But What
conclusion
do ye draw from this?
Nietzsche - Works - v15 - Will to Power - b
He once more recognised as that which he is: the
? brother of Dante and of Michelangelo; and verily, in view of the definite contours of his vision, the intensity, the coherence, and inner con sistency of his dream, the depth of his meditations, the superhuman greatness of his conception, he
-. . their equal son ge'nie a la meme tail/e et la meme
structure; est un des trois eqorits souverains de
la renaissance italienne. "
'
posthumous
Nota Ilene--Dante, Michelangelo, Napoleon.
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THE WILL To POWER.
I019.
Concerning the pessimism of strength--In the internal economy of the primitive man's soul, the fear of evil preponderates. What is evil? Three kinds of things: accident, uncertainty, the unex pected. How does primitive man combat evil ? --
He conceives it as a thing of reason, of power, even as a person. By this means he is enabled to make treaties with and generally to operate upon in advance--to forestall it.
---Another expedient to declare its evil and harmful character to be but apparent: the conse quences of accidental occurrences, and 0f uncer tainty and the unexpected, are interpreted as well meant, as reasonable.
---A third means to interpret evil, above all,
? as merited: evil thus justified as
--In short, man submits to it: all religious
and moral interpretations are but forms of sub mission to evil--The belief that good purpose lies behind all evil, implies the renunciation of any desire to combat it.
Now, the, history of every culture shows a diminution of this fear of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected. Culture means precisely, to learn to reckon, to discover causes, to acquire the power of forestalling events, to acquire belief in necessity. With the growth of culture, man able to dispense with that primitive form of submission to evil (called religion or morality), and that "justification of evil. " Now he wages war against " evil,"--he gets rid of it. Yes, state of
punishment.
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security, of belief in law and the possibility of cal culation, possible, in which consciousness regards these things with tedium,-in which the joy of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected, actually becomes spur.
Let us halt moment before this symptom of highest culture,--I call the pessimism of strength. Man now no longer requires "justification of evil justification precisely what he abhors: he enjoys evil, far, one he regards purposeless evil as the most interesting kind of evil. If he had required God in the past, he now delights in cosmic disorder without God, world of accident, to the essence of which terror, ambiguity, and seductiveness belong.
In state of this sort, precisely goodness which requires to be justified--that to say, must either have an evil and dangerous basis, or else must contain a vast amount of stupidity: in which case still pleases. Animality no longer awakens terror now; avery intellectual and happy wanton spirit in favour of the animal in man, in such periods, the most triumphant form Of spirit uality. Man now strong enough to be able to feel ashamed of a belief in God: he may now play the part of the devil's advocate afresh. If in practice he pretends to uphold virtue, will be for those reasons which lead virtue to be associated with subtlety, cunning, lust of gain, and form of the lust of power. ,
This pessimism of strength also ends in theo dicy, i. e. in an absolute saying Of yea to. the world ---but the same arguments will be raised in favour Of
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THE WILL TO POWER.
life which forinerly were raised against it: and in this way, in a conception of this world as the highest ideal possible, which has been effectively attained.
I
I020.
The principal kinds of pessimism :--
The pessimism of sensitiveness (excessive irrit
ability with a preponderance of the feelings of pain). The pessimism of the will that is not free (other wise expressed: the lack of resisting power a
gainst stimuli).
The pessimism of doubt (shyness in regard to
everything fixed, in regard to all grasping and touching).
The psychological conditions which belong to these different kinds of pessimism, may all be ob served in a lunatic asylum, even though they are there found in a slightly exaggerated form. The same applies to" Nihilism " (the penetrating feeling of " nonentity '
What, however, the nature of Pascal's moral pessimism, and the metaphysical pessimism of the Vedanta-Philosophy? What the nature of the social pessimism of anarchists (as of Shelley), and of the pessimism of compassion (like that of Leo, Tolstoy and of Alfred de Vigny)?
. Are all these things not also the phenomena of decay and sickness? And not excessive seriousness in regard to moral values, or in regard to "other-world" fictions, or social calamities, or sufiering in general, of the same order? All such exaggeration of single and narrow standpoint
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DIONYSUS. .
401
-in itself a sign of sickness. The same applies to the preponderance of a negative over an afl'irma tive attitude!
In this respect we must not confound with the above: the joy of saying and doing no, which is the result of the enormous power and tenseness of an affirmative attitude--peculiar to all rich and mighty men and ages. It as were, luxury,
form of courage too, which opposes the terrible, which has sympathy with the frightful and the questionable; because, among other things, one terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will, intellect, and taste.
02 I.
. My Five " Noes. " .
(I) My fight against the feeling of sin and the introduction of the notion of punishment into the physical and metaphysical world, likewise into psychology and the interpretation of history. The recognition of the fact that all philosophies and val uations hitherto have been saturated with morality.
My identification and my discovery of the traditional ideal, of the Christian ideal, even where the dogmatic form of Christianity has been wrecked. The danger of the Christian ideal resides in its valuations, in that which can dispense with concrete expression: my struggle against latent Christianity (for instance, in music, in Socialism).
(3) My struggle against the eighteenth century of Rousseau, against his" Nature," against his " good
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man," his belief in the dominion of feeling--against the pampering, weakening, and moralising of man: an ideal born of the hatred of aristocratic culture, which in practice is the dominion of unbridled feelings of resentment, and invented as a standard for the purpose of war (the Christian morality of the feeling of sin, as well as the morality of resent ment, is an attitude of the mob).
