No More Learning



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 359
526.
Unwilling to be a Symbol. —I sympathise
with princes: they are not at liberty to discard
their high rank even for a short time, and thus
they come to know people only from the very
uncomfortable position of constant dissimulation—
their continual compulsion to represent something
actually ends by making solemn ciphers of them. —
Such is the fate of all those who deem it their
duty to be symbols.
527.
The Hidden Men. —Have you never come
across those people who check and restrain even
their enraptured hearts, and who would rather
become mute than lose the modesty of modera-
tion? and have you never met those embarrassing,
and yet so often good-natured people who do not
wish to be recognised, and who time and again
efface the tracks they have made in the sand? and
who even deceive others as well as themselves in
order to remain obscure and hidden?
528.
Unusual Forbearance. —It is often no small
indication of kindness to be unwilling to criticise
some one, and even to refuse to think of him.
529.
How Men and Nations gain Lustre. —How
many really individual actions are left undone
t


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360 THE DAWN OF DAY.
merely because before performing them we perceive
or suspect that they will be misunderstood ! —those
actions, for example, which have some intrinsic
value, both in good and evil. The more highly an
age or a nation values its individuals, therefore, and
the more right and ascendancy we accord them,
the more will actions of this kind venture to make
themselves known,—and thus in the long run a
lustre of honesty, of genuineness in good and evil,
will spread over entire ages and nations, so that
they—the Greeks, for example—like certain stars,
will continue to shed light for thousands of years
after their sinking.
530.
Digressions of the Thinker. —The course
of thought in certain men is strict and inflexibly
bold. At times it is even cruel towards such men,
although considered individually they may be
gentle and pliable. With well-meaning hesitation
they will turn the matter ten times over in their
heads, but will at length continue their strict course.
They are like streams that wind their way past
solitary hermitages: there are places in their course
where the stream plays hide and seek with itself,
and indulges in short idylls with islets, trees,
grottos, and cascades—and then it rushes ahead
once more, passes by the rocks, and forces its way
through the hardest stones.
531-
Different Feelings towards Art. —From
the time when we begin to live as a hermit, con-


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 361
suming and consumed, our only company being
deep and prolific thoughts, we expect from art
either nothing more, or else something quite
different from what we formerly expected—in a
word, we change our taste. For in former times
we wished to penetrate for a moment by means of
art into the element in which we are now living
permanently: at that time we dreamt ourselves
into the rapture of a possession which we now
actually possess. Indeed, flinging away from us
for the time being what we now have, and imagin-
ing ourselves to be poor, or to be a child, a beggar,
or a fool, may now at times fill us with delight.
532.
"Love Equalises. "—Love wishes to spare the
other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of
strangeness: as a consequence it is permeated with
disguise and simulation; it keeps on deceiving con-
tinuously, and feigns an equality which in reality
does not exist. And all this is done so instinctively
that women who love deny this simulation and
constant tender trickery, and have even the
audacity to assert that love equalises (in other
words that it performs a miracle)!
This phenomenon is a simple matter if one of
the two permits himself or herself to be loved, and
does not deem it necessary to feign, but leaves
this to the other. No drama, however, could offer
a more intricate and confused instance than when
both persons are passionately in love with one
another; for in this case both are anxious to


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362 THE DAWN OF DAY.
surrender and to endeavour to conform to the
other, and finally they are both at a loss to know
what to imitate and what to feign. The beautiful
madness of this spectacle is too good for this world,
and too subtle for human eyes.
533-
We Beginners. —How many things does an
actor see and divine when he watches another on
the stage! He notices at once when a muscle fails
in some gesture; he can distinguish those little
artificial tricks which are so calmly practised
separately before the mirror, and are not in con-
formity with the whole; he feels when the actor is
surprised on the stage by his own invention, and
when he spoils it amid this surprise. —How differ-
ently, again, does a painter look at some one who
happens to be moving before him! He will see
a great deal that does not actually exist in order
to complete the actual appearance of the person,
and to give it its full effect. In his mind he
attempts several different illuminations of the same
object, and divides the whole by an additional
contrast. —Oh, that we now possessed the eyes of
such an actor and such a painter for the province
of the human soul!
534-
Small Doses. —If we wish a change to be as
deep and radical as possible, we must apply the
remedy in minute doses, but unremittingly for long
periods. What great action can be performed all


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 363
at once? Let us therefore be careful not to
exchange violently and precipitately the moral
conditions with which we are familiar for a new
valuation of things,—nay, we may even wish to
continue living in the old way for a long time to
come, until probably at some very remote period
we become aware of the fact that the new valua-
tion has made itself the predominating power
within us, and that its minute doses to which we
must henceforth become accustomed have set up
a new nature within us. —We now also begin to
understand that the last attempt at a great change
of valuations—that which concerned itself with
political affairs (the "great revolution")—was
nothing more than a pathetic and sanguinary piece
of quackery which, by means of sudden crises, was
able to inspire a credulous Europe with the hope
of a sudden recovery, and has therefore made all
political invalids impatient and dangerous up to
this very moment.
535-
Truth requires Power. —Truth in itself is
no power at all, in spite of all that flattering
rationalists are in the habit of saying to the
contrary. Truth must either attract power to
its side, or else side with power, for otherwise it
will perish again and again. This has already
been sufficiently demonstrated, and more than
sufficiently!
536.
The Thumbscrew. —It is disgusting to observe
with what cruelty every one charges his two or
. '


