No More Learning

" He who belongs to it
keeps himself well concealed :-they may be a
small number in whom it lives and is embodied, be-
sides perhaps being men who do not stand upon
the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs,
invalids, in part persons over-indulged, over-refined,
-


## p. 214 (#236) ############################################

214
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
such as have the ambition to conceal themselves.
They have all something in common : they keep
their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly
and noisy spouting of the democratic bourgeois.
In fact, a besotted and brutalised France at present
sprawls in the foreground-it recently celebrated a
veritable
orgy of bad taste, and at the same time
of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo.
There is also something else common to them:
a predilection to resist intellectual Germanising
--and a still greater inability to do so! In this
France of intellect, which is also a France of pessi-
mism, Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at
home, and more indigenous than he has ever been
in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who
has long ago been re-incarnated in the more re-
fined and fastidious lyrists of Paris; or of Hegel,
who at present, in the form of Taine—the first of
living historians--exercises an almost tyrannical
influence. As regards Richard Wagner, however,
the more French music learns to adapt itself to the
actual needs of the âme moderne, the more will it
“Wagnerise"; one can safely predict that before-
hand,—it is already taking place sufficiently! There
are, however, three things which the French can
still boast of with pride as their heritage and pos-
session, and as indelible tokens of their ancient
intellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of all
voluntary or involuntary Germanising and vulgar-
ising of taste. Firstly, the capacity for artistic
emotion, for devotion to "form," for which the
expression, l'art pour l'art, along with numerous
others, has been invented :-such capacity has


## p. 215 (#237) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
215
not been lacking in France for three centuries; and
owing to its reverence for the "small number," it
has again and again made a sort of chamber music
of literature possible, which is sought for in vain
elsewhere in Europe. —The second thing whereby
the French can lay claim to a superiority over
Europe is their ancient, many-sided, moralistic
culture, owing to which one finds on an average,
even in the petty romanciers of the newspapers and
chance boulevardiers de Paris, a psychological sensi-
tiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one
has no conception (to say nothing of the thing
itself! ) in Germany. The Germans lack a couple
of centuries of the moralistic work requisite thereto,
which, as we have said, France has not grudged:
those who call the Germans “naïve "on that account
give them commendation for a defect. (As the
opposite of the German inexperience and inno-
cence in voluptate psychologica, which is not too
remotely associated with the tediousness of German
intercourse, and as the most successful expression
of genuine French curiosity and inventive talent
in this domain of delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may
be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and fore-
running man, who, with a Napoleonic tempo,
traversed his Europe, in fact, several centuries of
the European soul, as a surveyor and discoverer
thereof:-it has required two generations to over-
take him one way or other, to divine long afterwards
some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured
him—this strange Epicurean and man of interroga-
tion, the last great psychologist of France). -There
is yet a third claim to superiority : in the French


## p. 216 (#238) ############################################

216
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
character there is a successful half-way synthesis
of the North and South, which makes them compre-
hend many things, and enjoins upon them other
things, which an Englishman can never compre-
hend. Their temperament, turned alternately to
and from the South, in which from time to time the
Provençal and Ligurian blood froths over, preserves
them from the dreadful, northern gray-in-gray,
from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty
of blood-our German infirmity of taste, for the
excessive prevalence of which at the present
moment, blood and iron, that is to say “high
politics," has with great resolution been prescribed
(according to a dangerous healing art, which bids
me wait and wait, but not yet hope). —There is
also still in France a pre-understanding and ready
welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men,
who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in
any kind of fatherlandism, and know how to love
the South when in the North and the North when
in the South-the. born Midlanders, the “good
Europeans. " For them Bizet has made music,
this latest genius, who has seen a new beauty and
seduction, -- who has discovered a piece of the
South in music.
255.
I hold that many precautions should be taken
against German music. Suppose a person loves
the South as I love it—as a great school of recovery
for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills,
as a boundless solar profusion and effulgence which
o'erspreads a sovereign existence believing in itself


## p. 217 (#239) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
217
a
-well, such a person will learn to be somewhat on
his guard against German music, because, in injuring
his taste anew, it will also injure his health anew.
Such a Southerner, a Southerner not by origin but
by belief, if he should dream of the future of music,
must also dream of it being freed from the influence
of the North ; and must have in his ears the pre-
lude to a deeper, mightier, and perhaps more per-
verse and mysterious music, a super-German music,
which does not fade, pale, and die away, as all
German music does, at the sight of the blue, wanton
sea and the Mediterranean clearness of sky-a
super-European music, which holds its own even in
presence of the brown sunsets of the desert, whose
soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can be at home
and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beasts
of prey. . . . I could imagine a music of which the
rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more
of good and evil; only that here and there perhaps
some sailor's home-sickness, some golden shadows
and tender weaknesses might sweep lightly over
it; an art which, from the far distance, would see
the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehen-
sible moral world fleeing towards it, and would be
hospitable enough and profound enough to receive
such belated fugitives.
256.
Owing to the morbid estrangement which the
nationality-craze has induced and still induces
among the nations of Europe, owing also to the
short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who
,
with the help of this craze, are at present in power,


