Friedrich Nietzsche
CHAPTER II (THE FREE SPIRIT)
24. O sancta simplicitiatas! In what strange simplification andfalsification man lives! One can never cease wondering when onceone has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have madeeverything around us clear and free and easy and simple! how wehave been able to give our senses a passport to everythingsuperficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton pranks andwrong inferences!--how from the beginning, we have contrived toretain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost inconceivablefreedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness, and gaiety--inorder to enjoy life! And only on this solidified, granitelikefoundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, thewill to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will,the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not asits opposite, but--as its refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed,that LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get over itsawkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of opposites wherethere are only degrees and many refinements of gradation; it isequally to be hoped that the incarnated Tartuffery of morals,which now belongs to our unconquerable "flesh and blood," willturn the words round in the mouths of us discerning ones. Hereand there we understand it, and laugh at the way in whichprecisely the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in thisSIMPLIFIED, thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, andsuitably falsified world: at the way in which, whether it will ornot, it loves error, because, as living itself, it loves life!
25. After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would fainbe heard; it appeals to the most serious minds. Take care, yephilosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom!Of suffering "for the truth's sake"! even in your own defense! Itspoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience;it makes you headstrong against objections and red rags; itstupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes, when in the struggle withdanger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worseconsequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last card asprotectors of truth upon earth--as though "the Truth" were suchan innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors!and you of all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance,Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, yeknow sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if YEjust carry your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher hascarried his point, and that there might be a more laudabletruthfulness in every little interrogative mark which you placeafter your special words and favourite doctrines (andoccasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn pantomimeand trumping games before accusers and law-courts! Rather go outof the way! Flee into concealment! And have your masks and yourruses, that ye may be mistaken for what you are, or somewhatfeared! And pray, don't forget the garden, the garden with goldentrellis-work! And have people around you who are as a garden--oras music on the waters at eventide, when already the day becomesa memory. Choose the GOOD solitude, the free, wanton, lightsomesolitude, which also gives you the right still to remain good inany sense whatsoever! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, doesevery long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means offorce! How PERSONAL does a long fear make one, a long watching ofenemies, of possible enemies! These pariahs of society, theselong-pursued, badly-persecuted ones--also the compulsoryrecluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos--always become in theend, even under the most intellectual masquerade, and perhapswithout being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekersand poison-Brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza'sethics and theology!), not to speak of the stupidity of moralindignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher thatthe sense of philosophical humour has left him. The martyrdom ofthe philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forcesinto the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him;and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artisticcuriosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy tounderstand the dangerous desire to see him also in hisdeterioration (deteriorated into a "martyr," into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire tobe clear WHAT spectacle one will see in any case--merely asatyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continuedproof that the long, real tragedy IS AT AN END, supposing thatevery philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin.
26. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and aprivacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority--where he may forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;--exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight tosuch men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in thegreat and exceptional sense. Whoever, in intercourse with men,does not occasionally glisten in all the green and grey coloursof distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess, andsolitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes;supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all thisburden and disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it,and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in hiscitadel, one thing is then certain: he was not made, he was notpredestined for knowledge. For as such, he would one day have tosay to himself: "The devil take my good taste! but 'the rule' ismore interesting than the exception--than myself, the exception!"And he would go DOWN, and above all, he would go "inside." Thelong and serious study of the AVERAGE man--and consequently muchdisguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad intercourse (allintercourse is bad intercourse except with one's equals):--thatconstitutes a necessary part of the life-history of everyphilosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, anddisappointing part. If he is fortunate, however, as a favouritechild of knowledge should be, he will meet with suitableauxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task; I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize the animal, thecommonplace and "the rule" in themselves, and at the same timehave so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talkof themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSES--sometimes theywallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill. Cynicism is theonly form in which base souls approach what is called honesty;and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finercynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomesshameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out.There are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust--namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound to some suchindiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case of the AbbeGaliani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest manof his century--he was far profounder than Voltaire, andconsequently also, a good deal more silent. It happens morefrequently, as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placedon an ape's body, a fine exceptional understanding in a basesoul, an occurrence by no means rare, especially among doctorsand moral physiologists. And whenever anyone speaks withoutbitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man as a belly withtwo requirements, and a head with one; whenever any one sees,seeks, and WANTS to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanityas the real and only motives of human actions; in short, when anyone speaks "badly"--and not even "ill"--of man, then ought thelover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; heought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there is talkwithout indignation. For the indignant man, and he whoperpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or,in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may indeed,morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the moreordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case. And no oneis such a LIAR as the indignant man.
