No More Learning

It is not the works, but the belief which is here.
decisive and determines the order of rank-to em-
ploy once more an old religious formula with a
new and deeper meaning, -it is some fundamental
certainty which a noble soul has about itself, some-
thing which is not to be sought, is not to be
found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. The
noble soul has reverence for itself. -
288.
There are men who are unavoidably intellectual,
let them turn and twist themselves as they will,
and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes
-as though the hand were not a betrayer; it
always comes out at last that they have something
which they hide-namely, intellect. One of the
subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as
possible, and of successfully representing oneself to
be stupider than one really is—which in everyday
life is often as desirable as an umbrella,-is called
enthusiasm, including what belongs to it, for in-
stance, virtue. For as Galiani said, who was
obliged to know it: vertu est enthousiasme,


## p. 257 (#279) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
257
а
289.
In the writings of a recluse one always hears
something of the echo of the wilderness, something
of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of soli-
tude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself,
there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of
silence, of concealment. He who has sat day and
.
night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his
soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has
become a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or a
treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave—it may
be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine-his
ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-
colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the
depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative
and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-
by. The recluse does not believe that a philo-
sopher-supposing that a philosopher has always
in the first place been a recluse-ever expressed
his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not
books written precisely to hide what is in us?
-indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher can
have “ultimate and actual” opinions at all; whether
behind every cave in him there is not, and must
necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler,
stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss
behind every bottom, beneath every “foundation. "
.
Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy—this
is a recluse's verdict: “There is something arbitrary
in the fact that the philosopher came to a stand
here, took a retrospect and looked around; that he
here laid his spade aside and did not dig any
R


## p. 258 (#280) ############################################

258
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
9)
deeper—there is also something suspicious in it. ”
Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy ; every
opinion is also a lurking-place, every word is also a
mask.
290.
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being
understood than of being misunderstood. The
latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former
wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says:
Ah, why would you also have as hard a time of it
as I have ? "
291.
Man, a complex, mendacious, artful, and inscrut-
able animal, uncanny to the other animals by his
artifice and sagacity, rather than by his strength,
has invented the good conscience in order finally
to enjoy his soul as something simple; and the
whole of morality is a long, audacious falsification,
by virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight
of the soul becomes possible. From this point of
view there is perhaps much more in the conception
of “art” than is generally believed.
>
292.
A philosopher : that is a man who constantly
experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams
extraordinary things; who is struck by his own
thoughts as if they came from the outside, from
above and below, as a species of events and lightning-
flashes peculiar to him; who is perhaps himself a
storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous


## p. 259 (#281) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE ?
259
man, around whom there is always rumbling and
mumbling and gaping and something uncanny
going on. A philosopher : alas, a being who often
runs away from himself, is often afraid of him-
self—but whose curiosity always makes him “come
to himself” again.
L
293.
A man who says: “I like that, I take it for
my own, and mean to guard and protect it from
every one”; a man who can conduct a case, carry
out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep
hold of a woman, punish and overthrow insolence;
a man who has his indignation and his sword, and
to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed,
and even the animals willingly submit and naturally
belong; in short, a man who is a master by nature
—when such a man has sympathy, well! that
sympathy has value! But of what account is the
sympathy of those who suffer! Or of those even
who preach sympathy! There is nowadays,
throughout almost the whole of Europe, a sickly
irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and also
a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an
effeminising, which, with the aid of religion and
philosophical nonsense, seeks to deck itself out as
something superior — there is a regular cult of
suffering. The unmanliness of that which is called
“sympathy” by such groups of visionaries, is
always, I believe, the first thing that strikes the
eye. —One must resolutely and radically taboo this
latest form of bad taste; and finally I wish people
to put the good amulet, "gai saber” (“gay science,”


## p. 260 (#282) ############################################

260
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as a pro-
tection against it.
294.
The Olympian Vice. Despite the philosopher
who, as a genuine Englishman, tried to bring
laughter into bad repute in all thinking minds-
“ Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature,
which every thinking mind will strive to overcome
(Hobbes),- I would even allow myself to rank
philosophers according to the quality of their
laughing-up to those who are capable of golden
laughter. And supposing that Gods also philo-
sophise, which I am strongly inclined to believe,
owing to many reasons—I have no doubt that they
also know how to laugh thereby in an overman-
like and new fashion—and at the expense of all
serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule: it
seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even
in holy matters.
295.
The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious
one possesses it, the tempter-god and born rat-
catcher of consciences, whose voice can descend
into the nether-world of every soul, who neither
speaks a word nor casts a glance in which there
may not be some motive or touch of allurement,
to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how
to appear,-not as he is, but in a guise which
acts as an additional constraint on his followers to
press ever closer to him, to follow him more cordially
and thoroughly ;--the genius of the heart, which


