No More Learning

The Patient. —The pine tree seems to listen,
the fir tree to wait, and both without impatience.
They do not give a thought to the petty human
being below who is consumed by his impatience
and his curiosity.
177.
The Best Joker. —My favourite joke is the one
that takes the place of a heavy and rather hesitat-
ing idea, and that at once beckons with its finger
and winks its eye.
178.
The Accessaries of all Reverence. —Wher-
ever the past is revered, the over-cleanly and over-
tidy people should not be admitted. Piety does not
feel content without a little dust, dirt, and dross.
179.
The Great Danger of Savants. —It is just
the most thorough and profound savants who are
in peril of seeing their life's goal set ever lower
and lower, and, with a feeling of this in their minds,
to become ever more discouraged and more unen-
durable in the latter half of their lives. At first they
plunge into their science with spacious hopes and
set themselves daring tasks, the ends of which are


## p. 282 (#324) ############################################

282 HUMAN-. jEk-TOO-HUMAN
T
d<m tt
already anticipated 'B their imaginations. Then
there are moments as in the lives of the great
maritime discoverers—knowledge, presentiment, and
power raise each other higher and higher, until a new
shore first dawns upon the eye in the far distance.
But now the stern man recognises more and more
how important it is that the individual task of the
inquirer should be limited as far as possible, so
that it may be entirely accomplished and the in-
tolerable waste of force from which earlier periods
of science suffered may be avoided. In those days
everything was done ten times over, and then the
eleventh always had the last and best word. Yet
the more the savant learns and practises this art of
solving riddles in their entirety, the more pleasure
he finds in so doing. But at the same time his de-
mands upon what is here called "entirety" grow
more exacting. He sets aside everything that must
remain in this sense incomplete, he acquires a dis-
gust and an acute scent for the half-soluble—for
all that can only give a kind of certainty in a
general and indefinite form. His youthful plans
crumble away before his eyes. There remains
scarcely anything but a few little knots, in unty-
ing which the master now takes his pleasure and
shows his strength. Then, in the midst of all this
useful, restless activity, he, now grown old, is sud-
denly then often overcome by a deep misgiving, a
sort of torment of conscience. He looks upon
himself as one changed, as if he were diminished,
humbled, transformed into a dexterous dwarf; he
grows anxious as to whether mastery in small
matters be not a convenience, an escape from the


## p. 283 (#325) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 283
summons to greatness in life and form. But he can-
not pass beyond any longer—the time for that has
gone by.
180.
Teachers in the Age of Books. —Now that
self-education and mutual education are becoming
more widespread, the teacher in his usual form must
become almost unnecessary. Friends eager to learn,
who wish to master some branch of knowledge to-
gether, find in our age of books a shorter and more
natural way than "school" and "teachers. "
181.
Vanity as the Greatest Utility. —Origin-
ally the strong individual uses not only Nature but
even societies and weaker individuals as objects of
rapine. He exploits them, so far as he can, and
then passes on. As he lives from hand to mouth,
alternating between hunger and superfluity, he kills
more animals than he can eat, and robs and mal-
treats men more than is necessary. His manifesta-
tion of power is at the same time one of revenge
against his cramped and worried existence. Further-
more, he wishes to be held more powerful than he
is, and thus misuses opportunities; the accretion of
fear that he begets being an accretion of power. He
soon observes that he stands or falls not by what
he is but by what he is thought to be. Herein lies
the origin of vanity. The man of power seeks by
every means to increase others' faith in his power. —
The thralls who tremble before him and serve him
know, for their part, that they are worth just so