402
My fight against Romanticism, in which the
(4)
ideals of Christianity and of Rousseau
converge, but which possesses at the same time a yearning for that antiquity which knew of sacerdotal and
aristocratic culture, a yearning for virtu, and for
the " strong man "--something extremely hybrid; a false and imitated kind of stronger humanity, which appreciates extreme conditions in general and sees the symptom of strength in them ("the cult of passion"; an imitation of the most expressive forms, furore espressivo, originating not out of pleni tude, but out ofwant). --(In the nineteenth century
there are some things which are born out of re lative plenitude--i. e. out of well-being; cheerful music, etc. -'--among poets, for instance, Stifter and Gottfried Keller give signs of more strength and inner well-being than The great strides Ofen gineering, of inventions, of the natural sciences and of history (? ) are relative products of the strength
and self-reliance of the nineteenth century. )
(5) My struggle against the predominance of
gregarious instincts, now science makes common cause with them; against the profound hate with which every kind of order of rank and of aloofness is treated.
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I022.
403
From the pressure of plenitude, from the tension of forces that are continually increasing within us and which cannot yet discharge themselves, con dition produced which very similar to that which precedes storm: we--like Nature's sky-- become overcast. That, too,
A teaching which puts an end to such condition by the fact that commands something: trans
valuation of values *by means of which the accumu lated forces are given channel, direction, so that they explode into deeds and flashes of light ning--does not in the least require to be a
hedonistic teaching: in so far as releases strength which was compressed to an agonising degree, brings happiness.
'102
Pleasure appears with the feeling of power. Happiness means that the consciousness of
power and triumph has begun to prevail.
Progress the strengthening of the type, the ability to exercise great will-power: everything
" pessimism. "
? else a misunderstanding and
1024.
There comes time when the old masquerade and moral togging-up of the passions provokes repugnance: naked Nature; when the quanta of
power are recognised as decidedly simple (as deter mining rank); when grand style appears again as the result of great passion.
danger.
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1025.
The purpose of culture would have us enlist every thing terrible, step by step and experimentally, into its service; but before it is strong enough for this it must combat, moderate, mask, and even curse every thing terrible.
Wherever a culture points to anything as evil, it betrays its fear and therefore weakness.
Thesis: everything good is the evil of yore which has been rendered serviceable. Standard . 4 the more terrible and the greater the passions may be which an age, a people, and an individual are at liberty to possess, because they are able to use them as a means, the higher is their culture: the more mediocre, weak, submissive, and cowardly a man-may be, the more things he will regard as evil: according to him the kingdom of evil is the largest. The lowest man will see the kingdom of evil (i. e. that which is forbidden him and which is hostile to him) everywhere.
1026.
It is not a fact that " happiness follOws virtue " --but it is the mighty man who first declares his
happy state to be virtue.
Evil actions belong to the mighty and the
virtuous: bad and base actions belong to the subjected.
The mightiest man, the creator, would have to be the most evil, inasmuch as he makes his ideal prevail over all men in opposition to their ideals, and remoulds them according to his own image.
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Evil, "in this respect, means hard, painful, en forced;
DIONYSUS.
v405
> Such men as Napoleon must always return and _always settle our belief in the self-glory of the in
dividual afresh: he himself, however, was corrupted by the means he had to stoop to, and had lost noblesse of character. If he had had, to prevail among another kind of men, he could have availed himself of other means; and thus would not
seem necessary that Caesar must become bad.
1027
? }
Man combination of the beast and the super beast; higher man a combination of the monster and the superman:' these opposites belong to each otherr With every degree of man's growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows down wards into the depths and into the terrible: we
should not desire the one without the other ;--or, better still: the more fundamentally we desire the one, the more completely we shall achieve the
'
other.
Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not
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> 1029
have taught the knowledge of such terrible things, that all "Epicurean contentment" im
" *,The play" on the German " words " Unthier and Uberthier," Unm'ensch and Ubermensch," unfortu
nately not translatable--TR.
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possible concerning them. DIionysian pleasure is
406
the only adequate kind here:
cover the tragic. Thanks to their superficiality in ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the mis-Q understanding of it ! The yearning for nonentity is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite!
1030.
A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, rob beries, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in pos session of an increased blissfulness in love. I
believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will under stand Dante for having written over the door of
his Inferno: "I also am the creation of eternal love. "
1031.
To have travelled over the whole circumference of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners ----my ambition, my torment, and my happiness.
Veritably to have overcome pessimism, and, as the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a Goethe--full of love and goodwill.
1032.
The first question is by no means whether we are satisfied with ourselves: but whether we are
was the to dis first
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satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we should say yea to any single moment, we have then affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of ex istence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us or in other things: and our soul has vibrated and rung with happiness, like a chord, once only and only once, then all eternity was necessary in order to bring about that one event,---and all eternity, this single moment of our afl'irmation, was called good, was saved, justified, and blessed.
1033.
The passions which say yup--Pride, happiness, health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war, reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will, the discipline Of lofty spirituality, the will to power, and gratitude to the Earth and to Life: all that
rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes, gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life--the whole power of the virtues that glon'fy--all declaring things good, saying yea, and doing yea.
1034.
We, many or few, who once more dare to live in a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith,--we
'are probably also the first who understand what pagan faith is: to be obliged to imagine higher
creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond good and evil; to be compelled to value all higher existence as immoral existence. We believe in Olympus, and not in the "man on the cross. "
DIONYSUS.
407
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THE WILL To POWER.
1035.
The more modern man has exercised his ideal ising power in regard to a God mostly by moralis-- ing the latter ever more and more--what does that mean ? --nothing good, a diminution in man's strength.
As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible:
and indications of this are not wanting. God im
agined as emancipation from morality, comprising the whole of the abundant assembly of Life's con trasts, and saving and justifying them in a divine agony. God as the beyond, the superior elevation, to the wretched cul-de-sac morality of " Good and Evil. "
1036.
A humanitarian God cannot be demonstrated from the world that is known to us: so much are ye driven and forced to conclude to-da'y.
But What conclusion do ye draw from this? " He can not be demonstrated to us ": the scepticism of knowledge. You all fear the conclusion: " From the world that is known. to us quite a different God would be demonstrable, such a one as would certainly not be humanitarian "--and, in a word, you cling fast to your God, and invent a World for Him which is unknown to us.
