No More Learning

Importunacy. —There is even an importunacy
in relation to works, and the act of associating one-
self from early youth on an intimate footing with
the illustrious works of all times evinces an entire
absence of shame. —Others are only importunate
from ignorance, not knowing with whom they have
to do—for instance classical scholars young and old
in relation to the works of the Greeks.


## p. 42 (#62) ##############################################

42 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
70.
The Will is Ashamed of the Intellect. —
In all coolness we make reasonable plans against
our passions. But we make the most serious mis-
take in this connection in being often ashamed,
when the design has to be carried out, of the cool-
ness and calculation with which we conceived it.
So we do just the unreasonable thing, from that
sort of defiant magnanimity that every passion in-
volves.
71.
Why the Sceptics Offend Morality. —He
who takes his morality solemnly and seriously is
enraged against the sceptics in the domain of morals.
For where he lavishes all his force, he wishes others
to marvel but not to investigate and doubt. Then
there are natures whose last shred of morality is
just the belief in morals. They behave in the same
way towards sceptics, if possible still more passion-
ately.
72.
SHyNESS. —All moralists are shy, because they
know they are confounded with spies and traitors,
so soon as their penchant is noticed. Besides, they
are generally conscious of being impotent in action,
for in the midst of work the motives of their activity
almost withdraw their attention from the work.
73-
A Danger to Universal Morality. —People
who are at the same time noble and honest come


## p. 43 (#63) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 43
to deify every devilry that brings out their honesty,
and to suspend for a time the balance of their moral
judgment.
74.
THE SADDEST ERROR. —It is an unpardonable
offence when one discovers that where one was con-
vinced of being loved, one is only regarded as a
household utensil and decoration, whereby the
master of the house can find an outlet for his
vanity before his guests.
75.
LOVE AND DUALITY. —What else is love but
understanding and rejoicing that another lives,
works, and feels in a different and opposite way to
ourselves ? That love may be able to bridge over
the contrasts by joys, we must not remove or deny
those contrasts. Even self-love presupposes an irre-
concileable duality (or plurality) in one person.
76.
SIGNS FROM DREAMS. —What one sometimes
does not know and feel accurately in waking hours
—whether one has a good or a bad conscience as
regards some person-is revealed completely and
unambiguously by dreams.
77.
DEBAUCHERY. —Not joy but joylessness is the
mother of debauchery.


## p. 44 (#64) ##############################################

44
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
78.
REWARD AND PUNISHMENT. -No one accuses
without an underlying notion of punishment and
revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself.
All complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation
is praise. Whether we do one or the other, we
always make some one responsible.
79.
DOUBLY UNJUST. -We sometimes advance truth
by a twofold injustice: when we see and represent
consecutively the two sides of a case which we are
not in a position to see together, but in such a way
that every time we mistake or deny the other side,
fancying that what we see is the whole truth.
80.
MISTRUST. -Self-mistrust does not always pro-
ceed uncertainly and shyly, but sometimes in a
furious rage, having worked itself into a frenzy in
order not to tremble.
81.
PHILOSOPHY OF PARVENUS. If you want to be
a personality you must even hold your shadow in
honour.
82.
KNOWING HOW TO WASH ONESELF CLEAN. -
We must know how to emerge cleaner from unclean
conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves
even with dirty water.


## p. 45 (#65) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 45
S3-
Letting Yourself Go. —The more you let
yourself go, the less others let you go.
84.
The Innocent Rogue. —There is a slow, grad-
ual path to vice and rascality of every description.
In the end, the traveller is quite abandoned by the
insect-swarms of a bad conscience, and although a
thorough scoundrel he walks in innocence.
85.
MAKINg PLANS. —Making plans and conceiving
projects involves many agreeable sentiments. He
that had the strength to be nothing but a contriver
of plans all his life would be a happy man. But
one must occasionally have a rest from this activity
by carrying a plan into execution, and then comes
anger and sobriety.
86.
Wherewith We See the Ideal. —Every effi-
cient man is blocked by his efficiency and cannot
look out freely from its prison. Had he not also
a goodly share of imperfection, he could, by reason
of his virtue, never arrive at an intellectual or moral
freedom. Our shortcomings are the eyes with
which we see the ideal.
87.
Dishonest Praise. —Dishonest praise causes
many more twinges of conscience than dishonest