## p. 261 (#283) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
261
imposes silence and attention on everything loud
and self-conceited, which smooths rough souls and
makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as a
mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in
them ;—the genius of the heart, which teaches the
clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp
more delicately; which scents the hidden and for-
gotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet
spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining-
rod for every grain of gold, long buried and im-
prisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart,
from contact with which every one goes away richer ;
not favoured or surprised, not as though gratified
and oppressed by the good things of others; but
richer in himself, newer than before, broken up,
blown upon, and sounded by a thawing wind; more
uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more
bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names,
full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will
and counter-current . . . but what am I doing, my
friends ? Of whom am I talking to you? Have
I forgotten myself so far that I have not even told
you his name? Unless it be that you have already
divined of your own accord who this questionable
God and spirit is, that wishes to be praised in such
a manner? For, as it happens to every one who
from childhood onward has always been on his
legs, and in foreign lands, I have also encountered
on my path many strange and dangerous spirits ;
above all, however, and again and again, the one
of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no less a
personage than the God Dionysus, the great equi-
vocator and tempter, to whom, as you know, I once


## p. 262 (#284) ############################################

262
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
:
offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits
-the last, as it seems to me, who has offered a
sacrifice to him, for I have found no one who could
understand what I was then doing. In the mean-
time, however, I have learned much, far too much,
about the philosophy of this God, and, as I said,
from mouth to mouth—1, the last disciple and
initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might
at last begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am
allowed, a little taste of this philosophy? In a
hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do
with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful,
and uncanny. The very fact that Dionysus is a
philosopher, and that therefore Gods also philo-
sophise, seems to me a novelty which is not unen-
snaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion pre-
cisely amongst philosophers ;-amongst you, my
friends, there is less to be said against it, except
that it comes too late and not at the right time;
for, as it has been disclosed to me, you are loth now-
adays to believe in God and gods. It may happen,
too, that in the frankness of my story I must go
further than is agreeable to the strict usages of your
ears ? Certainly the God in question went further,
very much further, in such dialogues, and was
always many paces ahead of me. . . . Indeed, if it
were allowed, I should have to give him, according
to human usage, fine ceremonious titles of lustre
and merit, I should have to extol his courage as
investigator and discoverer, his fearless honesty,
truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a God
does not know what to do with all that respectable
trumpery and pomp. “Keep that,” he would say,


## p. 263 (#285) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
263
"for thyself and those like thee, and whoever else
require it! I—have no reason to cover my naked-
ness ! ” One suspects that this kind of divinity and
philosopher perhaps lacks shame? —He once said:
“ Under certain circumstances I love mankind ”_
and referred thereby to Ariadne, who was present;
"in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave, in-
ventive animal, that has not his equal upon earth,
he makes his way even through all labyrinths. I
like man, and often think how I can still further
advance him, and make him stronger, more evil,
and more profound. ”—“Stronger, more evil, and
more profound ? " I asked in horror. “Yes," he said
again, “stronger, more evil, and more profound;
also more beautiful”—and thereby the tempter-god
smiled with his halcyon smile, as though he had
just paid some charming compliment. One here
sees at once that it is not only shame that this
divinity lacks ;-and in general there are good
grounds for supposing that in some things the
Gods could all of them come to us men for in-
struction. We men are—more human. -
296.
Alas! what are you, after all, my written and
painted thoughts ! Not long ago you were so
variegated, young, and malicious, so full of thorns
and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and
laugh—and now? You have already doffed your
novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to
become truths, so immortal do they look, so
pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever
otherwise ? What then do we write and paint, we


## p. 264 (#286) ############################################

264
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of
things which lend themselves to writing, what are
we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that
which is just about to fade and begins to lose its
odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms
and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds
strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let
themselves be captured with the hand—with our
hand! We immortalise what cannot live and fly
much longer, things only which are exhausted and
mellow! And it is only for your afternoon, you,
my written and painted thoughts, for which alone
I have colours, many colours perhaps, many varie-
gated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and
greens and reds ;-but nobody will divine thereby
how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks
and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved-
evil thoughts!