1037.
Let us banish the highest good from our con cept of God: it is unworthy of a God. Let us
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409
likewise banish the highest wisdom: it is the vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom: -the idea was to make Him as like them as possible. No
2 God as the highest power--that is sufficient!
--
And how many new Gods are not still pos siblel I, myself, in whom the religious--that is
to say, the god-creating instinct occasionally be comes active at the most inappropriate moments: how very differently the divine has revealed itself every time to me! . . . So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments,
which fall into a man's life as if they came from the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer knows how old he is or how young he still may be! . . . I would not doubt that there are several kinds of gods. . . . Some are not wanting which one could not possibly imagine without a certain halcyonic calm and levity. . . . Light feet perhaps belong to the concept " God. " Is it necessary to explain that a God knows how to hold Himself preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist
circles? also (between ourselves) beyond good and evil? His outlook is a free one--as Goethe would say. --And to invoke the authority Of Zara thustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in this regard: Zarathustra goes as far as to confess, "I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance. . . "
Everything follows from that, even world "l
v 1038
" the
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THE WILL TO POWER.
Again I say: how many new Gods are not still possible! Certainly Zarathustrahimself is merelyan old atheist: he believes neither in old norin newgods. Zarathustra says, "he would "--but Zarathustra will not. . . . Take care to understand him well.
The type God conceived according to the type of creative spirits, of " great men. "
1039.
And how many new ideals are not, at bottom, still possible? Here is a little idea! that I seize upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy. To spend one's life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality; half-artist, half-bird, half~ metaphysician ; without a yea or a nay for reality, save that from time to time one acknowledges after the manner of good dancer, with the tips of one's toes; always tickled by some happy ray of sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by_ sorrow
--for sorrow preserves the happy man; fixing little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing: this, as clear, the ideal of heavy spirit, ton in weight--of the spirit ofgravity.
1040
From the military-school of the soul. (Dedicated to the brave,the good-humoured, and the abstinent. )
should not like to undervalue the amiable vir tues; but greatness of soul not compatible with
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DIONYSUS. 41 1
them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all merely pleasing qualities.
In times of painful tension and
choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.
Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter; man only has what he needs.
has now already lasted ten years: no sound any longer reaches me--a land without rain. A man must have vast amount of humanity at his disposal in order not to pine away in such drought. "
1041.
My new road to an aflirmative attitude--Philo sophy, as have understood and lived up to the present, the voluntary quest of the repulsive and atrocious aspects of existence. From the long ex perience derived from such wandering over ice and desert,I learnt to regard quite differently everything that had been philosophised hitherto: the con cealed history of philosophy, the psychology of its great names came into the light for me. " How much truth can spirit endure; for how much truth
daring enough? "-this for me was the real
- * For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted with the circumstances of Nietzsche's life, would be as well to point out that this purely personal plaint, comprehen sible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was for years lonely anchorite. --TR.
vulnerability,
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measure of value. Error is a piece of cowardice . . every victory on the part of knowledge, is the re sultof courage,of hardness towards one'sself,of clean
linesstowardsone'sself. . . . Thekindof experimental philosophy which I am living, even anticipates the
of the most fundamental Nihilism, on but by this I do not mean that it re
possibility
principle:
mains standing at a negation, at a no, or at a will to negation. It would rather attain to the very reverse--to a Dionysian afirmation of the world, as it without subtraction, exception, or choice--
would have eternal circular motion: the same things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical
concatenation. The highest state to which philo sopher can attain to maintain Dionysian attitude
? to Life--my formula for this
To this end we must not only consider those
aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as necessary, but as desirable, and not only desirable to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto
or first prerequisites, so to speak), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more terrible, and more veritable aspects of life, in which
the latter's will expresses itself most clearly.
To this end, we must also value that aspect of existence which alone has been affirmed until now;
we must understand whence this valuation arises, and to how slight an extent has to do with Dionysian valuation of Life: selected and under stood that which in this respect says " yea "(on the one hand, the instinct of the sufferer; on the other,
the gregarious instinct; and thirdly, the instinct of the greater number against the exceptions).
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Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind of man must necessarilyimagine--the elevation and enhancement of man in another direction: higher creatures, beyond good and evil,beyond those values which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number
---I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy forma tion of ideals in history (the concepts "pagan," "classical," "noble," have been discovered afresh
'
1042.
We should demonstrate to what extent the
and brought forward).
? religion of the Greeks was higher than Christianity. The latter triumphed because the Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).
1043.
It is not surprising that a couple 01 centuries have been necessary in order to link up again--a couple of centuries are very little indeed.
1044.
There must be some people who sanctify func tions, not only eating and drinking: and not only in memory of them, or in harmony with them ; but this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in a novel fashion.
1045.
The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and charm of sensual things in a way which other men
Judaeo
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--those with "fleshy hearts "--cannot
imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine: they are sensualists with the best possible faith, because they grant the senses a more fundamental value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing machine, or whatever it is called, which in the
language of the people is termed "spirit. " The strength and power of the senses--this is the most essential thing in a sound man who is one of Nature's lucky strokes: the splendid beast must first be there--otherwise what is the value of all " humanisation "P
1046.
414
We want to hold fast to our senses, and to the belief in them--and accept their logical con clusions! The hostility to the senses in the philo sophy that has been written up to the present, has
'
and living things have so built themselves, that it now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding
slowly), we would fain continue building--not criticise it away as false!
Our valuations help in the process of build ing; they emphasise and accentuate. What does it_mean when whole religions say: " Everything is bad and false and evil"? This condemnation of the whole process can only be the judgment of the failures!
(4) True, the failures might be the greatest sufferers and therefore the most subtle! The con tented might be worth little!
(1)
been man's greatest feat of nonsense.