## p. 46 (#66) ##############################################

46 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
blame, probably only because we have exposed our
capacity for judgment far more completely through
excessive praise than through excessive and unjust
blame.
88.
How One Dies is Indifferent. —The whole
way in which a man thinks of death during the prime
of his life and strength is very expressive and sig-
nificant for what we call his character. But the hour
of death itself, his behaviour on the death-bed, is
almost indifferent. The exhaustion of waning life,
especially when old people die, the irregular or in-
sufficient nourishment of the brain during this last
period, the occasionally violent pain, the novel and
untried nature of the whole position, and only too
often the ebb and flow of superstitious impressions
and fears, as if dying were of much consequence and
meant the crossing of bridges of the most terrible
kind—all this forbids our using death as a testimony
concerning the living. Nor is it true that the dying
man is generally more honest than the living. On
the contrary, through the solemn attitude of the
bystanders, the repressed or flowing streams of tears
and emotions, every one is inveigled into a comedy
of vanity, now conscious, now unconscious. The
serious way in which every dying man is treated
must have been to many a poor despised devil the
highest joy of his whole life and a sort of compensa-
tion and repayment for many privations.
89.
Morality and its Sacrifice. —The origin of
morality may be traced to two ideas: "The com-


## p. 47 (#67) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 47
munity ;s of more value than the individual," and
"Th^ permanent interest is to be preferred to the
temporary. " The conclusion drawn is that the per-
manent interest of the community is unconditionally
to be set above the temporary interest of the indi-
vidual, especially his momentary well-being, but also
his permanent interest and even the prolongation
of his existence. Even if the individual suffers
by an arrangement that suits the mass, even if he
is depressed and ruined by it, morality must be
maintained and the victim brought to the sacrifice.
Such a trend of thought arises, however, only in
those who are not the victims—for in the victim's
case it enforces the claim that the individual might
be worth more than the many, and that the present
enjoyment, the " moment in paradise," * should per-
haps be rated higher than a tame succession of
untroubled or comfortable circumstances. But the
philosophy of the sacrificial victim always finds voice
too late, and so victory remains with morals and
morality: which are really nothing more than the
sentiment for the whole concept of morals under
which one lives and has been reared—and reared
not as an individual but as a member of the whole,
as a cipher in a majority. Hence it constantly
happens that the individual makes himself into a
majority by means of his morality.
90.
The Good and the Good Conscience. —You
hold that all good things have at all times had a
* Quotation from Schiller, Don Carlos, i. 5. —Tr.


## p. 48 (#68) ##############################################

48 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
good conscience? Science, which is certainly a
very good thing, has come into the world without
such a conscience and quite free from all pathos,"
rather clandestinely, by roundabout ways, walking
with shrouded or masked face like a sinner, and
always with the feeling at least of being a smuggler.
Good conscience has bad conscience for its stepping-
stone, not for its opposite. For all that is good has
at one time been new and consequently strange,
against morals, immoral, and has gnawed like a
worm at the heart of the fortunate discoverer.
91-
Success Sanctifies the Intentions. —We
should not shrink from treading the road to a virtue,
even when we see clearly that nothing but egotism,
and accordingly utility, personal comfort, fear, con-
siderations of health, reputation, or glory, are the
impelling motives. These motives are styled ignoble
and selfish. Very well, but if they stimulate us to
some virtue—for example, self-denial, dutifulness,
order, thrift, measure, and moderation—let us listen
to them, whatever their epithets may be! For if
we reach the goal to which they summon us, then
the virtue we have attained, by means of the pure
air it makes us breathe and the spiritual well-being
it communicates, ennobles the remoter impulses of
our action, and afterwards we no longer perform
those actions from the same coarse motives that
inspired us before. —Education should therefore force
the virtues on the pupil, as far as possible, according
to his disposition. Then virtue, the sunshine and


