No More Learning

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


## p. 254 (#276) ############################################

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


## p. 255 (#277) ############################################

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. Something
happens there as in the realm of the stars. The
light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching
man; and before it has arrived man denies—that
there are stars there. “How many centuries does
a mind require to be understood ? ”—that is also a
standard, one also makes a gradation of rank and
an etiquette therewith, such as is necessary for mind
and for star.
"
286.
“Here is the prospect free, the mind exalted. ” *
But there is a reverse kind of man, who is also
upon a height, and has also a free prospect-but
looks downwards.
287.
- What is noble? What does the word "noble "
still mean for us nowadays? How does the noble
man betray himself, how is he recognised under
this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeian-
ism, by which everything is rendered opaque and
* Goethe's "Faust,” Part II. , Act V. The words of Dr
Marianus.


## p. 256 (#278) ############################################

256
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
leaden - It is not his actions which establish his
claim-actions are always ambiguous, always in-
scrutable; neither is it his "works. " One finds
nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of
those who betray by their works that a profound
longing for nobleness impels them; but this very
need of nobleness is radically different from the
needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the
eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof.
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) ################################################

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