(2) The world now extant, on which all earthly
(3)
possibly
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(5) We must understand the fundamental artistic phenomenon which called "Life,"---the formative spirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable circumstances: and in the slowest manner pos sible-- The proof of all its combinations must first be given afresh: maintains itsel/I
1047.
Sexuality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived from appearance and deception, great and joyful gratitude to Life and its typical conditions--these things are essential to all paganism, and has good conscience on its side--That which hostile to Nature (already in Greek antiquity) combats paganism in the form of morality and dialectics.
1048.
remitting creation. _
1050.
"
The word "Dionysian " expresses: constraint to unity, soaring above personality, the common
5
41 5
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An anti-metaphysical view of the world--yes, but an artistic one.
049.
Apollo's misapprehension the eternity of beauti ful forms, the aristocratic prescription, " Thus shall
ever be
Dionysus: Sensuality and cruelty. The perish
able nature of existence might be interpreted as
the joy of procreative and destructive force, as un
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place, society, reality, and above the abyss of the ephemeral; the passionately painful sensation of superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctu ating conditions; an ecstatic saying of yea to the collective character of existence, as that which remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful throughout all change; the great pantheistic sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares even the most terribleand most questionable qualities of existence good, and sanctifies them; the 'eternal willtoprocreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence ; the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of creating and annihilating. "
The word " Apollonian expresses: the con straint to be absolutely isolated, to the typical " in dividual," to everything that simplifies, distinguishes, and makes strong, salient, definite, and typical: to freedom within the law. ,
The further development of art is just as neces sarily bound up with the antagonism of these two natural art-forces, as the. further development of mankind is bound up with the antagonism of the sexes. The plenitude of power and restraint, the highest form of'self-affirmation in a cool, noble, and reserved kind of beauty: the Apollonianism of the
Hellenic will.
This antagonism of the Dionysian and of the
Apollonian in the Greek soul, is one of the great riddles which made me feel drawn to the essence of Hellenism. At bottom, I troubled about nothing save the solution of the question, why precisely Greek Apollonianism should have been forced to grow out of a Dionysian soil : the Dionysian Greek
416
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417
had need of being Apollonian; that to
order to break his will to the titanic, to the com plex, to the uncertain, to the horrible by will to measure, to simplicity, and to submission to rule and concept. Extravagance, wildness, and
'A'siatic tendencies lie at the root of the Greeks. Their courage consists in their struggle with their Asiatic nature: they were not given beauty, any more than they were given Logic and moral naturalness: in them these things are victories, they are willed and fought for--they constitute the triumph of the Greeks.
I051.
say,in
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clear that only the rarest and most lucky cases of humanity can attain to the highest and ' most sublime human joys in which Life celebrates its own glorification; and this only happens when these rare creatures themselves and their forbears have lived long preparatory life leading to this goal, without, however, having done so consciously.
It then that an overflowing wealth of multi farious forces and the most agile power of "free will" and lordly command exist together in per fect concord in one man; then the intellect just as much at ease, or at home, in the senses as the senses are at ease or at home in and everything that takes place in the latter must give rise to ex traordinarily subtle joys in the former. And vice versd: just think of this vice versd for moment in man like Hafiz; even Goethe, though to
lesser degree, gives some idea of this process. VOL. II. 3D
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is probable that, in such perfect and well-constituted
men, the most sensual
figured by a symbolic elatedness of the highest intellectuality; in themselves they feel a kind of deification of the body and are most remote from the ascetic philosophy of the principle "God is a Spirit": from this principle it is clear that the ascetic is the "botched man " who declares only that to be good and " God " which is absolute, and which judges and condemns.
From that height of joy in which man feels him self completely and utterly a deified form and self
justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy peasants and healthy semi-human beasts, the whole of this long and enormous-gradation of the light and colour of happiness was called bythe Greek-- not without that grateful quivering of one who is initiated into secret, not without much caution and
pious silence--by the godlike name: Dionysus. What then do all modern men--the children of a
crumbling, multifarious, sick and strange age-- know of the compass of Greek happiness, how could they know anything about it ! Whence would the slaves of " modern ideas " derive their right to Dionysian feasts!
When the Greek body and soul were in full " bloom," and not, as it were, in states of morbid exaltation and madness, there arose the secret symbol of the loftiest affirmation and transfigura tion of life and the world that has ever existed. There we have a standard beside which everything
that has grown since must seem too short, too poor, too narrow: if we but pronounce the word
functions are finally trans
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monvsus.
419
" Dionysus " in the presence of the best of more recent names and things, in the presence of Goethe, for instance, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or Raphael, in trice we realise that our best things and moments are condemned. Dionysus judge Am understood? There can be no doubt that the Greeks sought to interpret, by means of their Dionysian experiences, the final mysteries of the " destiny of the soul " and everything they knew concerning the education and the purification of man, and above all concerning the absolute hier archyand inequalityof value between man and man. There the deepest experience of all Greeks, which
they conceal beneath great silence,--we do not . know the Greeks so long as this hidden and sub
terranean access to them remains obstructed. The indiscreet eyes of scholars will never perceive any thing in these things, however much learned energy may still have to be expended in the service of this excavation--; even the noble zeal of such friends of antiquity as Goethe and Winckelmann, seems to savour somewhat of bad form and of arrogance,
precisely in this respect. T0 wait and to prepare oneself; to await the appearance of new sources of knowledge; to prepare oneself in solitude for the
sight Of new faces and the sound of new voices to cleanse one's soul ever more and more of the dust and noise, as of country fair, which peculiar to this age to overcome everything Christian by some thing super-Christian, and not only to rid oneself of it,--f0r the Christian doctrine the counter doctrine to the Dionysian to rediscover the South in oneself, and to stretch clear, glittering, and
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-. . their equal son ge'nie a la meme tail/e et la meme
structure; est un des trois eqorits souverains de
la renaissance italienne. "
'
posthumous
Nota Ilene--Dante, Michelangelo, Napoleon.