## p. 49 (#69) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 49
summer atmosphere of the soul, can contribute her
own share of work and add mellowness and sweet-
ness.
92.
Dabblers in Christianity, not Christians.
—So that is your Christianity! —To annoy humanity
you praise " God and His Saints," and again when
you want to praise humanity you go so far that
God and His Saints must be annoyed. —I wish you
would at least learn Christian manners, as you are
so deficient in the civility of the Christian heart.
93-
The Religious and Irreligious Impression
of Nature. —A true believer must be to us an
object of veneration, but the same holds good of a
true, sincere, convinced unbeliever. With men of
the latter stamp we are near to the high mountains
where mighty rivers have their source, and with
believers we are under vigorous, shady, restful trees.
94-
JUDICIAL MURDER. —The two greatest judicial
murders * in the world's history are, to speak without
exaggeration, concealed and well-concealed suicide.
In both cases a man willed to die, and in both cases
he let his breast be pierced by the sword in the
hand of human injustice.
95-
"LOVE. "—The finest artistic conception wherein
Christianity had the advantage over other religious
* This, of course, refers to Jesus and Socrates. —Tr.
vol. 11. D


## p. 50 (#70) ##############################################

5<D HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
systems lay in one word—Love. Hence it became
the lyric religion (whereas in its two other creations
Semitism bestowed heroico-epical religions upon
the world). In the word "love" there is so much
meaning, so much that stimulates and appeals to
memory and hope, that even the meanest intelli-
gence and the coldest heart feel some glimmering
of its sense. The cleverest woman and the lowest
man think of the comparatively unselfish moments
of their whole life, even if with them Eros never
soared high: and the vast number of beings who
miss love from their parents or children or sweet-
hearts, especially those whose sexual instincts have
been refined away, have found their heart's desire
in Christianity.
96.
The Fulfilment of Christianity. — In
Christianity there is also an Epicurean trend of
thought, starting from the idea that God can only
demand of man, his creation and his image, what it
is possible for man to fulfil, and accordingly that
Christian virtue and perfection are attainable and
often attained. Now, for instance, the belief in loving
one's enemies—even if it is only a belief or fancy,
and by no means a psychological reality (a real
love)—gives unalloyed happiness, so long as it is
genuinely believed. (As to the reason of this,
psychologist and Christian might well differ. )
Hence earthly life, through the belief, I mean the
fancy, that it satisfies not only the injunction to
love our enemies, but all the other injunctions of
Christianity, and that it has really assimilated


## p. 51 (#71) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 51
and embodied in itself the Divine perfection accord-
ing to the command, "Be perfect as your Father
in heaven is perfect," might actually become a
holy life. Thus error can make Christ's promise
come true.
97-
Of the Future of Christianity. —We may
be allowed to form a conjecture as to the dis-
appearance of Christianity and as to the places
where it will be the slowest to retreat, if we con-
sider where and for what reasons Protestantism
spread with such startling rapidity. As is well
known, Protestantism promised to do far more
cheaply all that the old Church did, without costly
masses, pilgrimages, and priestly pomp and circum-
stance. It spread particularly among the Northern
nations, which were not so deeply rooted as those
of the South in the old Church's symbolism and
love of ritual. In the South the more powerful
pagan religion survived in Christianity, whereas in
the North Christianity meant an opposition to
and a break with the old-time creed, and hence
was from the first more thoughtful and less sensual,
but for that very reason, in times of peril, more
fanatical and more obstinate. If from the stand-
point of thought we succeed in uprooting Christi-
anity, we can at once know the point where it will
begin to disappear—the very point at which it will
be most stubborn in defence. In other places it
will bend but not break, lose its leaves but burst
into leaf afresh, because the senses, and not thought,
have gone over to its side. But it is the senses