## p. 218 (#240) ############################################

218
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
and do not suspect to what extent the disinte-
grating policy they pursue must necessarily be only
an interlude policy---owing to all this, and much
else that is altogether unmentionable at present,
the most unmistakable signs that Europe wishes to
be one, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely
misinterpreted. With all the more profound and
large-minded men of this century, the real general
tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls
was to prepare the way for that new synthesis,
and tentatively to anticipate the European of the
future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker
moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong to
the "fatherlands ”—they only rested from them-
selves when they became “patriots. " I think of such
men as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal,
Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer : it must not be
taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among
them, about whom one must not let oneself be de-
ceived by his own misunderstandings (geniuses like
him have seldom the right to understand them-
selves), still less, of course, by the unseemly noise
with which he is now resisted and opposed in
France: the fact remains, nevertheless, that Richard
Wagner and the later French Romanticism of the
forties, are most closely and intimately related to
one another. They are akin, fundamentally akin,
in all the heights and depths of their requirements;
it is Europe, the one Europe, whose soul presses
urgently and longingly, outwards and upwards, in
their multifarious and boisterous art-whither?
into a new light? towards a new sun? But who
would attempt to express accurately what all these


## p. 219 (#241) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
219
masters of new modes of speech could not express
distinctly? It is certain that the same storm and
stress tormented them, that they sought in the
same manner, these last great seekers! All of
them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears
-the first artists of universal literary culture--for
the most part even themselves writers, poets, inter-
mediaries and blenders of the arts and the senses
(Wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters,
as poet among musicians, as artist generally among
actors); all of them fanatics for expression “at any
cost”-I specially mention Delacroix, the nearest
related to Wagner; all of them great discoverers
in the realm of the sublime, also of the loathsome
and dreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, in
display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them
talented far beyond their genius, out and out virtuosi,
with mysterious accesses to all that seduces, allures,
constrains, and upsets; born enemies of logic and
of the straight line, hankering after the strange,
the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the
self-contradictory; as men, Tantaluses of the will,
plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be
incapable of a noble tempo or of a lento in life and
action—think of Balzac, for instance,-unrestrained
workers, almost destroying themselves by work;
antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and
insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all
of them finally shattering and sinking down at the
Christian cross (and with right and reason, for who
of them would have been sufficiently profound and
sufficiently original for an Antichristian philo-
sophy ? );-on the whole, a boldly daring, splendidly


## p. 220 (#242) ############################################

220
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging
class of higher men, who had first to teach their
century-and it is the century of the masses—the
conception “higher man. ” . . . Let the German
friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to
whether there is anything purely German in the
Wagnerian art, or whether its distinction does not
consist precisely in coming from super-German
sources and impulses : in which connection it may
not be underrated how indispensable Paris was to
the development of his type, which the strength of
his instincts made him long to visit at the most
decisive time--and how the whole style of his pro-
ceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect
itself in sight of the French socialistic original. On
a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be found,
to the honour of Richard Wagner's German nature,
that he has acted in everything with more strength,
daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-
century Frenchman could have done—owing to
the circumstance that we Germans are as yet
nearer to barbarism than the French ;—perhaps
even the most remarkable creation of Richard
Wagner is not only at present, but for ever inac-
cessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the
whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Sieg-
fried, that very free man, who is probably far too
free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too anti-
Catholic for the taste of old and mellow civilised
nations. He may even have been a sin against
Romanticism, this anti-Latin Siegfried: well,
Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old sad
days, when-anticipating a taste which has mean-


## p. 221 (#243) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
221
while passed into politics—he began, with the
religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach, at
least, the way to Rome, if not to walk therein. -
That these last words may not be misunderstood,
I will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes, which
will even betray to less delicate ears what I mean
-what I mean counter to the “last Wagner” and
his Parsifal music :-
-Is this our mode ? -
From German heart came this vexed ululating?
From German body, this self-lacerating?
Is ours this priestly hand-dilation,
This incense-fuming exaltation ?
Is ours this faltering, falling, shambling,
This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling?
This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing,
This wholly false enraptured heaven-o'erspringing ?
-Is this our modę ? -
Think well ! —ye still wait for admission-
For what ye hear is Rome-Rome's faith by in-
tuition !
po


## p. 222 (#244) ############################################

>
>
1


## p. 223 (#245) ############################################

NINTH CHAPTER.
WHAT IS NOBLE?
257
EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto
been the work of an aristocratic society—and so
will it always be-a society believing in a long
scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth
among human beings, and requiring slavery in
some form or other. Without the pathos of distance,
such as grows out of the incarnated difference of
classes, out of the constant outlooking and down-
looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and
instruments, and out of their equally constant
practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping
down and keeping at a distance—that other more
mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the
longing for an ever new widening of distance within
the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer,
further, more extended, more comprehensive states,
in short, just the elevation of the type “man,” the
continued. "self-surmounting of man,” to use a
moral formula in a supermoral sense. To be sure,
one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian
illusions about the history of the origin of an aristo-
cratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary
5


## p. 224 (#246) ############################################

224
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
condition for the elevation of the type “man"):
the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge un-
prejudicedly how every higher civilisation hitherto
has originated! Men with a still natural nature,
barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men
of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of
will and desire for power, threw themselves upon
weaker, more moral, more peaceful races (perhaps
trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old
mellow civilisations in which the final vital force
was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and
depravity. At the commencement, the noble caste
was always the barbarian caste: their superiority
did not consist first of all in their physical, but in
their psychical power—they were more complete
men (which at every point also implies the same
as “more complete beasts ").
258.
Corruption --- as the indication that anarchy
threatens to break out among the instincts, and
that the foundation of the emotions, called "life,"
is convulsed—is something radically different ac-
cording to the organisation in which it manifests
itself. When, for instance, an aristocracy like that
of France at the beginning of the Revolution, flung
away its privileges with sublime disgust and
sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments,
it was corruption :-it was really only the closing
act of the corruption which had existed for cen-
turies, by virtue of which that aristocracy had
abdicated step by step its lordly prerogatives and
lowered itself to a function of royalty (in the end