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THE WILL To POWER.
I019.
Concerning the pessimism of strength--In the internal economy of the primitive man's soul, the fear of evil preponderates. What is evil? Three kinds of things: accident, uncertainty, the unex pected. How does primitive man combat evil ? --
He conceives it as a thing of reason, of power, even as a person. By this means he is enabled to make treaties with and generally to operate upon in advance--to forestall it.
---Another expedient to declare its evil and harmful character to be but apparent: the conse quences of accidental occurrences, and 0f uncer tainty and the unexpected, are interpreted as well meant, as reasonable.
---A third means to interpret evil, above all,
? as merited: evil thus justified as
--In short, man submits to it: all religious
and moral interpretations are but forms of sub mission to evil--The belief that good purpose lies behind all evil, implies the renunciation of any desire to combat it.
Now, the, history of every culture shows a diminution of this fear of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected. Culture means precisely, to learn to reckon, to discover causes, to acquire the power of forestalling events, to acquire belief in necessity. With the growth of culture, man able to dispense with that primitive form of submission to evil (called religion or morality), and that "justification of evil. " Now he wages war against " evil,"--he gets rid of it. Yes, state of
punishment.
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? DIONYSUS.
399
security, of belief in law and the possibility of cal culation, possible, in which consciousness regards these things with tedium,-in which the joy of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected, actually becomes spur.
Let us halt moment before this symptom of highest culture,--I call the pessimism of strength. Man now no longer requires "justification of evil justification precisely what he abhors: he enjoys evil, far, one he regards purposeless evil as the most interesting kind of evil. If he had required God in the past, he now delights in cosmic disorder without God, world of accident, to the essence of which terror, ambiguity, and seductiveness belong.
In state of this sort, precisely goodness which requires to be justified--that to say, must either have an evil and dangerous basis, or else must contain a vast amount of stupidity: in which case still pleases. Animality no longer awakens terror now; avery intellectual and happy wanton spirit in favour of the animal in man, in such periods, the most triumphant form Of spirit uality. Man now strong enough to be able to feel ashamed of a belief in God: he may now play the part of the devil's advocate afresh. If in practice he pretends to uphold virtue, will be for those reasons which lead virtue to be associated with subtlety, cunning, lust of gain, and form of the lust of power. ,
This pessimism of strength also ends in theo dicy, i. e. in an absolute saying Of yea to. the world ---but the same arguments will be raised in favour Of
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THE WILL TO POWER.
life which forinerly were raised against it: and in this way, in a conception of this world as the highest ideal possible, which has been effectively attained.
I
I020.
The principal kinds of pessimism :--
The pessimism of sensitiveness (excessive irrit
ability with a preponderance of the feelings of pain). The pessimism of the will that is not free (other wise expressed: the lack of resisting power a
gainst stimuli).
The pessimism of doubt (shyness in regard to
everything fixed, in regard to all grasping and touching).
The psychological conditions which belong to these different kinds of pessimism, may all be ob served in a lunatic asylum, even though they are there found in a slightly exaggerated form. The same applies to" Nihilism " (the penetrating feeling of " nonentity '
What, however, the nature of Pascal's moral pessimism, and the metaphysical pessimism of the Vedanta-Philosophy? What the nature of the social pessimism of anarchists (as of Shelley), and of the pessimism of compassion (like that of Leo, Tolstoy and of Alfred de Vigny)?
. Are all these things not also the phenomena of decay and sickness? And not excessive seriousness in regard to moral values, or in regard to "other-world" fictions, or social calamities, or sufiering in general, of the same order? All such exaggeration of single and narrow standpoint
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VOL. 11. 2C
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DIONYSUS. .
401
-in itself a sign of sickness. The same applies to the preponderance of a negative over an afl'irma tive attitude!
In this respect we must not confound with the above: the joy of saying and doing no, which is the result of the enormous power and tenseness of an affirmative attitude--peculiar to all rich and mighty men and ages. It as were, luxury,
form of courage too, which opposes the terrible, which has sympathy with the frightful and the questionable; because, among other things, one terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will, intellect, and taste.
02 I.
. My Five " Noes. " .
(I) My fight against the feeling of sin and the introduction of the notion of punishment into the physical and metaphysical world, likewise into psychology and the interpretation of history. The recognition of the fact that all philosophies and val uations hitherto have been saturated with morality.
My identification and my discovery of the traditional ideal, of the Christian ideal, even where the dogmatic form of Christianity has been wrecked. The danger of the Christian ideal resides in its valuations, in that which can dispense with concrete expression: my struggle against latent Christianity (for instance, in music, in Socialism).
(3) My struggle against the eighteenth century of Rousseau, against his" Nature," against his " good
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man," his belief in the dominion of feeling--against the pampering, weakening, and moralising of man: an ideal born of the hatred of aristocratic culture, which in practice is the dominion of unbridled feelings of resentment, and invented as a standard for the purpose of war (the Christian morality of the feeling of sin, as well as the morality of resent ment, is an attitude of the mob).
402
My fight against Romanticism, in which the
(4)
ideals of Christianity and of Rousseau
converge, but which possesses at the same time a yearning for that antiquity which knew of sacerdotal and
aristocratic culture, a yearning for virtu, and for
the " strong man "--something extremely hybrid; a false and imitated kind of stronger humanity, which appreciates extreme conditions in general and sees the symptom of strength in them ("the cult of passion"; an imitation of the most expressive forms, furore espressivo, originating not out of pleni tude, but out ofwant). --(In the nineteenth century
there are some things which are born out of re lative plenitude--i. e. out of well-being; cheerful music, etc. -'--among poets, for instance, Stifter and Gottfried Keller give signs of more strength and inner well-being than The great strides Ofen gineering, of inventions, of the natural sciences and of history (? ) are relative products of the strength
and self-reliance of the nineteenth century. )
(5) My struggle against the predominance of
gregarious instincts, now science makes common cause with them; against the profound hate with which every kind of order of rank and of aloofness is treated.
