No More Learning

The Conceit of Artists. —I think artists often do
not know what they can do best, because they are
too conceited, and have set their minds on some-
thing loftier than those little plants appear to be,
which can grow up to perfection on their soil,
fresh, rare, and beautiful. The final value of their
own garden and vineyard is superciliously under-
estimated by them, and their love and their insight
are not of the same quality. Here is a musician,
who, more than any one else, has the genius for


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 123
discovering the tones peculiar to suffering. oppressed,
tortured souls, and who can endow even dumb
animals with speech. No one equals him in the
colours of the late autumn, in the indescribably
touching happiness of a last, a final, and all too
short enjoyment; he knows a chord for those secret
and weird midnights of the soul when cause and
effect seem out of joint, and when every instant
something may originate "out of nothing. " He
draws his resources best of all out of the lower
depths of human happiness, and so to speak, out of
its drained goblet, where the bitterest and most
nauseous drops have ultimately, for good or for
ill, commingled with the sweetest. He knows the
weary shuffling along of the soul which can no
longer leap or fly, yea, not even walk; he has the
shy glance of concealed pain, of understanding
without comfort, of leave-taking without avowal;
yea, as the Orpheus of all secret misery, he is greater
than anyone; and in fact much has been added
to art by him which was hitherto inexpressible
and not even thought worthy of art, and which was
only to be scared away, by words, and not grasped
—many small and quite microscopic features of
the soul: yes, he is the master of miniature. But
he does not wish to be so! His character is more
in love with large walls and daring frescoes! He
fails to see that his spirit has a different taste and
inclination, and prefers to sit quietly in the corners
of ruined houses:—concealed in this way, concealed
even from himself, he there paints his proper master-
pieces, all of which are very short, often only one
bar in length,—there only does he become quite


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124 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
good, great, and perfect, perhaps there only. —But
he does not know it! He is too conceited to
know it.
88.
Earnestness for the Truth. —Earnest for the truth!
What different things men understand by these
words! Just the same opinions, and modes of
demonstration and testing which a thinker regards
as a frivolity in himself, to which he has succumbed
with shame at one time or other,—just the same
opinions may give to an artist, who comes in
contact with them and accepts them temporarily,
the consciousness that the profoundest earnestness
for the truth has now taken hold of him, and that
it is worthy of admiration that, although an artist,
he at the same time exhibits the most ardent
desire for the antithesis of the apparent. It is thus
possible that a person may, just by his pathos of
earnestness, betray how superficially and sparingly
his intellect has hitherto operated in the domain of
knowledge. —And is not everything that we con-
sider important our betrayer? It shows where our
motives lie, and where our motives are altogether
lacking.
89.
Now and Formerly. —Of what consequence is all
our art in artistic products, if that higher art, the
art of the festival, be lost by us? Formerly all
. artistic products were exhibited on the great
festive path of humanity, as tokens of remembrance,
and monuments of high and happy moments.
One now seeks to allure the exhausted and sickly


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 125
from the great suffering path of humanity for a
wanton moment by means of works of art; one
furnishes them with a little ecstasy and insanity.
90.
Lights and Shades. —Books and writings are
different with different thinkers. One writer has
collected together in his book all the rays of light
which he could quickly plunder and carry home
from an illuminating experience; while another
gives only the shadows, and the grey and black
replicas of that which on the previous day had
towered up in his soul.
91.
Precaution. — Alfieri, as is well known, told a
great many falsehoods when he narrated the
history of his life to his astonished contemporaries.
He told falsehoods owing to the despotism toward
himself which he exhibited, for example, in the
way in which he created his own language, and
tyrannised himself into a poet:—he finally found
a rigid form of sublimity into which he forced his
life and his memory; he must have suffered much
in the process. —I would also give no credit to a
history of Plato's life written by himself, as little as
to Rousseau's, or to the Vita nuova of Dante.
92.
Prose and Poetry. —Let it be observed that the
great masters of prose have almost always been
poets as well, whether openly, or only in secret and


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126 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
for the " closet"; and in truth one only writes good
prose in view of poetry! For prose is an uninter-
rupted, polite warfare with poetry; all its charm
consists in the fact that poetry is constantly avoided,
and contradicted; every abstraction wants to have
a gibe at poetry, and wishes to be uttered with a
mocking voice; all dryness and coolness is meant
to bring the amiable goddess into an amiable
despair; there are often approximations and recon-
ciliations for the moment, and then a sudden recoil
and a burst of laughter; the curtain is often drawn
up and dazzling light let in just while the goddess
is enjoying her twilights and dull colours; the
word is often taken out of her mouth and chanted'
to a melody while she holds her fine hands before
her delicate little ears — and so there are a
thousand enjoyments of the warfare, the defeats
included, of which the unpoetic, the so-called
prose - men know nothing at all: — they conse-
quently write and speak only bad prose! Warfare
is the father of all good things, it is also the father
of good prose! —There have been four very singular
and truly poetical men in this century who have
arrived at mastership in prose, for which other-
wise this century is not suited, owing to lack of
poetry, as we have indicated. Not to take Goethe
into account, for he is reasonably claimed by the
century that produced him, I look only on Giacomo
Leopardi, Prosper Merimce, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary
Conversations, as worthy to be called masters of
prose.


## p. 127 (#161) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 127
93-
But why, then, do you Write ? —A: I do not
belong to those who think with the wet pen in
hand; and still less to those who yield themselves
entirely to their passions before the open ink-bottle,
sitting on their chair and staring at the paper. I
am always vexed and abashed by writing; writing
is a necessity for me,—even to speak of it in a
simile is disagreeable. B: But why, then, do you
write? A: Well, my dear Sir, to tell you in con-
fidence, I have hitherto found no other means of
getting rid of my thoughts. B: And why do you
wish to get rid of them? A: Why I wish? Do
I really wish! I must. —B: Enough! Enough!
94.
Growth after Death. —Those few daring words
about moral matters which Fontenelle threw
into his immortal Dialogues of the Dead, were
regarded by his age as paradoxes and amusements
of a not unscrupulous wit; even the highest judges
of taste and intellect saw nothing more in them,—
indeed, Fontenelle himself perhaps saw nothing
more. Then something incredible takes place:
these thoughts become truths! Science proves
them! The game becomes serious! And we read
those dialogues with a feeling different from that
with which Voltaire and Helvetius read them, and
we involuntarily raise their originator into another
and much higher class of intellects than they did. —
Rightly? Wrongly?


