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
sion on the "better life," and therefore so unassum-
ing, so secretly scornful, so proudly patient! —This
Christianity, as the evening chime of the good an-
tiquity, with cracked, weary and yet melodious bell,
is balm in the ears even to one who only now tra-
verses those centuries historically. What must it
have been to those men themselves! —To young and
fresh barbarian nations, on the other hand, Christi-
anity is a poison. For to implant the teaching of
sinfulness and damnation in the heroic, childlike,
and animal soul of the old Germans is nothing but
poisoning. An enormous chemical fermentation and
decomposition, a medley of sentiments and judg-
ments, a rank growth of adventurous legend, and
hence in the long run a fundamental weakening of
such barbarian peoples, was the inevitable result.
True, without this weakening what should we have
left of Greek culture, of the whole cultured past of
the human race? For the barbarians untouched by
Christianity knew very well how to make a clean
sweep of old cultures, as was only too clearly shown
by the heathen conquerors of Romanised Britain.
Thus Christianity, against its will, was compelled to
aid in making "the antique world " immortal. —There
remains, however, a counter-question and the possi-
bility of a counter-reckoning. Without this weaken-
ing through the poisoning referred to, would any of
those fresh stocks—the Germans, for instance—have
been in a position gradually to find by themselves a
higher, a peculiar, a new culture, of which the most
distant conception would therefore have been lost
to humanity? —In this, as in every case, we do not
know, Christianly speaking, whether God owes the
## p. 121 (#141) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 121
devil or the devil God more thanks for everything
having turned out as it has.
225.
Faith makes Holy and Condemns. — A
Christian who happened upon forbidden paths of
thought might well ask himself on some occasion
whether it is really necessary that there should be a
God, side by side with a representative Lamb, if
faith in the existence of these beings suffices to pro-
duce the same influences? If they do exist after
all, are they not superfluous beings? For all that
is given by the Christian religion to the human soul,
all that is beneficent, consoling, and edifying, just as
much as all that depresses and crushes, emanates
from that faith and not from the objects of that
faith. It is here as in another well-known case—
there were indeed no witches, but the terrible effects
of the belief in witches were the same as if they
really had existed. For all occasions where the
Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a
God, though in vain (for there is no God), his religion
is inventive enough to find subterfuges and reasons
for tranquillity. In so far Christianity is an ingenious
religion. —Faith, indeed, has up to the present not
been able to move real mountains, although I do
not know who assumed that it could. But it can
put mountains where there are none.
226.
The Tragi-Comedy of Regensburg. —Here
and there we see with terrible clearness the harle-
quinade of Fortune, how she fastens the rope, on
## p. 122 (#142) ############################################
122 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
which she wills that succeeding centuries should
dance, on to a few days, one place, the condition
and opinions of one brain. Thus the fate of modern
German history lies in the days of that disputation
at Regensburg: the peaceful settlement of ecclesi-
astical and moral affairs, without religious wars or a
counter-reformation, and also the unity of the Ger-
man nation, seemed assured: the deep, gentle spirit of
Contarini hovered for one moment over the theologi-
cal squabble, victorious, as representative of the riper
Italian piety, reflecting the morning glory of intel-
lectual freedom. But Luther's hard head, full of
suspicions and strange misgivings, showed resist-
ance. Because justification by grace appeared to
him his greatest motto and discovery, he did not
believe the phrase in the mouth of Italians; where-
as, in point of fact, as is well known, they had
invented it much earlier and spread it throughout
Italy in deep silence. In this apparent agreement
Luther saw the tricks of the devil, and hindered the
work of peace as well as he could, thereby advan-
cing to a great extent the aims of the Empire's foes.
—And now, in order to have a still stronger idea of
the dreadful farcicality of it all, let us add that none
of the principles about which men then disputed in
Regensburg—neither that of original sin, nor that of
redemption by proxy, nor that of justification by
faith—is in any way true or even has any connection
with truth: that they are now all recognised as in-
capable of being discussed. Yet on this account
the world was set on fire—that is to say, by opinions
which correspond to no things or realities; whereas
as regards purely philological questions—as, for in-
v
## p. 122 (#143) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 121
devil or the devil God more thanks for everything
having turned out as it has.
225.