? ? ? ? DIONYSUS.
I022.
403
From the pressure of plenitude, from the tension of forces that are continually increasing within us and which cannot yet discharge themselves, con dition produced which very similar to that which precedes storm: we--like Nature's sky-- become overcast. That, too,
A teaching which puts an end to such condition by the fact that commands something: trans
valuation of values *by means of which the accumu lated forces are given channel, direction, so that they explode into deeds and flashes of light ning--does not in the least require to be a
hedonistic teaching: in so far as releases strength which was compressed to an agonising degree, brings happiness.
'102
Pleasure appears with the feeling of power. Happiness means that the consciousness of
power and triumph has begun to prevail.
Progress the strengthening of the type, the ability to exercise great will-power: everything
" pessimism. "
? else a misunderstanding and
1024.
There comes time when the old masquerade and moral togging-up of the passions provokes repugnance: naked Nature; when the quanta of
power are recognised as decidedly simple (as deter mining rank); when grand style appears again as the result of great passion.
danger.
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THE WlLL r0 POWER.
1025.
The purpose of culture would have us enlist every thing terrible, step by step and experimentally, into its service; but before it is strong enough for this it must combat, moderate, mask, and even curse every thing terrible.
Wherever a culture points to anything as evil, it betrays its fear and therefore weakness.
Thesis: everything good is the evil of yore which has been rendered serviceable. Standard . 4 the more terrible and the greater the passions may be which an age, a people, and an individual are at liberty to possess, because they are able to use them as a means, the higher is their culture: the more mediocre, weak, submissive, and cowardly a man-may be, the more things he will regard as evil: according to him the kingdom of evil is the largest. The lowest man will see the kingdom of evil (i. e. that which is forbidden him and which is hostile to him) everywhere.
1026.
It is not a fact that " happiness follOws virtue " --but it is the mighty man who first declares his
happy state to be virtue.
Evil actions belong to the mighty and the
virtuous: bad and base actions belong to the subjected.
The mightiest man, the creator, would have to be the most evil, inasmuch as he makes his ideal prevail over all men in opposition to their ideals, and remoulds them according to his own image.
? 7_
? ? ? . ~ 0
Evil, "in this respect, means hard, painful, en forced;
DIONYSUS.
v405
> Such men as Napoleon must always return and _always settle our belief in the self-glory of the in
dividual afresh: he himself, however, was corrupted by the means he had to stoop to, and had lost noblesse of character. If he had had, to prevail among another kind of men, he could have availed himself of other means; and thus would not
seem necessary that Caesar must become bad.
1027
? }
Man combination of the beast and the super beast; higher man a combination of the monster and the superman:' these opposites belong to each otherr With every degree of man's growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows down wards into the depths and into the terrible: we
should not desire the one without the other ;--or, better still: the more fundamentally we desire the one, the more completely we shall achieve the
'
other.
Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not
'
I028
,
deceive ourselves. -'
-
> 1029
have taught the knowledge of such terrible things, that all "Epicurean contentment" im
" *,The play" on the German " words " Unthier and Uberthier," Unm'ensch and Ubermensch," unfortu
nately not translatable--TR.
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possible concerning them. DIionysian pleasure is
406
the only adequate kind here:
cover the tragic. Thanks to their superficiality in ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the mis-Q understanding of it ! The yearning for nonentity is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite!
1030.
A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, rob beries, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in pos session of an increased blissfulness in love. I
believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will under stand Dante for having written over the door of
his Inferno: "I also am the creation of eternal love. "
1031.
To have travelled over the whole circumference of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners ----my ambition, my torment, and my happiness.
Veritably to have overcome pessimism, and, as the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a Goethe--full of love and goodwill.
1032.
The first question is by no means whether we are satisfied with ourselves: but whether we are
was the to dis first
? ? ? ? ? s-
satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we should say yea to any single moment, we have then affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of ex istence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us or in other things: and our soul has vibrated and rung with happiness, like a chord, once only and only once, then all eternity was necessary in order to bring about that one event,---and all eternity, this single moment of our afl'irmation, was called good, was saved, justified, and blessed.
1033.
The passions which say yup--Pride, happiness, health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war, reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will, the discipline Of lofty spirituality, the will to power, and gratitude to the Earth and to Life: all that
rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes, gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life--the whole power of the virtues that glon'fy--all declaring things good, saying yea, and doing yea.
1034.
We, many or few, who once more dare to live in a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith,--we
'are probably also the first who understand what pagan faith is: to be obliged to imagine higher
creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond good and evil; to be compelled to value all higher existence as immoral existence. We believe in Olympus, and not in the "man on the cross. "
DIONYSUS.
407
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THE WILL To POWER.
1035.
The more modern man has exercised his ideal ising power in regard to a God mostly by moralis-- ing the latter ever more and more--what does that mean ? --nothing good, a diminution in man's strength.
As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible:
and indications of this are not wanting. God im
agined as emancipation from morality, comprising the whole of the abundant assembly of Life's con trasts, and saving and justifying them in a divine agony. God as the beyond, the superior elevation, to the wretched cul-de-sac morality of " Good and Evil. "
1036.
A humanitarian God cannot be demonstrated from the world that is known to us: so much are ye driven and forced to conclude to-da'y.
But What conclusion do ye draw from this? " He can not be demonstrated to us ": the scepticism of knowledge. You all fear the conclusion: " From the world that is known. to us quite a different God would be demonstrable, such a one as would certainly not be humanitarian "--and, in a word, you cling fast to your God, and invent a World for Him which is unknown to us.
1037.