## p. 284 (#326) ############################################

284 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
much as they appear to him to be worth, and so
they work with an eye to this valuation rather than
to their own self-satisfaction. We know vanity only
in its most weakened forms, in its idealisations and
its small doses, because we live in a late and very
emasculated state of society. Originally vanity is the
great utility, the strongest means of preservation.
And indeed vanity will be greater, the cleverer the
individual, because an increase in the belief in power
is easier than an increase in the power itself, but
only for him who has intellect or (as must be the
case under primitive conditions) who is cunning and
crafty.
182.
Weather-Signs of Culture. —There are so
few decisive weather-signs of culture that we must
be glad to have at least one unfailing sign at hand
for use in house and garden. To test whether a
man belongs to us (I mean to the free spirits) or
not, we must test his sentiments regarding Christi-
anity. If he looks upon Christianity with other than
a critical eye, we turn our backs to him, for he brings
us impure air and bad weather. —It is no longer our
task to teach such men what a sirocco wind is. They
have Moses and the prophets of weather and of
enlightenment. * If they will not listen to these,
then
183.
There is a Proper Time for Wrath and
PUNISHMENT. —Wrath and punishment are our in-
* In the German Aufkl'drung there is a play on the sense
"clearing up " (of weather) and "enlightenment. "—Tr.


## p. 285 (#327) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 285
heritance from the animals. Man does not become
of age until he has restored to the animals this gift
of the cradle. —Herein lies buried one of the mightiest
ideas that men can have, the idea of a progress of
all progresses. —Let us go forward together a few
millenniums, my friends! There is still reserved for
mankind a great deal of joy, the very scent of which
has not yet been wafted to the men of our day!
Indeed, we may promise ourselves this joy, nay
summon and conjure it up as a necessary thing, so
long as the development of human reason does not
stand still. Some day we shall no longer be recon-
ciled to the logical sin that lurks in all wrath and
punishment, whether exercised by the individual or
by society—some day, when head and heart have "~|
learnt to live as near together as they now are far
apart. That they no longer stand so far apart as
they did originally is fairly palpable from a glance
at the whole course of humanity. The individual
who can review a life of introspective work will be-
come conscious of the rapprochement arrived at, with
a proud delight at the distance he has bridged, in
order that he may thereupon venture upon more
ample hopes.
184.
Origin of Pessimists. —A snack of good food
often decides whether we are to look to the future
with hollow eye or in hopeful mood. The same
influence extends to the very highest and most
intellectual states. Discontent and reviling of the
world are for the present generation an inheritance
from starveling ancestors. Even, in our artists and
r*^


## p. 286 (#328) ############################################

286 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
poets we often notice that, however exuberant their
life, they are not of good birth, and have often, from
oppressed and ill-nourished ancestors, inherited in
their blood and brain much that comes out as the
subject and even the conscious colouring of their
work. The culture of the Greeks is a culture of men
of wealth,in fact, inherited wealth Forafewcenturies
they lived better than we do (better in every sense,
in particular far more simply in food and drink).
Then the brain finally became so well-stored and
subtle, and the blood flowed so quickly, like a joyous,
clear wine, that the best in them came to light no
longer as gloomy, distorted, and violent, but full of
beauty and sunshine.
185.
Of Reasonable Death. —Which is more reason-
able, to stop the machine when the works have done
the task demanded of them, or to let it run on until
it stands still of its own accord—in other words, is
destroyed? Is not the latter a waste of the cost of
upkeep, a misuse of the strength and care of those
who serve? Are men not here throwing away that
which would be sorely needed elsewhere? Is not a
kind of contempt of the machines propagated, in that
many of them are so uselessly tended and kept up? —
I am speaking of involuntary (natural) and voluntary
(reasonable) death. Natural death is independent
of all reason and is really an irrational death, in
which the pitiable substance of the shell determines
how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which,
accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull-witted


