Friedrich Nietzsche

“ We dread this powerful realm of the great, cosmical stupidity, for, in most cases, we learn to know it as dropping down upon that other world of purposes and intentions, like a brick from the roof, destroying some beautiful purpose of ours. This belief in the two realms is a very ancient romance and myth: we clever dwarfs, for all our will and our purposes, are molested, run down, and often trampled to death by those stupid, extremely stupid giants, the accidents—but, despite all this, we should not like to be deprived of the awful poetry of this implied in their presence ”

“ We try to divine what may allay his pain, and give it to him: if he wants words of comfort, kind glances, attentions, services, presents, we give them; but above all, if he wishes to see us suffer through his suffering, we feign to be suffering ; yet, in all this, we feel the enjoyment of active gratitude: which, in short, is kind revenge. If he either wants nor accepts anything from us, we depart chilled and sad, almost grieved; it seems as though our gratitude were declined—on this point of honour even the kindest will be a stickler. ”

“ Should a person just for once experimentally and intentionally make the occasions for pity in practical life for a while the object of his attention, and again and again picture to his mind all the misery he may meet with in his surroundings, he will assuredly grow ill and despondent. But should he wish to serve mankind in any sense of the word as a physician, he will have to be very cautious, else it might paralyse him in all critical moments, cramp his knowledge wind unnerve his helpful, delicate hand. ”

“ Man has applied this interpretation of all movements and lineaments as intentions even to the nature of all inanimate things— in the delusion that there exists nothing inanimate: I believe that this is the origin of what we call enjoyment of nature at the sight of heaven, fields, rocks, forests, storm, stars, the sea, a landscape, spring; without the ancient habits of fear which made us view everything in the light of a second, remoter sense, we should now feel no delight in nature, any more than we should rejoice in man and beast without fear, that preceptor of our intellect. ”

“ But it is not in our power to be willing to fight at all against the impetuosity of a craving, or to determine which method we should choose, or whether we succeed by this method. On the contrary, our intellect, during this whole process, is evidently nothing but the blind tool of another craving, a rival of that one which torments us with its impetuosity: be it the craving for rest, or the fear of disgrace and other evil consequences, or love. While we thus imagine that we are complaining of the impetuosity of a craving, it is really one craving complaining of another ”

“ Contrariwise, the glorification of the originator is often an equally blind result of another craving, which wants to seize upon its victim—this time the sacrifice to the very victim has a sweet and inviting odour—for, when the sense of power in a nation or a society is surfeited by a great and fascinating success, and a weariness of victory has set in, pride is, to sole extent, cast aside; the sense of devotion springs up and looks out for an object. ”

“ There are two classes of deniers of morality.—”To deny morality" may mean, first, to deny that the moral motives which men adduce have really egged them on to their actions—hence it is like asserting that morality consists in words, and is part of the course and subtle deceit (especially self-deceit) of men, perhaps more especially of those who are most famed for their virtues. Secondly, we may deny that the moral judgments are based on truths. In this case we admit that they are real motives for action, but that errors, as foundations of all moral judgment, egg men on to their moral actions. ”

“ We are in regular convulsions of pride. And now comes the first ray of relief, of convalescence, and almost the first effect is that we revolt against the sovereignty of our pride: we call ourselves silly and vain, as if we had experienced something unique. Ungratefully we humble the all-powerful pride, with the very aid of which we endured the pain, and impetuously clamour for an antidote to pride: we want to be estranged from ourselves and impersonal, after pain has made us personal too forcibly and too long. ”

“ If our intellect had been developed in strict proportion to our strength and our exercise of strength, the topmost principle of our thinking would be that we can only understand that which we can do—if there is any understanding at all. The thirsty man is deprived of water, but the creations of his fancy continually produce water before his sight, as if nothing could be more easily procured; the superficial and easily satisfied nature of the intellect cannot grasp the real distress, and in this it feels its superiority. ”

“ I believe that, in this whole range of inward experiences, we people of our days are mere novices, trying to solve dark riddles; four thousand years ago these infamous refinements of self-enjoyment were much better known than they now arc. Take the creation of the world: perhaps some Indian dreamer may have looked on it as an ascetic operation which a god attempted with himself. Perhaps the god wanted to chain himself to a versatile nature as an instrument of torture, and, thereby, to feel his bliss and power doubled! ”

“ Let us then learn, for it is high time, that even in our presumed separate realm of purposes and reason the giants are the rulers. And our purposes and reason are not dwarfs but giants. And our own webs are as often and as clumsily broken by ourselves as by the brick! And not everything is purpose which is so called, and much less is everything volition which is called volition! ”