FAITH MAKES HOLY AND CONDEMNS. - A
Christian who happened upon forbidden paths of
thought might well ask himself on some occasion
whether it is really necessary that there should be a
God, side by side with a representative Lamb, if
faith in the existence of these beings suffices to pro-
duce the same influences ? If they do exist after
all, are they not superfluous beings? For all that
is given by the Christian religion to the human soul,
all that is beneficent, consoling, and edifying, just as
much as all that depresses and crushes, emanates
from that faith and not from the objects of that
faith. It is here as in another well-known case-
there were indeed no witches, but the terrible effects
of the belief in witches were the same as if they
really had existed. For all occasions where the
Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a
God, though in vain (for there is no God), his religion
is inventive enough to find subterfuges and reasons
for tranquillity. In so far Christianity is an ingenious
religion. -Faith, indeed, has up to the present not
been able to move real mountains, although I do
not know who assumed that it could. But it can
put mountains where there are none.
226.
THE TRAGI-COMEDY OF REGENSBURG. —Here
and there we see with terrible clearness the harle-
quinade of Fortune, how she fastens the rope, on
## p. 122 (#144) ############################################
122
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
which she wills that succeeding centuries should
dance, on to a few days, one place, the condition
and opinions of one brain. Thus the fate of modern
German history lies in the days of that disputation
at Regensburg: the peaceful settlement of ecclesi-
astical and moral affairs, without religious wars or a
counter-reformation, and also the unity of the Ger-
man nation, seemed assured: the deep, gentle spirit of
Contarini hovered for one moment over the theologi-
cal squabble, victorious, as representative of the riper
Italian piety, reflecting the morning glory of intel-
lectual freedom. But Luther's hard head, full of
suspicions and strange misgivings, showed resist-
ance. Because justification by grace appeared to
him his greatest motto and discovery, he did not
believe the phrase in the mouth of Italians; where-
as, in point of fact, as is well known, they had
invented it much earlier and spread it throughout
Italy in deep silence. In this apparent agreement
Luther saw the tricks of the devil, and hindered the
work of peace as well as he could, thereby advan-
cing to a great extent the aims of the Empire's foes.
—And now, in order to have a still stronger idea of
the dreadful farcicality of it all, let us add that none
of the principles about which men then disputed in
Regensburg—neither that of original sin, nor that of
redemption by proxy, nor that of justification by
faith—is in any way true or even has any connection
with truth: that they are now all recognised as in-
capable of being discussed. Yet on this account
the world was set on fire—that is to say, by opinions
which correspond to no things or realities; whereas
as regards purely philological questions-as, for in-
-
--
## p. 123 (#145) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 123
stance, that of thesacramental words in the Eucharist
—discussion at any rate is permitted, because in this
case the truth can be said. But " where nothing is,
even truth has lost her right. " *—Lastly, it only re-
mains to be said that it is true these principles give
rise to sources of power so mighty that without them
all the mills of the modern world could not be driven
with such force. And it is primarily a matter of
force, only secondarily of truth (and perhaps not
even secondarily)—is it not so, my dear up-to-date
friends?
227.
Goethe's Errors. —Goethe is a signal excep-
tion among great artists in that he did not live
within the limited confines of his real capacity, as if
that must be the essential, the distinctive, the un-
conditional, and the last thing in him and for all the
world. Twice he intended to possess something
higher than he really possessed—and went astray
in the second half of his life, where he seems quite
convinced that he is one of the great scientific dis-
coverers and illuminators. So too in the first half
of his life he demanded of himself something higher
than the poetic art seemed to him—and here already
he made a mistake. That nature wished to make
him a plastic artist,—this was his inwardly glowing
and scorching secret, which finally drove him to
Italy, that he might give vent to his mania in this
direction and make to it every possible sacrifice.
At last, shrewd as he was, and honestly averse to
* Allusion to German proverb: "Where there is nothing,
the Emperor has lost his rights. "—Tr.
## p. 124 (#146) ############################################
124 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
any mental perversion in himself, he discovered that
a tricksy elf of desire had attracted him to the belief
in this calling, and that he must free himself of the
greatest passion of his heart and bid it farewell.