## p. 287 (#329) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 287
jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which
his distinguished prisoner shall die. Natural death
is the suicide of nature—in other words, the annihi-
lation of the most rational being through the most
irrational element that is attached thereto. Only
through religious illumination can the reverse ap-
pear; for then, as is equitable, the higher reason
(God) issues its orders, which the lower reason has
to obey. Outside religious thought natural death
is not worth glorifying. The wise dispensation and
disposal of death belongs to that now quite incom-
prehensible and immoral-sounding morality of the
future, the dawn of which it will be an ineffable de-
light to behold.
186.
Retrograde Influences. —All criminals force
society back to earlier stages of culture than that
in which they are placed for the time being. Their
influence is retrograde. Let us consider the tools
that society must forge and maintain for its defence:
the cunning detectives, the jailers, the hangmen.
Nor should we forget the public counsel for pro-
secution and defence. Finally we may ask our-
selves whether the judge himself and punishment
and the whole legal procedure are not oppressive
rather than elevating in their reaction upon all who
are not law-breakers. For we shall never succeed
in arraying self-defence and revenge in the garb of
innocence, and so long as men are used and sacri-
ficed as a means to the end, of society, all loftier
humanity will deplore this necessity.


## p. 288 (#330) ############################################

288 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I87.
J WAR AS A Remedy. —For nations that are grow-
ing weak and contemptible war may be prescribed
as a remedy, if indeed they really want to go on
living. National consumption as well as individual
admits of a brutal cure. The eternal will to live
and inability to die is, however, in itself already a
sign of senility of emotion. The more fully and
thoroughly we live, the more ready we are to sacri-
fice life for a single pleasurable emotion. A people
that lives and feels in this wise has no need of war.
188.
Intellectual and Physical Transplanta-
tion as Remedies. —The different cultures are so
many intellectual climates, every one of which is
peculiarly harmful or beneficial to this or that
organism. History as a whole, as the knowledge
of different cultures, is the science of remedies, but
not the science of the healing art itself. We still
need a physician who can make use of these
remedies, in order to send every one—temporarily
or permanently—to the climate that just suits
him. To live in the present, within the limits of a
single culture, is insufficient as a universal remedy:
too many highly useful kinds of men, who cannot
breathe freely in this atmosphere, would perish.
With the aid of history we must give them air and
try to preserve them: even men of lower cultures
have their value. —Add to this cure of intellects that
humanity, on considerations of bodily health, must
strive to discover by means of a medical geography


## p. 289 (#331) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 289
what kinds of degeneration and disease are caused
by each region of the earth, and conversely, what
ingredients of health the earth affords: and then,
gradually, nations, families, and individuals must be
transplanted long and permanently enough for them
to become masters of their inherited physical in-
firmities. The whole world will finally be a series
of sanatoria.
189.
Reason and the Tree of Mankind. —What
you all fear in your senile short-sightedness, regard-
ing the over-population of the world, gives the more
hopeful a mighty task. Man is some day to become
a tree overshadowing the whole earth, with millions
upon millions of buds that shall all grow to fruits
side by side, and the earth itself shall be prepared
for the nourishment of this tree. That the shoot,
tiny as yet, may increase in sap and strength ; that
the sap may flow in countless channels for the
nutrition of the whole and the parts—from these
and similar tasks we must derive our standard for
measuring whether a man of to-day is useful or
worthless. The task is unspeakably great and ad-
venturous: let us all contribute our share to pre-
vent the tree from rotting before its time! The
historically trained mind will no doubt succeed in
calling up the human activities of all the ages before
its eyes, as the community of ants with its cunningly
wrought mounds stands before our eyes. Super-
ficially judged, mankind as a whole, like ant-kind,
might admit of our speaking of "instinct. " On a
closer examination we observe how whole nations,
vol. ii, T