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364 THE DAWN OF DAY.
three private virtues to the account of others who
may perhaps not possess them, and whom he
torments and worries with them. Let us therefore
deal humanely with the "sense of honesty," although
we may possess in it a thumbscrew with which we
can worry to death all these presumptuous egoists
who even yet wish to impose their own beliefs upon
the whole world—we have tried this thumbscrew
on ourselves!
537-
Mastery. —We have reached mastery when we
neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement.
538.
The Moral Insanity of Genius. —In a
certain category of great intellects we may observe
a painful and partly horrible spectacle: in their
most productive moments their flights aloft and
into the far distance appear to be out of harmony
with their general constitution and to exceed their
power in one way or another, so that each time
there remains a deficiency, and also in the long
run a defectiveness in the entire machinery, which
latter is manifested among those highly intellectual
natures by various kinds of moral and intellectual
symptoms more regularly than by conditions of
bodily distress.
Thus those incomprehensible characteristics of
their nature—all their timidity, vanity, hatefulness,
envy, their narrow and narrowing disposition—and
that too personal and awkward element in natures
like those of Rousseau and Schopenhauer, may very


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 365
well be the consequences of a periodical attack of
heart disease; and this in its turn may be the
result of a nervous complaint, and this latter the
consequence of *
So long as genius dwells within us we are full
of audacity, yea, almost mad, and heedless of
health, life, and honour; we fly through the day
as free and swift as an eagle, and in the darkness
we feel as confident as an owl. —But let genius
once leave us and we are instantly overcome by a
feeling of the most profound despondency: we can
no longer understand ourselves; we suffer from
everything that we experience and do not ex-
perience; we feel as if we were in the midst of
shelterless rocks with the tempest raging round us,
and we are at the same time like pitiful childish
souls, afraid of a rustle or a shadow. —Three-
fourths of all the evil committed in the world is
due to timidity; and this is above all a physio-
logical process.
539-
Do YOU KNOW WhaT YOU Want ? —Have you
never been troubled by the fear that you might
not be at all fitted for recognising what is true?
by the fear that your senses might be too dull, and
even your delicacy of sight far too blunt? If you
could only perceive, even once, to what extent your
volition dominates your sight! How, for example,
you wished yesterday to see more than some one
else, while to-day you wish to see it differently!
and how from the start you were anxious to see
* This omission is in the original. —Tr.


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366 THE DAWN OF DAY.
something which would be in conformity with or
in opposition to anything that people thought they
had observed up to the present. Oh, those shame-
ful cravings! How often you keep your eyes open
for what is efficacious, for what is soothing, just
because you happen to be tired at the moment!
Always full of secret predeterminations of what
truth should be like, so that you—you, forsooth ! —
might accept it! or do you think that to-day,
because you are as frozen and dry as a bright
winter morning, and because nothing is weighing
on your mind, you have better eyesight! Are not
ardour and enthusiasm necessary to do justice to
the creations of thought ? —and this indeed is what
is called sight! as if you could treat matters of
thought any differently from the manner in which
you treat men. In all relations with thought there
is the same morality, the same honesty of purpose,
the same arriere-pensee, the same slackness, the
same faint-heartedness—your whole lovable and
hateful self! Your physical exhaustion will lend
the things pale colours whilst your feverishness will
turn them into monsters! Does not your morning
show the things in a different light from the
evening? Are you not afraid of finding in the
cave of all knowledge your own phantom, the veil
in which truth is wrapped up and hidden from
your sight? Is it not a dreadful comedy in which
you so thoughtlessly wish to take part?
540.
Learning. —Michelangelo considered Raphael's
genius as having been acquired by study, and upon


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 367
his own as a natural gift: learning as opposed to
talent; though this is mere pedantry, with all due
respect to the great pedant himself. For what is
talent but a name for an older piece of learning, ex-
perience, exercise, appropriation, and incorporation,
perhaps as far back as the times of our ancestors,
or even earlier! And again: he who learns forms
his own talents, only learning is not such an easy
matter and depends not only upon our willingness,
but also upon our being able to learn at all.
Jealousy often prevents this in an artist, or that
pride which, when it experiences any strange feel-
ing, at once assumes an attitude of defence instead
of an attitude of scholarly receptiveness. Raphael,
like Goethe, lacked this pride, on which account
they were great learners, and not merely the ex-
ploiters of those quarries which had been formed
by the manifold genealogy of their forefathers.
Raphael vanishes before our eyes as a learner
in the midst of that assimilation of what his
great rival called his "nature": this noblest of
all thieves daily carried off a portion of it; but
before he had appropriated all the genius of
Michelangelo he died—and the final series of his
works, because it is the beginning of a new plan of
study, is less perfect and good, for the simple reason
that the great student was interrupted by death in
the midst of his most difficult task, and took away
with him that justifying and final goal which he had
in view.
541.
HOW WE SHOULD TURN TO STONE. — By
slowly, very, very slowly, becoming hard like a
--