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128 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
95-
Chamfort. — That such a judge of men and
of the multitude as Chamfort should side with
the multitude, instead of standing apart in philo-
sophical resignation and defence—I am at a loss
to explain, except as follows:—There was an
instinct in him stronger than his wisdom, and
it had never been gratified: the hatred against all
noblesse of blood; perhaps his mother's old and
only too explicable hatred, which was consecrated
in him by love of her,—an instinct of revenge from
his boyhood, which waited for the hour to avenge
his mother. But then the course of his life, his
genius, and alas! most of all, perhaps, the paternal
blood in his veins, had seduced him to rank
and consider himself equal to the noblesse —
for many, many years! In the end, however, he
could not endure the sight of himself, the "old
man" under the old regime, any longer; he got
into a violent, penitential passion, and in this state
he put on the raiment of the populace as his special
kind of hair-shirt! His bad conscience was the
neglect of revenge. —If Chamfort had then been
a little more of the philosopher, the Revolution
would not have had its tragic wit and its sharpest
sting; it would have been regarded as a much
more stupid affair, and would have had no such
seductive influence on men's minds. But Chamfort's
hatred and revenge educated an entire generation;
and the most illustrious men passed through his
school. Let us but consider that Mirabeau looked
up to Chamfort as to his higher and older self,


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 129
from whom he expected (and endured) impulses,
warnings, and condemnations,—Mirabeau, who as
a man belongs to an entirely different order of
greatness, as the very foremost among the states-
man-geniuses of yesterday and to-day. —Strange,
that in spite of such a friend and advocate—we
possess Mirabeau's letters to Chamfort — this
wittiest of all moralists has remained unfamiliar
to the French, quite the same as Stendhal, who
has perhaps had the most penetrating eyes and
ears of any Frenchman of this century. Is it
because the latter had really too much of the
German and the Englishman in his nature for
the Parisians to endure him? —while Chamfort,
a man with ample knowledge of the profundities
and secret motives of the soul, gloomy, suffering,
ardent—a thinker who found laughter necessary
as the remedy of life, and who almost gave himself
up as lost every day that he had not laughed,—
seems much more like an Italian, and related by
blood to Dante and Leopardi, than like a French-
man. One knows Chamfort's last words: "Ah/
mon ami" he said to Sieyes, "Je trien vais enfin
de ce monde, oil il faut que le coeur se brise ou se
bronze—. " These were certainly not the words of
a dying Frenchman.
96.
Two Orators. —Of these two orators the one
arrives at a full understanding of his case only
when he yields himself to emotion; it is only this
that pumps sufficient blood and heat into his brain
to compel his high intellectuality to reveal itself,
9


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130 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
The other attempts, indeed, now and then to do
the same: to state his case sonorously, vehe-
mently, and spiritedly with the aid of emotion,
—but usually with bad success. He then very
soon speaks obscurely and confusedly; he exagger-
ates, makes omissions, and excites suspicion of the
justice of his case: indeed, he himself feels this
suspicion, and the sudden changes into the coldest
and most repulsive tones (which raise a doubt in
the hearer as to his passionateness being genuine)
are thereby explicable. With him emotion always
drowns the spirit; perhaps because it is stronger
than in the former. But he is at the height of his
power when he resists the impetuous storm of his
feeling, and as it were scorns it; it is then only
that his spirit emerges fully from its concealment,
a spirit logical, mocking, and playful, but never-
theless awe-inspiring.
97-
The Loquacity of Authors. —There is a loquacity
of anger—frequent in Luther, also in Schopenhauer.
A loquacity which comes from too great a store
of conceptual formulae, as in Kant. A loquacity
which comes from delight in ever new modifications
of the same idea: one finds it in Montaigne. A
loquacity of malicious natures: whoever reads
writings of our period will recollect two authors in
this connection. A loquacity which comes from
delight in fine words and forms of speech: by no
means rare in Goethe's prose. A loquacity which
comes from pure satisfaction in noise and confusion
of feelings: for example in Carlyle.


## p. 131 (#165) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 131
98.
In Honour of Shakespeare. — The best thing I
could say in honour of Shakespeare, the man, is
that he believed in Brutus and cast not a shadow
of suspicion on the kind of virtue which Brutus
represents! It is to him that Shakespeare conse-
crated his best tragedy—it is at present still called
by a wrong name,—to him and to the most terrible
essence of lofty morality. Independence of soul!
—that is the question at issue! No sacrifice can
be too great there: one must be able to sacrifice
to it even one's dearest friend, though he be also
the grandest of men, the ornament of the world, the
genius without peer,—if one really loves freedom
as the freedom of great souls, and if this freedom
be threatened by him :—it is thus that Shakespeare
must have felt! The elevation in which he places
Caesar is the most exquisite honour he could confer
upon Brutus; it is thus only that he lifts into
vastness the inner problem of his hero, and similarly
the strength of soul which could cut this knot! —
And was it actually political freedom that impelled
the poet to sympathy with Brutus,—and made him
the accomplice of Brutus? Or was political freedom
merely a symbol for something inexpressible? Do
we perhaps stand before some sombre event or
adventure of the poet's own soul, which has remained
unknown, and of which he only cared to speak
symbolically? What is all Hamlet-melancholy
in comparison with the melancholy of Brutus! —
and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he
knew the other, by experience! Perhaps he also had


