No More Learning

Yes, if ye could do that! If ye could
forget your origin, your past, your preparatory
schooling,—your whole history as man and beast!
There is no " reality" for us—nor for you either, ye
sober ones,—we are far from being so alien to one
another as ye suppose, and perhaps our good-will
to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable
as your belief that ye are altogether incapable of
drunkenness.
58.
Only as Creators ! —It has caused me the greatest
trouble, and for ever causes me the greatest trouble,
to perceive that unspeakably more depends upon
what things are called, than on what they are.
The reputation, the name and appearance, the
importance, the usual measure and weight of
things — each being in origin most frequently
an error and arbitrariness thrown over the things
like a garment, and quite alien to their essence and
even to their exterior—have gradually, by the
belief therein and its continuous growth from
generation to generation, grown as it were on-
and-into things and become their very body; the
appearance at the very beginning becomes almost
always the essence in the end, and operates
as the essence! What a fool he would be who
would think it enough to refer here to this
origin and this nebulous veil of illusion, in order
to annihilate that which virtually passes for the
world—namely, so-called "reality"! It is only as


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 97
creators that we can annihilate! —But let us not
forget this: it suffices to create new names and
valuations and probabilities, in order in the long
run to create new "things. "
59-
We Artists! —When we love a woman we have
readily a hatred against nature, on recollecting all
the disagreeable natural functions to which every
woman is subject; we prefer not to think of
them at all, but if once our soul touches on
these things it twitches impatiently, and glances,
as we have said, contemptuously at nature :—
we are hurt; nature seems to encroach upon
our possessions, and with the profanest hands.
We then shut our ears against all physiology, and
we decree in secret that "we will hear nothing
of the fact that man is something else than
soul and form! " "The man under the skin" is
an abomination and monstrosity, a blasphemy of
God and of love to all lovers. —Well, just as the
lover still feels with respect to nature and natural
functions, so did every worshipper of God and his
"holy omnipotence" formerly feel: in all that was
said of nature by astronomers, geologists, physiolo-
gists, and physicians, he saw an encroachment on
his most precious possession, and consequently an
attack, — and moreover also an impertinence of
the assailant! The "law of nature" sounded to
him as blasphemy against God; in truth he would
too willingly have seen the whole of mechanics
traced back to moral acts of volition and arbitrari-


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98 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
ness :—but because nobody could render him this
service, he concealed nature and mechanism from
himself as best he could, and lived in a dream.
Oh, those men of former times understood how to
dream, and did not need first to go to sleep! —and
we men of the present day also still understand
it too well, with all our good-will for wakefulness
and daylight! It suffices to love, to hate, to
desire, and in general to feel,—immediately the
spirit and the power of the dream come over us,
and we ascend, with open eyes and indifferent
to all danger, the most dangerous paths, to the
roofs and towers of fantasy, and without any
giddiness, as persons born for climbing—we the
night-walkers by day! We artists! We con-
cealers of naturalness! We moon-struck and God-
struck ones! We dead-silent, untiring wanderers
on heights which we do not see as heights, but as
our plains, as our places of safety!
60.
Women and their Effect in the Distance. —Have
I still ears? Am I only ear, and nothing else
besides? Here I stand in the midst of the
surging of the breakers, whose white flames fork
up to my feet;—from all sides there is howling,
threatening, crying, and screaming at me, while in
the lowest depths the old earth-shaker sings his aria,
hollow like a roaring bull; he beats such an earth-
shaker's measure thereto, that even the hearts of
these weathered rock-monsters tremble at the
sound. Then, suddenly, as if born out of nothing-


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 99
ness, there appears before the portal of this hellish
labyrinth, only a few fathoms distant,—a great
sailing-ship gliding silently along like a ghost.
Oh, this ghostly beauty! With what enchantment
it seizes me! What? Has all the repose and
silence in the world embarked here? Does my
happiness itself sit in this quiet place, my happier
ego, my second immortalised self? Still not
dead, yet also no longer living? As a ghost-like,
calm, gazing, gliding, sweeping, neutral being?
Similar to the ship, which, with its white sails, like
an immense butterfly, passes over the dark sea!
Yes! Passing over existence! That is it! That
would be it! It seems that the noise here has
made me a visionary? All great noise causes one
to place happiness in the calm and the distance.
When a man is in the midst of his hubbub, in the
midst of the breakers of his plots and plans,
he there sees perhaps calm, enchanting beings
glide past him, for whose happiness and retirement
he longs—they are women. He almost thinks that
there with the women dwells his better self; that
in these calm places even the loudest breakers
become still as death, and life itself a dream of life.
But still! But still! My noble enthusiast, there
is also in the most beautiful sailing-ship so much
noise and bustling, and alas, so much petty, piti-
able bustling! The enchantment and the most
powerful effect of women is, to use the language
of philosophers, an effect at a distance, an actio in
distans; there belongs thereto, however, primarily
and above all,—distance!