## p. 290 (#332) ############################################

200 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
nay whole centuries, take pains to discover and test
new means of benefiting the great mass of humanity,
and thus finally the great common fruit-tree of
the world. Whatever injury the individual nations
or periods may suffer in this testing process, they
have each become wise through this injury, and
from them the tide of wisdom slowly pours over
the principles of whole races and whole epochs.
Ants too go astray and make blunders. Through
the folly of its remedies, mankind may well go to
rack and ruin before the proper time. There is no
sure guiding instinct for the former or the latter.
Rather must we boldly face the great task of pre-
paring the earth for a plant of the most ample and
joyous fruitfulness—a task set by reason to reason!
190.
The Praise of Disinterestedness and its
Origin. — Between two neighbouring chieftains
there was a long-standing quarrel: they laid waste
each other's territories, stole cattle, and burnt down
houses, with an indecisive result on the whole, be-
cause their power was fairly equal. A third, who
from the distant situation of his property was able
to keep aloof from these feuds, yet had reason to
dread the day when one of the two neighbours
should gain a decisive preponderance, at last inter-
vened between the combatants with ceremonial
goodwill. Secretly he lent a heavy weight to
his peace proposal by giving either to understand
that he would henceforth join forces with the other
against the one who strove to break the peace.


## p. 291 (#333) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 2QI
They met in his presence, they hesitatingly placed
into his hand the hands that had hitherto been the
tools and only too often the causes of hatred—and
then they really and seriously tried to keep the
peace. Either saw with astonishment how suddenly
his prosperity and his comfort increased; how he
now had as neighbour a dealer ready to buy and
sell instead of a treacherous or openly scornful
evil-doer; how even, in unforeseen troubles, they
could reciprocally save each other from distress,
instead of, as before, making capital out of this dis-
tress of his neighbour and enhancing it to the highest
degree. It even seemed as if the human type had
improved in both countries, for the eyes had become
brighter, the forehead had lost its wrinkles; all now
felt confidence in the future—and nothing is more
advantageous for the souls and bodies of men than
this confidence. They saw each other every year
on the anniversary of the alliance, the chieftains as
well as their retinue, and indeed before the eyes of
the mediator, whose mode of action they admired
and revered more and more, the greater the profit
that they owed to him became. Then his mode of
action was called disinterested. They had looked
far too fixedly at the profit they had reaped them-
selves hitherto to see anything more of their neigh-
bour's method of dealing than that his condition in
consequence of this had not altered so much as their
own ; he had rather remained the same: and thus it
appeared that the former had not had his profit in
view. For the first time people said to themsel-
ves that disinterestedness was a virtue. It is true
that in minor private matters similar circumstances


## p. 292 (#334) ############################################

2«)2 HUMAN', ALL-TOO-OTTMAX.
had arisen, but men only had eyes for this virtue
when it was depicted on the walls in a large script
that was legible to the whole community. Moral
qualities are not recognised as virtues, endowed
with names, held in esteem, and recommended as
worthy of acquisition until the moment when they
have visibly decided the happiness and destiny of
whole societies. For then the loftiness of senti-
ment and the excitation of the inner creative forces
is in many so great, that offerings are brought to
this quality, offerings from the best of what each
possesses. At its feet the serious man lays his
seriousness, the dignified man his dignity, women
their gentleness, the young all the wealth of hope
and futurity that in them lies; the poet lends it
words and names, sets it marching in the procession
of similar beings, gives it a pedigree, and finally, as
is the way of artists, adores the picture of his fancy
as a new godhead—he even teaches others to adore.
Thus in the end, with the co-operation of universal
love and gratitude, a virtue becomes, like a statue,
a repository of all that is good and honourable, a
sort of temple and divine personage combined. It
appears thenceforward as an individual virtue, as
an absolute entity, which it was not before, and
exercises the power and privileges of a sanctified
super-humanity. —In the later days of Greece the
cities were full of such deified human abstractions
(if one may so call them). The nation, in its own
fashion, had set up a Platonic " Heaven of Ideas"
on earth, and I do not think that its inhabitants
were felt to be less alive than any of the old
Homeric divinities.