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132 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
his dark hour and his bad angel, just as Brutus had
them! —But whatever similarities and secret re-
lationships of that kind there may have been,
Shakespeare cast himself on the ground and felt
unworthy and alien in presence of the aspect and
virtue of Brutus:—he has inscribed the testimony
thereof in the tragedy itself. He has twice brought
in a poet in it, and twice heaped upon him such
an impatient and extreme contempt, that it sounds
like a cry,—like the cry of self-contempt. Brutus,
even Brutus loses patience when the poet appears,
self-important, pathetic, and obtrusive, as poets
usually are,—persons who seem to abound in the
possibilities of greatness, even moral greatness,
and nevertheless rarely attain even to ordinary
uprightness in the philosophy of practice and of
life. "He may know the times, but I know his
temper,—away with the jigging fool I"—shouts
Brutus. We may translate this back into the soul
of the poet that composed it.
99-
The Followers of Schopenhauer. —What one sees
at the contact of civilized peoples with barbarians,
—namely, that the lower civilization regularly
accepts in the first place the vices, weaknesses,
and excesses of the higher; then, from that point
onward, feels the influence of a charm; and finally,
by means of the appropriated vices and weaknesses,
also allows something of the valuable influence of
the higher culture to leaven it:—one can also see
this close at hand and without journeys to bar-
barian peoples, to be sure, somewhat refined and


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 133
spiritualised, and not so readily palpable. What
are the German followers of Schopenltauer still
accustomed to receive first of all from their master:
—those who, when placed beside his superior culture,
must deem themselves sufficiently barbarous to be
first of all barbarously fascinated and seduced
by him. Is it his hard matter-of-fact sense, his
inclination to clearness and rationality, which often
makes him appear so English, and so unlike
Germans? Or the strength of his intellectual
conscience, which endured a life-long contradiction
of "being" and "willing," and compelled him to
contradict himself constantly even in his writings
on almost every point? Or his purity in matters
relating to the Church and the Christian God ? —
for here he was pure as no German philosopher
had been hitherto, so that he lived and died "as
a Voltairian. " Or his immortal doctrines of the
intellectuality of intuition, the apriority of the law
of causality, the instrumental nature of the intellect,
and the non-freedom of the will? No, nothing of
this enchants, nor is felt as enchanting; but
Schopenhauer's mystical embarrassments and
shufflings in those passages where the matter-of-
fact thinker allowed himself to be seduced and
corrupted by the vain impulse to be the unraveller
of the world's riddle: his undemonstrable doctrine
of one will (" all causes are merely occasional causes
of the phenomenon of the will at such a time and
at such a place," "the will to live, whole and
undivided, is present in every being, even in the
smallest, as perfectly as in the sum of all that
was, is, and will be"); his denial of the


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134 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
individual ("all lions are really only one lion,"
"plurality of individuals is an appearance," as
also development is only an appearance: he calls
the opinion of Lamarck "an ingenious, absurd
error"); his fantasy about genius (" in aesthetic
contemplation the individual is no longer an
individual, but a pure, will-less, painless, timeless
subject of knowledge," "the subject, in that it
entirely merges in the contemplated object, has
become this object itself"); his nonsense about
sympathy, and about the outburst of the principium
individuationis thus rendered possible, as the source
of all morality; including also such assertions as,
"dying is really the design of existence," "the
possibility should not be absolutely denied that
a magical effect could proceed from a person
already dead " :—these, and similar extravagances
and vices of the philosopher, are always first
accepted and made articles of faith; for vices
and extravagances are always easiest to imitate,
and do not require a long preliminary practice.
But let us speak of the most celebrated of the
living Schopenhauerians, Richard Wagner. — 1%
has happened to him as it has already happened
to many an artist: he made a mistake in the
interpretation of the characters he created, and
misunderstood the unexpressed philosophy of
the art peculiarly his own. Richard Wagner
allowed himself to be misled by Hegel's influence
till the middle of his life; and he did the same
again when later on he read Schopenhauer's
doctrine between the lines of his characters, and
began to express himself with such terms as


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 135
"will," "genius," and "sympathy. " Nevertheless
it will remain true that nothing is more counter
to Schopenhauer's spirit than the essentially
Wagnerian element in Wagner's heroes: I mean
the innocence of the supremest selfishness, the
belief in strong passion as the good in itself, in a
word, the Siegfried trait in the countenances of
his heroes. "All that still smacks more of Spinoza
than of me,"—Schopenhauer would probably have
said. Whatever good reasons, therefore, Wagner
might have had to be on the outlook for other
philosophers than Schopenhauer, the enchantment
to which he succumbed in respect to this thinker,
not only made him blind towards all other philo-
sophers, but even towards science itself; his entire
art is more and more inclined to become the
counterpart and complement of the Schopen-
hauerian philosophy, and it always renounces more
emphatically the higher ambition to become the
counterpart and complement of human knowledge
and science. And not only is he allured thereto
by the whole mystic pomp of this philosophy
(which would also have allured a Cagliostro), the
peculiar airs and emotions of the philosopher have
all along been seducing him as well! For example,
Wagner's indignation about the corruption of the
German language is Schopenhauerian; and if one
should commend his imitation in this respect, it
is nevertheless not to be denied that Wagner's
style itself suffers in no small degree from all the
tumours and turgidities, the sight of which made
Schopenhauer so furious; and that, in respect to
the German-writing Wagnerians, Wagneromania
s