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IOO • THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
61.
In Honour of Friendship. —That the sentiment
of friendship was regarded by antiquity as the
highest sentiment, higher even than the most
vaunted pride of the self-sufficient and wise, yea as
it were its sole and still holier brotherhood, is
very well expressed by the story of the Macedonian
king who made the present of a talent to a cynical
Athenian philosopher from whom he received it
back again. "What? " said the king, "has he then
no friend? " He therewith meant to say, " I honour
this pride of the wise and independent man, but
I should have honoured his humanity still higher
if the friend in him had gained the victory over his
pride. The philosopher has lowered himself in my
estimation, for he showed that he did not know
one of the two highest sentiments—and in fact the
higher of them! "
62.
Love. —Love pardons even the passion of the
beloved.
63.
Woman in Music. —How does it happen that
warm and rainy winds bring the musical mood
and the inventive delight in melody with them?
Are they not the same winds that fill the churches
and give women amorous thoughts?
64.
Sceptics. —I fear women who have become old
are more sceptical in the secret recesses of their


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II IOI
hearts than any of the men are; they believe in
the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and
all virtue and profundity is to them only the dis-
guising of this " truth," the very desirable disguising
of a pudendum,—an affair, therefore, of decency
and of modesty, and nothing more!
65.
Devotedness. —There are noble women with a
certain poverty of spirit, who, in order to express
their profoundest devotedness, have no other alter-
native but to offer their virtue and modesty: it is
the highest thing they have. And this present
is often accepted without putting the recipient
under such deep obligation as the giver supposed,
—a very melancholy story!
66.
The Strength of the Weak. —Women are all skil-
ful in exaggerating their weaknesses, indeed they are
inventive in weaknesses, so as to seem quite fragile
ornaments to which even a grain of dust does
harm; their existence is meant to bring home to
man's mind his coarseness, and to appeal to his
conscience. They thus defend themselves against
the strong and all " rights of might. "
67.
Self-dissembling. —She loves him now and has
since been looking forth with as quiet confidence
as a cow; but alas! It was precisely his delight
that she seemed so fitful and absolutely incompre-
hensible! He had rather too much steady weather


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102 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
in himself already! Would she not do well to
feign her old character? to feign indifference?
Does not—love itself advise her to do so? Vivat
comcedia!
68.
Will and Willingness. —Some one brought a
youth to a wise man and said, "See, this is one
who is being corrupted by women! " The wise
man shook his head and smiled. "It is men," he
called out, "who corrupt women: and everything
that women lack should be atoned for and improved
in men,—for man creates for himself the ideal of
woman, and woman moulds herself according to
this ideal. "—" You are too tender-hearted towards
women," said one of the bystanders, "you do not
know them! " The wise man answered: "Man's
attribute is will, woman's attribute is willingness,—
such is the law of the sexes, verily! a hard law for
woman! All human beings are innocent of their
existence, women, however, are doubly innocent;
who could have enough of salve and gentleness for
them ! "—"What about salve! What about gentle-
ness ! " called out another person in the crowd," we
must educate women better! "—" We must educate
men better," said the wise man, and made a sign
to the youth to follow him. —The youth, however,
did not follow him.
69.
Capacity for Revenge. —That a person cannot
and consequently will not defend himself, does
not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes; but


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 103
we despise the person who has neither the ability
nor the good-will for revenge — whether it be
a man or a woman. Would a woman be able
to captivate us (or, as people say, to "fetter"
us) whom we did not credit with knowing how
to employ the dagger (any kind of dagger)
skilfully against us under certain circumstances?
Or against herself; which in a certain case might
be the severest revenge (the Chinese revenge).
70.
The Mistresses of the Masters. —A powerful con-
tralto voice, as we occasionally hear it in the
theatre, raises suddenly for us the curtain on
possibilities in which we usually do not believe;
all at once we are convinced that somewhere in the
world there may be women with high, heroic, royal
souls, capable and prepared for magnificent remon-
strances, resolutions, and self-sacrifices, capable and
prepared for domination over men, because in
them the best in man, superior to sex, has become
a corporeal ideal. To be sure, it is not the inten-
tion of the theatre that such voices should give
such a conception of women; they are usually
intended to represent the ideal male lover,
for example, a Romeo; but, to judge by my
experience, the theatre regularly miscalculates here,
and the musician also, who expects such effects
from such a voice. People do not believe in these
lovers; these voices still contain a tinge of the
motherly and housewifely character, and most of
all when love is in their tone.


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104 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
71.
On Female Chastity. —There is something quite
astonishing and extraordinary in the education of
women of the higher class ; indeed, there is perhaps
nothing more paradoxical. All the world is agreed
to educate them with as much ignorance as possible
in eroticis, and to inspire their soul with a profound
shame of such things, and the extremest impatience
and horror at the suggestion of them. It is really
here only that all the "honour" of woman is at
stake; what would one not forgive them in other
respects! But here they are intended to remain
ignorant to the very backbone:—they are intended
to have neither eyes, ears, words, nor thoughts for
this, their " wickedness "; indeed knowledge here is
already evil. And then! To be hurled as with
an awful thunderbolt into reality and knowledge
with marriage—and indeed by him whom they
most love and esteem: to have to encounter love
and shame in contradiction, yea, to have to feel
rapture, abandonment, duty, sympathy, and fright
at the unexpected proximity of God and animal,
and whatever else besides! all at once! —There,
in fact, a psychic entanglement has been effected
which is quite unequalled! Even the sympathetic
curiosity of the wisest discerner of men does not
suffice to divine how this or that woman gets along
with the solution of this enigma and the enigma
of this solution; what dreadful, far-reaching sus-
picions must awaken thereby in the poor unhinged
soul; and forsooth, how the ultimate philosophy
and scepticism of the woman casts anchor at this