## p. 293 (#335) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 293
191.
Days of Darkness. —" Days of Darkness" is
the name given in Norway to the period when the
sun remains below the horizon the whole day long.
The temperature then falls slowly but continually. —
A fine simile for all thinkers for whom the sun of
the human future is temporarily eclipsed.
192.
The Philosophy of Luxury. —A garden, figs,
a little cheese, and three or four good friends—that
was the luxury of Epicurus.
193-
The Epochs of Life. —The real epochs of life
are those brief periods of cessation midway between
the rise and decline of a dominating idea or emotion.
Here once again there is satisfaction: all the rest is
hunger and thirst—or satiety.
194.
DREAMS. —Our dreams, if for once in a way they
succeed and are complete—generally a dream is a
bungled piece of work—are symbolic concatenations
of scenes and images in place of a narrative poeti-
cal language. They paraphrase our experiences or
expectations or relations with poetic boldness and
definiteness, so that in the morning we are always
astonished at ourselves when we remember the
nature of our dream. In dreams we use up too
much artistry—and hence are often too poor in
artistry in the daytime.


## p. 294 (#336) ############################################

294 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
195-
Nature and Science. — As in nature, so in
science the worse and less fertile soils are first
cultivated—because the means that science in its
early stages has at command are fairly sufficient for
this purpose. The working of the most fertile soils
requires an enormous, carefully developed, perse-
vering method, tangible individual results, and an
organised body of well-trained workers. All these
are found together only at a late stage. —Impa-
tience and ambition often grasp too early at these
most fertile soils, but the results are then from the
first null and void. In nature such losses would
usually be avenged by the starvation of the settlers.
196.
The Simple Life. —A simple mode of life is
nowadays difficult, requiring as it does farmore re-
flection and gift for invention than even very clever
people possess. The most honourable will perhaps
still say, "I have not the time for such lengthy
reflection. The simple life is for me too lofty a goal:
I will wait till those wiser than I have discovered
it. "
197.
Peaks andNeedle-Points. —The poor fertility,
the frequent celibacy, and in general the sexual
coldness of the highest and most cultivated spirits,
as that of the classes to which they belong, is
essential in human economy. Intelligence recog-
nises and makes use of the fact that at an acme of


## p. 295 (#337) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW.
295
intellectual development the danger of a neurotic
offspring is very great. Such men are the peaks of
mankind — they ought no longer to run out into
needle-points.
198.
Natura nonfacitsaltum. —However strongly
man may develop upwards and seem to leap from
one contradiction to another, a close observation
will reveal the dovetails where the new building
grows out of the old. This is the biographer's task:
he must reflect upon his subject on the principle
that nature takes no jumps.
199.
Clean, but He who clothes himself with
rags washed clean dresses cleanly, to be sure, but is
still ragged.
200.
The Solitary Speaks. —In compensation for
much disgust, disheartenment, boredom—such as
a lonely life without friends, books, duties, and
passions must involve—we enjoy those short spans
of deep communion with ourselves and with Nature.
He who fortifies himselfcompletely against boredom
fortifies himself against himself too. He will never
drink the most powerful elixir from his own inner-
most spring.
201.
False Renown. —I hate those so-called natural
beauties which really have significance only through
science, especially geographical science, but are in-


## p. 296 (#338) ############################################

296 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
significant in an aesthetic sense: for example, the
view of Mont Blanc from Geneva. This is an in-
significant thing without the auxiliary mental joy of
science: the nearer mountains are all more beautiful
and fuller of expression, but "not nearly so high,"
adds that absurd depreciatory science. The eye
here contradicts science: how can it truly rejoice in
the contradiction?
202.
Those that Travel for Pleasure. — Like
animals, stupid and perspiring, they climb moun-
tains: people forgot to tell them that there were
fine views on the way.
203.
Too Much and Too Little. —Men nowadays
live too much and think too little. They have
hunger and dyspepsia together, and become thinner
and thinner, however much they eat. He who now
says " Nothing has happened to me" is a blockhead.
204.
End and Goal. —Not every end is the goal.
The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if
a melody has not reached its end, it has also not
reached its goal. A parable.
205.
Neutrality of Nature on a Grand Scale.
—The neutrality of Nature on a grand scale (in