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136 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
is beginning to be as dangerous as only some kinds
of Hegelomania have been. Schopenhauerian is
Wagner's hatred of the Jews, to whom he
is unable to do justice, even in their greatest
exploit: are not the Jews the inventors of
Christianity! The attempt of Wagner to construe
Christianity as a seed blown away from Buddhism,
and his endeavour to initiate a Buddhistic era in
Europe, under a temporary approximation to
Catholic-Christian formulas and sentiments, are
both Schopenhauerian. Wagner's preaching in
favour of pity in dealing with animals is Schopen-
hauerian; Schopenhauer's predecessor here, as is
well known, was Voltaire, who already perhaps, like
his successors, knew how to disguise his hatred of
certain men and things as pity towards animals.
At least Wagner's hatred of science, which mani-
fests itself in his preaching, has certainly not
been inspired by the spirit of charitableness and
kindness—nor bylthe spirit at all, as is sufficiently
obvious. —Finally, it is of little importance what
the philosophy of an artist is, provided it is only a
supplementary philosophy, and does not do any
injury to his art itself. We cannot be sufficiently on
our guard against taking a dislike to an artist on
account of an occasional, perhaps very unfortunate
and presumptuous masquerade; let us not forget
that the dear artists are all of them something of
actors—and must be so; it would be difficult for
them to hold out in the long run without stage-
playing. Let us be loyal to Wagner in that
which is true and original in him,—and especially
in this point, that we, his disciples, remain loyal


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 137
to ourselves in that which is true and original in us.
Let us allow him his intellectual humours and
spasms, let us in fairness rather consider what
strange nutriments and necessaries an art like his
is entitled to, in order to be able to live and grow!
It is of no account that he is often wrong as a
thinker; justice and patience are not his affair. It
is sufficient that his life is right in his own eyes,
and maintains its right,—the life which calls to
each of us: "Be a man, and do not follow me—but
thyself! thyself! " Our life, also ought to main-
tain its right in our own eyes! We also are to
grow and blossom out of ourselves, free and fearless,
in innocent selfishness! And so, on the contem-
plation of such a man, these thoughts still ring in
my ears to-day, as formerly: "That passion is
better than stoicism or hypocrisy; that straight-
forwardness, even in evil, is better than losing
oneself in trying to observe traditional morality;
that the free man is just as able to be good as
evil, but that the unemancipated man is a disgrace
to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly
bliss; finally, that all who wish to be free-must
become so through themselves, and that freedom falls
to nobody's lot as a gift from Heaven. " {Richard
Wagner in Bayreuth, Vol. I. of this Translation,
pp. 199-200).
100.
Learning to do Homage. —One must learn the
art of homage, as well as the art of contempt.
Whoever goes in new paths and has led many
persons therein, discovers with astonishment how
f


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138 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
awkward and incompetent all of them are in the
expression of their gratitude, and indeed how
rarely gratitude is able even to express itself. It
is always as if something comes into people's
throats when their gratitude wants to speak, so
that it only hems and haws, and becomes silent
again. The way in which a thinker succeeds in
tracing the effect of his thoughts, and their trans-
forming and convulsing power, is almost a comedy:
it sometimes seems as if those who have been
operated upon felt profoundly injured thereby, and
could only assert their independence, which they
suspect to be threatened, by all kinds of impro-
prieties. It needs whole generations in order merely
to devise a courteous convention of gratefulness;
it is only very late that the period arrives when
something of spirit and genius enters into gratitude.
Then there is usually some one who is the great
receiver of thanks, not only for the good he himself
has done, but mostly for that which has been
gradually accumulated by his predecessors, as a
treasure of what is highest and best.
101.
Voltaire. —Wherever there has been a court, it
has furnished the standard of good-speaking, and
with this also the standard of style for writers.
The court language, however, is the language of
the courtier who has no profession, and who even in
conversations on scientific subjects avoids all con-
venient, technical expressions, because they smack
of the profession; on that account the technical
expression, and everything that betrays the special-


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 139
ist, is a blemish of style in countries which have a
court culture. At present, when all courts have
become caricatures of past and present times, one
is astonished to find even Voltaire unspeakably
reserved and scrupulous on this point (for example,
in his judgments concerning such stylists as Fon-
tenelle and Montesquieu),—we are now, all of us,
emancipated from court taste, while Voltaire was
its perfecter!
102.
A Word for Philologists. —It is thought that
there are books so valuable and royal that whole
generations of scholars are well employed when
through their efforts these books are kept genuine
and intelligible,—to confirm this belief again and
again is the purpose of philology. It presupposes
that the rare men are not lacking (though they may
not be visible), who actually know how to use such
valuable books :—those men perhaps who write such
books themselves, or could write them. I mean
to say that philology presupposes a noble belief,—
that for the benefit of some few who are always
"to come," and are not there, a very great amount
of painful, and even dirty labour has to be done
beforehand: it is all labour in usum Delphinomm.
103.
German Music. —German music, more than any
other, has now become European music; because
the changes which Europe experienced through
the Revolution have therein alone found expres-
sion: it is only German music that knows how to


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140 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
express the agitation of popular masses, the tre-
mendous artificial uproar, which does not even
need to be very noisy,—while Italian opera, for
example, knows only the choruses of domestics
or soldiers, but not "the people. " There is
the additional fact that in all German music a
profound bourgeois jealousy of the noblesse can be
traced, especially a jealousy of esprit and tUgance,
as the expressions of a courtly, chivalrous, ancient,
and self-confident society. It is not music like
that of Goethe's musician at the gate, which was
pleasing also "in the hall," and to the king as
well; it is not here said: "The knights looked
on with martial air; with bashful eyes the
ladies. " Even the Graces are not allowed in
German music without a touch of remorse; it is
only with Pleasantness, the country sister of the
Graces that the German begins to feel morally
at ease—and from this point up to his enthusiastic,
learned, and often gruff " sublimity" (the Beethoven-
like sublimity), he feels more and more so. If we
want to imagine the man of this music,—well, let
us just imagine Beethoven as he appeared beside
Goethe, say, at their meeting at Teplitz: as semi-
barbarism beside culture, as the masses beside
the nobility, as the good-natured man beside the
good and more than "good" man, as the visionary
beside the artist, as the man needing comfort beside
the comforted, as the man given to exaggeration
and distrust beside the man of reason, as the
crank and self-tormenter, as the foolish, enraptured,
blessedly unfortunate, sincerely immoderate man,
as the pretentious and awkward man,—and alto-