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368 THE DAWN OF DAY.
precious stone, and at last lie still, a joy to all
eternity.
542.
The Philosopher and Old Age. —It is not
wise to permit evening to act as a judge of the
day; for only too often in this case weariness be-
comes the judge of success and good will. We
should also take the greatest precautions in regard
to everything connected with old age and its judg-
ment upon life, more especially since old age, like
the evening, is fond of assuming a new and charm-
ing morality, and knows well enough how to
humiliate the day by the glow of the evening skies,
twilight and a peaceful and wistful silence. The
reverence which we feel for an old man, especially
if he is an old thinker and sage, easily blinds us to
the deterioration of his intellect, and it is always
necessary to bring to light the hidden symptoms of
such a deterioration and lassitude, that is to say, to
uncover the physiological phenomenon which is still
concealed behind the old man's moral judgments
and prejudices, in case we should be deceived by
our veneration for him, and do something to the
disadvantage of knowledge. For it is not seldom
that the illusion of a great moral renovation and
regeneration takes possession of the old man.
Basing his views upon this, he then proceeds to
express his opinions on the work and development
of his life as if he had only then for the first time
become clearsighted—and nevertheless it is not
wisdom, but fatigue, which prompts his present state
of well-being and his positive judgments.


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 369
The most dangerous indication of this weariness
is above all the belief in genius, which as a rule only
arises in great and semi-great men of intellect at
this period of their lives: the belief in an excep-
tional position, and exceptional rights. The thinker
who thus believes himself to be inspired by genius
henceforth deems it permissible for him to take
things more easily, and takes advantage of his
position as a genius to decree rather than to prove.
It is probable, however, that the need felt by the
weary intellect for alleviation is the main source of
this belief—it precedes it in time, though appear-
ances may indicate the contrary.
At this time too, as the result of the love which
all weary and old people feel for enjoyment, such
men as those I am speaking of wish to enjoy the
results of their thinking instead of again testing
them and scattering the seeds abroad once more.
This leads them to make their thoughts palatable
and enjoyable, and to take away their dryness,
coldness, and want of flavour; and thus it comes
about that the old thinker apparently raises him-
self above his life's work, while in reality he spoils
it by infusing into it a certain amount of fantasy,
sweetness, flavour, poetic mists, and mystic lights.
This is how Plato ended, as did also that great
and honest Frenchman, Auguste Comte, who, as a
conqueror of the exact sciences, cannot be matched
either among the Germans or the Englishmen of
this century.
There is a third symptom of fatigue: that
ambition which actuated the great thinker when
he was young, and which could not then find any-
2A
f


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370 THE DAWN OF DAY.
thing to satisfy it, has also grown old, and, like
one that has no more time to lose, it begins to
snatch at the coarser and more immediate means
of its gratification, means which are peculiar to
active, dominating, violent, and conquering dis-
positions. From this time onwards the thinker
wishes to found institutions which shall bear his
name, instead of erecting mere brain-structures.
What are now to him the ethereal victories and
honours to be met with in the realm of proofs and
refutations, or the perpetuation of his fame in books,
or the thrill of exultation in the soul of the reader?
But the institution, on the other hand, is a temple,
as he well knows—a temple of stone, a durable
edifice, which will keep its god alive with more cer-
tainty than the sacrifices of rare and tender souls. *
Perhaps, too, at this period of his life the old
thinker will for the first time meet with that love
which is fitted for a god rather than for a human
being, and his whole nature becomes softened and
sweetened in the rays of such a sun, like fruit in
autumn. Yes, he grows more divine and beautiful,
this great old man,—and nevertheless it is old age
and weariness which permit him to ripen in this
way, to grow more silent, and to repose in the
luminous adulation of a woman. Now it is all up
with his former desire—a desire which was superior
even to his own ego—for real disciples, followers
who would carry on his thought, that is, true
opponents. This desire arose from his hitherto un-
diminished energy, the conscious pride he felt in
* This, of course, refers to Richard Wagner, as does also
the following paragraph. —Tr.


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THE DAWN OF DAY.
371
being able at any time to become an opponent
himself,—nay, even the deadly enemy of his own
doctrine, - but now his desire is for resolute
partisans, unwavering comrades, auxiliary forces,
heralds, a pompous train of followers. He is now
no longer able to bear that dreadful isolation in
which every intellect that advances beyond the
others is compelled to live. From this time forward
he surrounds himself with objects of veneration,
companionship, tenderness, and love; but he also
wishes to enjoy the privileges of all religious people,
and to worship what he venerates most highly
in his little community—he will even go as far as
to invent a religion for the purpose of having a
community.
Thus lives the wise old man, and in living thus
he falls almost imperceptibly into such a deplorable
proximity to priestly and poetic extravagances that
it is difficult to recollect all his wise and severe
period of youth, the former rigid morality of his
mind, and his truly virile dread of fancies and mis-
placed enthusiasm. When he was formerly in the
habit of comparing himself with the older thinkers,
he did so merely that he might measure his weak-
ness against their strength, and that he might
become colder and more audacious towards himself;
but now he only makes this comparison to intoxi-
cate himself with his own delusions. Formerly he
looked forward with confidence to future thinkers,
and he even took a delight in imagining himself to
be cast into the shade by their brighter light. Now,
however, he is mortified to think that he cannot be
the last: he endeavours to discover some way of