## p. 265 (#287) ############################################

FROM THE HEIGHTS.
By F. W. NIETZSCHE.
TRANSLATED BY L. A. MAGNUS.
I.
MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
My summer's park!
Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark :-
I peer for friends, am ready day and night,-
Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!
2.
Is not the glacier's grey to-day for you
Rose-garlanded ?
The brooklet seeks you; wind, cloud, with longing
thread
And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.
3.
My table was spread out for you on high :-
Who dwelleth so
Star-near, so near the grisly pit below ? -
My realm—what realm hath wider boundary?
My honey-who hath sipped its fragrancy?
S


## p. 266 (#288) ############################################

266
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
4.
Friends, ye are there! Woe me,-yet I am not
He whom ye seek ?
Ye stare and stop-better your wrath could speak!
I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And
what
I am, to you my friends, now am I not?
5.
Am I an other ? Strange am I to Me?
Yet from Me sprung?
A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?
Hindering too oft my own self's potency
Wounded and hampered by self-victory?
!
6.
I sought where-so the wind blow keenest. There
I learned to dwell
Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,
And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer ?
Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?
7.
Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled
o'er
With love and fear!
Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.


## p. 267 (#289) ############################################

FROM THE HEIGHTS.
267
8.
An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
My bow was bent!
Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent-
Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,
Perilous as none. -Have yon safe home ye sought!
9.
Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart ;-
Strong was thy hope;
Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,
Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!
Wast thou young then, now-better young thou art !
IO.
What linked us once together, one hope's tie-
(Who now doth con
Those lines, now fading, Love
once wrote
thereon ? )
Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy
To touch-like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.
II.
Oh! Friends no more! They are—what name
for those ?
Friends' phantom-flight
Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night,
Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,
Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose !
"


## p. 268 (#290) ############################################

268
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
12.
Pinings of youth that might not understand!
For which I pined,
Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind :
But they grew old, and thus were doomed and
banned :
None but new kith are native of my land!
13.
Midday of life! My second youth's delight!
My summer's park!
Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark !
I peer for friends ! -am ready day and night,
For my new friends. Come! Come ! The time
is right!
14.
This song is done,--the sweet sad cry of rue
Sang out its end ;
A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,
The midday-friend, -no, do not ask me who;
At midday 't was, when one became as two.
15.
We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,
Our aims self-same:
The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!
The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,
And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.


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

THE WORKS OF
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4


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

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
THE RENAISSANCE
By COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU
Translated by Paul V. COHN, with an Introductory
Essay by Dr. Oscar LEVY
75. ба.
(HEINEMANN)
(In the Press)
These five historical dramas cover the flowering-time of the Italian
Renaissance from the rise to prominence of Savonarola (1492) to the
last days of Michaelangelo (about 1560). While grouped round the
leading figures who provide the titles-Savonarola, Cesare Borgia,
Julius 11. , Leo x. , and Michaelangelo—the plays introduce almost
every interesting character of the period. Nor are we only con-
cerned with the great names : the author aims at catching the spirit
of the people, and the thoughts and feelings of soldier, artisan,
trader, and their womenfolk find ample voice in his pages.
The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest to English
readers, not least because of its profound influence on our own
Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the most many-sided period in
history: even fifth-century Greece scarcely contributed so much-
or at any rate so much that has survived—to the world of politics,
art, and thought. Now while this interest is amply reflected in
contemporary literature, from the monumental work of Symonds
down to the flotsam and jetsam of everyday fiction, there is one kind
of man who more than an historian would show insight into this
age, and that is a poet.
It is as a poet's work that Gobineau's "Historical Scenes” recom-
mend themselves to the public. But there are many kinds of poets :
there is the religious and moral kind, there is the irreligious and
submoral kind, and there is the super-religious and super-moral
kind. Only the last-named can understand, can feel, can sympathise
with such mighty figures as Cesare Borgia and Julius 11. -the
religious poet being inclined to paint them as monsters, the sub-
religious as freaks and neurotics. Similia similibus : equals can
only be recognised by their equals, and Gobineau was himself a type
of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an age of low bourgeois and
socialist ideals. In a century swayed by romanticism and democracy,
Gobineau was a classic and an aristocrat. He is a forerunner of
Nietzsche (“the only European spirit I should care to converse with,”
said Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is peculiarly fitted