Let us banish the highest good from our con cept of God: it is unworthy of a God. Let us
? ? ? ? DIONYSUS.
409
likewise banish the highest wisdom: it is the vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom: -the idea was to make Him as like them as possible. No
2 God as the highest power--that is sufficient!
--
And how many new Gods are not still pos siblel I, myself, in whom the religious--that is
to say, the god-creating instinct occasionally be comes active at the most inappropriate moments: how very differently the divine has revealed itself every time to me! . . . So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments,
which fall into a man's life as if they came from the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer knows how old he is or how young he still may be! . . . I would not doubt that there are several kinds of gods. . . . Some are not wanting which one could not possibly imagine without a certain halcyonic calm and levity. . . . Light feet perhaps belong to the concept " God. " Is it necessary to explain that a God knows how to hold Himself preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist
circles? also (between ourselves) beyond good and evil? His outlook is a free one--as Goethe would say. --And to invoke the authority Of Zara thustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in this regard: Zarathustra goes as far as to confess, "I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance. . . "
Everything follows from that, even world "l
v 1038
" the
? ? ? ? 410
THE WILL TO POWER.
Again I say: how many new Gods are not still possible! Certainly Zarathustrahimself is merelyan old atheist: he believes neither in old norin newgods. Zarathustra says, "he would "--but Zarathustra will not. . . . Take care to understand him well.
The type God conceived according to the type of creative spirits, of " great men. "
1039.
And how many new ideals are not, at bottom, still possible? Here is a little idea! that I seize upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy. To spend one's life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality; half-artist, half-bird, half~ metaphysician ; without a yea or a nay for reality, save that from time to time one acknowledges after the manner of good dancer, with the tips of one's toes; always tickled by some happy ray of sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by_ sorrow
--for sorrow preserves the happy man; fixing little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing: this, as clear, the ideal of heavy spirit, ton in weight--of the spirit ofgravity.
1040
From the military-school of the soul. (Dedicated to the brave,the good-humoured, and the abstinent. )
should not like to undervalue the amiable vir tues; but greatness of soul not compatible with
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DIONYSUS. 41 1
them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all merely pleasing qualities.
In times of painful tension and
choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.
Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter; man only has what he needs.
has now already lasted ten years: no sound any longer reaches me--a land without rain. A man must have vast amount of humanity at his disposal in order not to pine away in such drought. "
1041.
My new road to an aflirmative attitude--Philo sophy, as have understood and lived up to the present, the voluntary quest of the repulsive and atrocious aspects of existence. From the long ex perience derived from such wandering over ice and desert,I learnt to regard quite differently everything that had been philosophised hitherto: the con cealed history of philosophy, the psychology of its great names came into the light for me. " How much truth can spirit endure; for how much truth
daring enough? "-this for me was the real
- * For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted with the circumstances of Nietzsche's life, would be as well to point out that this purely personal plaint, comprehen sible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was for years lonely anchorite. --TR.
vulnerability,
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THE \VILL TO POWER.
measure of value. Error is a piece of cowardice . . every victory on the part of knowledge, is the re sultof courage,of hardness towards one'sself,of clean
linesstowardsone'sself. . . . Thekindof experimental philosophy which I am living, even anticipates the
of the most fundamental Nihilism, on but by this I do not mean that it re
possibility
principle:
mains standing at a negation, at a no, or at a will to negation. It would rather attain to the very reverse--to a Dionysian afirmation of the world, as it without subtraction, exception, or choice--
would have eternal circular motion: the same things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical
concatenation. The highest state to which philo sopher can attain to maintain Dionysian attitude
? to Life--my formula for this
To this end we must not only consider those
aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as necessary, but as desirable, and not only desirable to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto
or first prerequisites, so to speak), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more terrible, and more veritable aspects of life, in which
the latter's will expresses itself most clearly.
To this end, we must also value that aspect of existence which alone has been affirmed until now;
we must understand whence this valuation arises, and to how slight an extent has to do with Dionysian valuation of Life: selected and under stood that which in this respect says " yea "(on the one hand, the instinct of the sufferer; on the other,
the gregarious instinct; and thirdly, the instinct of the greater number against the exceptions).
(as complements
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Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind of man must necessarilyimagine--the elevation and enhancement of man in another direction: higher creatures, beyond good and evil,beyond those values which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number
---I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy forma tion of ideals in history (the concepts "pagan," "classical," "noble," have been discovered afresh
'
1042.
We should demonstrate to what extent the
and brought forward).
? religion of the Greeks was higher than Christianity. The latter triumphed because the Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).
1043.
It is not surprising that a couple 01 centuries have been necessary in order to link up again--a couple of centuries are very little indeed.
1044.
There must be some people who sanctify func tions, not only eating and drinking: and not only in memory of them, or in harmony with them ; but this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in a novel fashion.
1045.
The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and charm of sensual things in a way which other men
Judaeo
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER.
--those with "fleshy hearts "--cannot
imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine: they are sensualists with the best possible faith, because they grant the senses a more fundamental value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing machine, or whatever it is called, which in the
language of the people is termed "spirit. " The strength and power of the senses--this is the most essential thing in a sound man who is one of Nature's lucky strokes: the splendid beast must first be there--otherwise what is the value of all " humanisation "P
1046.
414
We want to hold fast to our senses, and to the belief in them--and accept their logical con clusions! The hostility to the senses in the philo sophy that has been written up to the present, has
'
and living things have so built themselves, that it now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding
slowly), we would fain continue building--not criticise it away as false!
Our valuations help in the process of build ing; they emphasise and accentuate. What does it_mean when whole religions say: " Everything is bad and false and evil"? This condemnation of the whole process can only be the judgment of the failures!
(4) True, the failures might be the greatest sufferers and therefore the most subtle! The con tented might be worth little!
(1)
been man's greatest feat of nonsense.