## p. 225 (#247) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
225
even to its decoration and parade-dress). The
essential thing, however, in a good and healthy
aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a
function either of the kingship or the commonwealth,
but as the significance and highest justification
thereof-that it should therefore accept with a good
conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals,
who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced
to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its
fundamental belief must be precisely that society is
not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a
foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a
select class of beings may be able to elevate them-
selves to their higher duties, and in general to a
higher existence : like those sun-seeking climbing
plants in Java—they are called Sipo Matador,-
which encircle an oak so long and so often with
their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported
by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light,
and exhibit their happiness.
259.
To refrain mutually from injury, from violence,
from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with
that of others: this may result in a certain rough
sense in good conduct among individuals when the
necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual
similarity of the individuals in amount of force and
degree of worth, and their co-relation within one
organisation). As soon, however, as one wished to
take this principle more generally, and if possible
even as the fundamental
principle of society, it would
immediately disclose what it really is-namely, a
P


## p. 226 (#248) ############################################

226
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution
and decay. Here one must think profoundly to
the
very
basis and resist all sentimental weakness :
life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, con-
quest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity,
obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at
the least, putting it mildest, exploitation ;—but
why should one for ever use precisely these words
on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been
stamped ? Even the organisation within which, as
was previously supposed, the individuals treat each
other as equal—it takes place in every healthy
aristocracy-must itself, if it be a living and not a
dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies,
which the individuals within it refrain from doing
to each other: it will have to be the incarnated
Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain
ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency-
not owing to any morality or immorality, but
because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to
Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary
consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be
corrected than on this matter; people now rave
everywhere, even under the guise of science, about
coming conditions of society in which " the exploit-
ing character" is to be absent :--that sounds to my
ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life
which should refrain from all organic functions.
" Exploitation” does not belong to a depraved, or
imperfect and primitive society; it belongs to the
nature of the living being as a primary organic
function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will
to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life. -


## p. 227 (#249) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
227
L.
Granting that as a theory this is a novelty—as a
reality it is the fundamental fact of all history: let
us be so far honest towards ourselves !
260.
In a tour through the many finer and coarser
moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still
prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring
regularly together. and connected with one another,
until finally two primary types revealed themselves
to me, and a radical distinction was brought to
light. There is master-morality and slave-morality;
- I would at once add, however, that in all higher
and mixed civilisations, there are also attempts at
the reconciliation of the two moralities; but one
finds still oftener the confusion and mutual mis-
understanding of them, indeed, sometimes their
close juxtaposition-even in the same man, within
one soul. The distinctions of moral values have
either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly con-
scious of being different from the ruled-or among
the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts.
In the first case, when it is the rulers who deter-
mine the conception “good,” it is the exalted,
proud disposition which is regarded as the distin-
guishing feature, and that which determines the
order of rank. The noble type of man separates
from himself the beings in whom the opposite of
this exalted, proud disposition displays itself: he
despises them. Let it at once be noted that in
his first kind of morality the antithesis “good” and
"bad" means practically the same as “noble” and
despicable";—the antithesis "good" and "evil”
6


## p. 228 (#250) ############################################

228
BEYOND GOOD AND, EVIL.
de pesed
»
is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid,
the insignificant, and those thinking merely of
narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the
distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-
abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let them-
selves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and
above all the liars :-it is a fundamental belief of
all aristocrats that the common people are untruth-
ful. "We truthful ones ”--the nobility in ancient
Greece called themselves. It is obvious that every-
where the designations of moral value were at first
applied to men, and were only derivatively and at
a later period applied to actions ; it is a gross mis-
take, therefore, when historians of morals start with
questions like, “Why have sympathetic actions
been praised ? " The noble type of man regards
himself as a determiner of values; he does not
require to be approved of; he passes the judgment:
“What is injurious to me is injurious in itself”; he
knows that it is he himself only who confers
honour on things; he is a creator of values. He
honours whatever he recognises in himself: such
morality is self-glorification. In the foreground
there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which
seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension,
the consciousness of a wealth which would fain
give and bestow :—the noble man also helps the
unfortunate, but not--or scarcely-out of pity, but
rather from an impulse generated by the super-
abundance of power. The noble man honours in
himself the powerful one, him also who has power
over himself, who knows how to speak and how
to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting
A


## p. 229 (#251) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
229
>
himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence
for all that is severe and hard. “Wotan placed a
hard heart in my breast,” says an old Scandinavian
Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of
a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud
of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the
Saga therefore adds warningly: "He who has not
a hard heart when young, will never have one. "
The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest
removed from the morality which sees precisely in
sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in
désintéressement, the characteristic of the moral;
faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity
and irony towards “selflessness,” belong as definitely
to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and pre-
caution in presence of sympathy and the “warm
heart. ”—It is the powerful who know how to
honour, it is their art, their domain for invention.
The profound reverence for age and for tradition-
all law rests on this double reverence, the belief
and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavour-
able to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the
powerful; and if, reversely, men of “modern ideas”
believe almost instinctively in “progress" and the
“future," and are more and more lacking in respect
for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas " has
complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality
of the ruling class, however, is more especially
foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the
sternness of its principle that one has duties only
to one's equals; that one may act towards beings
of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as
seems good to one, or “as the heart desires,” and
"
")