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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 105
point! —Afterwards the same profound silence as be-
fore: and often even a silence to herself, a shutting
of her eyes to herself. —Young wives on that account
make great efforts to appear superficial and thought-
less; the most ingenious of them simulate a kind
of impudence. —Wives easily feel their husbands as
a question-mark to their honour, and their children
as an apology or atonement,—they require children,
and wish for them in quite another spirit than a
husband wishes for them. —In short, one cannot
be gentle enough towards women!
72.
Mothers. —Animals think differently from men
with respect to females; with them the female is
regarded as the productive being. There is no
paternal love among them, but there is such a
thing as love of the children of a beloved, and
habituation to them. In the young, the females
find gratification for their lust of dominion; the
young are a property, an occupation, something
quite comprehensible to them, with which they
can chatter: all this conjointly is maternal love,—
it is to be compared to the love of the artist for
his work. Pregnancy has made the females gentler,
more expectant, more timid, more submissively
inclined; and similarly intellectual pregnancy en-
genders the character of the contemplative, who
are allied to women in character:—they are the
masculine mothers. —Among animals the masculine
sex is regarded as the beautiful sex.


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106 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
73-
Saintly Cruelty. —A man holding a newly born
child in his hands came to a saint. "What should
I do with the child," he asked, "it is wretched,
deformed, and has not even enough of life to
die. " "Kill it," cried the saint with a dreadful
voice, "kill it, and then hold it in thy arms for
three days and three nights to brand it on thy
memory:—thus wilt thou never again beget a child
when it is not the time for thee to beget. "—When
the man had heard this he went away disappointed;
and many found fault with the saint because he
had advised cruelty, for he had advised to kill the
child. "But is it not more cruel to let it live? "
asked the saint.
74-
The Unsuccessful. —Those poor women always fail
of success who become agitated and uncertain, and
talk too much in presence of him whom they love;
for men are most successfully seduced by a
certain subtle and phlegmatic tenderness.
75-
The Third Sex. —" A small man is a paradox,
but still a man,—but the small woman seems to
me to be of another sex in comparison with well-
grown ones"—said an old dancing-master. A
small woman is never beautiful—said old Aristotle.
76.
The greatest Danger. —Had there not at all times
been a larger number of men who regarded the


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 107
cultivation of their mind—their "rationality"—
as their pride, their obligation, their virtue, and
were injured or shamed by all play of fancy and
extravagance of thinking—as lovers of "sound
common sense ":—mankind would long ago have
perished! Incipient insanity has hovered, and
hovers continually over mankind as its greatest
danger: that is precisely the breaking out of in-
clination in feeling, seeing, and hearing; the enjoy-
ment of the unruliness of the mind; the delight in
human unreason. It is not truth and certainty
that is the antithesis of the world of the insane,
but the universality and all-obligatoriness of a
belief, in 1 short, non-voluntariness in forming
opinions. And the greatest labour of human be-
ings hitherto has been to agree with one another
regarding a great many things, and to impose
upon themselves a law of agreement—indifferent
whether these things are true or false. This is
the discipline of the mind which has preserved
mankind;—but the counter-impulses are still so
powerful that one can really speak of the future of
mankind with little confidence. The ideas of
things still continually shift and move, and will
perhaps alter more than ever in the future; it is
continually the most select spirits themselves who
strive against universal obligatoriness—the investi-
gators of truth above all! The accepted belief, as
the belief of all the world, continually engenders a
disgust and a new longing in the more ingenious
minds; and already the slow tempo which it de-
mands for all intellectual processes (the imitation
of the tortoise, which is here recognised as the rule)


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108 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
makes the artists and poets runaways:—it is in
these impatient spirits that a downright delight in
delirium breaks out, because delirium has such a
joyful tempo! Virtuous intellects, therefore, are
needed—ah I I want to use the least ambiguous
word,—virtuous stupidity is needed, imperturbable
conductors of the slow spirits are needed, in order
that the faithful of the great collective belief may
remain with one another and dance their dance
further: it is a necessity of the first importance
that here enjoins and demands. We others are the
exceptions and the danger,—we eternally need pro-
tection ! —Well, there can actually be something
said in favour of the exceptions provided that they
never want to become the rule.
77-
The Animal with good Conscience. —It is not
unknown to me that there is vulgarity in every-
thing that pleases Southern Europe—whether it
be Italian opera (for example, Rossini's and
Bellini's), or the Spanish adventure-romance (most
readily accessible to us in the French garb of Gil
Blas)—but it does not offend me, any more than
the vulgarity which one encounters in a walk
through Pompeii, or even in the reading of every
ancient book: what is the reason of this? Is
it because shame is lacking here, and because the
vulgar always comes forward just as sure and
certain of itself as anything noble, lovely, and
passionate in the same kind of music or romance?
"The animal has its rights like man, so let it
run about freely; and you, my dear fellow-man,


## p. 109 (#139) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 109
are still this animal, in spite of all! " — that
seems to me the moral of the case, and the
peculiarity of southern humanity. Bad taste has
its rights like good taste, and even a prerogative
over the latter when it is the great requisite, the
sure satisfaction, and as it were a universal language,
an immediately intelligible mask and attitude;
the excellent, select taste on the other hand has
always something of a seeking, tentative character,
not fully certain that it understands,—it is never,
and has never been popular! The masque is and
remains popular! So let all this masquerade
run along in the melodies and cadences, in the
leaps and merriment of the rhythm of these operas!
Quite the ancient life! What does one understand
of it, if one does not understand the delight in the
masque, the good conscience of all masquerade!
Here is the bath and the refreshment of the ancient
spirit: — and perhaps this bath was still more
necessary for the rare and sublime natures of the
ancient world than for the vulgar. —On the other
hand, a vulgar turn in northern works, for example
in German music, offends me unutterably. There
is shame in it, the artist has lowered himself in
his own sight, and could not even avoid blushing:
we are ashamed with him, and are so hurt because
we surmise that he believed he had to lower him-
self on our account.
78.
What we should be Grateful for. —It is only the
artists, and especially the theatrical artists who
have furnished men with eyes and ears to hear and