27. It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinksand lives gangasrotogati [Footnote: Like the river Ganges:presto.] among those only who think and live otherwise--namely,kurmagati [Footnote: Like the tortoise: lento.], or at best"froglike," mandeikagati [Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (Ido everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!)--and oneshould be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinementof interpretation. As regards "the good friends," however, whoare always too easy-going, and think that as friends they have aright to ease, one does well at the very first to grant them aplay-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding--one can thuslaugh still; or get rid of them altogether, these good friends--and laugh then also!
28. What is most difficult to render from one language intoanother is the TEMPO of its style, which has its basis in thecharacter of the race, or to speak more physiologically, in theaverage TEMPO of the assimilation of its nutriment. There arehonestly meant translations, which, as involuntaryvulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the original, merelybecause its lively and merry TEMPO (which overleaps and obviatesall dangers in word and expression) could not also be rendered. AGerman is almost incapacitated for PRESTO in his language;consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of themost delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spiritedthought. And just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him inbody and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius areuntranslatable for him. Everything ponderous, viscous, andpompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style,are developed in profuse variety among Germans--pardon me forstating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture ofstiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the"good old time" to which it belongs, and as an expression ofGerman taste at a time when there was still a "German taste,"which was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. Lessing is anexception, owing to his histrionic nature, which understood much,and was versed in many things; he who was not the translator ofBayle to no purpose, who took refuge willingly in the shadow ofDiderot and Voltaire, and still more willingly among the Romancomedy-writers--Lessing loved also free-spiritism in the TEMPO,and flight out of Germany. But how could the German language,even in the prose of Lessing, imitate the TEMPO of Machiavelli,who in his "Principe" makes us breathe the dry, fine air ofFlorence, and cannot help presenting the most serious events in aboisterous allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artisticsense of the contrast he ventures to present--long, heavy,difficult, dangerous thoughts, and a TEMPO of the gallop, and ofthe best, wantonest humour? Finally, who would venture on aGerman translation of Petronius, who, more than any greatmusician hitherto, was a master of PRESTO in invention, ideas,and words? What matter in the end about the swamps of the sick,evil world, or of the "ancient world," when like him, one has thefeet of a wind, the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of awind, which makes everything healthy, by making everything RUN!And with regard to Aristophanes--that transfiguring,complementary genius, for whose sake one PARDONS all Hellenismfor having existed, provided one has understood in its fullprofundity ALL that there requires pardon and transfiguration;there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on PLATO'Ssecrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petitfait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no"Bible," nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic--but abook of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life--aGreek life which he repudiated--without an Aristophanes!
29. It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is aprivilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with thebest right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he isprobably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. Heenters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangerswhich life in itself already brings with it; not the least ofwhich is that no one can see how and where he loses his way,becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur ofconscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so farfrom the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, norsympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannoteven go back again to the sympathy of men!