## p. 52 (#72) ##############################################

52 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that maintain the belief that with all its expensive
outlay the Church is more cheaply and conveniently
managed than under the stern conditions of work
and wages. Yet what does one hold leisure (or
semi-idleness) to be worth, when once one has be-
come accustomed to it? The senses plead against
a dechristianised world, saying that there would
be too much work to do in it and an insufficient
supply of leisure. They take the part of magic—
that is, they let God work himself (premus nos, Deus
labored).
98.
Theatricality and Honesty of Un-
believers. —There is no book that contains in
such abundance or expresses so faithfully all that
man occasionally finds salutary—ecstatic inward
happiness, ready for sacrifice or death in the belief
in and contemplation of his truth—as the book
that tells of Christ. From that book a clever man
may learn all the means whereby a book can be
made into a world-book, a vade-mecum for all, and
especially that master-means of representing every-
thing as discovered, nothing as future and uncertain.
All influential books try to leave the same impres-
sion, as if the widest intellectual horizon were cir-
cumscribed here and as if about the sun that shines
here every constellation visible at present or in the
future must revolve. —Must not then all purely
scientific books be poor in influence on the same
grounds as such books are rich in influence? Is
not the book fated to live humble and among
humble folk, in order to be crucified in the end
and never resurrected? In relation to what the


## p. 53 (#73) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 53
religious inform us of their " knowledge" and their
"holy spirit," are not all upright men of science
"poor in spirit"? Can any religion demand more
self-denial and draw the selfish out of themselves
more inexorably than science ? —This and similar
things we may say, in any case with a certain
theatricality, when we have to defend ourselves
against believers, for it is impossible to conduct a
defence without a certain amount of theatricality.
But between ourselves our language must be more
honest, and we employ a freedom that those be-
lievers are not even allowed, in their own interests,
to understand. Away, then, with the monastic
cowl of self-denial, with the appearance of humility!
Much more and much better—so rings our truth!
If science were not linked with the pleasure of
knowledge, the utility of the thing known, what
should we care for science? If a little faith, love,
and hope did not lead our souls to knowledge,
what would attract us to science? And if in science
the ego means nothing, still the inventive, happy
ego, every upright and industrious ego, means a
great deal in the republic of the men of science.
The homage of those who pay homage, the joy of
those whom we wish well or honour, in some cases
glory and a fair share of immortality, is the personal
reward for every suppression of personality: to say
nothing here of meaner views and rewards, although
it is just on this account that the majority have sworn
and always continue to swear fidelity to the laws of
the republic and of science. If we had not remained
in some degree unscientific, what would science
matter to us? Taking everything together and
S \>-*u>


## p. 54 (#74) ##############################################

54 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
speaking in plain language: "To a purely knowing
being knowledge would be indifferent. "—Not the
quality but the quantity of faith and devoutness
distinguishes us from the pious, the believers. We
are content with less. But should one of them cry
out to us: "Be content and show yourselves con-
tented! " we could easily answer: "As a matter
of fact, we do not belong to the most discontented
class. But you, if your faith makes you happy,
show yourselves to be happy. Your faces have
always done more harm to your faith than our
reasons! If that glad message of your Bible were
written in your faces, you would not need to de-
mand belief in the authority of that book in such
stiff-necked fashion. Your words, your actions
should continually make the Bible superfluous—in
fact, through you a new Bible should continually
come into being. As it is, your apologia for
Christianity is rooted in your unchristianity, and
with your defence you write your own condemna-
tion. If you, however, should wish to emerge from
your dissatisfaction with Christianity, you should
ponder over the experience of two thousand years,
which, clothed in the modest form of a question,
may be voiced as follows: "If Christ really in-
tended to redeem the world, may he not be said
to have failed? "
99-
The Poet as Guide to the Future. —All
the surplus poetical force that still exists in modern
humanity, but is not used under our conditions of
life, should (without any deduction) be devoted to


## p. 55 (#75) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 55
a definite goal—not to depicting the present nor to
reviving and summarising the past, but to pointing
the way to the future. Nor should this be so
done as if the poet, like an imaginative political
economist, had to anticipate a more favourable
national and social state of things and picture their
realisation.
Rather will he, just as the earlier
poets portrayed the images of the Gods, portray
the fair images of men. He will divine those cases
where, in the midst of our modern world and reality
(which will not be shirked or repudiated in the
usual poetic fashion), a great, noble soul is still
possible, where it may be embodied in harmonious,
equable conditions, where it may become perma-
nent, visible, and representative of a type, and so, by
the stimulus to imitation and envy, help to create
the future. The poems of such a poet would be
distinguished by appearing secluded and protected
from the heated atmosphere of the passions. The
irremediable failure, the shattering of all the strings
of the human instrument, the scornful laughter and
gnashing of teeth, and all tragedy and comedy in
the usual old sense, would appear by the side of
this new art as mere archaic lumber, a blurring of
the outlines of the world-picture. Strength, kind-
ness, gentleness, purity, and an unsought, innate
moderation in the personalities and their action: a
levelled soil, giving rest and pleasure to the foot: a
shining heaven mirrored in faces and events: science
and art welded into a new unity: the mind living
together with her sister, the soul, without arrogance
or jealousy, and enticing from contrasts the grace
of seriousness, not the impatience of discord—all