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1IO THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
see with some pleasure what everyone is in him-
self, what he experiences and aims at: it is only
they who have taught us how to estimate the hero
that is concealed in each of these common-place
men, and the art of looking at ourselves from a
distance as heroes, and as it were simplified and
transfigured,—the art of " putting ourselves on the
stage" before ourselves. It is thus only that we
get beyond some of the paltry details in ourselves!
Without that art we should be nothing but fore-
ground, and would live absolutely under the spell
of the perspective which makes the closest and the
commonest seem immensely large and like reality
in itself. —Perhaps there is merit of a similar kind
in the religion which commanded us to look at the
sinfulness of every individual man with a magnify-
ing-glass, and to make a great, immortal criminal
out of the sinner; in that it put eternal per-
spectives around man, it taught him to see himself
from a distance, and as something past, something
entire.
79-
The Charm of Imperfection. —I see here a poet,
who, like so many men, exercises a higher charm
by his imperfections than by all that is rounded off
and takes perfect shape under his hands,—indeed,
he derives his advantage and reputation far more
from his actual limitations than from his abun-
dant powers. His work never expresses altogether
what he would really like to express, what he
would like to have seen: he appears to have had
the foretaste of a vision and never the vision


## p. 111 (#141) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II III
itself:—but an extraordinary longing for this vision
has remained in his soul; and from this he
derives his equally extraordinary eloquence of
longing and craving. With this he raises those
who listen to him above his work and above all
"works," and gives them wings to rise higher than
hearers have ever risen before, thus making them
poets and seers themselves; they then show an ad-
miration for the originator of their happiness, as if
he had led them immediately to the vision of his
holiest and ultimate verities, as if he had reached
his goal, and had actually seen and communicated
his vision. It is to the advantage of his reputa-
tion that he has not really arrived at his goal.
80.
Art and Nature. —The Greeks (or at least the
Athenians) liked to hear good talking: indeed
they had an eager inclination for it, which dis-
tinguished them more than anything else from
non-Greeks. And so they required good talking
even from passion on the stage, and submitted to
the unnaturalness of dramatic verse with delight:
—in nature, forsooth, passion is so sparing of words!
so dumb and confused! Or if it finds words, so
embarrassed and irrational and a shame to itself!
We have now, all of us, thanks to the Greeks,
accustomed ourselves to this unnaturalness on the
stage, as we endure that other unnaturalness, the
singing passion, and willingly endure it, thanks to
the Italians. —It has become a necessity to us, which
we cannot satisfy out of the resources of actuality,
to hear men talk well and in full detail in the most


## p.
111 (#142) ############################################

IIO THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
see with some pleasure what everyone is in him-
self, what he experiences and aims at: it is only
they who have taught us how to estimate the hero
that is concealed in each of these common-place
men, and the art of looking at ourselves from a
distance as heroes, and as it were simplified and
transfigured,—the art of " putting ourselves on the
stage" before ourselves. It is thus only that we
get beyond some of the paltry details in ourselves!
Without that art we should be nothing but fore-
ground, and would live absolutely under the spell
of the perspective which makes the closest and the
commonest seem immensely large and like reality
in itself. —Perhaps there is merit of a similar kind
in the religion which commanded us to look at the
sinfulness of every individual man with a magnify-
ing-glass, and to make a great, immortal criminal
out of the sinner; in that it put eternal per-
spectives around man, it taught him to see himself
from a distance, and as something past, something
entire.
79-
The Charm of Imperfection. —I see here a poet,
who, like so many men, exercises a higher charm
by his imperfections than by all that is rounded off
and takes perfect shape under his hands,—indeed,
he derives his advantage and reputation far more
from his actual limitations than from his abun-
dant powers. His work never expresses altogether
what he would really like to express, what he
would like to have seen: he appears to have had
the foretaste of a vision and never the vision


## p. 111 (#143) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II III
itself:—but an extraordinary longing for this vision
has remained in his soul; and from this he
derives his equally extraordinary eloquence of
longing and craving. With this he raises those
who listen to him above his work and above all
"works," and gives them wings to rise higher than
hearers have ever risen before, thus making them
poets and seers themselves; they then show an ad-
miration for the originator of their happiness, as if
he had led them immediately to the vision of his
holiest and ultimate verities, as if he had reached
his goal, and had actually seen and communicated
his vision. It is to the advantage of his reputa-
tion that he has not really arrived at his goal.
80.
Art and Nature. —The Greeks (or at least the
Athenians) liked to hear good talking: indeed
they had an eager inclination for it, which dis-
tinguished them more than anything else from
non-Greeks. And so they required good talking
even from passion on the stage, and submitted to
the unnaturalness of dramatic verse with delight:
—in nature, forsooth, passion is so sparing of words!
so dumb and confused! Or if it finds words, so
embarrassed and irrational and a shame to itself!
We have now, all of us, thanks to the Greeks,
accustomed ourselves to this unnaturalness on the
stage, as we endure that other unnaturalness, the
singing passion, and willingly endure it, thanks to
the Italians. —It has become a necessity to us, which
we cannot satisfy out of the resources of actuality,
to hear men talk well and in full detail in the most