## p. 230 (#252) ############################################

230
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
in any case “beyond good and evil”: it is here
that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a
place. The ability and obligation to exercise pro-
longed gratitude and prolonged revenge — both
-
only within the circle of equals,-artfulness in
retaliation, raffinement of the idea in friendship, a
certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the
emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance-in
fact, in order to be a good friend): all these are
typical characteristics of the noble morality, which,
as has been pointed out, is not the morality of
་ “modern ideas," and is therefore at present difficult
to realise, and also to unearth and disclose. --It is
otherwise with the second type of morality, slave-
morality. Supposing that the abused, the op-
pressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary,
and those uncertain of themselves, should moralise,
what will be the common element in their moral
estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with
regard to the entire situation of man will find
expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, to-
gether with his situation. The slave has an un-
favourable eye for the virtues of the powerfut; he
has a scepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust
of everything “good” that is there honoured_he
would fain persuade himself that the very happi-
ness there is not genuine. On the other hand, those
qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of
sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded
with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind,
helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence,
humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for
here these are the most useful qualities, and almost


## p. 231 (#253) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
231
4
the only means of supporting the burden of exist-
ence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of
.
utility. Here is the seat of the origin of the famous
antithesis "good" and "evil" :-power and danger-
ousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain
dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not
admit of being despised. According to slave-
morality, therefore, the "evil” man arouses fear. . .
according to master-morality, it is precisely the
“good” man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse
it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable
being. The contrast attains its maximum when,
,
in accordance with the logical consequences of
slave-morality, a shade of depreciation—it may be
slight and well-intentioned-at last attaches itself
even to the “good” man of this morality ;;because,
according to the servile mode of thought, the good
man must in any case be the safe man: he is good-
natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un
bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains
the ascendency, language shows a tendency to
approximate the significations of the words “good
and “stupid. "-A last fundamental difference: the
desire for freedom, the instinct for happiness and
the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as
necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice
and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the
regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of think-
ing and estimating:-Hence we can understand
without further detail why love as a passion—it is
ir European speciality-must absolutely be of
noble origin; as is well known, its invention is
due to the Provençal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant


## p. 232 (#254) ############################################

232
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe
owes so much, and almost owes itself.
261.
Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps
most difficult for a noble man to understand: he
will be tempted to deny it, where another kind of
man thinks he sees it self-evidently. The problem
for him is to represent to his mind beings who seek
to arouse a good opinion of themselves which they
themselves do not possess—and consequently also
do not "deserve,”—and who yet believe in this good
opinion afterwards. This seems to him on the one
hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful, and
on the ether hand so grotesquely unreasonable,
that he would like to consider vanity an excep-
tion, and is doubtful about it in most cases when
it is spoken of. He will say, for instance: “I
may be mistaken about my value, and on the
other hand may nevertheless demand that my value
should be acknowledged by others precisely as
I rate it :-- that, however, is not vanity (but
self-conceit, or, in most cases, that which is called
'humility,' and also modesty'). ” Or he will
even say: "For many reasons I can delight in
the good opinion of others, perhaps because I
love and honour them, and rejoice in all their joys,
perhaps also because their good opinion endorses
and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion,
perhaps because the good opinion of others, even
in cases where I do not share it, is useful to me,
or gives promise of usefulness :-all this, however,
is not vanity. " The man of noble character must
V
C


## p. 233 (#255) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
233
first bring it home forcibly to his mind, especially
with the aid of history, that, from time immemorial,
in all social strata in any way dependent, the
ordinary man was only that which he passed for :-
not being at all accustomed to fix values, he did
not assign even to himself any other value than
that which his master assigned to him (it is the
peculiar right of masters to create values). It may
be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary
atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is
still always waiting for an opinion about himself,
and then instinctively submitting himself to it;
yet by no means only to a “good” opinion, but
also to a bad and unjust one (think, for instance,
of the greater part of the self-appreciations and
self-depreciations which believing women learn
from their confessors, and which in general the
believing Christian learns from his Church). In
fact, conformably to the slow rise of the democratic
social order (and its cause, the blending of the
blood of masters and slaves), the originally noble
and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value
to themselves and to "think well" of themselves,
will now be more and more encouraged and ex- .
tended; but it has at all times an older, ampler,
and more radically ingrained propensity opposed
to it and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this
older propensity overmasters the younger. The
vain person rejoices over every good opinion which
he hears about himself (quite apart from the point
of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of
its truth or falsehood), just as he suffers from every
bad opinion : for he subjects himself to both, he
1


## p. 234 (#256) ############################################

234
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
»
feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest in-
stinct of subjection which breaks forth in him. -
It is "the slave" in the vain man's blood, the re-
mains of the slave's craftiness—and how much of
the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance !
which seeks to seduce to good opinions of itself;
it is the slave, too, who immediately afterwards
falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as
though he had not called them forth. -And to
repeat it again : vanity is an atavism.
/
262,
A species originates, and a type becomes estab-
lished and strong in the long struggle with essen-
tially constant unfavourable conditions. On the
other hand, it is known by the experience of
breeders that species which receive superabundant
nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection
and care, immediately tend in the most marked
way to develop variations, and are fertile in pro-
digies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices).
Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say
an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary
or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rear-
ing human beings; there are there men beside
one another, thrown upon their own resources,
who want to make their species prevail, chiefly
because they must prevail, or else run the terrible
danger of being exterminated. The favour, the
superabundance, the protection are there lacking
under which variations are fostered; the species
needs itself as species, as something which, pre-
cisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and