30. Our deepest insights must--and should--appear as follies, andunder certain circumstances as crimes, when they comeunauthorizedly to the ears of those who are not disposed andpredestined for them. The exoteric and the esoteric, as they wereformerly distinguished by philosophers--among the Indians, asamong the Greeks, Persians, and Mussulmans, in short, whereverpeople believed in gradations of rank and NOT in equality andequal rights--are not so much in contradistinction to one anotherin respect to the exoteric class, standing without, and viewing,estimating, measuring, and judging from the outside, and not fromthe inside; the more essential distinction is that the class inquestion views things from below upwards--while the esotericclass views things FROM ABOVE DOWNWARDS. There are heights of thesoul from which tragedy itself no longer appears to operatetragically; and if all the woe in the world were taken together,who would dare to decide whether the sight of it wouldNECESSARILY seduce and constrain to sympathy, and thus to adoubling of the woe? . . . That which serves the higher class ofmen for nourishment or refreshment, must be almost poison to anentirely different and lower order of human beings. The virtuesof the common man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in aphilosopher; it might be possible for a highly developed man,supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualitiesthereby alone, for the sake of which he would have to be honouredas a saint in the lower world into which he had sunk. There arebooks which have an inverse value for the soul and the healthaccording as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or thehigher and more powerful, make use of them. In the former casethey are dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the lattercase they are herald-calls which summon the bravest to THEIRbravery. Books for the general reader are always ill-smellingbooks, the odour of paltry people clings to them. Where thepopulace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it isaccustomed to stink. One should not go into churches if onewishes to breathe PURE air.
31. In our youthful years we still venerate and despise withoutthe art of NUANCE, which is the best gain of life, and we haverightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and thingswith Yea and Nay. Everything is so arranged that the worst of alltastes, THE TASTE FOR THE UNCONDITIONAL, is cruelly befooled andabused, until a man learns to introduce a little art into hissentiments, and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial,as do the real artists of life. The angry and reverent spiritpeculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it hassuitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passionupon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying anddeceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continualdisillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself--stillardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse ofconscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tearsitself, how it revenges itself for its long self-blinding, asthough it had been a voluntary blindness! In this transition onepunishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments; one torturesone's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscienceto be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassitudeof a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses uponprinciple the cause AGAINST "youth."--A decade later, and onecomprehends that all this was also still--youth!
32. Throughout the longest period of human history--one calls itthe prehistoric period--the value or non-value of an action wasinferred from its CONSEQUENCES; the action in itself was nottaken into consideration, any more than its origin; but prettymuch as in China at present, where the distinction or disgrace ofa child redounds to its parents, the retro-operating power ofsuccess or failure was what induced men to think well or ill ofan action. Let us call this period the PRE-MORAL period ofmankind; the imperative, "Know thyself!" was then still unknown.--In the last ten thousand years, on the other hand, on certainlarge portions of the earth, one has gradually got so far, thatone no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its origin,decide with regard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole,an important refinement of vision and of criterion, theunconscious effect of the supremacy of aristocratic values and ofthe belief in "origin," the mark of a period which may bedesignated in the narrower sense as the MORAL one: the firstattempt at self-knowledge is thereby made. Instead of theconsequences, the origin--what an inversion of perspective! Andassuredly an inversion effected only after long struggle andwavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, a peculiarnarrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy preciselythereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the mostdefinite sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; peoplewere agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in thevalue of its intention. The intention as the sole origin andantecedent history of an action: under the influence of thisprejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men havejudged and even philosophized almost up to the present day.--Isit not possible, however, that the necessity may now have arisenof again making up our minds with regard to the reversing andfundamental shifting of values, owing to a new self-consciousnessand acuteness in man--is it not possible that we may be standingon the threshold of a period which to begin with, would bedistinguished negatively as ULTRA-MORAL: nowadays when, at leastamong us immoralists, the suspicion arises that the decisivevalue of an action lies precisely in that which is NOTINTENTIONAL, and that all its intentionalness, all that is seen,sensible, or "sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or skin--which, like every skin, betrays something, but CONCEALS stillmore? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign orsymptom, which first requires an explanation--a sign, moreover,which has too many interpretations, and consequently hardly anymeaning in itself alone: that morality, in the sense in which ithas been understood hitherto, as intention-morality, has been aprejudice, perhaps a prematureness or preliminariness, probablysomething of the same rank as astrology and alchemy, but in anycase something which must be surmounted. The surmounting ofmorality, in a certain sense even the self-mounting of morality--let that be the name for the long-secret labour which has beenreserved for the most refined, the most upright, and also themost wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones ofthe soul.