## p. 111 (#144) ############################################

I IO THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
see with some pleasure what everyone is in him-
self, what he experiences and aims at: it is only
they who have taught us how to estimate the hero
that is concealed in each of these common-place
men, and the art of looking at ourselves from a
distance as heroes, and as it were simplified and
transfigured,—the art of " putting ourselves on the
stage" before ourselves. It is thus only that we
get beyond some of the paltry details in ourselves!
Without that art we should be nothing but fore-
ground, and would live absolutely under the spell
of the perspective which makes the closest and the
commonest seem immensely large and like reality
in itself. —Perhaps there is merit of a similar kind
in the religion which commanded us to look at the
sinfulness of every individual man with a magnify-
ing-glass, and to make a great, immortal criminal
out of the sinner; in that it put eternal per-
spectives around man, it taught him to see himself
from a distance, and as something past, something
entire.
79-
The Charm of Imperfection. —I see here a poet,
who, like so many men, exercises a higher charm
by his imperfections than by all that is rounded off
and takes perfect shape under his hands,—indeed,
he derives his advantage and reputation far more
from his actual limitations than from his abun-
dant powers. His work never expresses altogether
what he would really like to express, what he
would like to have seen: he appears to have had
the foretaste of a vision and never the vision


## p. 111 (#145) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II III
itself:—but an extraordinary longing for this vision
has remained in his soul; and from this he
derives his equally extraordinary eloquence of
longing and craving. With this he raises those
who listen to him above his work and above all
"works," and gives them wings to rise higher than
hearers have ever risen before, thus making them
poets and seers themselves; they then show an ad-
miration for the originator of their happiness, as if
he had led them immediately to the vision of his
holiest and ultimate verities, as if he had reached
his goal, and had actually seen and communicated
his vision. It is to the advantage of his reputa-
tion that he has not really arrived at his goal.
80.
Art and Nature. —The Greeks (or at least the
Athenians) liked to hear good talking: indeed
they had an eager inclination for it, which dis-
tinguished them more than anything else from
non-Greeks. And so they required good talking
even from passion on the stage, and submitted to
the unnaturalness of dramatic verse with delight:
—in nature, forsooth, passion is so sparing of words!
so dumb and confused! Or if it finds words, so
embarrassed and irrational and a shame to itself!
We have now, all of us, thanks to the Greeks,
accustomed ourselves to this unnaturalness on the
stage, as we endure that other unnaturalness, the
singing passion, and willingly endure it, thanks to
the Italians. —It has become a necessity to us, which
we cannot satisfy out of the resources of actuality,
to hear men talk well and in full detail in the most


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112 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
trying situations: it enraptures us at present when
the tragic hero still finds words, reasons, eloquent
gestures, and on the whole a bright spirituality,
where life approaches the abysses, and where the
actual man mostly loses his head, and certainly
his fine language. This kind of deviation from
nature is perhaps the most agreeable repast for
man's pride: he loves art generally on account of
it, as the expression of high, heroic unnatural-
ness and convention. One rightly objects to the
dramatic poet when he does not transform every-
thing into reason and speech, but always retains a
remnant of silence:—just as one is dissatisfied with
an operatic musician who cannot find a melody
for the highest emotion, but only an emotional,
"natural" stammering and crying. Here nature
has to be contradicted! Here the common
charm of illusion has to give place to a higher
charm! The Greeks go far, far in this direction
—frightfully far! As they constructed the stage
as narrow as possible and dispensed with all the
effect of deep backgrounds, as they made panto-
mime and easy motion impossible to the actor, and
transformed him into a solemn, stiff, masked bogey,
so they have also deprived passion itself of its deep
background, and have dictated to it a law of fine
talk; indeed, they have really done everything to
counteract the elementary effect of representa-
tions that inspire pity and terror: they did not
want pity and terror,—with due deference, with
the highest deference to Aristotle! but he
certainly did not hit the nail, to say nothing
of the head of the nail, when he spoke about the


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II I13
final aim of Greek tragedy! Let us but look at
the Grecian tragic poets with respect to what most
excited their diligence, their inventiveness, and their
emulation,—certainly it was not the intention of
subjugating the spectators by emotion! The
Athenian went to the theatre to hear fine talking!
And fine talking was arrived at by Sophocles! —
pardon me this heresy! —It is very different with
serious opera: all its masters make it their business
to prevent their personages being understood.
"An occasional word picked up may come to the
assistance of the inattentive listener; but on the
whole the situation must be self-explanatory,—
the talking is of no account! "—so they all think,
and so they have all made fun of the words.
Perhaps they have only lacked courage to express
fully their extreme contempt for words: a little
additional insolence in Rossini, and he would have
allowed la-la-la-la to be sung throughout—and it
might have been the rational course! The person-
ages of the opera are not meant to be believed
"in their words," but in their tones! That is the
difference, that is the fine unnaturalness on account
of which people go to the opera! Even the recita-
tivo secco is not really intended to be heard as
words and text: this kind of half-music is meant
rather in the first place to give the musical ear a
little repose (the repose from melody, as from the
sublimest, and on that account the most straining
enjoyment of this art),—but very soon something
different results, namely, an increasing impatience,
an increasing resistance, a new longing for entire
music, for melody. —How is it with the art of
8