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 141
gether as the "untamed man": it was thus that
Goethe conceived and characterised him, Goethe,
the exceptional German, for whom a music of
equal rank has not yet been found! — Finally,
let us consider whether the present, continually
extending contempt of melody and the stunting of
the sense for melody among Germans should not
be understood as a democratic impropriety and an
after-effect of the Revolution? For melody has
such an obvious delight in conformity to law, and
such an aversion to everything evolving, unformed
and arbitrary, that it sounds like a note out of the
ancient European regime, and as a seduction and
re-duction back to it.
104.
The Tone of the German Language. —We know
whence the German originated which for several
centuries has been the universal, literary language
of Germany. The Germans, with their reverence for
everything that came from the court, intentionally
took the chancery style as their pattern in all that
they had to write, especially in their letters, records,
wills, &c. To write in the chancery style, that was
to write in court and government style,—that was
regarded as something select compared with the
language of the city in which a person lived.
People gradually drew this inference, and spoke
also as they wrote,—they thus became still more
select in the forms of their words, in the choice of
their terms and modes of expression, and finally
also in their tones: they affected a court tone when
they spoke, and the affectation at last became


## p. 141 (#176) ############################################

140 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
express the agitation of popular masses, the tre-
mendous artificial uproar, which does not even
need to be very noisy,—while Italian opera, for
example, knows only the choruses of domestics
or soldiers, but not "the people. " There is
the additional fact that in all German music a
profound bourgeois jealousy of the noblesse can be
traced, especially a jealousy of esprit and e'Ugance,
as the expressions of a courtly, chivalrous, ancient,
and self-confident society. It is not music like
that of Goethe's musician at the gate, which was
pleasing also "in the hall," and to the king as
well; it is not here said: "The knights looked
on with martial air; with bashful eyes the
ladies. " Even the Graces are not allowed in
German music without a touch of remorse; it is
only with Pleasantness, the country sister of the
Graces that the German begins to feel morally
at ease—and from this point up to his enthusiastic,
learned, and often gruff " sublimity" (the Beethoven-
like sublimity), he feels more and more so.
If we
want to imagine the man of this music,—well, let
us just imagine Beethoven as he appeared beside
Goethe, say, at their meeting at Teplitz: as semi-
barbarism beside culture, as the masses beside
the nobility, as the good-natured man beside the
good and more than "good" man, as the visionary
beside the artist, as the man needing comfort beside
the comforted, as the man given to exaggeration
and distrust beside the man of reason, as the
crank and self-tormenter, as the foolish, enraptured,
blessedly unfortunate, sincerely immoderate man,
as the pretentious and awkward man,—and alto-


## p. 141 (#177) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 141
gether as the "untamed man ": it was thus that
Goethe conceived and characterised him, Goethe,
the exceptional German, for whom a music of
equal rank has not yet been found! — Finally,
let us consider whether the present, continually
extending contempt of melody and the stunting of
the sense for melody among Germans should not
be understood as a democratic impropriety and an
after-effect of the Revolution? For melody has
such an obvious delight in conformity to law, and
such an aversion to everything evolving, unformed
and arbitrary, that it sounds like a note out of the
ancient European regime, and as a seduction and
re-duction back to it.
104.
The Tone of the German Language. —We know
whence the German originated which for several
centuries has been the universal, literary language
of Germany. The Germans, with their reverence for
everything that came from the court, intentionally
took the chancery style as their pattern in all that
they had to write, especially in their letters, records,
wills, &c. To write in the chancery style, that was
to write in court and government style,—that was
regarded as something select compared with the
language of the city in which a person lived.
People gradually drew this inference, and spoke
also as they wrote,—they thus became still more
select in the forms of their words, in the choice of
their terms and modes of expression, and finally
also in their tones: they affected a court tone when
they spoke, and the affectation at last became


## p. 141 (#178) ############################################

140 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
express the agitation of popular masses, the tre-
mendous artificial uproar, which does not even
need to be very noisy,—while Italian opera, for
example, knows only the choruses of domestics
or soldiers, but not "the people. " There is
the additional fact that in all German music a
profound bourgeois jealousy of the noblesse can be
traced, especially a jealousy of esprit and e'Ugance,
as the expressions of a courtly, chivalrous, ancient,
and self-confident society. It is not music like
that of Goethe's musician at the gate, which was
pleasing also "in the hall," and to the king as
well; it is not here said: "The knights looked
on with martial air; with bashful eyes the
ladies. " Even the Graces are not allowed in
German music without a touch of remorse; it is
only with Pleasantness, the country sister of the
Graces that the German begins to feel morally
at ease—and from this point up to his enthusiastic,
learned, and often gruff " sublimity" (the Beethoven-
like sublimity), he feels more and more so. If we
want to imagine the man of this music,—well, let
us just imagine Beethoven as he appeared beside
Goethe, say, at their meeting at Teplitz: as semi-
barbarism beside culture, as the masses beside
the nobility, as the good-natured man beside the
good and more than "good" man, as the visionary
beside the artist, as the man needing comfort beside
the comforted, as the man given to exaggeration
and distrust beside the man of reason, as the
crank and self-tormenter, as the foolish, enraptured,
blessedly unfortunate, sincerely immoderate man,
as the pretentious and awkward man,—and alto-


## p. 141 (#179) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 141
gether as the "untamed man ": it was thus that
Goethe conceived and characterised him, Goethe,
the exceptional German, for whom a music of
equal rank has not yet been found! — Finally,
let us consider whether the present, continually
extending contempt of melody and the stunting of
the sense for melody among Germans should not
be understood as a democratic impropriety and an
after-effect of the Revolution? For melody has
such an obvious delight in conformity to law, and
such an aversion to everything evolving, unformed
and arbitrary, that it sounds like a note out of the
ancient European regime, and as a seduction and
re-duction back to it.
104.
The Tone of the German Language. —We know
whence the German originated which for several
centuries has been the universal, literary language
of Germany. The Germans, with their reverence for
everything that came from the court, intentionally
took the chancery style as their pattern in all that
they had to write, especially in their letters, records,
wills, &c. To write in the chancery style, that was
to write in court and government style,—that was
regarded as something select compared with the
language of the city in which a person lived.
People gradually drew this inference, and spoke
also as they wrote,—they thus became still more
select in the forms of their words, in the choice of
their terms and modes of expression, and finally
also in their tones: they affected a court tone when
they spoke, and the affectation at last became


