Friedrich Nietzsche

“ The saint's eye, fixed upon the terrible meaning of this short earthly life, upon the nearness of the last decision concerning endless new spans of existence, this burning eye in a half-wasted body made men of the old world tremble to their very depths; to gaze, to turn shudderingly away, to feel anew the attraction of the spectacle and to give way to it, to drink deep of it till the soul quivered with fire and ague,—that was the last pleasure that antiquity invented after it had grown blunted even at the sight of beast-baitings and human combats. ”

“ THE SUFFERINGS OF GENIUS AND THEIR VALUE.— The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find any one to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. This gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has really no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic? Perhaps.— As compensation for this deprivation, however, he finds more pleasure in creating than the rest of mankind experiences in all other species of activity. ”

“ ART AS RAISER OF THE DEAD.—Art also fulfils the task of preservation and even of brightening up extinguished and faded memories ; when it accomplishes this task it weaves a rope round the ages and causes their spirits to return. It is, certainly, only a phantom-life that results therefrom, as out of graves, or like the return in dreams of our beloved dead, but for some moments, at least, the old sensation lives again and the heart beats to an almost forgotten time. ”

“ Do you think that such a life with such an aim is too wearisome, too empty of all that is agreeable ? Then you have still to learn that no honey is sweeter than that of knowledge, and that the overhanging clouds of trouble must be to you as an udder from which you shall draw milk for your refreshment. And only when old age approaches will you rightly perceive how you listened to the voice of nature, that nature which rules the whole world through pleasure ; the same life which has its zenith in age has also its zenith in wisdom, in that mild sunshine of a constant mental joyfulness ”

“ It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so turbulent ; but the struggle of belief in opinions,—that is to say, of convictions. If all those who thought so highly of their convictions, who made sacrifices of all kinds for them, and spared neither honour, body, nor life in their service, had only devoted half of their energy to examining their right to adhere to this or that conviction and by what road they arrived at it, how peaceable would the history of mankind now appear! ”

“ In any case they keep alive curiosity about the passions; it is as if they said: "Without passions you have no experience whatever." Because we have sworn fidelity (perhaps even to a purely fictitious being, such as a god) , because we have surrendered our heart to a prince, a party, a woman, a priestly order, an artist, or a thinker, in a state of infatuated delusion that threw a charm over us and made those beings appear worthy of all veneration, and every sacrifice—are we, therefore, firmly and inevitably bound? ”

“ Every teacher, every official, adds this to whatever is his duty ; it is the perpetual occupation of humanity, and at the same time the waves of its light, in which everything grows ; in the narrowest circle, namely, within the family, life blooms and flourishes only through that goodwill. Kindliness, friendliness, the courtesy of the heart, are ever-flowing streams of un-egoistic impulses, and have given far more powerful assistance to culture than even those much more famous demonstrations which are called pity, mercy, and self-sacrifice. ”

“ Otherwise there will suddenly appear that great chasm between the artist, who creates his work upon a height apart, and the public, who cannot rise up to that height and finally sinks discontentedly deeper. For when the artist no longer raises his public it rapidly sinks downwards, and its fall is the deeper and more dangerous in proportion to the height to which genius has carried it, like the eagle, out of whose talons a tortoise that has been borne up into the clouds falls to its destruction. ”

“ MORALITY AND CONSEQUENCES.—It is not only the spectators of a deed who frequently judge of its morality or immorality according to its consequences, but the doer of the deed himself does so. For the motives and intentions are seldom sufficiently clear and simple, and sometimes memory itself seems clouded by the consequences of the deed, so that one ascribes the deed to false motives or looks upon unessential motives as essential. Success often gives an action the whole honest glamour of a good conscience; failure casts the shadow of remorse over the most estimable deed. ”

“ THE AGE OF COMPARISON.—The less men are fettered by tradition, the greater becomes the inward activity of their motives ; the greater, again, in proportion thereto, the outward restlessness, the confused flux of mankind, the polyphony of strivings. For whom is there still an absolute compulsion to bind himself and his descendants to one place ? For whom is there still anything strictly compulsory? As all styles of arts are imitated simultaneously, so also are all grades and kinds of morality, of customs, of cultures. ”