“ To cease thinking of oneself.—Let us thoroughly revolve in our minds the reason why we jump after a person who, before our eyes, falls into the water, though we do not in the least care for him. For pity's sake we only think of him—so says thoughtlessness. Why do we feel pain and discomfort about somebody spitting blood, though we may be adversely and ill-disposed towards him: From pity; we cease to think of ourselves, —so says again thoughtlessness. ”

“ Woe, if this craving should rage!—Suppose the craving for attachment and care for others (the “sympathetic affection”) had double the power it really has, life on earth would be unbearable. Only consider how many foolish things every one is apt to do, each day and hour, out of sheer attachment and cure for his own self, and how intolerable he appears in so doing: how, if we were to become to others objects of these same follies and intrusions, with which they have hitherto only pestered themselves. Should we not flee precipitously, as soon as a “neighbour’’ approached us? ”

“ He finally kills such a brave, where it is in his power, and grants funeral honours to him, the dauntless one: had he wailed, had his countenance lost the expression of cold defiance, had he shown himself contemptible, well, he would have been allowed to live like a dog, he would no longer have stirred the pride of the spectator, and pity would have stepped in the place of admiration. ”

“ But though we may wish to conquer our pity in spite of ourselves, is not this a loftier and more liberal attitude and spirit than that one in which we feel safe after having fond out whether an action benefits or hurts our neighbour? On the contrary, by means of the sacrifice—in which both we and our neighbours are included—we should strengthen and raise the general feeling of human power, though we might not attain more. ”

“ Perhaps in our days no prejudice is more implicitly believed in than that we know what really constitutes morality. It seems that now everybody is pleased to hear that society is about adapt the individual to the general requirements, and that the happiness and, at the same time, the sacrifice of the individual consists in feeling himself as a useful member and instrument of the whole: we have only our lingering doubts as to where to look for this whole ”

“ We repel this kind of pain and offence, requiting it by an act of pity, behind which a subtle self-defence or even revenge may be hidden. The fact that, in the main, we strongly think of ourselves, may be guessed from the decision which we come to in all cases where we can avoid the sight of the suffering, starving, wailing ones; we decide on the opposite course whenever we can approach them as the more powerful, helpful ones; when we are sure of approbation, or wish to feel the contrast of our happiness, or hope to shake off our dulness by the sight. ”

“ The unknown world of the subject.—What men from the remotest times down to the present clay have found so hard to understand is their ignorance of themselves; not only with regard to good and evil, but with regard to something much more essential. Still that most ancient of delusions lives on, that we know, precisely know in each case, how human action is brought about. Not only "God who looks into the heart," not only the door who premeditates his deed—no, not anybody else even entertains my doubt as to his grasping the essential part in the proceedings of another person's actions. ”

“ The moral fashions.—How the general moral judgments have shifted! Those greatest marvels of ancient morality, Epictetus, for instance, knew nothing of the glorification, so usual now, of taking thought for others, of living for others; according to our moral fashion, we ought really to call them immoral, for with every means in their power, they fought for their ego and against all sympathy for others (especially for their sufferings and moral imperfections) . Perhaps they would answer us: “If you feel yourselves such dull or plain objects, think of others more than of yourselves. ”

“ What then is our neighbour—What then do we conceive to be the limits of our neighbour, I mean that whereby he, so to speak, engraves and impresses himself on us? We know nothing of him but the changes wrought in us by him,—our knowledge of him is like a hollow, unmoulded space. We impute to him the sensations which his actions arouse in us, thus giving him a false, inverted positivity. According to our knowledge of our selves, we form him into a satellite of our own system, and if he shines or grows dark to us, and we are the ultimate cause in either case, we still believe the contrary! ”

“ Happiness in pity.—If, with the Indians, the knowledge of human misery be looked upon as the goal of the whole intellectual activity, and throughout —many intellectual generations such a terrible purpose be steadily adhered to: pity, in the eyes of such people of hereditary pessimism, at last assumes a new value us a life-preserving force, to make existence endurable, though it may seem worthy of being thrown away in disgust and horror. ”

“ One who severely suffers looks forth from his condition upon the things without with terrible indifference: all those small mendacious spells wherein things usually float when the eye of the healthy looks upon them, have vanished from his view : nay, his own self, stripped of plumage and colour, lies pure before him. Suppose that, up to then, he had lived in some dangerous realm of fancy: this extreme sobering down by pain is the means—and perhaps the only means—of extricating him therefrom. ”

“ The Greeks called this realm of incalculable recurrences and sublime, eternal weak-mindedness, Moira, and placed it round their gods as the horizon beyond which neither their actions or their eyes could reach: with that secret defiance of the gods which is met with among several nations, in so far as they are worshipped, whilst fate is kept in hand as a last trump against them; when, for instance, Indians and Persians imagine their gods dependent on the sacrifices of mortals, thus giving to mortals the power, if worse came to the worst, to let the gods hunger and starve ”