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372 THE DAWN OF DAY.
imposing upon mankind, together with the inherit-
ance which he is leaving to them, a restriction of
sovereign thinking. He fears and reviles the pride
and the love of freedom of individual minds: after
him no one must allow his intellect to govern with
absolute unrestriction: he himself wishes to remain
for ever the bulwark on which the waves of ideas
may break—these are his secret wishes, and perhaps,
indeed, they are not always secret.
The hard fact upon which such wishes are based,
however, is that he himself has come to a halt before
his teaching, and has set up his boundary stone,
his " thus far and no farther. " In canonising him-
self he has drawn up his own death warrant: from
now on his mind cannot develop further. His race
is run; the hour-hand stops. Whenever a great
thinker tries to make himself a lasting institution
for posterity, we may readily suppose that he has
passed the climax of his powers, and is very tired,
very near the setting of his sun.
543-
We must not make Passion an Argument
FOR TRUTH. —Oh, you kind-hearted and even
noble enthusiasts, I know you! You wish to seem
right in our eyes as well as in your own, but
especially in your own ! —and an irritable and subtle
evil conscience so often spurs you on against your
very enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become
in deceiving your conscience, and lulling it to sleep!
How you hate honest, simple, and clean souls; how
you avoid their innocent glances! That better
knowledge whose representatives they are, and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 373
whose voice you hear only too distinctly within
yourselves when it questions your belief,—how you
try to cast suspicion upon it as a bad habit, as a
disease of the age, as the neglect and infection of
your own intellectual health! It drives you on to
hate even criticism, science, reason! You must
falsify history to make it testify in your favour;
you must deny virtues in case they should obscure
those of your own idols and ideals.
Coloured images where arguments are needed!
Ardour and power of expression! Silver mists!
Ambrosian nights! well do you know how to en-
lighten and to darken—to darken by means of
light! and indeed when your passion can no longer
be kept within bounds the moment comes when
you say to yourselves, " Now I have won for myself
a good conscience, now I am exalted, courageous,
self-denying, magnanimous; now I am honest! "
How you long for these moments when your passion
will confer upon you full and absolute rights, and
also, as it were, innocence. How happy you are
when engaged in battle and inspired with ecstasy
or courage, when you are elated beyond yourself,
when gnawing doubt has left you, and when you
can even decree: "Any man who is not in ecstasy
as we are cannot by any chance know what or
where truth is. " How you long to meet with those
who share your belief in this state—which is a
state of intellectual depravity—and to set your own
fire alight with their flames! Oh, for your martyr-
dom, your victory of the sanctified lie! Must you
really inflict so much pain upon yourselves ? —
Must you?


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374 THE DAWN OF DAY
544-
How Philosophy is now Practised. —I can
see quite well that our philosophising youths,
women, and artists require from philosophy exactly
the opposite of what the Greeks derived from it.
What does he who does not hear the continual
exultation that resounds through every speech and
counter-argument in a Platonic dialogue, this ex-
ultation over the new invention of rational thinking,
know about Plato or about ancient philosophy?
At that time souls were filled with enthusiasm when
they gave themselves up to the severe and sober
sport of ideas, generalisations, refutations,—that
enthusiasm which perhaps those old, great, severe,
and prudent contrapuntists in music have also
known. At that time the Greek palate still pos-
sessed that older and formerly omnipotent taste:
and by the side of this taste their new taste appeared
to be enveloped in so much charm that the divine
art of dialectic was sung by hesitating voices as if
its followers were intoxicated with the frenzy of
love. That old form of thinking, however, was
thought within the bounds of morality, and for it
nothing existed but fixed judgments and estab-
lished facts, and it had no reasons but those of
authority. Thinking, therefore, was simply a matter
of repetition, and all the enjoyment of speech and
dialogue could only lie in their form.
Wherever the substance of a thing is looked upon
as eternal and universally approved, there is only
one great charm, the charm of variable forms, that
is, of fashion. Even in the poets ever since the


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 375
time of Homer, and later on in the case of the sculp-
tors, the Greeks did not enjoy originality, but its
contrary. It was Socrates who discovered another
charm, that of cause and effect, of reason and
sequence, and we moderns have become so used to
it, and have been brought up to the necessity of
logic that we look upon it as the normal taste, and
as such it cannot but be repugnant to ardent and
presumptuous people. Such people are pleased
by whatever stands out boldly from the normal:
their more subtle ambition leads them to believe
only too readily that they are exceptional souls,
not dialectic and rational beings, but, let us say,
"intuitive" beings gifted with an "inner sense," or
with a certain " intellectual perception. " Above all,
however, they wish to be " artistic natures" with a
genius in their heads, and a demon in their bodies,
and consequently with special rights in this world
and in the world to come—especially the divine
privilege of being incomprehensible.
And people like these are "going in for" philo-
sophy nowadays! I fear they will discover one
day that they have made a mistake—what they
are looking for is religion!
545-
But we do not Believe you. —You would
fain pass for psychologists, but we shall not allow
it! Are we not to notice that you pretend to be
more experienced, profound, passionate, and perfect
than you actually are ?
—just as we notice in yonder
painter that there is a trifling presumptuousness in