## p. 235 (#257) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
235
simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and
make itself permanent in constant struggle with
its neighbours, or with rebellious or rebellion-
threatening vassals. The most varied experience
teaches it what are the qualities to which it princi-
pally owes the fact that it still exists, in spite of
all Gods and men, and has hitherto been victorious :
these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues
alone it develops to maturity. It does so with
severity, indeed it desires severity ; every aristo-
cratic morality is intolerant in the education of
youth, in the control of women, in the marriage
customs, in the relations of old and young, in the
penal laws (which have an eye only for the de-
generating): it counts intolerance itself among the
virtues, under the name of "justice. ” A type with
few, but very marked features, a species of severe,
warlike, wisely silent, reserved and reticent men
(and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for
the charm and nuances of society) is thus estab-
lished, unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations;
the constant struggle with uniform unfavourable
conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a
type becoming stable and hard. Finally, however,
a happy state of things results, the enormous
tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more
enemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the
means of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are
present in superabundance. With one stroke the
bond and constraint of the old discipline severs :
it is no longer regarded as necessary, as a condition
of existence-if it would continue, it can only do so
as a form of luxury, as an archaïsing taste. Varia-


## p. 236 (#258) ############################################

236
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
-
tions, whether they be deviations into the higher,
finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities,
appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuber-
ance and splendour; the individual dares to be
individual and detach himself. At this turning-
point of history there manifest themselves, side
by side, and often mixed and entangled together,
a magnificent, manifold, virgin - forest - like up-
growth and up-striving, a kind of tropical tempo in
the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay
and self-destruction, owing to the savagely oppos-
ing and seemingly exploding egoisms, which strive
with one another “for sun and light," and can no
longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance
for themselves by means of the hitherto existing
morality. It was this morality itself which piled
up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow
in so threatening a manner :-it is now out of
date,” it is getting "out of date. ” The dan-
gerous and disquieting point has been reached
when the greater, more manifold, more compre-
hensive life is lived beyond the old morality; the
“individual” stands out, and is obliged to have
recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and
artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and
self-deliverance. Nothing but new “Whys,” nothing
but new “Hows,” no common formulas any longer,
misunderstanding and disregard in league with
each other, decay, deterioration, and the loftiest
desires frightfully entangled, the genius of the race
overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and
bad, a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and
Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar


## p. 237 (#259) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
237
to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied cor-
ruption. Danger is again present, the mother of
morality, great danger; this time shifted into the
individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the
street, into their own child, into their own heart,
into all the most personal and secret recesses of
their desires and volitions. What will the moral
philosophers who appear at this time have to
preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and
loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that
everything around them decays and produces
decay, that nothing will endure until the day after
to-morrow, except one species of man, the incur-
ably mediocre. The mediocre alone have a pro-
spect of continuing and propagating themselves-
they will be the men of the future, the sole sur-
vivors; "be like them! become mediocre ! ” is now
the only morality which has still a significance,
which still obtains a hearing. -But it is difficult to
preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never
avow what it is and what it desires ! it has to talk
of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly
love-it will have difficulty in concealing its
irony !
263.
There is an instinct for rank, which more than
anything else is already the sign of a high rank;
there is a delight in the nuances of reverence which
leads one to infer noble origin and habits. The
refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are
put to a perilous test when something passes by
that is of the highest rank, but is not yet pro-


## p. 238 (#260) ############################################

238
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
tected by the awe of authority from obtrusive
touches and incivilities : something that goes its
way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, un-
discovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled
and disguised. He whose task and practice it is
to investigate souls, will avail himself of many
varieties of this very art to determine the ultimate
value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank
to which it belongs : he will test it by its instinct for
reverence. Différence engendre haine : the vulgarity
of many a nature spurts up suddenly like dirty
water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed
shrines, any book bearing the marks of great
destiny, is brought before it; while on the other
hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of
the eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is
indicated that a soul feels the nearness of what is
worthiest of respect.
The way in which, on the
whole, the reverence for the Bible has hitherto been
maintained in Europe, is perhaps the best example
of discipline and refinement of manners which
Europe owes to Christianity: books of such pro-
foundness and supreme significance require for
their protection an external tyranny of authority,
in order to acquire the period of thousands of years
which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them.
Much has been achieved when the sentiment has
been at last instilled into the masses (the shallow-
pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are
not allowed to touch everything, that there are
holy experiences before which they must take off
their shoes and keep away the unclean hand-it is
almost their highest advance towards humanity


## p. 239 (#261) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
239
On the contrary, in the so-called cultured classes,
the believers in “modern ideas,” nothing is perhaps
so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy inso-
lence of eye and hand with which they touch,
taste, and finger everything; and it is possible that
even yet there is more relative nobility of taste, and
more tact for reverence among the people, among
the lower classes of the people, especially among
peasants, than among the newspaper-reading demi-
monde of intellect, the cultured class.
264.
It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his
ancestors have preferably and most constantly
done : whether they were perhaps diligent econo-
misers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest
and citizen-like in their desires, modest also in their
virtues; or whether they were accustomed to com-
manding from morning till night, fond of rude
pleasures and probably of still ruder duties and
responsibilities; or whether, finally, at one time or
another, they have sacrificed oid privileges of
birth and possession, in order to live wholly for
their faith—for their “God,”—as men of an inexor-
able and sensitive conscience, which blushes at
every compromise. It is quite impossible for a
man not to have the qualities and predilections of
his parents and ancestors in his constitution, what-
ever appearances may suggest to the contrary.
This is the problem of race. Granted that one
knows something of the parents, it is admissible
to draw a conclusion about the child : any kind of
offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or
a