The
painful conviction, tearing and gnawing at his vitals,
that it was necessary to bid farewell, finds full ex-
pression in the character of Tasso. Over Tasso,
that Werther intensified, hovers the premonition of
something worse than death, as when one says:
"Now it is over, after this farewell: how shall I go
on living without going mad? " These two funda-
mental errors of his life gave Goethe, in face of a
purely literary attitude towards poetry (the only
attitude then known to the world), such an unem-
barrassed and apparently almost arbitrary position.
Not to speak of the period when Schiller (poor
Schiller, who had no time himself and left no time
to others) drove away his shy dread of poetry, his
fear of all literary life and craftsmanship, Goethe
appears like a Greek who now and then visits his
beloved, doubting whether she be not a Goddess
to whom he can give no proper name. In all his
poetry one notices the inspiring neighbourhood of
plastic art and Nature. The features of these figures
that floated before him—and perhaps he always
thought he was on the track of the metamorphoses
of one Goddess—became, without his will or know-
ledge, the features of all the children of his art.
Without the extravagances of error he would not
have been Goethe—that is, the only German artist
in writing who has not yet become out of date—just
because he desired as little to be a writer as a German
by vocation.
^—
## p. 125 (#147) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 125
228.
Travellers and their Grades. — Among
travellers we may distinguish five grades. The
first and lowest grade is of those who travel and
are seen—they become really travelled and are, as
it were, blind. Next come those who really see
the world. The third class experience the results
of their seeing. The fourth weave their experience
into their life and carry it with them henceforth.
Lastly, there are some men of the highest strength
who, as soon as they have returned home, must
finally and necessarily work out in their lives and
productions all the things seen that they have
experienced and incorporated in themselves. —Like
these five species of travellers, all mankind goes
through the whole pilgrimage of life, the lowest as
purely passive, the highest as those who act and
live out their lives without keeping back any re-
sidue of inner experiences.
229.
In Climbing Higher. —So soon as we climb
higher than those who hitherto admired us, we
appear to them as sunken and fallen. For they
imagined that under all circumstances they were on
the heights in our company (maybe also through
our agency).
230.
Measure and Moderation. —Of two quite'lofty
things, measure and moderation, it is best never to
speak. A few know their force and significance,
## p. 126 (#148) ############################################
126 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
J
from the mysterious paths of inner experiences
and conversions: they honour in them something
quite godlike, and are afraid to speak aloud. All
the rest hardly listen when they are spoken about,
and think the subjects under discussion are tedium
and mediocrity. We must perhaps except those
who have once heard a warning note from that
realm but have stopped their ears against the sound.
The recollection of it makes them angry and ex-
asperated.
231.
Humanity of Friendship and Comrade-
ship. —" If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will
go to the right," * that feeling is the hall-mark of
humanity in intimate intercourse, and without that
feeling every friendship, every band of apostles or
disciples, sooner or later becomes a fraud.
232.
The Profound. —Men of profound thought ap-
pear to themselves in intercourse with others like
comedians, for in order to be understood they must
always simulate superficiality.
233-
For the Scorners of " Herd-Humanity. "—
He who regards human beings as a herd, and flies
from them as fast as he can, will certainly be caught
up by them and gored upon their horns.
* Genesis xiii. 9. —Tr.
## p. 127 (#149) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 127
234- y
The Main Transgression against the
Vain. —In society, he who gives another an op-
portunity of favourably setting forth his knowledge,
sentiments, and experience sets himself above him.
Unless he is felt by the other to be a superior being
without limitation, he is guilty of an attack upon his
vanity, while what he aimed at was the gratification
of the other man's vanity.
235-
Disappointment. —When a long life of action
distinguished by speeches and writings gives pub-
licity to a man's personality, personal intercourse
with him is generally disappointing on two grounds.
Firstly, one expects too much from a brief period
of intercourse (namely, all that the thousand and
one opportunities of life can alone bring out).
Secondly, no recognised person gives himself the
trouble to woo recognition in individual cases. He
is too careless, and we are at too high a tension.
236.
Two Sources of Kindness. —To treat all men
with equal good-humour, and to be kind without
distinction of persons, may arise as much from a
profound contempt for mankind as from an in-
grained love of humanity.