## p. 56 (#76) ##############################################

56 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
this would be the general environment, the back-
ground on which the delicate differences of the em-
bodied ideals would make the real picture, that of
ever-growing human majesty. Many roads to this
poetry of the future start from Goethe, but the quest
needs good pathfinders and above all a far greater
strength than is possessed by modern poets, who
unscrupulously represent the half-animal and the
immaturity and intemperance that are mistaken
by them for power and naturalness.
ioo.
/ The Muse as Penthesilea*—"Better to rot
than to be a woman without charm. " When once
the Muse thinks thus, the end of her art is again
at hand. But it can be a tragic and also a comic
finale.
IOI.
The Circuitous Path to the Beautiful. —
If the beautiful is to be identified with that which
gives pleasure—and thus sang the Muses once—
the useful is often the necessary circuitous path
to the beautiful, and has a perfect right to spurn
the short-sighted censure of men who live for the
moment, who will not wait, and who think that
they can reach all good things without ever taking
a circuitous path.
102.
An Excuse for many a Transgression. —The
ceaseless desire to create, the eternal looking out-
* Queen of the Amazons, slain by Achilles in the Trojan
War. —Tr.


## p. 57 (#77) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. $7
ward of the artist, hinders him from becoming better
and more beautiful as a personality: unless his crav-
ing for glory be great enough to compel him to
exhibit in his relations with other men a growth
corresponding to the growing beauty and greatness
of his works. In any case he has but a limited
measure of strength, and how could the proportion
of strength that he spends on himself be of any
benefit to his work—or vice versa?
103.
Satisfying the Best People. —If we have sat-
isfied the best people of our time with our art, it is
a sign that we shall not satisfy the best people of
the succeeding period. We have indeed "lived for
all time," and the applause of the best people ensures
our fame. *
104.
Of One Substance. —If we are of one substance
with a book or a work of art, we think in our heart
of hearts that it must be excellent, and are offended
if others find it ugly, over-spiced, or pretentious.
105.
Speech and Emotion. —That speech is not given
to us to communicate our emotions may be seen
from the fact that all simple men are ashamed to
seek for words to express their deeper feelings. These
* From Schiller, Wallensteiris Lager: "Wer den Besten
seiner Zeit genug gethan, der hat gelebt fur alle Zeiten"
(" He that has satisfied the best men of his time has lived for
all time").


## p. 58 (#78) ##############################################

58 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
feelings are expressed only in actions, and even here
such men blush if others seem to divine their motives.
After all, among poets, to whom God generally
denies this shame, the more noble are more mono-
syllabic in the language of emotion, and evince a
certain constraint: whereas the real poets of emotion
are for the most part shameless in practical life.
106.
A Mistake about a Privation. —He that has
not for a long time been completely weaned from an
art, and is still always at home in it, has no idea how
small a privation it is to live without that art.
107.
Three-quarter Strength. —A work that is
meant to give an impression of health should be
produced with three-quarters, at the most, of the
strength of its creator. If he has gone to his farthest
limit, the work excites the observer and disconcerts
him by its tension. All good things have some-
thing lazy about them and lie like cows in the
meadow.
108.
Refusing to have Hunger as a Guest. —As
refined fare serves a hungry man as well as and no
better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist
will not dream of inviting the hungry man to his
meal.
109.
Living without Art and Wine. —It is with
works of art as with wine—it is better if one can do