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376 THE DAWN OF DAY.
his manner of wielding the brush, and in yonder
musician that he brings forward his theme with the
desire to make it appear superior to what it really
is. Have you experienced history within your-
selves, commotions, earthquakes, long and pro-
found sadness, and sudden flashes of happiness?
Have you acted foolishly with great and little fools?
Have you really undergone the delusions and woe
of the good people? and also the woe and the
peculiar happiness of the most evil? Then you
may speak to me of morality, but not otherwise!
546.
Slave and Idealist. —The followers of Epic-
tetus would doubtless not be to the taste of'those
who are now striving after the ideal. The constant
tension of his being, the indefatigable inward glance,
the prudent and reserved incommunicativeness of
his eye whenever it happens to gaze upon the outer
world, and above all, his silence or laconic speech:
all these are characteristics of the strictest fortitude,
—and what would our idealists, who above all else
are desirous of expansion, care for this? But in
spite of all this the Stoic is not fanatical. He
detests the display and boasting of our idealists:
his pride, however great it may be, is not eager
to disturb others. It permits of a certain gentle
approach, and has no desire to spoil anybody's good
humour—nay, it can even smile. A great deal of
ancient humanity is to be seen exemplified in this
ideal. The most excellent feature about it, how-
ever, is that the thinker is completely free from the


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 377
fear of God, strictly believes in reason, and is no
preacher of penitence.
Epictetus was a slave: his ideal man is,without
any particular rank, and may exist in any grade of
society, but above all he is to be sought in the
deepest and lowest social classes, as the silent and
self-sufficient man in the midst of a general state
of servitude, a man who defends himself alone
against the outer world, and is constantly living in
a state of the highest fortitude. He is distinguished
from the Christian especially,because the latter lives
in hope in the promise of "unspeakable glory,"
permits presents to be made to him, and expects
and accepts the best things from divine love and
grace, and not from himself. Epictetus, on the
other hand, neither hopes nor allows his best
treasure to be given him—he possesses it already,
holds it bravely in his hand, and defies the world
to take it away from him. Christianity was devised
for another class of ancient slaves, for those who
had a weak will and weak reason—that is to say,
for the majority of slaves.
547-
The Tyrants of the Intellect. —The pro-
gress of science is at the present time no longer
hindered by the purely accidental fact that man
attains to about seventy years, which was the case
far too long. In former times people wished to
master the entire extent of knowledge within this
period, and all the methods of knowledge were
valued according to this general desire. Minor


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378 THE DAWN OF DAY.
questions and individual experiments were looked
upon as unworthy of notice: people wanted to take
the shortest path under the impression that, since
everything in this world seemed to be arranged
with a view to man's needs, even the acquirement
of knowledge was regulated in view of the limits
of human life.
To solve everything at a single stroke, with one
word—this was the secret desire; and the task was
represented in the symbol of the Gordian knot or
the egg of Columbus. No one doubted that it was
possible to reach the goal of knowledge after the
manner of Alexander or Columbus, and to settle
all questions with one answer. "There is a mystery
to be solved," seemed to be the aim of life in the
eyes of the philosopher: it was necessary in the first
place to find out what this enigma was, and to con-
dense the problem of the world into the simplest
enigmatical formula possible. The boundless ambi-
tion and delight of being the "unraveller of the
world" charmed the dreams of many a thinker:
nothing seemed to him worth troubling about in
this world but the means of bringing everything to
a satisfactory conclusion. Philosophy thus became
a kind of supreme struggle for the tyrannical sway
over the intellect, and no one doubted that such a
tyrannical domination was reserved for some very
happy, subtle, ingenious, bold, and powerful person
—a single individual! —and many (the last was
Schopenhauer) fancied themselves to be this privi-
leged person.
From this it follows that, on the whole, science
has up to the present remained in a rather back-


## p. 379 (#531) ############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. 379
ward state owing to the moral narrow-mindedness
of its disciples, and that henceforth it will have to
be pursued from a higher and more generous motive.
"What do I matter? " is written over the door of
the thinker of the future.
548.
Victory over Power. —If we consider all that
has been venerated up to the present as "super-
human intellect" or " genius," we must come to the
sad conclusion that, considered as a whole, the in-
tellectuality of mankind must have been extremely
low and poor: so little mind has hitherto been
necessary in order to feel at once considerably
superior to all this! Alas for the cheap glory of
"genius "! How quickly has it been raised to the
throne, and its worship grown into a custom! We
still fall on our knees before power—according to
the old custom of slaves—and nevertheless, when
the degree of venerability comes to be determined,
only the degree of reason in the power will be the
deciding factor. We must find out, indeed, to how
great an extent power has been overcome by some-
thing higher, which it now obeys as a tool and
instrument.
As yet, however, there have been too few eyes
for such investigations: even in the majority of
cases the mere valuation of genius has almost been
looked upon as blasphemy. And thus perhaps
everything that is most beautiful still takes place in
the midst of darkness and vanishes in endless night
almost as soon as it has made its appearance,—
s