## p. 297 (#339) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 297
mountain, sea, forest, and desert) is pleasing, but
only for a brief space. Afterwards we become im-
patient. "Have they all nothing to say to us?
Do we not exist so far as they are concerned? "
There arises a feeling that a lese-majesti is com-
mitted against humanity.
206.
Forgetting our Purpose. —In a journey we
commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation
is chosen and entered upon as means to an end, but
is continued as the ultimate end. Forgetting our
purpose is the most frequent form of folly.
207.
Solar Orbit of an Idea. —When an idea is
just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature is
usually very low. Gradually the idea develops in
warmth, and is hottest (that is to say, exerts its
greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already
on the wane.
208.
How to have every Man against You. —
If some one now dared to say, "He that is not
for me is against me," he would at once have all
against him. —This sentiment does credit to our era.
209.
Being Ashamed of Wealth. —Our age endures
only a single species of rich men—those who are
J


## p. 297 (#340) ############################################

296
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
significant in an æsthetic sense : for example, the
view of Mont Blanc from Geneva. This is an in-
significant thing without the auxiliary mental joy of
science: the nearer mountains are all more beautiful
and fuller of expression, but “not nearly so high,"
adds that absurd depreciatory science. The eye
here contradicts science: how can it truly rejoice in
the contradiction ?
202.
THOSE THAT TRAVEL FOR PLEASURE. — Like
animals, stupid and perspiring, they climb moun-
tains : people forgot to tell them that there were
fine views on the way.
203.
Too MUCH AND Too LITTLE. —Men nowadays
live too much and think too little. They have
hunger and dyspepsia together, and become thinner
and thinner, however much they eat. He who now
says “ Nothing has happened to me" is a blockhead.
204.
END AND GOAL. --Not every end is the goal.
The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if
a melody has not reached its end, it has also not
reached its goal. A parable.
205.
NEUTRALITY OF NATURE ON A GRAND SCALE.
-The neutrality of Nature on a grand scale (in


## p. 297 (#341) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW.
297
mountain, sea, forest, and desert) is pleasing, but
only for a brief space. Afterwards we become im-
patient. “Have they all nothing to say to us?
Do we not exist so far as they are concerned ? ”
There arises a feeling that a lèse-majesté is com-
mitted against humanity.
206.
FORGETTING OUR PURPOSE. —In a journey we
commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation
is chosen and entered upon as means to an end, but
is continued as the ultimate end. Forgetting our
purpose is the most frequent form of folly.
207.
SOLAR ORBIT OF AN IDEA. —When an idea is
just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature is
usually very low. Gradually the idea develops in
warmth, and is hottest (that is to say, exerts its
greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already
on the wane.
208.
HOW TO HAVE EVERY MAN AGAINST YOU. -
If some one now dared to say, “He that is not
for me is against me," he would at once have all
against him. -This sentiment does credit to our era.
209.
BEING ASHAMED OF WEALTH. –Our age endures
only a single species of rich men—those who are


## p. 298 (#342) ############################################

298 HCJCAX, AIA-TOO-HTMJLS.
ashamed of their wealth. If we hear it said of
any one that he is very rich, we at once feel a similar
sentiment to that experienced at the sight of a re-
pulsively swollen invalid, one suffering from diabetes
or dropsy. We must with an effort remember our
humanity, in order to go about with this rich man
in such a way that he does not notice our feeling of
disgust . But as soon as he prides himself at all on
his wealth, our feelings are mingled with an almost
compassionate surprise at such a high degree of
human unreason. We would fain raise our hands
to heaven and cry, "Poor deformed and over-
burdened creature, fettered a hundredfold, to whom
every hour brings or may bring something un-
pleasant, in whose frame twitches every event that
occurs in scores of countries, how can you make us
believe that you feel at ease in your position? If
you appear anywhere in public, we know that it
is a sort of running the gauntlet amid countless
glances that have for you only cold hate or im-
portunity or silent scorn. You may earn more
easily than others, but it is only a superfluous
earning, which brings little joy, and the guarding
of what you have earned is now, at any rate, a more
troublesome business than any toilsome process of
earning. You are continually suffering, because you
are continually losing. What avails it you that they
are always injecting you with fresh artificial blood?
That does not relieve the pain of those cupping-
glasses that are fixed, for ever fixed, on your neck ! —
But, to be quite fair to you, it is difficult or perhaps
impossible for you not to be rich. You must guard,
you must earn more; the inherited bent of your