## p. 142 (#180) ############################################

142 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
natural. Perhaps nothing quite similar has ever
happened elsewhere:—the predominance of the
literary style over the talk, and the formality and
affectation of an entire people, becoming the basis
of a common and no longer dialectical language.
I believe that the sound of the German language
in the Middle Ages, and especially after the Middle
Ages, was extremely rustic and vulgar; it has
ennobled itself somewhat during the last centuries,
principally because it was found necessary to
imitate so many French, Italian, and Spanish
sounds, and particularly on the part of the German
(and Austrian) nobility, who could not at all
content themselves with their mother-tongue. But
notwithstanding this practice, German must have
sounded intolerably vulgar to Montaigne, and even
to Racine: even at present, in the mouths of
travellers among the Italian populace, it still sounds
very coarse, sylvan, and hoarse, as if it had origi-
nated in smoky rooms and outlandish districts. —
Now I notice that at present a similar striving
after selectness of tone is spreading among
the former admirers of the chancery style, and
that the Germans are beginning to accommodate
themselves to a peculiar " witchery of sound," which
might in the long run become an actual danger to
the German language,—for one may seek in vain
for more execrable sounds in Europe. Something
mocking, cold, indifferent, and careless in the
voice: that is what at present sounds "noble"
to the Germans — and I hear the approval of
this nobleness in the voices of young officials,
teachers, women, and trades-people; indeed, even


## p. 143 (#181) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II 143
the little girls already imitate this German of the
officers. For the officer, and in fact the Prussian
officer is the inventor of these tones: this same
officer, who, as soldier and professional man pos-
sesses that admirable tact for modesty which the
Germans as a whole might well imitate (German
professors and musicians included ! ). But as soon
as he speaks and moves he is the most immodest
and inelegant figure in old Europe — no doubt
unconsciously to himself! And unconsciously also
to the good Germans, who gaze at him as the man
of the foremost and most select society, and
willingly let him " give them his tone. " And indeed
he gives it to them! —in the first place it is the
sergeant-majors and non-commissioned officers that
imitate his tone and coarsen it. One should note
the roars of command, with which the German
cities are absolutely surrounded at present, when
there is drilling at all the gates: what presump-
tion, furious imperiousness, and mocking coldness
speaks in this uproar! Could the Germans
actually be a musical people? —It is certain that
the Germans martialise themselves at present in
the tone of their language: it is probable that, being
exercised to speak martially, they will finally write
martially also. For habituation to definite tones
extends deeply into the character:—people soon
have the words and modes of expression, and finally
also the thoughts which just suit these tones!
Perhaps they already write in the officers' style;
perhaps I only read too little of what is at present
written in Germany to know this. But one thing
I know all the surer: the German public declara-


## p. 144 (#182) ############################################

144 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
tions which also reach places abroad, are not
inspired by German music, but just by that new
tone of tasteless arrogance. Almost in every
speech of the foremost German statesman, and
even when he makes himself heard through his
imperial mouth-piece, there is an accent which the
ear of a foreigner repudiates with aversion: but
the Germans endure it,—they endure themselves.
IOS.
The Germans as Artists. —When once a German
actually experiences passion (and not only, as is
usual, the mere inclination to it), he then behaves
just as he must do in passion, and does not think
further of his behaviour. The truth is, however,
that he then behaves very awkwardly and uglily,
and as if destitute of rhythm and melody; so
that onlookers are pained or moved thereby, but
nothing more—unless he elevate himself to the
sublimity and enrapturedness of which certain
passions are capable. Then even the German
becomes beautiful. The perception of the height
at which beauty begins to shed its charm even
over Germans, raises German artists to the height,
to the supreme height, and to the extravagances of
passion: they have an actual, profound longing,
therefore, to get beyond, or at least to look beyond
the ugliness and awkwardness — into a better,
easier, more southern, more sunny world. And
thus their convulsions are often merely indications
that they would like to dance: these poor bears in
whom hidden nymphs and satyrs, and sometimes
still higher divinities, carry on their game!


## p. 145 (#183) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II I45
106.
Music as Advocate. —" I have a longing for a
master of the musical art," said an innovator to
his disciple, " that he may learn from me my ideas
and speak them more widely in his language: I
shall thus be better able to reach men's ears and
hearts. For by means of tones one can seduce
men to every error and every truth: who could
refute a tone ? "—" You would, therefore, like to be
regarded as irrefutable? " said his disciple. The
innovator answered: "I should like the germ to
become a tree. In order that a doctrine may
become a tree, it must be believed in for a con-
siderable period; in order that it may be believed
in it must be regarded as irrefutable. Storms and
doubts and worms and wickedness are necessary
to the tree, that it may manifest its species and
the strength of its germ; let it perish if it is not
strong enough! But a germ is always merely
annihilated,—not refuted ! "—When he had said
this, his disciple called out impetuously: "But I
believe in your cause, and regard it as so strong
that I will say everything against it, everything
that I still have in my heart. "—The innovator
laughed to himself and threatened the disciple with
his finger. "This kind of discipleship," said he
then, "is the best, but it is dangerous, and not
every kind of doctrine can stand it. "
^ 107.
Our Ultimate Gratitude to Art. —If we had not
approved of the Arts and invented this sort of cult


## p. 145 (#184) ############################################

144
tions
inspire
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becomes beaut
at which beaut
over Germans, 1
to the supreme
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therefore, to get 1
the ugliness and
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thus their convulsi
that they would lil
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E
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th, and are rather velgtis
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We need all arrogant, svart
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stion or things which our
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## p. 145 (#185) ############################################