“ Do not despise the fact of having been religious ; consider fully how you have had a genuine access to art Can you not, with the help of these experiences, follow immense stretches of former humanity with a clearer understanding ? Is not that ground which sometimes displeases you so greatly, that ground of clouded thought, precisely the one upon which have grown many of the most glorious fruits of older civilisations ? You must have loved religion and art as you loved mother and nurse,—otherwise you cannot be wise. ”

“ This will be the time when indignation will be the peculiar masculine passion; indignation, because all arts and sciences have been overflowed and choked by an unprecedented dilettanteism, philosophy talked to death by brain-bewildering chatter, politics more fantastic and partisan than ever, and society in complete disorganisation, because the conservatrices of ancient customs have become ridiculous to themselves, and have endeavoured in every way to place themselves outside the pale of custom. ”

“ ESTIMATION OF UNPRETENTIOUS TRUTHS.— It is the mark of a higher culture to value the little unpretentious truths which have been discovered by means of rigorous method more highly than the errors handed down by metaphysical ages and men, which blind us and make us happy. At first, one has scorn on his lips for unpretentious truths, as if they could offer no match for the others: they stand so modest, simple, sober, even apparently discouraging, while the other truths are so beautiful, splendid, enchanting, or even enrapturing. ”

“ THE VOICE OF HISTORY.—In general, history appears to teach the following about the production of genius : it ill-treats and torments mankind—calls to the passions of envy, hatred, and rivalry—drives them to desperation, people against people, throughout whole centuries ! Then, perhaps, like a stray spark from the terrible energy thereby aroused, there flames up suddenly the light of genius ; the will, like a horse maddened by the rider's spur, thereupon breaks out and leaps over into another domain. ”

“ Mankind probably approaches nearer to its actual aim in the middle of its road, in the middle time of its existence than at the end. It may be that powers with which, for instance, art is a condition, die out altogether ; the pleasure in lying, in the undefined, the symbolical, in intoxication, in ecstasy might fall into disrepute. For certainly, when life is ordered in the perfect State, the present will provide no more motive for poetry, and it would only be those persons who had remained behind who would ask for poetical unreality. ”

“ The whole of human life is deeply immersed in untruthfulness ; the individual cannot draw it up out of this well, without thereby taking a deep dislike to his whole past, without finding his present motives —those of honour, for instance—inconsistent, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions which conduce to happiness in the future. Is it true that there remains but one sole way of thinking which brings after it despair as a personal experience, as a theoretical result, a philosophy of dissolution, disintegration, and self-destruction ? ”

“ It is the intellect that saves us from being utterly burnt and reduced to ashes ; it occasionally drags us away from the sacrificial altar of justice or enwraps us in a garment of asbestos. Liberated from the fire, and impelled by the intellect, we then pass from opinion to opinion, through the change of parties, as noble betrayers of all things that can in any way be betrayed—and nevertheless without a feeling of guilt. ”

“ ART DANGEROUS TO THE ARTIST.— When art seizes violently on an individual it draws him back to the conceptions of those ages in which art flourished most mightily, and then it effects a retrogression in him. The artist acquires increasing reverence for sudden excitations, believes in gods and demons, instills a soul into nature, hates the sciences, becomes changeable of mood as were the men of antiquity and longs for an overthrowing of everything unfavorable to art, and he does this with all the vehemence and unreasonableness of a child. ”

“ To make a whole personality out of ourselves, and in all that we do to keep that personality's highest good in view, carries us further than those sympathetic emotions and actions for the benefit of others. We all still suffer, certainly, from the too small consideration of the personal in us ; it is badly developed,—let us admit it ; rather has our mind been forcibly drawn away from it and offered as a sacrifice to the State, to science, or to those who stand in need of help, as if it were the bad part which must be sacrificed. ”

“ JOY IN AGE.— The thinker or artist whose better self has fled into his works feels an almost malicious joy when he sees his body and spirit slowly broken into and destroyed by time; it is as if he were in a corner, watching a thief at work on his safe, all the while knowing that it is empty and that all his treasures have been rescued. ”