(2) The world now extant, on which all earthly
(3)
possibly
? ? ? ? DIOstus.
(5) We must understand the fundamental artistic phenomenon which called "Life,"---the formative spirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable circumstances: and in the slowest manner pos sible-- The proof of all its combinations must first be given afresh: maintains itsel/I
1047.
Sexuality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived from appearance and deception, great and joyful gratitude to Life and its typical conditions--these things are essential to all paganism, and has good conscience on its side--That which hostile to Nature (already in Greek antiquity) combats paganism in the form of morality and dialectics.
1048.
remitting creation. _
1050.
"
The word "Dionysian " expresses: constraint to unity, soaring above personality, the common
5
41 5
? _ ~
An anti-metaphysical view of the world--yes, but an artistic one.
049.
Apollo's misapprehension the eternity of beauti ful forms, the aristocratic prescription, " Thus shall
ever be
Dionysus: Sensuality and cruelty. The perish
able nature of existence might be interpreted as
the joy of procreative and destructive force, as un
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place, society, reality, and above the abyss of the ephemeral; the passionately painful sensation of superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctu ating conditions; an ecstatic saying of yea to the collective character of existence, as that which remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful throughout all change; the great pantheistic sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares even the most terribleand most questionable qualities of existence good, and sanctifies them; the 'eternal willtoprocreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence ; the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of creating and annihilating. "
The word " Apollonian expresses: the con straint to be absolutely isolated, to the typical " in dividual," to everything that simplifies, distinguishes, and makes strong, salient, definite, and typical: to freedom within the law. ,
The further development of art is just as neces sarily bound up with the antagonism of these two natural art-forces, as the. further development of mankind is bound up with the antagonism of the sexes. The plenitude of power and restraint, the highest form of'self-affirmation in a cool, noble, and reserved kind of beauty: the Apollonianism of the
Hellenic will.
This antagonism of the Dionysian and of the
Apollonian in the Greek soul, is one of the great riddles which made me feel drawn to the essence of Hellenism. At bottom, I troubled about nothing save the solution of the question, why precisely Greek Apollonianism should have been forced to grow out of a Dionysian soil : the Dionysian Greek
416
? ? ? ? DIONYSUS.
417
had need of being Apollonian; that to
order to break his will to the titanic, to the com plex, to the uncertain, to the horrible by will to measure, to simplicity, and to submission to rule and concept. Extravagance, wildness, and
'A'siatic tendencies lie at the root of the Greeks. Their courage consists in their struggle with their Asiatic nature: they were not given beauty, any more than they were given Logic and moral naturalness: in them these things are victories, they are willed and fought for--they constitute the triumph of the Greeks.
I051.
say,in
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clear that only the rarest and most lucky cases of humanity can attain to the highest and ' most sublime human joys in which Life celebrates its own glorification; and this only happens when these rare creatures themselves and their forbears have lived long preparatory life leading to this goal, without, however, having done so consciously.
It then that an overflowing wealth of multi farious forces and the most agile power of "free will" and lordly command exist together in per fect concord in one man; then the intellect just as much at ease, or at home, in the senses as the senses are at ease or at home in and everything that takes place in the latter must give rise to ex traordinarily subtle joys in the former. And vice versd: just think of this vice versd for moment in man like Hafiz; even Goethe, though to
lesser degree, gives some idea of this process. VOL. II. 3D
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? 418 THE WILL TO POWER.
is probable that, in such perfect and well-constituted
men, the most sensual
figured by a symbolic elatedness of the highest intellectuality; in themselves they feel a kind of deification of the body and are most remote from the ascetic philosophy of the principle "God is a Spirit": from this principle it is clear that the ascetic is the "botched man " who declares only that to be good and " God " which is absolute, and which judges and condemns.
From that height of joy in which man feels him self completely and utterly a deified form and self
justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy peasants and healthy semi-human beasts, the whole of this long and enormous-gradation of the light and colour of happiness was called bythe Greek-- not without that grateful quivering of one who is initiated into secret, not without much caution and
pious silence--by the godlike name: Dionysus. What then do all modern men--the children of a
crumbling, multifarious, sick and strange age-- know of the compass of Greek happiness, how could they know anything about it ! Whence would the slaves of " modern ideas " derive their right to Dionysian feasts!
When the Greek body and soul were in full " bloom," and not, as it were, in states of morbid exaltation and madness, there arose the secret symbol of the loftiest affirmation and transfigura tion of life and the world that has ever existed. There we have a standard beside which everything
that has grown since must seem too short, too poor, too narrow: if we but pronounce the word
functions are finally trans
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monvsus.
419
" Dionysus " in the presence of the best of more recent names and things, in the presence of Goethe, for instance, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or Raphael, in trice we realise that our best things and moments are condemned. Dionysus judge Am understood? There can be no doubt that the Greeks sought to interpret, by means of their Dionysian experiences, the final mysteries of the " destiny of the soul " and everything they knew concerning the education and the purification of man, and above all concerning the absolute hier archyand inequalityof value between man and man. There the deepest experience of all Greeks, which
they conceal beneath great silence,--we do not . know the Greeks so long as this hidden and sub
terranean access to them remains obstructed. The indiscreet eyes of scholars will never perceive any thing in these things, however much learned energy may still have to be expended in the service of this excavation--; even the noble zeal of such friends of antiquity as Goethe and Winckelmann, seems to savour somewhat of bad form and of arrogance,
precisely in this respect. T0 wait and to prepare oneself; to await the appearance of new sources of knowledge; to prepare oneself in solitude for the
sight Of new faces and the sound of new voices to cleanse one's soul ever more and more of the dust and noise, as of country fair, which peculiar to this age to overcome everything Christian by some thing super-Christian, and not only to rid oneself of it,--f0r the Christian doctrine the counter doctrine to the Dionysian to rediscover the South in oneself, and to stretch clear, glittering, and
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