237-
The Wanderer in the Mountains to Him-
self. —There are certain signs that you have gone
J
## p. 128 (#150) ############################################
128 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
farther and higher. There is a freer, wider prospect
before you, the air blows cooler yet milder in your
face (you have unlearned the folly of confounding
mildness with warmth), your gait is more firm and
vigorous, courage and discretion have waxed to-
gether. On all these grounds your journey may
now be more lonely and in any case more perilous
than heretofore, if indeed not to the extent be-
lieved by those who from the misty valley see you,
the roamer, striding on the mountains.
238.
With the Exception of Our Neighbour.
—I admit that my head is set wrong on my neck
only, for every other man, as is well known, knows
better than I what I should do or leave alone.
The only one who cannot help me is myself, poor
beggar! Are we not all like statues on which false
heads have been placed? Eh, dear neighbour ? —
Ah no; you, just you, are the exception!
239-
Caution. —We must either not go about at all
with people who are lacking in the reverence for
personalities, or inexorably fetter them beforehand
with the manacles of convention.
240.
The Wish to Appear Vain. —In conversation
with strangers or little-known acquaintances, to
express only selected thoughts, to speak of one's
famous acquaintances, and important experiences
## p. 129 (#151) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 129
and travels, is a sign that one is not proud, or at
least would not like to appear proud. Vanity is the
polite mask of pride.
241.
Good Friendship. —A good friendship arises
when the one man deeply respects the other, more
even than himself; loves him also, though not so
much as himself; and finally, to facilitate intercourse,
knows how to add the delicate bloom and veneer
of intimacy, but at the same time wisely refrains
from a true, real intimacy, from the confounding of
meum and tuum.
242.
Friends as Ghosts. —If we change ourselves
vitally, our friends, who have not changed, become
ghosts of our own past: their voice sounds shadowy
and dreadful to us, as if we heard our own voice
speaking, but younger, harder, less mellow.
243-
, OnejEye andTwo Glances. —The same people
whose eyes naturally plead for favours and indul-
gences are accustomed, from their frequent humilia-
tions and cravings for revenge, to assume a shame-
less glance as well.
244.
The Haze of Distance. —A child throughout
life—that sounds very touching, but is only the
verdict from the distance. Seen and known close
at hand, he is always called "puerile throughout
life. "
VOl. II. I
## p. 130 (#152) ############################################
130 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I
245.
Advantage and Disadvantage in the Same
Misunderstanding. — The mute perplexity of
the subtle brain is usually understood by the non-
subtle as a silent superiority, and is much dreaded
whereas the perception of perplexity would produce
good will.
246.
J The Sage giving Himself out to be a
Fool. —The philanthropy of the sage sometimes
makes him decide to pretend to be excited, enraged,
or delighted, so that he may not hurt his surround-
ings by the coldness and rationality of his true
nature.
247.
Forcing Oneself to Attention. —So soon
as we note that any one in intercourse and conver-
sation with us has to force himself to attention, we
have adequate evidence that he loves us not, or loves
us no longer.
248.
The Way to a Christian Virtue. —Learning
from one's enemies is the best way to love them, for
it inspires us with a grateful mood towards them.
249.
Stratagem of the Importunate. —The im-
portunate man gives us gold coins as change for
our convention coins, and thereby tries to force us
afterwards to treat our convention as an oversight
and him as an exception.
## p. 131 (#153) ############################################
MISCELLANEONFOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 131
250.
REASON FOR DISLIKE. —We become hostile to
many an artist or writer, not because we notice in
the end that he has duped us, but because he did
not find more subtle means necessary to entrap us.
251.
IN PARTING. — Not by the way one soul ap-
proaches another, but by the way it separates, do I
recognise its relationship and homogeneity with the
other.
252.
SILENTIUM. —We must not speak about our
friends, or we renounce the sentiment of friendship.
253.
IMPOLITENESS. --Impoliteness is often the sign
of a clumsy modesty, which when taken by surprise
loses its head and would fain hide the fact by means
of rudeness.
254.
HONESTY'S MISCALCULATION. -Our newest ac-
quaintances are sometimes the first to learn what
we have hitherto kept dark. We have the foolish
notion that our proof of confidence is the strongest
fetter wherewith to hold them fast. But they do
not know enough about us to feel so strongly the
sacrifice involved in our speaking out, and betray
our secrets to others without any idea of betrayal.
Hereby we possibly lose our old friends.