## p. 59 (#79) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 59
without both and keep to water, and if from the
inner fire and inner sweetness of the soul the water
spontaneously changes again into wine.
no.
The Pirate-Genius. —The pirate-genius in art,
who even knows how to deceive subtle minds, arises
when some one unscrupulously and from youth up-
wards regards all good things, that are not protected
by law, as the property of a particular person, as his
legitimate spoil. Now all the good things of past
ages and masters lie free around us, hedged about
and protected by the reverential awe of the few who
know them. To these few our robber-genius, by
the force of his impudence, bids defiance and ac-
cumulates for himself a wealth that once more calls
forth homage and awe.
in.
To the Poets of Great Towns. —In the gar-
dens of modern poetry it will clearly be observed
that the sewers of great towns are too near. With
the fragrance of flowers is mingled something that
betrays abomination and putrescence. With pain I
ask: "Must you poets always request wit and dirt
to stand godfather, when an innocent and beautiful
sensation has to be christened by you? Are you
obliged to dress your noble goddess in a hood of
devilry and caricature? But whence this necessity,
this obligation? " The reason is—because you live
too near the sewers.


## p. 60 (#80) ##############################################

60 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
112.
Of the Salt of Speech. —No one has ever
explained why the Greek writers, having at com-
mand such an unparalleled wealth and power of
language, made so sparing a use of their resources
that every post-classical Greek book appears by
comparison crude, over-coloured, and extravagant.
It is said that towards the North Polar ice and
in the hottest countries salt is becoming less and
less used, whereas on the other hand the dwellers
on the plains and by the coast in the more temper-
ate zones use salt in great abundance. Is it possible
that the Greeks from a twofold reason—because
their intellect was colder and clearer but their fun-
damental passionate nature far more tropical than
ours—did not need salt and spice to the same extent
that we do?
"3-
The Freest Writer. —In a book for free spirits
one cannot avoid mention of Laurence Sterne, the
man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of
his century. May he be satisfied with the honour of
being called the freest writer of all times, in com-
parison with whom all others appear stiff, square-
toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case
we should not speak of the clear and rounded but
of "the endless melody"—if by this phrase we arrive
at a name for an artistic style in which the definite
form is continually broken, thrust aside and trans-
ferred to the realm of the indefinite, so that it
signifies one and the other at the same time. Sterne
is the great master of double entendre, this phrase


## p. 61 (#81) ##############################################

MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6l
being naturally used in a far wider sense than is
commonly done when one applies it to sexual
relations. We may give up for lost the reader
who always wants to know exactly what Sterne
thinks about a matter, and whether he be making
a serious or a smiling face (for he can do both
with one wrinkling of his features; he can be and
even wishes to be right and wrong at the same
moment, to interweave profundity and farce). His
digressions are at once continuations and further
developments of the story, his maxims contain a
satire on all that is sententious, his dislike of
seriousness is bound up with a disposition to take no
matter merely externally and on the surface. So in
the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty
whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a feeling
most closely akin to that of floating in the air. He,
the most versatile of writers, communicates some-
thing of this versatility to his reader. Yes, Sterne
unexpectedly changes the parts, and is often as much
reader as author, his book being like a play within a
play, a theatre audience before another theatre audi-
ence. We must surrender at discretion to the mood
of Sterne, although we can always expect it to be
gracious. It is strangely instructive to see how so
great a writer as Diderot has affected this double
entendre of Sterne's — to be equally ambiguous
throughout is just the Sternian super-humour. Did
Diderot imitate, admire, ridicule, or parody Sterne
in his Jacques le Fataliste} One cannot be exactly
certain, and this uncertainty was perhaps intended
by the author. This very doubt makes the French
unjust to the work of one of their first masters, one