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## p. 146 (#186) ############################################

146 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II
of the untrue, the insight into the general untruth
and falsity of things now given us by science—
an insight into delusion and error as conditions
of intelligent and sentient existence—would be
quite unendurable. Honesty would have disgust
and suicide in its train. Now, however, our
honesty has a counterpoise which helps us to
escape such consequences;—namely, Art, as the
good-will to illusion. We do not always restrain
our eyes from rounding off and perfecting in
imagination: and then it is no longer the eternal
imperfection that we carry over the river of
Becoming—for we think we carry a goddess, and
are proud and artless in rendering this service. As
an aesthetic phenomenon existence is still endurable
to us; and by Art, eye and hand and above all the
good conscience are given to us, to be able to make
such a phenomenon out of ourselves. We must
rest from ourselves occasionally by contemplating
and looking down upon ourselves, and by laughing
or weeping over ourselves from an artistic remote-
ness: we must discover the hero, and likewise the
fool, that is hidden in our passion for knowledge;
we must now and then be joyful in our folly, that
we may continue to be joyful in our wisdom!
And just because we are heavy and serious men
in our ultimate depth, and are rather weights than
men, there is nothing that does us so much good
as the foots cap and bells: we need them in pre-
sence of ourselves—we need all arrogant, soaring,
dancing, mocking, childish and blessed Art, in order
not to lose the free dominion over things which our
ideal demands of us. It would be backsliding for us,


## p. 147 (#187) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, II I47
with our susceptible integrity, to lapse entirely into
morality, and actually become virtuous monsters
and scarecrows, on account of the over-strict
requirements which we here lay down for our-
selves. We ought also to be able to stand above
morality, and not only stand with the painful
stiffness of one who every moment fears to slip and
fall, but we should also be able to soar and play
above it! How could we dispense with Art for
that purpose, how could we dispense with the fool?
—And as long as you are still ashamed of your-
selves in any way, you still do not belong to us!


## p. 148 (#188) ############################################



## p. 149 (#189) ############################################

BOOK THIRD
149


## p. 150 (#190) ############################################



## p. 151 (#191) ############################################

1o8.
New Struggles. —After Buddha was dead people
showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a
cave,—an immense frightful shadow. God is dead:
but as the human race is constituted, there will
perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which
people will show his shadow. —And we—we have
still to overcome his shadow!
109.
Let us be on our Guard. —Let us be on our guard
against thinking that the world is a living being.
Where could it extend itself? What could it
nourish itself with? How could it grow and
increase? We know tolerably well what the
organic is; and we are to reinterpret the emphati-
cally derivative, tardy, rare and accidental, which
we only perceive on the crust of the earth, into the
essential, universal and eternal, as those do who
call the universe an organism? That disgusts me.
Let us now be on our guard against believing that
the universe is a machine; it is assuredly not con-
structed with a view to one end; we invest it with
far too high an honour with the word "machine. "
Let us be on our guard against supposing that
anything so methodical as the cyclic motions of
our neighbouring stars obtains generally and
throughout the universe; indeed a glance at the


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152 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
Milky Way induces doubt as to whether there are
not many cruder and more contradictory motions
there, and even stars with continuous, rectilinearly
gravitating orbits, and the like. The astral arrange-
ment in which we live is an exception; this
arrangement, and the relatively long durability
which is determined by it, has again made possible
the exception of exceptions, the formation of
organic life. The general character of the world,
on the other hand, is to all eternity chaos; not by
the absence of necessity, but in the sense of the
absence of order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom,
and whatever else our aesthetic humanities are
called. Judged by our reason, the unlucky casts
are far oftenest the rule, the exceptions are not the
secret purpose; and the whole musical box repeats
eternally its air, which can never be called a melody,
—and finally the very expression, " unlucky cast"
is already an anthropomorphising which involves
blame. But how could we presume to blame or
praise the universe! Let us be on our guard
against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason,
or their opposites; it is neither perfect, nor beauti-
ful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of
the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate
man! It is altogether unaffected by our aesthetic
and moral judgments! Neither has it any self-
preservative instinct, nor instinct at all; it also
knows no law. Let us be on our guard against
saying that there arc laws in nature. There are
only necessities: there is no one who commands,
no one who obeys, no one who transgresses.
When you know that there is no design, you know


## p. 153 (#193) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 153
also that there is no chance: for it is only
where there is a world of design that the word
"chance" has a meaning. Let us be on our guard
against saying that death is contrary to life. The
living being is only a species of dead being, and
a very rare species. — Let us be on our guard
against thinking that the world eternally creates
the new. There are no eternally enduring
substances; matter is just another such error as
the God of the Eleatics. But when shall we be at
an end with our foresight and precaution! When
will all these shadows of God cease to obscure us?
When shall we have nature entirely undeified!
When shall we be permitted to naturalise our-
selves by means of the pure, newly discovered,
newly redeemed nature?
no.
Origin of Knowledge. —Throughout immense
stretches of time the intellect has produced nothing
but errors; some of them proved to be useful and
preservative of the species: he who fell in with
them, or inherited them, waged the battle for him-
self and his offspring with better success. Those
erroneous articles of faith which were successively
transmitted by inheritance, and have finally become
almost the property and stock of the human
species, are, for example, the following :—that there
are enduring things, that there are equal things,
that there are things, substances, and bodies, that
a thing is what it appears, that our will is free,
that what is good for me is also good abso-
lutely. It was only very late that the deniers and