## p. 132 (#154) ############################################
132 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
255.
In the Ante-Chamber of Favour. —All men
whom we let stand long in the ante-chamber of our
favour get into a state of fermentation or become
bitter.
256.
Warning to the Despised. —When we have
sunk unmistakably in the estimation of mankind
we should cling tooth and nail to modesty in inter-
course, or we shall betray to others that we have
sunk in our own estimation as well. Cynicism in
intercourse is a sign that a man, when alone, treats
himself too as a dog.
257.
Ignorance often Ennobles. —With regard to
the respect of those who pay respect, it is an ad-
vantage ostensibly not to understand certain things.
Ignorance, too, confers privileges.
258.
The Opponent of Grace. —The impatient and
arrogant man does not care for grace, feeling it
to be a corporeal, visible reproach against himself.
For grace is heartfelt toleration in movement and
gesture.
259.
On Seeing Again. —When old friends see each
other again after a long separation, it often happens
that they affect an interest in matters to which they
## p. 133 (#155) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 133
as
have long since become indifferent. Sometimes
both remark this, but dare not raise the veil—from
a mournful doubt. Hence arise conversations as
in the realm of the dead. By means d. Tuse lowepts
hey to be the Tyread merisuologio lunere
toddlere l authoricul il down to the presupun
MARING FRIENDS ONLY WITH THE INDUSTRI-
OUS. —The man of leisure is dangerous to his friends,
for, having nothing to do, he talks of what his friends
are doing or not doing, interferes, and finally makes
himself a nuisance. The clever man will only make
friends with the industrious.
261.
ONE WEAPON TWICE AS MUCH AS Two. It is
an unequal combat when one man defends his
cause with head and heart, the other with head
alone. The first has sun and wind against him, as
it were, and his two weapons interfere with each
other: he loses the prize—in the eyes of truth.
True, the victory of the second, with his one
weapon, is seldom a victory after the hearts of all
the other spectators, and makes him unpopular.
262.
DEPTH AND TROUBLED WATERS. —The public
easily confounds him who fishes in troubled waters
with him who pumps up from the depths.
263.
DEMONSTRATING ONE'S VANITY TO FRIEND
AND FOE. —Many a man, from vanity, maltreats
## p. 134 (#156) ############################################
134 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
even his friends, when in the presence of witnesses
to whom he wishes to make his own preponderance
clear. Others exaggerate the merits of their enemies,
in order to point proudly to the fact that they are
worthy of such foes.
264.
COOLINg Off. —The over-heating of the heart is
generally allied with illness of the head and judg-
ment. He who is concerned for a time with the
health of his head must know what he has to cool,
careless of the future of his heart. For if we are
capable at all of giving warmth, we are sure to
become warm again and then have our summer.
265.
Mingled Feelings. —Towards science women
and self-seeking artists entertain a feeling that is
composed of envy and sentimentality.
266.
Where Danger is Greatest. —We seldom
break our leg so long as life continues a toilsome
upward climb. The danger comes when we begin
to take things easily and choose the convenient
paths.
267.
Not TOO Early. —We must beware of becoming
sharp too early, or we shall also become thin too
early.
268.
Joy in Refractoriness. — The good teacher
knows cases where he is proud that his pupil re-
## p. 135 (#157) ############################################
MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 135
mains true to himself in opposition to him—at
times when the youth must not understand the man
or would be harmed by understanding him.
269.
The Experiment of Honesty. —Young men,
who wish to be more honest than they have been,
seek as victim some one acknowledged to be honest,
attacking him first with an attempt to reach his
height by abuse—with the underlying notion that
this first experiment at any rate is void of danger.
For just such a one has no right to chastise the
impudence of the honest man.
270.
The Eternal Child. —We think, short-sighted
that we are, that fairy-tales and games belong to
childhood. As if at any age we should care to live
without fairy-tales and games! Our words and
sentiments are indeed different, but the essential
fact remains the same, as is proved by the child
himself looking on games as his work and fairy-
tales as his truth. The shortness of life ought to
preserve us from a pedantic distinction between the
different ages^-as if every age brought something
new—and a poet ought one day to portray a man
of two hundred, who really lives without fairy-tales
and games.
271.
Every Philosophy is the Philosophy of a
Period of Life.