## p. 240 (#262) ############################################

240
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
of clumsy self-vaunting—the three things which
together have constituted the genuine plebeian
type in all times—such must pass over to the
child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of
the best education and culture one will only suc-
ceed in deceiving with regard to such heredity.
And what else does education and culture try to
do nowadays! In our very democratic, or rather,
very plebeian age, “education” and “culture ” must
be essentially the art of deceiving—deceiving with
regard to origin, with regard to the inherited
plebeianism in body and soul. An educator who
nowadays preached truthfulness above everything
else, and called out constantly to his pupils : "Be
true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you are! "-
even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in
a short time to have recourse to the furca of Horace,
naturam expellere: with what results? "Plebeianism”
usque recurret. *
265.
At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I sub-
mit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble
soul, I mean the unalterable belief that to a being
such as "we," other beings must naturally be in
subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The
noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without
question, and also without consciousness of harsh-
ness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather
as something that may have its basis in the primary
law of things :-if he sought a designation for it
* Horace's “Epistles," I. X. 24.


## p. 241 (#263) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
241
а
he would say: "It is justice itself. ”
He ac-
knowledges under certain circumstances, which
made him hesitate at first, that there are other
equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled
this question of rank, he moves among those equals
and equally privileged ones with the same assur-
ance, as regards modesty and delicate respect,
which he enjoys in intercourse with himself-in
accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism
which all the stars understand. It is an additional
.
instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-
limitation in intercourse with his equals—every
star is a similar egoist; he honours himself in them,
and in the rights which he concedes to them, he
has no doubt that the exchange of honours and
rights, as the essence of all intercourse, belongs also
to the natural condition of things. The noble
soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate
and sensitive instinct of requital, which is at the
root of his nature. The notion of "favour” has,
inter pares, neither significance nor good repute ;
there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it
were light upon one from above, and of drinking
them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts
and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His
egoism hinders him here: in general, he looks
"aloft” unwillingly - he looks either forward,
horizontally and deliberately, or downwards-he
knows that he is on a height.
266.
“One can only truly esteem him who does not
look out for himself. ”—Goethe to Rath Schlosser.
Q


## p. 242 (#264) ############################################

242
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
:
267.
The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even
teach their children : “Siao-sin” (“make thy heart
small”). This is the essentially fundamental
tendency in latter-day civilisations. I have no
doubt that an ancient Greek, also, would first of
all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of to-
day-in this respect alone we should immediately
be " distasteful” to him.
>
268.
What, after all, is ignobleness ? —Words are
vocal symbols for ideas ; ideas, however, are more
or less definite mental symbols for frequently re-
turning and concurring sensations, for groups of
sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same
words in order to understand one another: we must
also employ the same words for the same kind of
internal experiences, we must in the end have ex-
periences in common. On this account the people
of one nation understand one another better than
those belonging to different nations, even when
they use the same language; or rather, when people
have lived long together under similar conditions
(of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there
originates therefrom an entity that “understands
itself”-namely, a nation. In all souls a like
number of frequently recurring experiences have
gained the upper hand over those occurring more
rarely: about these matters people understand one
another rapidly and always more rapidly-the
history of language is the history of a process of


## p. 243 (#265) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
243
abbreviation; on the basis of this quick com-
prehension people always unite closer and closer.
The greater the danger, the greater is the need
of agreeing quickly and readily about what is
necessary; not to misunderstand one another in
danger--that is what cannot at all be dispensed
with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friend-
ships one has the experience that nothing of the
kind continues when the discovery has been made
that in using the same words, one of the two parties
has feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears
different from those of the other. (The fear of the
"eternal misunderstanding": that is the good genius
which so often keeps persons of different sexes from
too hasty attachments, to which sense and heart
prompt them- and not some Schopenhauerian
genius of the species”! ). Whichever groups of
sensations within a soul awaken most readily,
begin to speak, and give the word of command-
these decide as to the general order of rank of its
values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable
things. A man's estimates of value betray some-
thing of the structure of his soul, and wherein it
sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Sup-
posing now that necessity has from all time drawn
together only such men as could express similar
requirements and similar experiences by similar
symbols, it results on the whole that the easy
communicability of need, which implies ultimately
the undergoing only of average and common ex-
periences, must have been the most potent of all
the forces which have hitherto operated upon man-
kind. The more similar, the more ordinary people,


## p. 244 (#266) ############################################

244
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
have always had and are still having the advantage;
the more select, more refined, more unique, and
difficultly comprehensible, are liable to stand alone;
they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and
seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal
to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this
natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile, the
evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the
average, the gregarious—to the ignoble !
269.
The more a psychologist-a born, an unavoidable
psychologist and soul-diviner-turns his attention
to the more select cases and individuals, the greater
is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he
needssternness and cheerfulness more than any other
man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher
men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in
fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule
always before one's eyes. The manifold torment
of the psychologist who has discovered this ruina-
tion, who discovers once, and then discovers almost
repeatedly throughout all history, this universal
inner "desperateness” of higher men, this eternal
“ too late ! " in every sense—may perhaps one day
be the cause of his turning with bitterness against
his own lot, and of his making an attempt at self-
destruction-of his "going to ruin ” himself. One
may perceive in almost every psychologist a tell-
tale inclination for delightful intercourse with
commonplace and well-ordered men: the fact is
thereby disclosed that he always requires healing,
that he needs a sort of flight and forgetfulness,
4