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 299
character is the yoke fastened upon you. But do
not on that account deceive us—be honestly and
visibly ashamed of the yoke you wear, as in your
soul you are weary and unwilling to wear it. This
shame is no disgrace. "
210.
Extravagant Presumptions. —There are men
so pre'sumptuous that they can only praise a great-
ness which they publicly admire by representing it
as steps and bridges that lead to themselves.
211.
On the Soil of Insult. —He who wishes to
deprive men of a conception is generally not
satisfied with refuting it and drawing out of it the
illogical worm that resides within. Rather, when
the worm has been killed, does he throw the whole
fruit as well into the mire, in order to make it
ignoble in men's sight and to inspire disgust. Thus
he thinks that he has found a means of making the
usual "third-day resurrection" of conceptions an
impossibility. —He is wrong, for on the very soil of
insult, in the midst of the filth, the kernel of the
conception soon produces new seeds. —The right
thing then, is not to scorn and bespatter what one
wishes finally to remove, but to lay it tenderly on
ice again and again, having regard to the fact that
conceptions are very tenacious of life. Here we
must act according to the maxim: "One refutation
is no refutation. "


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300 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
212.
The Lot OF Morality. —Since spiritual bond-
age is being relaxed, morality (the inherited, tra-
ditional, instinctive mode of action in accordance
with moral sentiments) is surely also on the decline.
This, however, is not the case with the individual
virtues, moderation, justice, repose; for the greatest
freedom of the conscious intellect leads at some
time, even unconsciously, back to these virtues, and
then enjoins their practice as expedient.
213.
The Fanatic of Distrust and his Surety.
—The Elder: You wish to make the tremendous
venture and instruct mankind in the great things?
What is your surety?
Pyrrho: It is this: I intend to warn men
against myself; I intend to confess all the defects of
my character quite openly, and reveal to the world
my hasty conclusions, my contradictions, and my
foolish blunders. "Do not listen to me," I will say
to them, "until I have become equal to the meanest
among you, nay am even less than he. Struggle
against truth as long as you can, from your disgust
with her advocate. I shall be your seducer and
betrayer if you find in me the slightest glimmering
of respectability and dignity. "
The Elder: You promise too much; you cannot
bear this burden.
Pyrrho: Then I will tell men even that, and say
that I am too weak, and cannot keep my promise.
The greater my unworthiness, the more will they


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 301
mistrust the truth, when it passes through my
lips.
The Elder: You propose to teach distrust of
truth?
Pyrrho: Yes; distrust as it never was yet on
earth, distrust of anything and everything. This
is the only road to truth. The right eye must not
trust the left eye, and for some time light must be
called darkness: this is the path that you must
tread. Do not imagine that it will lead you to
fruit trees and fair pastures. You will find on this
road little hard grains — these are truths. For
years and years you will have to swallow handfuls
of lies, so as not to die of hunger, although you
know that they are lies. But those grains will be
sown and planted, and perhaps, perhaps some day
will come the harvest. No one may promise that
day, unless he be a fanatic.
The Elder: Friend, friend! Your words too are
those of a fanatic!
Pyrrho: You are right! I will be distrustful of
all words.
The Elder: Then you will have to be silent.
Pyrrho: I shall tell men that I have to be silent,
and that they are to mistrust my silence.
The Elder: So you draw back from your under-
taking?
Pyrrho: On the contrary—you have shown me
the door through which I must pass.
The Elder: I don't know whether we yet com-
pletely understand each other?
Pyrrho: Probably not.
The Elder: If only you understand yourself!