33. It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrificefor one's neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must bemercilessly called to account, and brought to judgment; just asthe aesthetics of "disinterested contemplation," under which theemasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to createitself a good conscience. There is far too much witchery andsugar in the sentiments "for others" and "NOT for myself," forone not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and for one askingpromptly: "Are they not perhaps--DECEPTIONS?"--That they PLEASE--him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also themere spectator--that is still no argument in their FAVOUR, butjust calls for caution. Let us therefore be cautious!
34. At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneselfnowadays, seen from every position, the ERRONEOUSNESS of theworld in which we think we live is the surest and most certainthing our eyes can light upon: we find proof after proof thereof,which would fain allure us into surmises concerning a deceptiveprinciple in the "nature of things." He, however, who makesthinking itself, and consequently "the spirit," responsible forthe falseness of the world--an honourable exit, which everyconscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of--he whoregards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, asfalsely DEDUCED, would have at least good reason in the end tobecome distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto beenplaying upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guaranteewould it give that it would not continue to do what it has alwaysbeen doing? In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers hassomething touching and respect-inspiring in it, which evennowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the requestthat it will give them HONEST answers: for example, whether it be"real" or not, and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely ata distance, and other questions of the same description. Thebelief in "immediate certainties" is a MORAL NAIVETE which doeshonour to us philosophers; but--we have now to cease being"MERELY moral" men! Apart from morality, such belief is a follywhich does little honour to us! If in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust is regarded as the sign of a "bad character," andconsequently as an imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our beingimprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a RIGHT to"bad character," as the being who has hitherto been most befooledon earth--he is now under OBLIGATION to distrustfulness, to thewickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.--Forgive methe joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for Imyself have long ago learned to think and estimate differentlywith regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at leasta couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with whichphilosophers struggle against being deceived. Why NOT? It isnothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more thansemblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in theworld. So much must be conceded: there could have been no life atall except upon the basis of perspective estimates andsemblances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity ofmany philosophers, one wished to do away altogether with the"seeming world"--well, granted that YOU could do that,--at leastnothing of your "truth" would thereby remain! Indeed, what is itthat forces us in general to the supposition that there is anessential opposition of "true" and "false"? Is it not enough tosuppose degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darkershades and tones of semblance--different valeurs, as the painterssay? Why might not the world WHICH CONCERNS US--be a fiction? Andto any one who suggested: "But to a fiction belongs anoriginator?"--might it not be bluntly replied: WHY? May not this"belong" also belong to the fiction? Is it not at lengthpermitted to be a little ironical towards the subject, just astowards the predicate and object? Might not the philosopherelevate himself above faith in grammar? All respect togovernesses, but is it not time that philosophy should renouncegoverness-faith?
35. O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklishin "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goesabout it too humanely--"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire lebien"--I wager he finds nothing!
36. Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our worldof desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other"reality" but just that of our impulses--for thinking is only arelation of these impulses to one another:--are we not permittedto make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is"given" does not SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for theunderstanding even of the so-called mechanical (or "material")world? I do not mean as an illusion, a "semblance," a"representation" (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian sense),but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotionsthemselves--as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, inwhich everything still lies locked in a mighty unity, whichafterwards branches off and develops itself in organic processes(naturally also, refines and debilitates)--as a kind ofinstinctive life in which all organic functions, including self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and change ofmatter, are still synthetically united with one another--as aPRIMARY FORM of life?--In the end, it is not only permitted tomake this attempt, it is commanded by the conscience of LOGICALMETHOD. Not to assume several kinds of causality, so long as theattempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to itsfurthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so):that is a morality of method which one may not repudiatenowadays--it follows "from its definition," as mathematicianssay. The question is ultimately whether we really recognize thewill as OPERATING, whether we believe in the causality of thewill; if we do so--and fundamentally our belief IN THIS is justour belief in causality itself--we MUST make the attempt to posithypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality."Will" can naturally only operate on "will"--and not on "matter"(not on "nerves," for instance): in short, the hypothesis must behazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever"effects" are recognized--and whether all mechanical action,inasmuch as a power operates therein, is not just the power ofwill, the effect of will. Granted, finally, that we succeeded inexplaining our entire instinctive life as the development andramification of one fundamental form of will--namely, the Will toPower, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functionscould be traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solutionof the problem of generation and nutrition--it is one problem--could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired theright to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER.The world seen from within, the world defined and designatedaccording to its "intelligible character"--it would simply be"Will to Power," and nothing else.