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154 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
doubters of such propositions came forward,—
it was only very late that truth made its appear-
ance as the most impotent form of knowledge. It
seemed as if it were impossible to get along with
truth, our organism was adapted for the very
opposite; all its higher functions, the perceptions
of the senses, and in general every kind of sensation
co-operated with those primevally embodied, funda-
mental errors. Moreover, those propositions became
the very standards of knowledge according to which
the "true" and the "false" were determined—
throughout the whole domain of pure logic. The
strength of conceptions does not, therefore, depend
on their degree of truth, but on their antiquity,
their embodiment, their character as conditions of
life. Where life and knowledge seemed to con-
flict, there has never been serious contention;
denial and doubt have there been regarded
as madness. The exceptional thinkers like the
Eleatics, who, in spite of this, advanced and main-
tained the antitheses of the natural errors, believed
that it was possible also to live these counterparts:
it was they who devised the sage as the man
of immutability, impersonality and universality of
intuition, as one and all at the same time, with
a special faculty for that reverse kind of knowledge;
they were of the belief that their knowledge was
at the same time the principle of life. To be able
to affirm all this, however, they had to deceive them-
selves concerning their own condition: they had
to attribute to themselves impersonality and un-
changing permanence, they had to mistake the
nature of the philosophic individual, deny the force


## p. 155 (#195) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 155
of the impulses in cognition, and conceive of reason
generally as an entirely free and self-originating
activity; they kept their eyes shut to the fact that
they also had reached their doctrines in contradiction
to valid methods, or through their longing for repose
or for exclusive possession or for domination. The
subtler development of sincerity and of scepticism
finally made these men impossible; their life also
and their judgments turned out to be dependent
on the primeval impulses and fundamental errors
of all sentient being. —The subtler sincerity and
scepticism arose whenever two antithetical maxims
appeared to be applicable to life, because both of
them were compatible with the fundamental errors;
where, therefore, there could be contention con-
cerning a higher or lower degree of utility for life;
and likewise where new maxims proved to be, not
in fact useful, but at least not injurious, as ex-
pressions of an intellectual impulse to play a game
that was, like all games, innocent and happy.
The human brain was gradually filled with such
judgments and convictions; and in this tangled
skein there arose ferment, strife and lust for power.
Not only utility and delight, but every kind of
impulse took part in the struggle for " truths ": the
intellectual struggle became a business, an attrac-
tion, a calling, a duty, an honour—: cognizing and
striving for the true finally arranged themselves as
needs among other needs. From that moment,
not only belief and conviction, but also examination,
denial, distrust and contradiction became forces;
all "evil "instincts were subordinated to know-
ledge, were placed in its service, and acquired the


## p. 156 (#196) ############################################

156 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
prestige of the permitted, the honoured, the useful,
and finally the appearance and innocence of the
good. Knowledge, thus became a portion of life
itself, and as life it became a continually growing
power: until finally the cognitions and those
primeval, fundamental errors clashed with each
other, both as life, both as power, both in the
same man. The thinker is now the being in
whom the impulse to truth and those life-
preserving errors wage their first conflict, now
that the impulse to truth has also proved itself
to be a life-preserving power. In comparison with
the importance of this conflict everything else is
indifferent; the final question concerning the con-
ditions of life is here raised, and the first attempt
is here made to answer it by experiment. How
far is truth susceptible of embodiment? —that is
the question, that is the experiment.
III.
Origin of the Logical. —Where has logic origin-
ated in men's heads? Undoubtedly out of the
illogical, the domain of which must originally
have been immense. But numberless beings who
reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished;
albeit that they may have come nearer to truth
than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern
the " like " often enough with regard to food, and
with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever,
therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circum-
spect in his deductions, had smaller probability of
survival than he who in all similar things immedi-
ately divined the equality. The preponderating


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THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 157
inclination, however, to deal with the similar as
the equal—an illogical inclination, for there is no-
thing equal in itself—first created the whole basis
of logic. It was just so (in order that the con-
ception of substance might originate, this being
indispensable to logic, although in the strictest
sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a
long period the changing process in things had to
be overlooked, and remain unperceived ; the beings
not seeing correctly had an advantage over those
who saw everything "in flux. " In itself every
high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every
sceptical inclination, is a great danger to life. No
living being would have been preserved unless the
contrary inclination—to affirm rather than suspend
judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait,
to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than
be in the right—had been cultivated with extra-
ordinary assiduity. —The course of logical thought
and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to
a process and struggle of impulses, which singly
and in themselves are all very illogical and un-
just; we experience usually only the result of the
struggle, so rapidly and secretly does this primitive
mechanism now operate in us.
112.
Cause and Effect. —We say it is "explanation ";
but it is only in "description" that we are in
advance of the older stages of knowledge and
science. We describe better,—we explain just as
little as our predecessors. We have discovered a
manifold succession where the naive man and


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156 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III
prestige of the permitted, the honoured, the useful,
and finally the appearance and innocence of the
good. Knowledge, thus became a portion of life
itself, and as life it became a continually growing
power: until finally the cognitions and those
primeval, fundamental errors clashed with each
other, both as life, both as power, both in the
same man. The thinker is now the being in
whom the impulse to truth and those life-
preserving errors wage their first conflict, now
that the impulse to truth has also proved itself
to be a life-preserving power. In comparison with
the importance of this conflict everything else is
indifferent; the final question concerning the con-
ditions of life is here raised, and the first attempt
is here made to answer it by experiment. How
far is truth susceptible of embodiment ? —that is
the question, that is the experiment.
in.
Origin of the Logical. —Where has logic origin-
ated in men's heads? Undoubtedly out of the
illogical, the domain of which must originally
have been immense. But numberless beings who
reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished;
albeit that they may have come nearer to truth
than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern
the " like " often enough with regard to food, and
with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever,
therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circum-
spect in his deductions, had smaller probability of
survival than he who in all similar things immedi-
ately divined the equality. The preponderating


## p. 157 (#199) ############################################

THE JOYFUL WISDOM, III 157
inclination, however, to deal with the similar as
the equal—an illogical inclination, for there is no-
thing equal in itself—first created the whole basis
of logic. It was just so (in order that the con-
ception of substance might originate, this being
indispensable to logic, although in the strictest
sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a
long period the changing process in things had to
be overlooked, and remain unperceived; the beings
not seeing correctly had an advantage over those
who saw everything "in flux. " In itself every
high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every
sceptical inclination, is a great danger to life.