## p. 380 (#532) ############################################

380 THE DAWN OF DAY.
I refer to the spectacle of that power which a genius
does not lay out upon works, but upon himself as
a work, that is, his own self-control, the purifying
of his own imagination, the order and selection in
his inspirations and tasks. The great man ever
remains invisible in the greatest thing that claims
worship, like some distant star: his victory over
power remains without witnesses, and hence also
without songs and singers. The hierarchy of the
great men in all the past history of the human race
has not yet been determined.
549-
Flight from One's Self. —Those sufferers
from intellectual spasms who are impatient towards
themselves and look upon themselves with a gloomy
eye—such as Byron or Alfred de Musset—and who,
in everything that they do, resemble runaway horses,
and from their own works derive only a transient
joy and an ardent passion which almost bursts their
veins, followed by sterility and disenchantment—
how are they able to bear up! They would fain
attain to something "beyond themselves. " If we
happen to be Christians, and are seized by such a
desire as this, we strive to reach God and to become
one with Him; if we are a Shakespeare we shall
be glad to perish in images of a passionate life; if
we are like Byron we long for actions, because these
detach us from ourselves to an even greater extent
than thoughts, feelings, and works.
And should the desire for performing great deeds
really be at bottom nothing but a flight from our
own selves ? —as Pascal would ask us. And indeed


## p. 381 (#533) ############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. 381
this assertion might be proved by considering the
most noble representations of this desire for action:
in this respect let us remember, bringing the know-
ledge of an alienist to our aid, that four of the
greatest men of all ages who were possessed of this
lust for action were epileptics—Alexander the
Great, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; and
Byron likewise was subject to the same complaint.
5 SO.
Knowledge and Beauty. —If men, as they
are still in the habit of doing, reserve their venera-
tion and feelings of happiness for works of fancy
and imagination, we should not be surprised if they
feel chilled and displeased by the contrary of fancy
and imagination. The rapture which arises from
even the smallest, sure, and definite step in advance
into insight, and which our present state of science
yields to so many in such abundance—this rapture
is in the meantime not believed in by all those who
are in the habit of feeling enraptured only when
they leave reality altogether and plunge into the
depths of vague appearance—romanticism. These
people look upon reality as ugly, but they entirely
overlook the fact that the knowledge of even the
ugliest reality is beautiful, and that the man who
can discern much and often is in the end-very far
from considering as ugly the main items of that
reality, the discovery of which has always inspired
him with the feeling of happiness.
Is there anything "beautiful in itself"? The
happiness of those who can recognise augments the
beauty of the world, bathing everything that exists


## p. 381 (#534) ############################################

** OF DAY.
--
-- Seriment not only envelops
: T WN but in the long run
2. mselves with its beauty-
S E
SI Vas to the truth of this
O
r me let us recall an old
V
s horoughly different in
si-istotle were agreed
1 : 5 N ec superior happiness
-
opere UT Is that of men in general,
A S er eie happiness of the
- 22. arnings to lie in know-
nawet practised and in-
***. . . --"
W
i r intuition " like the
Om
encheologians; not in
via
22 hot in work, like the
* 92233 SSJpinions were ex-
-
XS
S What great
a .
let in knowledge!
1. ). **E
t hat their honesty
Ir themselves might
ve LSI
Vas TT -S as it come about
the cure de ce vrd has become,
: Dore
a ns eram zis bare diminished ?
Was fear so frequency the indamental basis of
that awe which overcame us at the sight of any-
thing bitherto unknown and mysterious, and which
taught us to fall upon our knees before the unin-
telligible, and to beg for mercy? And has the
world, perhaps, through the very fact that we have


## p. 381 (#535) ############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY.
383
grown less timid, lost some of the charms it
formerly had for us? Is it not possible that our
own dignity and stateliness, our formidable char-
acter, has decreased together with our spirit of
dread? Perhaps we value the world and our-
selves less highly since we have begun to think
more boldly about it and ourselves? Perhaps there
will come a moment in the future when this cour-
ageous spirit of thinking will have reached such a
point that it will feel itself soaring in supreme pride,
far above men and things—when the wise man,
being also the boldest, will see himself, and even
more particularly existence, the lowest of all be-
neath himself ?
This type of courage, which is not far removed
from excessive generosity, has been lacking in
humanity up to the present. —Oh, that our poets
might once again become what they once were:
seers, telling us something about what might
possibly happen! now that what is real and what
is past are being ever more and more taken from
them, and must continue to be taken from them
—for the time of innocent counterfeiting is at an
end! Let them try to enable us to anticipate
future virtues, or virtues that will never be found
on earth, although they may exist somewhere in
the world ! -purple-glowing constellations and
whole Milky Ways of the beautiful! Where are
ye, ye astronomers of the ideal ?
552.
IDEAL SELFISHNESS. —Is there a more sacred
state than that of pregnancy? To perform every