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302 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAX.
(Pyrrho turns round and laughs. )
The Elder: Ah, friend! Silence and laughter—
is that now your whole philosophy?
Pyrrho: There might be a worse.
214.
European Books. —In reading Montaigne, La
Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Fontenelle (especially
the Dialogues des Moris), Vauvenargues, and Cham-
fort we are nearer to antiquity than in any group
of six authors of other nations. Through these
six the spirit of the last centuries before Christ
has once more come into being, and they collec-
tively form an important link in the great and
still continuous chain of the Renaissance. Their
books are raised above all changes of national
taste and philosophical nuances from which as a
rule every book takes and must take its hue in
order to become famous. They contain more real
ideas than all the books of German philosophers
put together: ideas of the sort that breed ideas
I am at a loss how to define to the end: enough to
say that they appear to me writers who wrote
neither for children nor for visionaries, neither for
virgins nor for Christians, neither for Germans nor
for I am again at a loss how to finish my list
.
To praise them in plain terms, I may say that
had they been written in Greek, they would have
been understood by Greeks. How much, on the
other hand, would even a Plato have understood
of the writings of our best German thinkers—Goethe
and Schopenhauer, for instance—to say nothing
of the repugnance that he would have felt to


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 303
their style, particularly to its obscure, exaggerated,
and occasionally dry-as-dust elements? And these
are defects from which these two among German
thinkers suffer least and yet far too much (Goethe
as thinker was fonder than he should have been
of embracing the cloud, and Schopenhauer almost
constantly wanders, not with impunity, among
symbols of objects rather than among the objects
themselves). — On the other hand, what clearness
and graceful precision there is in these Frenchmen!
The Greeks, whose ears were most refined, could
not but have approved of this art, and one quality
they would even have admired and reverenced—
the French verbal wit: they were extremely fond
of this quality, without being particularly strong
in it themselves.
215.
Fashion and Modernity. — Wherever ignor-
ance, uncleanness, and superstition are still rife,
where communication is backward, agriculture poor,
and the priesthood powerful, national costumes are
still worn. Fashion, on the other hand, rules where
the opposite conditions prevail. Fashion is accor-
dingly to be found next to the virtues in modern
Europe. Are we to call it their seamy side? —
Masculine dress that is fashionable and no longer
national proclaims of its wearer: firstly, that he
does not wish to appear as an individual or as
member of a class or race; that he has made an
intentional suppression of these kinds of vanity a
law unto himself: secondly, that he is a worker,
and has little time for dressing and self-adornment,


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304 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
and moreover regards anything expensive or lux-
urious in material and cut as out of harmony with
his work: lastly, that by his clothes he indic-
ates the more learned and intellectual callings as
those to which he stands or would like to stand
nearest as a European—whereas such national
costumes as still exist would exhibit the occupa-
tions of brigand, shepherd, and soldier as the most
desirable and distinguished. Within this general
character of masculine fashion exist the slight
fluctuations demanded by the vanity of young
men, the dandies and dawdlers of our great
cities — in other words, Europeans who have
not yet reached maturity. —European women are
as yet far less mature, and for this reason the
fluctuations with them are much greater. They
also will not have the national costume, and hate
to be recognised by their dress as German, French,
or Russian. They are, however, very desirous of
creating an impression as individuals. Then, too,
their dress must leave no one in doubt that they
belong to one of the more reputable classes of
society (to "good " or " high" or "great" society),
and on this score their pretensions are all the
greater if they belong scarcely or not at all to that
class. Above all, the young woman does not want
to wear what an older woman wears, because she
thinks she loses her market value if she is suspected
of being somewhat advanced in years.