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62 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
who need not be ashamed of comparison with any
of the ancients or moderns. For humour (and
especially for this humorous attitude towards
humour itself) the French are too serious. Is it
necessary to add that of all great authors Sterne is
the worst model, in fact the inimitable author, and
that even Diderot had to pay for his daring? What
the worthy Frenchmen and before them some
Greeks and Romans aimed at and attained in prose
is the very opposite of what Sterne aims at and
attains. He raises himself as a masterly exception
above all that artists in writing demand of them-
selves—propriety, reserve, character, steadfastness
of purpose, comprehensiveness, perspicuity, good
deportment in gait and feature. Unfortunately
Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely
related to Sterne the writer. His squirrel-soul
sprang with insatiable unrest from branch to
branch; he knew what lies between sublimity and
rascality; he had sat on every seat, always with un-
abashed watery eyes and mobile play of feature.
He was—if language does not revolt from such a
combination—of a hard-hearted kindness, and in
the midst of the joys of a grotesque and even cor-
rupt imagination he showed the bashful grace of
innocence. Such a carnal and spiritual hermaphro-
ditism, such untrammelled wit penetrating into
every vein and muscle, was perhaps never possessed
by any other man.
114.
A CHOICE Reality. —Just as the good prose
writer only takes words that belong to the language
of daily intercourse, though not by a long way all


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its words—whence arises a choice style—so the
good poet of the future will only represent the real
and turn his eyes away from all fantastic, supersti-
tious, half-voiced, forgotten stories, to which earlier
poets devoted their powers. Only reality, though
by a long way not every reality—but a choice
reality.
115.
Degenerate Species of Art. —Side by side
with the genuine species of art, those of great repose
and great movement, there are degenerate species
—weary, blase" art and excited art. Both would
have their weakness taken for strength and wish to
be confounded with the genuine species.
116.
A Hero Impossible from Lack of Colour. —
The typical poets and artists of our age like to
compose their pictures upon a background of shim-
mering red, green, grey, and gold, on the back-
ground of nervous sensuality—a condition well
understood by the children of this century. The
drawback comes when we do not look at these pic-
tures with the eyes of our century. Then we see that
the great figures painted by these artists have some-
thing flickering, tremulous, and dizzy about them,
and accordingly we do not ascribe to them heroic
deeds, but at best mock-heroic, swaggering misdeeds.
117.
Overladen Style. —The overladen style is a
consequence of the impoverishment of the organis-


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64 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
ing force together with a lavish stock of expedients
and intentions. At the beginnings of art the very
reverse conditions sometimes appear.
118.
PULCHRUM EST PAUCORUM HOMINUM. —History
and experience tell us that the significant grotesque-
ness that mysteriously excites the imagination and
carries one beyond everyday reality, is older and
grows more luxuriantly than the beautiful and re-
verence for the beautiful in art: and that it begins
to flourish exceedingly when the sense for beauty
is on the wane. For the vast majority of mankind
this grotesque seems to be a higher need than the
beautiful, presumably because it contains a coarser
narcotic.
119.
Origins of Taste in Works of Art. —If we
consider the primary germs of the artistic sense, and
ask ourselves what are the various kinds of joy
produced by the firstlings of art—as, for example,
among savage tribes—we find first of all the joy
of understanding what another means. Art in this
case is a sort of conundrum, which causes its solver
pleasure in his own quick and keen perceptions. —
Then the roughest works of art remind us of the
pleasant things we have actually experienced, and
so give joy—as, for example, when the artist alludes
to a chase, a victory, a wedding. —Again, the repre-
sentation may cause us to feel excited, touched, in-
flamed, as for instance in the glorification of revenge


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and danger. Here the enjoyment lies in the ex-
citement itself, in the victory over tedium. —The
memory, too, of unpleasant things, so far as they
have been overcome or make us appear interesting
to the listener as subjects for art (as when the
singer describes the mishaps of a daring seaman),
can inspire great joy, the credit for which is given
to art. —A more subtle variety is the joy that
arises at the sight of all that is regular and sym-
metrical in lines, points, and rhythms. For by a
certain analogy is awakened the feeling for all that
is orderly and regular in life, which one has to thank
alone for all well-being. So in the cult of symmetry
we unconsciously do homage to rule and proportion
as the source of our previous happiness, and the joy
in this case is a kind of hymn of thanksgiving.
Only when a certain satiety of the last-mentioned
joy arises does a more subtle feeling step in, that
enjoyment might even lie in a violation of the
symmetrical and regular. This feeling, for example,
impels us -to seek reason in apparent unreason, and
the sort of aesthetic riddle-guessing that results is in
a way the higher species of the first-named artistic
joy. —He who pursues this speculation still further
will know what kind of hypotheses for the ex-
planation of aesthetic phenomena are hereby funda-
mentally rejected.
120.
Not too Near. —It is a disadvantage for good
thoughts when they follow too closely on one
another, for they hide the view from each other.
vol. 11. E