## p. 382 (#536) ############################################

382 THE DAWN OF DAY.
in a sunnier light: discernment not only envelops
all things in its own beauty, but in the long run
permeates the things themselves with its beauty—
may ages to come bear witness to the truth of this
statement! In the meantime let us recall an old
experience: two men so thoroughly different in
every respect as Plato and Aristotle were agreed
in regard to what constituted superior happiness
—not merely their own and that of men in general,
but happiness in itself, even the happiness of the
gods. They found this happiness to lie in know-
ledge, in the activity of a well practised and in-
ventive understanding (not in "intuition" like the
German theologians and semi-theologians; not in
visions, like the mystics; and not in work, like the
merely practical men). Similar opinions were ex-
pressed by Descartes and Spinoza. What great
delight must all these men have felt in knowledge!
and how great was the danger that their honesty
might give way, and that they themselves might
become panegyrists of things!
SSL
Future Virtues. — How has it come about
that, the more intelligible the world has become,
the more all kinds of ceremonies have diminished?
Was fear so frequently the fundamental basis of
that awe which overcame us at the sight of any-
thing hitherto unknown and mysterious, and which
taught us to fall upon our knees before the unin-
telligible, and to beg for mercy? And has the
world, perhaps, through the very fact that we have


## p. 383 (#537) ############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. 383
grown less timid, lost some of the charms it
formerly had for us? Is it not possible that our
own dignity and stateliness, our formidable char-
acter, has decreased together with our spirit of
dread? Perhaps we value the world and our-
selves less highly since we have begun to think
more boldly about it and ourselves? Perhaps there
will come a moment in the future when this cour-
ageous spirit of thinking will have reached such a
point that it will feel itself soaring in supreme pride,
far above men and things—when the wise man,
being also the boldest, will see himself, and even
more particularly existence, the lowest of all be-
neath himself?
This type of courage, which is not far removed
from excessive generosity, has been lacking in
humanity up to the present. —Oh, that our poets
might once again become what they once were:
seers, telling us something about what might
possibly happen! now that what is real and what
is past are being ever more and more taken from
them, and must continue to be taken from them
—for the time of innocent counterfeiting is at an
end! Let them try to enable us to anticipate
future virtues, or virtues that will never be found
on earth, although they may exist somewhere in
the world! —purple-glowing constellations and
whole Milky Ways of the beautiful! Where are
ye, ye astronomers of the ideal?
552.
Ideal Selfishness. —Is there a more sacred
state than that of pregnancy? To perform every


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384 THE DAWN OF DAY.
one of our actions in the silent conviction that in
one way or another it will be to the benefit of that
which is being generated within us—that it must
augment its mysterious value, the very thought of
which fills us with rapture? At such a time we
refrain from many things without having to force
ourselves to do so: we suppress the angry word,
we grasp the hand forgivingly; our child must be
born from all that is best and gentlest. We shun
our own harshness and brusqueness in case it should
instil a drop of unhappiness into the cup of the
beloved unknown. Everything is veiled, ominous;
we know nothing about what is going on, but
simply wait and try to be prepared. During this
time, too, we experience a pure and purifying feel-
ing of profound irresponsibility, similar to that felt
by a spectator before a drawn curtain; it is grow-
ing, it is coming to light; we have nothing to do
with determining its value, or the hour of its arrival.
We are thrown back altogether upon indirect,
beneficent and defensive influences. "Something
greater than we are is growing here "—such is our
most secret hope: we prepare everything with a
view to his birth and prosperity—not merely every-
thing that is useful, but also the noblest gifts of our
souls.
We should, and can, live under the influence of
such a blessed inspiration! Whether what we are
looking forward to is a thought or a deed, our
relationship to every essential achievement is none
other than that of pregnancy, and all our vain-
glorious boasting about "willing" and "creating"
should be cast to the winds! True and ideal


## p. 385 (#539) ############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. 385
selfishness consists in always watching over and
restraining the soul, so that our productiveness may
come to a beautiful termination. Thus in this
indirect manner we must provide for and watch
over the good of all; and the frame of mind, the
mood in which we live, is a kind of soothing oil
which spreads far around us on the restless souls.
—Still, these pregnant ones are funny people!
let us therefore dare to be funny also, and not
reproach others if they must be the same. And
even when this phenomenon becomes dangerous
and evil we must not show less respect to that which
is generating within us or others than ordinary
worldly justice, which does not allow the judge or
the hangman to interfere with a pregnant woman.
553-
Circuitous Routes. —Where does all this
philosophy mean to end with its circuitous routes?
Does it do more than transpose into reason, so to
speak, a continuous and strong impulse—a craving
for a mild sun, a bright and bracing atmosphere,
southern plants, sea breezes, short meals of meat,
eggs, and fruit, hot water to drink, quiet walks for
days at a time, little talking, rare and cautious
reading, living alone, pure, simple, and almost
soldier-like habits—a craving, in short, for all
things which are suited to my own personal taste?
a philosophy which is in the main the instinct for
a personal regimen—an instinct that longs for my
air, my height, my temperature, and my kind of
health, and takes the circuitous route of my head
to persuade me to it!
2li