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114 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
Richard Wagner as seen from this standpoint? Is
it perhaps the same? Perhaps otherwise? It would
often seem to me as if one needed to have learned
by heart both the words and the music of his
creations before the performances; for without
that—so it seemed to me—one may hear neither
the words, nor even the music.
81.
Grecian Taste. —" What is beautiful in it ? "—
asked a certain geometrician, after a performance
of the Iphigenia—" there is nothing proved in it! "
Could the Greeks have been so far from this taste?
In Sophocles at least "everything is proved. "
82.
Esprit Un-Grecian. —The Greeks were exceed-
ingly logical and plain in all their thinking; they
did not get tired of it, at least during their long
flourishing period, as is so often the case with the
French; who too willingly made a little excursion
into the opposite, and in fact endure the spirit of
logic only when it betrays its sociable courtesy,
its sociable self-renunciation, by a multitude of
such little excursions into its opposite. Logic
appears to them as necessary as bread and water,
but also like these as a kind of prison-fare, as soon
as it is to be taken pure and by itself. In good
society one must never want to be in the right
absolutely and solely, as all pure logic requires;
hence, the little dose of irrationality in all French
esprit. —The social sense of the Greeks was far
less developed than that of the French in the


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II IIS
present and the past; hence, so little esprit in their
cleverest men, hence, so little wit, even in their wags,
hence—alas! But people will not readily believe
these tenets of mine, and how much of the kind
I have still on my soul! —Est res magna tacere
—says Martial, like all garrulous people.
S3-
Translations. —One can estimate the amount of
the historical sense which an age possesses by the
way in which it makes translations and seeks to
embody in itself past periods and literatures.
The French of Corneille, and even the French of
the Revolution, appropriated Roman antiquity in a
manner for which we would no longer have the
courage—owing to our superior historical sense.
And Roman antiquity itself: how violently, and
at the same time how naively, did it lay its hand
on everything excellent and elevated belonging to
the older Grecian antiquity! How they trans-
lated these writings into the Roman present!
How they wiped away intentionally and uncon-
cernedly the wing-dust of the butterfly moment!
It is thus that Horace now and then translated
Alcaeus or Archilochus, it is thus that Propertius
translated Callimachus and Philetas (poets of
equal rank with Theocritus, if we be allowed to
judge): of what consequence was it to them that
the actual creator experienced this and that, and
had inscribed the indication thereof in his poem ! —
as poets they were averse to the antiquarian,
inquisitive spirit which precedes the historical
sense; as poets they did not respect those essenti-


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Il6 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
ally personal traits and names, nor anything
peculiar to city, coast, or century, such as its
costume and mask, but at once put the present
and the Roman in its place. They seem to us to
ask: "Should we not make the old new for our-
selves, and adjust ourselves to it? Should we not
be allowed to inspire this dead body with our soul?
for it is dead indeed: how loathsome is everything
dead ! "—They did not know the pleasure of the
historical sense; the past and the alien was painful
to them, and as Romans it was an incitement to
a Roman conquest. In fact, they conquered
when they translated,—not only in that they
omitted the historical: no, they added also allu-
sions to the present; above all, they struck out the
name of the poet and put their own in its place
—not with the feeling of theft, but with the very
best conscience of the imperium Romanum.
84.
The Origin of Poetry. —The lovers of the fantastic
in man, who at the same time represent the doctrine
of instinctive morality, draw this conclusion:
"Granted that utility has been honoured at all times
as the highest divinity, where then in all the world
has poetry come from ? —this rhythmising of speech
which thwarts rather than furthers plainness of
communication, and which, nevertheless, has sprung
up everywhere on the earth, and still springs up,
as a mockery of all useful purpose! The wildly
beautiful irrationality of poetry refutes you, ye
utilitarians! The wish to get rid of utility in
some way—that is precisely what has elevated


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 117
man, that is what has inspired him to morality and
art! " Well, I must here speak for once to please
the utilitarians,—they are so seldom in the right
that it is pitiful! In the old times which called
poetry into being, people had still utility in view
with respect to it, and a very important utility—
at the time when rhythm was introduced into
speech, the force which arranges all the particles
of the sentence anew, commands the choosing of
the words, recolours the thought, and makes it more
obscure, more foreign, and more distant: to be sure
a superstitious utility! It was intended that a
human entreaty should be more profoundly im-
pressed upon the Gods by virtue of rhythm, after
it had been observed that men could remember
a verse better than an unmetrical speech. It was
likewise thought that people could make them-
selves audible at greater distances by the rhythmi-
cal beat; the rhythmical prayer seemed to come
nearer to the ear of the Gods. Above all, however,
people wanted to have the advantage of the
elementary conquest which man experiences in
himself when he hears music: rhythm is a con-
straint; it produces an unconquerable desire to
yield, to join in; not only the step of the foot,
but also the soul itself follows the measure,—
probably the spul of the Gods also, as people
thought! They attempted, therefore, to constrain
the Gods by rhythm and to exercise a power over
them; they threw poetry around the Gods like a
magic noose. There was a still more wonderful
idea, and it has perhaps operated most powerfully
of all in the originating of poetry. Among the