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

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
to deal with one of the few periods that was not dominated by the
moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to attract the large
and ever-growing circle of students of Nietzsche in this country and
America.
Although Gobineau, especially in his masterly touches of irony,
is a thorough Frenchman, he has not attracted in his own country,
even since his death in 1881, the attention he deserves. This is
mainly due to his anti-republican and anti-patriotic bias. In Ger-
many, on the other hand, his work has created great stir : of “La
Renaissance” alone there are no fewer than four different trans-
lations, and acting versions have been and still are produced with
We may hope that England-of late years not behind hand
in welcoming continental authors—will to some extent follow the
example of her Teutonic sister-nation. At any rate, the work of
Gobineau does not lack a distinguished English sponsor-one who
was no less a discerning critic than a great creative artist. George
Meredith writes (in a letter to Mrs. J. G. Butcher, Feb. 27th,
1906, : “I return the book of the Comte de Gobineau. I have not
for long read anything so good. The Renaissance in its chief ruler
and the ideas and character of the time is made alive. So much
has the writer impressed me that I sent for ‘Histoire des Perses,' an
exposé of his political notions. ”
success.
NIETZSCHE: HIS LIFE AND
WORKS
By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
Preface by Dr. OSCAR LEVY
103 pages, Is. net
(CONSTABLE & Co)
In this short monograph on Nietzsche, the latest addition
to Messrs. Constable's Shilling “Philosophies, Ancient and
Modern" series, Mr. Ludovici not only gives the reader a
succinct account of the philosophy of the “Will to Power”in
all its main features; but he also sketches in bold strokes the
groundwork of an attack on Darwin, Spencer, English Materi-
alism, and English Utilitarianism, which is perhaps the first
criticism of the kind ever attempted from a Nietzschean
standpoint.
"


## p. (#294) ################################################

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
NIETZSCHE AND ART
BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
45. 6d.
(CONSTABLE & Co)
Not only to the Nietzsche enthusiast, but also to the
art student, this book ought to be of particular value and
interest, seeing that it is the first attempt that has ever
been made, either in English or any Continental language,
to apply Nietzsche's Æsthetic to one of the branches of
Art.
In this work the reader will find all the matter included
in Mr. Ludovici's stimulating course of lectures recently
delivered at University College, Gower Street, and a good
deal more besides. “I have done two things,” says the
author in his preface; “I have given a detailed account
of Nietzsche's general art doctrine, and I have also
applied this doctrine to the graphic arts of to-day and
of antiquity. ”
To quote the Daily Telegraph's report of the lectures,
Mr. Ludovici's thesis is simply this : “The finest art,
or the ruler art, as he calls it, is that in which the
aristocratic principles of culture, selection, precision, and
simplicity are upheld, and this art can be the flower
and product only of a society in which an aristocratic
order is observed.


## p. (#295) ################################################

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
THE MASTERY OF LIFE
By G. T. WRENCH
155. net
(STEPHEN SWIFT)
This book is a review of the history of civilisation with the
object of discovering, in the phrase of Nietzsche, “under
what conditions and where the plant man flourished best. "
The review shows that the patriarchal family has always
been the foundation of peoples who have been distinguished
for their joy in and power over life, and have expressed their
joy and power in art works which have been their peculiar
glory and the object of admiration and wonder of other
peoples. On the other hand, peoples who have not based
themselves on the larger humanity of patriarchalism, and
who have not cultivated a masterful aristocracy, have been
distinguished by a weaker and often miserable attitude
towards life, and by an expression, not of power, joy, and
quality, but of exhaustion, pessimism, and doubts about the
objects of existence.
The author contrasts the two types of peoples, the orderly
and artistic, and the dehumanised or mechanical, and shows
how the latter may hope to attain to the mastery of life, both
social and individual. But to carry out the change of social
basis and values, a new kind of men is needed, and this need
leads the author in the last pages to advocate as an essential
preliminary the self-culture of power and will which Nietzsche
taught so brilliantly through the mouth of Zarathustra.