## p. 386 (#540) ############################################

386 THE DAWN OF DAY.
There are many other and certainly more lofty
philosophies, and not only such as are more gloomy
and pretentious than mine—and are they perhaps,
taking them as a whole, nothing but intellectual
circuitous routes of the same kind of personal im-
pulses ? —In the meantime I look with a new eye
upon the mysterious and solitary flight of a butter-
fly high on the rocky banks of the lake where so
many plants are growing: there it flies hither and
thither, heedless of the fact that its life will last
only one more day, and that the night will be too
cold for its winged fragility. For it, too, a philo-
sophy might be found, though it might not be
my own.
5 54-
LEADING. *—When we praise progress we only
praise the movement and those who do not let us
remain on the same spot, and in the circumstances
this is certainly something, especially if we live
among Egyptians. In changeable Europe, how-
ever, where movement is " understood," to use their
own expression, "as a matter of course "—alas, if
we only understood something about it too! —I
praise leaders and forerunners: that is to say, those
who always leave themselves behind, and do not
care in the least whether any one is following them
or not. "Wherever I halt I find myself alone:
why should I halt! the desert is still so wide ! "—
such is the sentiment of the true leader.
* The play upon the words Vorschritt (leading) and
Fortschrilt (progress) cannot be rendered in English. —Tr.


## p. 387 (#541) ############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. 387
5S5-
The least Important are Sufficient. —
We ought to avoid events when we know that even
the least important of them frequently enough leave
a strong impression upon us—and these we cannot
avoid. —The thinker must possess an approximate
canon of all the things he still wishes to experience.
556.
The Four Virtues. —Honest towards our-
selves, and to all and everything friendly to us;
brave in the face of our enemy; generous towards
the vanquished; polite at all times: such do the
four cardinal virtues wish us to be.
557-
Marching against an Enemy. —How pleas-
ant is the sound of even bad music and bad motives
when we are setting out to march against an
enemy!
558.
Not concealing One's Virtues. —I love
those men who are as transparent as water, and
who, to use Pope's expression, hide not from view
the turbid bottom of their stream. Even they, how-
ever, possess a certain vanity, though of a rare and
more sublimated kind: some of them would wish
us to see nothing but the mud, and to take no
notice of the clearness of the water which enables
us to look right to the bottom. No less a man than


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388 THE DAWN OF DAY.
Gautama Buddha has imagined the vanity of these
few in the formula, " Let your sins appear before
men, and conceal your virtues. " But this would
exhibit a disagreeable spectacle to the world—it
would be a sin against good taste.
559-
"Nothing in Excess ! "—How often is the
individual recommended to set up a goal which it
is beyond his power to reach, in order that he may
at least attain that which lies within the scope of
his abilities and most strenuous efforts! Is it really
so desirable, however, that he should do so? Do
not the best men who try to act according to this
doctrine, together with their best deeds, necessarily
assume a somewhat exaggerated and distorted ap-
pearance on account of their excessive tension ? and
in the future will not a grey mist of failure envelop
the world, owing to the fact that we may see every-
where struggling athletes and tremendous gestures,
but nowhere a conqueror crowned with the laurel,
and rejoicing in his victory?
560.
What we are Free to do. —We can act as
the gardeners of our impulses, and—which few
people know—we may cultivate the seeds of anger,
pity, vanity, or excessive brooding, and make these
things fecund and productive, just as we can train
a beautiful plant to grow along trellis-work. We
may do this with the good or bad taste of a


## p. 389 (#543) ############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. 389
gardener, and as it were, in the French, English,
Dutch, or Chinese style. We may let nature take
its own course, only trimming and embellishing a
little here and there; and finally, without any
knowledge or consideration, we may even allow the
plants to spring up in accordance with their own
natural growth and limitations, and fight out their
battle among themselves,—nay, we can even take
delight in such chaos, though we may possibly
have a hard time with it! All this is at our option:
but how many know that it is? Do not the majority
of people believe in themselves as complete and
perfect facts? and have not the great philosophers
set their seal on this prejudice through their doctrine
of the unchangeability of character?
561.
Letting our Happiness also Shine. —In the
same way as painters are unable to reproduce the
deep brilliant hue of the natural sky, and are com-
pelled to use all the colours they require for their
landscapes a few shades deeper than nature has
made them—just'as they,by means of this trick, suc-
ceed in approaching the brilliancy and harmony of
nature's own hues, so also must poets and philoso-
phers, for whom the luminous rays of happiness
are inaccessible, endeavour to find an expedient.
By picturing all things a shade or two darker than
they really are, their light, in which they excel, will
produce almost exactly the same effect as the
sunlight, and will resemble the light of true happi-
ness. —The pessimist, on the other hand, who paints


## p. 390 (#544) ############################################

390 THE DAWK OF DAY.
all things in the blackest and most sombre hues,
only makes use of bright flames, lightning, celestial
glories, and everything that possesses a glaring,
dazzling power, and bewilders our eyes: to him
light only serves the purpose of increasing the
horror, and of making us look upon things as being
more dreadful than they really are
562.
The Settled and the Free. —It is only in
the Underworld that we catch a glimpse of that
gloomy background of all that bliss of adventure
which forms an everlasting halo around Ulysses
and his like, rivalling the eternal phosphorescence
of the sea,—that background which we can never
forget: the mother of Ulysses died of grief and
yearning for her child. The one is driven on from
place to place, and the heart of the other, the tender
stay-at-home friend,breaks through it—so it always
is.