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Il8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
/
Pythagoreans it made its appearance as a philoso-
phical doctrine and as an artifice of teaching: but
long before there were philosophers music was
acknowledged to possess the power of unburdening
the emotions, of purifying the soul, of soothing
the ferocia animi—and this was owing to the
rhythmical element in music. When the proper
tension and harmony of the soul were lost a person
had to dance to the measure of the singer,—that
was the recipe of this medical art. By means of it
Terpander quieted a tumult, Empedocles calmed a
maniac, Damon purged a love-sick youth; by
means of it even the maddened, revengeful Gods
were treated for the purpose of a cure. First of
all, it was by driving the frenzy and wantonness
of their emotions to the highest pitch, by making
the furious mad, and the revengeful intoxicated
with vengeance:—all the orgiastic cults seek to
discharge the ferocia of a deity all at once and
thus make an orgy, so that the deity may feel freer
and quieter afterwards, and leave man in peace.
Melos, according to its root, signifies a soothing
means, not because the song is gentle itself, but
because its after-effect makes gentle. —And not
only in the religious^song, but also in the secular
song of the most ancient times the prerequisite is
that the rhythm should exercise a magical influence;
for example, in drawing water, or in rowing: the
song is for the enchanting of the spirits supposed to
be active thereby; it makes them obliging, involun-
tary, and the instruments of man. And as often
as a person acts he has occasion to sing, every
action is dependent on the assistance of spirits;


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 119
magic song and incantation appear to be the
original form of poetry. When verse also came to
be used in oracles—the Greeks said that the
hexameter was invented at Delphi,—the rhythm
was here also intended to exercise a compulsory
influence. To make a prophecy—that means
originally (according to what seems to me the
probable derivation of the Greek word) to deter-
mine something; people thought they could deter-
mine the future by winning Apollo over to their
side: he who, according to the most ancient idea, is
far more than a foreseeing deity. According as the
formula is pronounced with literal and rhythmical
correctness, it determines the future: the formula,
however, is the invention of Apollo, who as the
God of rhythm, can also determine the goddesses
of fate. —Looked at and investigated as a whole,
was there ever anything more serviceable to the
ancient superstitious species of human being than
rhythm? People could do everything with it:
they could make labour go on magically; they
could compel a God to appear, to be near at hand,
and listen to them; they could arrange the future
for themselves according to their will; they could
unburden their own souls of any kind of excess (of
anxiety, of mania, of sympathy, of revenge), and
not only their own soul, but the souls of the most
evil spirits,—without verse a person was nothing,
by means of verse a person became almost a God.
Such a fundamental feeling no longer allows itself
to be fully eradicated,—and even now, after mil-
lenniums of long labour in combating such supersti-
tion, the very wisest of us occasionally becomes the


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120 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
fool of rhythm, be it only that one perceives a
thought to be truer when it has a metrical form
and approaches with a divine hopping. Is it not
a very funny thing that the most serious philo-
sophers, however anxious they are in other respects
for strict certainty, still appeal to poetical sayings in
order to give their thoughts force and credibility?
—and yet it is more dangerous to a truth when the
poet assents to it than when he contradicts it!
For, as Homer says, "The singers speak much
falsehood! "—
85.
The Good and the Beautiful. —Artists glorify
continually—they do nothing else,—and indeed
they glorify all those conditions and things that
have a reputation, so that man may feel himself
good or great, or intoxicated, or merry, or pleased
and wise by it. Those select things and conditions
whose value for human happiness is regarded
as secure and determined, are the objects of
artists: they are ever lying in wait to discover
such things, to transfer them into the domain of
art. I mean to say that they are not themselves
the valuers of happiness and of the happy ones,
but they always press close to these valuers with
the greatest curiosity and longing, in order
immediately to use their valuations advantageously.
As besides their impatience, they have also the
big lungs of heralds and the feet of runners, they
are likewise always among the first to glorify the
new excellency, and often seem to be those who
first of all called it good and valued it as good.


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 121
This, however, as we have said, is an error; they are
only faster and louder than the actual valuers:—
And who then are these? —They are the rich and
the leisurely.
86.
The Theatre. —This day has given me once more
strong and elevated sentiments, and if I could
have music and art in the evening, I know well
what music and art I should not like to have;
namely, none of that which would fain intoxicate
its hearers and excite them to a crisis of strong and
high feeling,—those men with commonplace souls,
who in the evening are not like victors on triumphal
cars, but like tired mules to whom life has rather
too often applied the whip. What would those
men at all know of " higher moods," unless there
were expedients for causing ecstasy and idealistic
strokes of the whip! —and thus they have their
inspirers as they have their wines. But what is
their drink and their drunkenness to me! Does
the inspired one need wine? He rather looks with
a kind of disgust at the agency and the agent which
are here intended to produce an effect without
sufficient reason,—an imitation of the high tide of
the soul! What? One gives the mole wings and
proud fancies—before going to sleep, before he
creeps into his hole? One sends him into the
theatre and puts great magnifying-glasses to his
blind and tired eyes? Men, whose life is not
"action" but business, sit in front of the stage
and look at strange beings to whom life is more
than business? "This is proper," you say, "this