37. "What? Does not that mean in popular language: God isdisproved, but not the devil?"--On the contrary! On the contrary,my friends! And who the devil also compels you to speakpopularly!
38. As happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern timeswith the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quitesuperfluous when judged close at hand, into which, however, thenoble and visionary spectators of all Europe have interpretedfrom a distance their own indignation and enthusiasm so long andpassionately, UNTIL THE TEXT HAS DISAPPEARED UNDER THEINTERPRETATION), so a noble posterity might once moremisunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps only therebymake ITS aspect endurable.--Or rather, has not this alreadyhappened? Have not we ourselves been--that "noble posterity"?And, in so far as we now comprehend this, is it not--therebyalready past?
39. Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merelybecause it makes people happy or virtuous--excepting, perhaps,the amiable "Idealists," who are enthusiastic about the good,true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley, coarse, andgood-natured desirabilities swim about promiscuously in theirpond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. It is willinglyforgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that tomake unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter-arguments. A thing could be TRUE, although it were in the highestdegree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamentalconstitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by afull knowledge of it--so that the strength of a mind might bemeasured by the amount of "truth" it could endure--or to speakmore plainly, by the extent to which it REQUIRED truthattenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified. But thereis no doubt that for the discovery of certain PORTIONS of truththe wicked and unfortunate are more favourably situated and havea greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the wicked whoare happy--a species about whom moralists are silent. Perhapsseverity and craft are more favourable conditions for thedevelopment of strong, independent spirits and philosophers thanthe gentle, refined, yielding good-nature, and habit of takingthings easily, which are prized, and rightly prized in a learnedman. Presupposing always, to begin with, that the term"philosopher" be not confined to the philosopher who writesbooks, or even introduces HIS philosophy into books!--Stendhalfurnishes a last feature of the portrait of the free-spiritedphilosopher, which for the sake of German taste I will not omitto underline--for it is OPPOSED to German taste. "Pour etre bonphilosophe," says this last great psychologist, "il faut etresec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a unepartie du caractere requis pour faire des decouvertes enphilosophie, c'est-a-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est."
40. Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundestthings have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not theCONTRARY only be the right disguise for the shame of a God to goabout in? A question worth asking!--it would be strange if somemystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing. Thereare proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well tooverwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognizable;there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity afterwhich nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash thewitness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection. Many aone is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order atleast to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shameis inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is mostashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask--there is so muchgoodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with somethingcostly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsilyand rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: therefinement of his shame requiring it to be so. A man who hasdepths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisionsupon paths which few ever reach, and with regard to the existenceof which his nearest and most intimate friends may be ignorant;his mortal danger conceals itself from their eyes, and equally sohis regained security. Such a hidden nature, which instinctivelyemploys speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustiblein evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a mask ofhimself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of hisfriends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will someday be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask ofhim there--and that it is well to be so. Every profound spiritneeds a mask; nay, more, around every profound spirit therecontinually grows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that isto say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation of every word he utters, everystep he takes, every sign of life he manifests.
41. One must subject oneself to one's own tests that one isdestined for independence and command, and do so at the righttime. One must not avoid one's tests, although they constituteperhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the endtests made only before ourselves and before no other judge. Notto cleave to any person, be it even the dearest--every person isa prison and also a recess. Not to cleave to a fatherland, be iteven the most suffering and necessitous--it is even lessdifficult to detach one's heart from a victorious fatherland. Notto cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men, into whosepeculiar torture and helplessness chance has given us an insight.Not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one with the mostvaluable discoveries, apparently specially reserved for us. Notto cleave to one's own liberation, to the voluptuous distance andremoteness of the bird, which always flies further aloft in orderalways to see more under it--the danger of the flier. Not tocleave to our own virtues, nor become as a whole a victim to anyof our specialties, to our "hospitality" for instance, which isthe danger of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls, whodeal prodigally, almost indifferently with themselves, and pushthe virtue of liberality so far that it becomes a vice. One mustknow how TO CONSERVE ONESELF--the best test of independence.