## p. 245 (#267) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
245
"
away from what his insight and incisiveness-from
what his “business ”—has laid upon his conscience.
The fear of his memory is peculiar to him. He is
easily silenced by the judgment of others; he hears
with unmoved countenance how people honour,
admire, love, and glorify, where he has perceived-or
he even conceals his silence by expressly assenting
to some plausible opinion. Perhaps the paradox of
his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely
where he has learnt great sympathy, together with
great contempt, the multitude, the educated, and the
visionaries, have on their part learnt great reverence
-reverence for "great men and marvellous
animals, for the sake of whom one blesses and
honours the fatherland, the earth, the dignity of
mankind, and one's own self, to whom one points
the young, and in view of whom one educates them.
And who knows but in all great instances hitherto
just the same happened : that the multitude wor-
shipped a God, and that the “God” was only a
poor sacrificial animal ! Success has always been
the greatest liar—and the “work” itself is a
success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the
discoverer, are disguised in their creations until they
are unrecognisable; the "work" of the artist, of the
philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is
reputed to have created it; the “great men,” as they
are reverenced, are poor little fictions composed
afterwards; in the world of historical values
spurious coinage prevails. Those great poets, for
example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi,
Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention much
greater names, but I have them in my mind), as
"


## p. 246 (#268) ############################################

246
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be :
men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, and
childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust
and distrust; with souls in which usually some
flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge with
their works for an internal defilement, often seeking
forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true
memory, often lost in the mud and almost in
love with it, until they become like the Will-o'-
the-Wisps around the swamps, and pretend to be
stars—the people then call them idealists,—often
struggling with protracted disgust, with an ever-re-
appearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them
cold, and obliges them to languish for gloria and
devour “faith as it is” out of the hands of in-
toxicated adulators :-what a torment these great
artists are and the so-called higher men in general,
to him who has once found them out! It is thus
conceivable that it is just from woman-who is
clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also un-
fortunately eager to help and save to an extent far
beyond her powers—that they have learnt so readily
those outbreaks of boundless devoted sympathy,
which the multitude, above all the reverent multi-
tude, do not understand, and overwhelm with
prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This
sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its
power ; woman would like to believe that love can
do everything—it is the superstition peculiar to her.
Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor,
helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best
and deepest love is—he finds that it rather destroys
than saves ! -It is possible that under the holy fable


## p. 247 (#269) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
247
and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden one
of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of
knowledge about love: the martyrdom of the most
innocent and most craving heart, that never had
enough of any human love, that demanded love, that
demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved
and nothing else, with terrible outbursts against
those who refused him their love ; the story of a
poor soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had
to invent hell to send thither those who would not
love him—and that at last, enlightened about
human love, had to invent a God who is entire love,
entire capacity for love—who takes pity on human
love, because it is so paltry, so ignorant! He who
has such sentiments, he who has such knowledge
about love-seeks for death ! —But why should one
deal with such painful matters? Provided, of
course, that one is not obliged to do so.
-
270.
The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of
every man who has suffered deeply-it almost
determines the order of rank how deeply men can
suffer—the chilling certainty, with which he is
thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of
his suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and
wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar
with, and “at home” in, many distant, dreadful
worlds of which “ you know nothing ”! —this silent
intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of
the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated," of the
almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise neces-
sary to protect itself from contact with officious and


## p. 248 (#270) ############################################

248
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
sympathising hands, and in general from all that is
not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes
noble ; it separates. —One of the most refined forms
of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain
ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering
lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all
that is sorrowful and profound. There are "gay
men who make use of gaiety, because they are
misunderstood on account of it—they wish to be
misunderstood. There are scientific minds ” who
make use of science, because it gives a gay appear-
ance, and because scientificalness leads to the con-
clusion that a person is superficial—they wish to
mislead to a false conclusion. There are free
insolent minds which would fain conceal and deny
that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts (the
cynicism of Hamlet—the case of Galiani); and
occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate
over-assured knowledge. -From which it follows
that it is the part of a more refined humanity to
have reverence “ for the mask," and not to make
use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.
271.
That which separates two men most profoundly
is a different sense and grade of purity. What
does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal
usefulness, what does it matter about all their
mutual good-will: the fact still remains—they
“cannot smell each other ! ” The highest instinct
for purity places him who is affected with it in the
most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a
saint: for it is just holiness—the highest spiritualisa-


## p. 249 (#271) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
249
tion of the instinct in question. Any kind of
cognisance of an indescribable excess in the joy of
the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which per-
petually impels the soul out of night into the
morning, and out of gloom, out of “affliction” into
clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement :—just
as much as such a tendency distinguishes—it is a
noble tendency—it also separates. —The pity of the
saint is pity for the filth of the human, all-too-
human. And there are grades and heights where
pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth.
-
272.
Signs of nobility : never to think of lowering our
duties to the rank of duties for everybody ; to be
unwilling to renounce or to share our responsi-
bilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise
of them, among our duties.
1
273.
A man who strives after great things, looks upon
every one whom he encounters on his way either as
a means of advance, or a delay and hindrance-or
as a temporary resting-place. His peculiar lofty
bounty to his fellow-men is only possible when he
attains his elevation and dominates. Impatience,
and the consciousness of being always condemned
to comedy up to that time-for even strife is a
comedy, and conceals the end, as every means
does—spoil all intercourse for him ; this kind of
man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most
poisonous in it.