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122 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
is entertaining, this is what culture wants! "—Well
then! culture is too often lacking in me, for this
sight is too often disgusting to me. He who
has enough of tragedy and comedy in himself
surely prefers to remain away from the theatre;
or, as the exception, the whole procedure—theatre
and public and poet included—becomes for him a
truly tragic and comic play, so that the performed
piece counts for little in comparison. He who is
something like Faust and Manfred, what does it
matter to him about the Fausts and Manfreds of
the theatre! —while it certainly gives him some-
thing to think about that such figures are brought
into the theatre at all. The strongest thoughts and
passions before those who are not capable of thought
and passion—but of intoxication only! And those
as a means to this end! And theatre and music the
hashish-smoking and betel-chewing of Europeans!
Oh, who will narrate to us the whole history of
narcotics! —It is almost the history of "culture,"
the so-called higher culture!
87.
The Conceit of Artists. —I think artists often do
not know what they can do best, because they are
too conceited, and have set their minds on some-
thing loftier than those little plants appear to be,
which can grow up to perfection on their soil,
fresh, rare, and beautiful. The final value of their
own garden and vineyard is superciliously under-
estimated by them, and their love and their insight
are not of the same quality. Here is a musician,
who, more than any one else, has the genius for


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 123
discovering the tones peculiar to suffering. oppressed,
tortured souls, and who can endow even dumb
animals with speech. No one equals him in the
colours of the late autumn, in the indescribably
touching happiness of a last, a final, and all too
short enjoyment; he knows a chord for those secret
and weird midnights of the soul when cause and
effect seem out of joint, and when every instant
something may originate "out of nothing. " He
draws his resources best of all out of the lower
depths of human happiness, and so to speak, out of
its drained goblet, where the bitterest and most
nauseous drops have ultimately, for good or for
ill, commingled with the sweetest. He knows the
weary shuffling along of the soul which can no
longer leap or fly, yea, not even walk; he has the
shy glance of concealed pain, of understanding
without comfort, of leave-taking without avowal;
yea, as the Orpheus of all secret misery, he is greater
than anyone; and in fact much has been added
to art by him which was hitherto inexpressible
and not even thought worthy of art, and which was
only to be scared away, by words, and not grasped
—many small and quite microscopic features of
the soul: yes, he is the master of miniature. But
he does not wish to be so! His character is more
in love with large walls and daring frescoes! He
fails to see that his spirit has a different taste and
inclination, and prefers to sit quietly in the corners
of ruined houses:—concealed in this way, concealed
even from himself, he there paints his proper master-
pieces, all of which are very short, often only one
bar in length,—there only does he become quite


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124 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
good, great, and perfect, perhaps there only. —But
he does not know it! He is too conceited to
know it.
88.
Earnestness for the Truth. —Earnest for the truth!
What different things men understand by these
words! Just the same opinions, and modes of
demonstration and testing which a thinker regards
as a frivolity in himself, to which he has succumbed
with shame at one time or other,—just the same
opinions may give to an artist, who comes in
contact with them and accepts them temporarily,
the consciousness that the profoundest earnestness
for the truth has now taken hold of him, and that
it is worthy of admiration that, although an artist,
he at the same time exhibits the most ardent
desire for the antithesis of the apparent. It is thus
possible that a person may, just by his pathos of
earnestness, betray how superficially and sparingly
his intellect has hitherto operated in the domain of
knowledge. —And is not everything that we con-
sider important our betrayer? It shows where our
motives lie, and where our motives are altogether
lacking.
89.
Now and Formerly. —Of what consequence is all
our art in artistic products, if that higher art, the
art of the festival, be lost by us? Formerly all
. artistic products were exhibited on the great
festive path of humanity, as tokens of remembrance,
and monuments of high and happy moments.
One now seeks to allure the exhausted and sickly


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 125
from the great suffering path of humanity for a
wanton moment by means of works of art; one
furnishes them with a little ecstasy and insanity.
90.
Lights and Shades. —Books and writings are
different with different thinkers. One writer has
collected together in his book all the rays of light
which he could quickly plunder and carry home
from an illuminating experience; while another
gives only the shadows, and the grey and black
replicas of that which on the previous day had
towered up in his soul.
91.
Precaution. — Alfieri, as is well known, told a
great many falsehoods when he narrated the
history of his life to his astonished contemporaries.
He told falsehoods owing to the despotism toward
himself which he exhibited, for example, in the
way in which he created his own language, and
tyrannised himself into a poet:—he finally found
a rigid form of sublimity into which he forced his
life and his memory; he must have suffered much
in the process. —I would also give no credit to a
history of Plato's life written by himself, as little as
to Rousseau's, or to the Vita nuova of Dante.
92.
Prose and Poetry. —Let it be observed that the
great masters of prose have almost always been
poets as well, whether openly, or only in secret and


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126 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
for the " closet"; and in truth one only writes good
prose in view of poetry! For prose is an uninter-
rupted, polite warfare with poetry; all its charm
consists in the fact that poetry is constantly avoided,
and contradicted; every abstraction wants to have
a gibe at poetry, and wishes to be uttered with a
mocking voice; all dryness and coolness is meant
to bring the amiable goddess into an amiable
despair; there are often approximations and recon-
ciliations for the moment, and then a sudden recoil
and a burst of laughter; the curtain is often drawn
up and dazzling light let in just while the goddess
is enjoying her twilights and dull colours; the
word is often taken out of her mouth and chanted'
to a melody while she holds her fine hands before
her delicate little ears — and so there are a
thousand enjoyments of the warfare, the defeats
included, of which the unpoetic, the so-called
prose - men know nothing at all: — they conse-
quently write and speak only bad prose!