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66 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
That is why great artists and writers have made an
abundant use of the mediocre.
121.
Roughness and Weakness. —Artists of all
periods have made the discovery that in roughness
lies a certain strength, and that not every one can be
rough who wants to be: also that many varieties of
weakness have a powerful effect on the emotions.
From this source are derived many artistic substi-
tutes, which not even the greatest and most con-
scientious artists can abstain from using.
122.
Good Memory. —Many a man fails to become
a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too
good.
123.
Arousing instead of Appeasing Hunger. —
Great artists fancy that they have taken full pos-
session of a soul. In reality, and often to their
painful disappointment, that soul has only been
made more capacious and insatiable, so that a dozen
greater artists could plunge into its depths without
filling it up.
124.
Artists' Anxiety. —The anxiety lest people
may not believe that their figures are alive can mis-
lead many artists of declining taste to portray these
figures so that they appear as if mad. From the


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 67
same anxiety, on the other hand, Greek artists of
the earliest ages gave even dead and sorely wounded
men that smile which they knew as the most vivid
sign of life—careless of the actual forms bestowed
by nature on life at its last gasp.
125.
The Circle must be Completed. —He who
follows a philosophy or a genre of art to the end of
its career and beyond, understands from inner ex-
perience why the masters and disciples who come
after have so often turned, with a depreciatory ges-
ture, into a new groove. The circle must be de-
scribed—but the individual, even the greatest, sits
firm on his point of the circumference, with an in-
exorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle ought
never to be completed.
126.
The Older Art and the Soul of the
PRESENt. —Since every art becomes more and more
adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the
more lively, delicate, energetic, and passionate states,
the later masters, spoilt by these means of expres-
sion, do not feel at their ease in the presence of the
old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients
had merely been lacking in the means of making
their souls speak clearly, also perhaps in some neces-
sary technical preliminaries. They think that they
must render some assistance in this quarter, for
they believe in the similarity or even unity of all
souls. In truth, however, measure, symmetry, a


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68 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
contempt for graciousness and charm, an uncon-
scious severity and morning chilliness, an evasion
• of passion, as if passion meant the death of art—
such are the constituents of sentiment and morality
in all old masters, who selected and arranged their
means of expression not at random but in a neces-
sary connection with their morality. Knowing this,
are we to deny those that come after the right to
animate the older works with their soul? No, for
these works can only survive through our giving
them our soul, and our blood alone enables them
to speak to us. The real "historic" discourse would
talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the great
artists less by that barren timidity that allows every
word, every note to remain intact than by energetic
endeavours to aid them continually to a new life. —
True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life
and hear one of his works performed with that
modern animation and nervous refinement that bring
glory to our masters of execution, he would probably
be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should
raise his hand to curse or to bless, but perhaps say
at last: "Well, well! That is neither I nor not-I, but
a third thing—it seems to me, too, something right,
if not just bright thing. But you must know your-
selves what to do, as in any case it is you who have
to listen. As our Schiller says, 'the living man is
right. ' So have it your own way, and let me go
down again. "
127.
fr> t*^- Against the Disparagers of Brevity. —A
brief dictum may be the fruit and harvest of long


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6g
reflection. The reader, however, who is a novice
in this field and has never considered the case in
point, sees something embryonic in all brief dicta,
not without a reproachful hint to the author, request-
ing him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared
food.
128.
Against the Short-Sighted. —Do you think
it is piece-work because it is (and must be) offered
you in pieces?
129.
Readers of Aphorisms. —The worst readers of
aphorisms are the friends of the author, if they make
a point of referring the general to the particular
instance to which the aphorism owes its origin.
This namby-pamby attitude brings all the author's
trouble to naught, and instead of a philosophic lesson
and a philosophic frame of mind, they deservedly
gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curi-
osity.
130.