42. A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture tobaptize them by a name not without danger. As far as I understandthem, as far as they allow themselves to be understood--for it istheir nature to WISH to remain something of a puzzle--thesephilosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly,claim to be designated as "tempters." This name itself is afterall only an attempt, or, if it be preferred, a temptation.
43. Will they be new friends of "truth," these comingphilosophers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto haveloved their truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. Itmust be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to theirtaste, that their truth should still be truth for every one--thatwhich has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose ofall dogmatic efforts. "My opinion is MY opinion: another personhas not easily a right to it"--such a philosopher of the futurewill say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing toagree with many people. "Good" is no longer good when one'sneighbour takes it into his mouth. And how could there be a"common good"! The expression contradicts itself; that which canbe common is always of small value. In the end things must be asthey are and have always been--the great things remain for thegreat, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrillsfor the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for therare.
44. Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free,VERY free spirits, these philosophers of the future--as certainlyalso they will not be merely free spirits, but something more,higher, greater, and fundamentally different, which does not wishto be misunderstood and mistaken? But while I say this, I feelunder OBLIGATION almost as much to them as to ourselves (we freespirits who are their heralds and forerunners), to sweep awayfrom ourselves altogether a stupid old prejudice andmisunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made theconception of "free spirit" obscure. In every country of Europe,and the same in America, there is at present something whichmakes an abuse of this name a very narrow, prepossessed,enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the opposite ofwhat our intentions and instincts prompt--not to mention that inrespect to the NEW philosophers who are appearing, they muststill more be closed windows and bolted doors. Briefly andregrettably, they belong to the LEVELLERS, these wrongly named"free spirits"--as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of thedemocratic taste and its "modern ideas" all of them men withoutsolitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whomneither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only,they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially intheir innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL humanmisery and failure in the old forms in which society has hithertoexisted--a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! Whatthey would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal,green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security,safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one, their twomost frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called "Equalityof Rights" and "Sympathy with All Sufferers"--and sufferingitself is looked upon by them as something which must be DONEAWAY WITH. We opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye andconscience to the question how and where the plant "man" hashitherto grown most vigorously, believe that this has alwaystaken place under the opposite conditions, that for this end thedangerousness of his situation had to be increased enormously,his inventive faculty and dissembling power (his "spirit") had todevelop into subtlety and daring under long oppression andcompulsion, and his Will to Life had to be increased to theunconditioned Will to Power--we believe that severity, violence,slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy,stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind,--thateverything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, andserpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the humanspecies as its opposite--we do not even say enough when we onlysay THIS MUCH, and in any case we find ourselves here, both withour speech and our silence, at the OTHER extreme of all modernideology and gregarious desirability, as their anti-podesperhaps? What wonder that we "free spirits" are not exactly themost communicative spirits? that we do not wish to betray inevery respect WHAT a spirit can free itself from, and WHEREperhaps it will then be driven? And as to the import of thedangerous formula, "Beyond Good and Evil," with which we at leastavoid confusion, we ARE something else than "libres-penseurs,""liben pensatori" "free-thinkers," and whatever these honestadvocates of "modern ideas" like to call themselves. Having beenat home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, havingescaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in whichpreferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of menand books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us,full of malice against the seductions of dependency which heconcealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of thesenses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes ofillness, because they always free us from some rule, and its"prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us,inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty,with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth andstomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business thatrequires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure,owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posteriorsouls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult topry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no footmay run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators,although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers andcollectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and ourfull-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting,inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories,sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day,yea, if necessary, even scarecrows--and it is necessary nowadays,that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealousfriends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and middaysolitude--such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhapsye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye NEWphilosophers?
Next: CHAPTER III (THE RELIGIOUS MOOD)
Table of Contents: Beyond Good and Evil