## p. 250 (#272) ############################################

250
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
274.
The Problem of those who Wait. —Happy chances
are necessary, and many incalculable elements, in
order that a higher man in whom the solution of a
problem is dormant, may yet take action, or “ break
forth,” as one might say—at the right moment.
On an average it does not happen; and in all
corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting,
who hardly know to what extent they are waiting,
and still less that they wait in vain. Occasionally,
too, the waking call comes too late-the chance
which gives “permission ” to take action—when
their best youth, and strength for action have been
used up in sitting still; and how many a one, just
as he "sprang up,” has found with horror that his
limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too
heavy! "It is too late," he has said to himself-
and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for
ever useless. In the domain of genius, may not the
“ Raphael without hands” (taking the expression
in its widest sense) perhaps not be the exception,
but the rule ? —Perhaps genius is by no means so
rare : but rather the five hundred hands which it
requires in order to tyrannise over the kaipós, “the
right time”-in order to take chance by the fore-
lock !
275.
He who does not wish to see the height of a
man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in
him, and in the foreground-and thereby betrays
himself.


## p. 251 (#273) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
251
276.
In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and
coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul : the
dangers of the latter must be greater, the pro-
bability that it will come to grief and perish is in
fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the
conditions of its existence. -In a lizard a finger
grows again which has been lost; not so in man. -
-
277
It is too bad! Always the old story! When a
man has finished building his house, he finds that
he has learnt unawares something which he ought
absolutely to have known before he—began to
build. The eternal, fatal "Too late! " The melan-
cholia of everything completed ! -
6
278.
-Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow
thy path without scorn, without love, with un-
fathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which
has returned to the light insatiated out of every
depth-what did it seek down there ? _with a
bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal
their loathing, with a hand which only slowly
grasps : who art thou? what hast thou done? Rest
thee here: this place has hospitality for every one-
refresh thyself! And whoever thou art, what is it
that now pleases thee? What will serve to refresh
thee? Only name it, whatever I have I offer thee!
“To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thou prying
one, what sayest thou ! But give me, I pray


## p. 252 (#274) ############################################

252
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
theem-” What? what? Speak out ! “Another
mask! A second mask ! "
279.
Men of profound sadness betray themselves when
they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon
happiness as though they would choke and strangle
it, out of jealousy-ah, they know only too well
that it will flee from them!
280.
“Bad ! Bad! What? Does he not-go back? "
Yes! But you misunderstand him when you com-
plain about it. He goes back like every one who
is about to make a great spring.
281.
-“Will people believe it of me? But I insist
that they believe it of me: I have always thought
very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself,
only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always
without delight in the subject, ready to digress
from 'myself,' and always without faith in the
result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the
possibility of self-knowledge, which has led me so
far as to feel a contradictio in adjecto even in the
idea of direct knowledge' which theorists allow
themselves :—this matter of fact is almost the most
certain thing I know about myself. There must
be a sort of repugnance in me to believe anything
definite about myself. --Is there perhaps some
enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing


## p. 253 (#275) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
253
for my own teeth. —Perhaps it betrays the species
to which I belong ? —but not to myself, as is
sufficiently agreeable to me. "
282.
-"But what has happened to you? "_“I do
not know," he said, hesitatingly; “perhaps the
Harpies have flown over my table. "-It sometimes
happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring
man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates,
upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks every-
body—and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging
at himself - whither? for what purpose ? To
famish apart? To suffocate with his memories -
To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty
soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his
food prepared, the danger will always be great-
nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown
into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with
which he does not like to eat out of the same dish,
he may readily perish of hunger and thirst-or,
should he nevertheless finally “fall to," of sudden
nausea. —We have probably all sat at tables to
which we did not belong; and precisely the most
spiritual of us, who are most difficult to nourish,
know the dangerous dyspepsia which originates
from a sudden insight and disillusionment about
our food and our messmates the after-dinner
nausea.
283.
If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and
at the same time a noble self-control, to praise only


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254
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
where one does not agree-otherwise in fact one
would praise oneself, which is contrary to good
taste : a self-control, to be sure, which offers
excellent opportunity and provocation to constant
misunderstanding. To be able to allow oneself
this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one
must not live among intellectual imbeciles, but
rather among men whose misunderstandings and
mistakes amuse by their refinement-or one will
have to pay dearly for it ! —“He praises me, there-
fore he acknowledges me to be right”-this asinine
method of inference spoils half of the life of us
recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbour-
hood and friendship.
}
284.
To live in a vast and proud tranquillity; always
beyond . . . To have, or not to have, one's emo-
tions, one's For and Against, according to choice;
to lower oneself to them for hours; to seat oneself
on them as upon horses, and often as upon asses :
for one must know how to make use of their
stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserve one's
three hundred foregrounds; also one's black spec-
tacles : for there are circumstances when nobody
must look into our eyes, still less into our“motives. ”
And to choose for company that roguish and
cheerful vice, politeness. And to remain master
of one's four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy,
and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as
a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines
that in the contact of man and man—"in society”
-it must be unavoidably impure. All society


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WHAT IS NOBLE?
255
makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime-
commonplace. "
(
-
are
1
285.
The greatest events and thoughts—the greatest
thoughts, however, are the greatest events
longest in being comprehended : the generations
which are contemporary with them do not experi-
ence such events—they live past them.