“ JUSTICE AGAINST THE BECOMING GOD.—When the entire history of culture unfolds itself to our gaze, as a confusion of evil and noble, of true and false ideas, and we feel almost seasick at the sight of these tumultuous waves, we then under- stand what comfort resides in the conception of a becoming God. This Deity is unveiled ever more and more throughout the changes and fortunes of mankind ; it is not all blind mechanism, a senseless and aimless confusion of forces. ”

“ THE WANDERER.—He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth and not even as a traveller towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world ; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual ; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness. ”

“ He scourges his self-adoration with self-contempt and cruelty, he rejoices in the wild tumult of his desires and the sharp pain of sin, even in the idea of being lost; he understands how to lay a trap for his emotions, for instance even for his keen love of ruling, so that he sinks into the most utter abasement and his tormented soul is thrown out of joint by this contrast ; and finally, if he longs for visions, conversations with the dead or with divine beings, it is at bottom a rare kind of delight that he covets, perhaps that delight in which all others are united. ”

“ THE WAR HISTORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.—In a single human life that passes through many styles of culture we find that struggle condensed which would otherwise have been played out between two generations, between father and son ; the closeness of the relationship sharpens this struggle, because each party ruthlessly drags in the familiar inward nature of the other party ; and thus this struggle in the single individual becomes most embittered; here every new phase disregards the earlier ones with cruel injustice and misunderstanding of their means and aims. ”

“ The artist will soon be regarded as a glorious relic, and we shall bestow upon him, as a marvelous stranger upon whose strength and beauty the happiness of former ages depended, honors such as we do not grant to others of our own kind. The best in us has perhaps been inherited from the sensibilities of earlier ages to which we hardly any longer have access by direct paths; the sun has already set, but the sky of our life still glows with its light, even though we no longer see it. ”

“ There is a powerful charm of life in such countless but very small doses in which malice makes itself felt, just as goodwill, spread in the same way throughout the world, is the ever-ready means of healing. But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain? that one not infrequently amuses one's self—and amuses one's self very well—in causing mortifications to others, at least in thought, and firing off at them the grape-shot of petty malice ? Most people are too dishonest, and a few are too good, to know anything of this pudendum ”

“ ART MAKES HEAVY THE HEART OF THE THINKER.— How strong metaphysical need is and how difficult nature renders our departure from it may be seen from the fact that even in the free spirit, when he has cast off everything metaphysical, the loftiest effects of art can easily produce a resounding of the long silent, even broken, metaphysical string—it may be, for instance, that at a passage in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony he feels himself floating above the earth in a starry dome with the dream of immortality in his heart ”

“ The abundance of religious feelings which have grown into a stream are always breaking forth again and desire to conquer new kingdoms, but the growth of the Enlightenment undermined the dogmas of religion and inspired a fundamental mistrust of them—so that the feelings, thrust by the Enlightenment out of the religious sphere, throw themselves into art, in a few cases into political life, even straight into science. Everywhere where human endeavour wears a loftier, gloomier aspect, it may be assumed that the fear of spirits, incense, and church-shadows have remained attached to it. ”

“ To him Nature—uncomprehended, terrible, mysterious Nature must appear as the sphere of liberty, of voluntariness, of the higher power, even as a superhuman degree of existence, as God. In those times and conditions, however, every individual felt that his existence, his happiness, and that of the family and the State, and the success of all undertakings, depended on those spontaneities of nature; certain natural events must appear at the right time, others be absent at the right time. How can one have any influence on these terrible unknown things, how can one bind the sphere of liberty ? ”

“ FORWARD.— And thus forward upon the path of wisdom, with a firm step and good confidence ! However you may be situated, serve yourself as a source of experience ! Throw off the displeasure at your nature, forgive yourself your own individuality, for in any case you have in yourself a ladder with a hundred steps upon which you can mount to knowledge. The age into which with grief you feel yourself thrown thinks you happy because of this good fortune ; it calls out to you that you shall still have experiences which men of later ages will perhaps be obliged to forego. ”