noble
bane although generally mild and easily tamed, a raccoon will fight valiantly against great odds if cornered. 000124
...
marjorie How noble one must be to conquer themselves. The honor, the glory, the mundane rooted out into the open.. the horrorifying ideals of past times hurled to the ground in a whirl of dust and ashes as they burn.. your fingertips like molten lava reach deep to take my heart and help me conquer myself... 000129
...
camille Respectfully establishing a high moral character. 000129
...
me What Is Noble?
257.

Every elevation of the type "man," has
hitherto been the work of an
aristocratic society and so it will
always be--a society believing in a
long scale of gradations of rank and
differences of worth among human
beings, and requiring slavery in some
form or other. Without the pathos of
distance, such as grows out of the
incarnated difference of classes, out
of the constant out-looking and
down-looking of the ruling caste on
subordinates and instruments, and
out of their equally constant practice
of obeying and commanding, of
keeping down and keeping at a
distance--that other more
mysterious pathos could never have
arisen, the longing for an ever new
widening of distance within the soul
itself, the formation of ever higher,
rarer, further, more extended, more
comprehensive states, in short, just
the elevation of the type "man," the
continued "self-surmounting of man,"
to use a moral formula in a
supermoral sense. To be sure, one
must not resign oneself to any
humanitarian illusions about the
history of the origin of an aristocratic
society (that is to say, of the
preliminary condition for the
elevation of the type "man"): the truth
is hard. Let us acknowledge
unprejudicedly how every higher
civilisation hitherto has originated!
Men with a still natural nature,
barbarians in every terrible sense of
the word, men of prey, still in
possession of unbroken strength of
will and desire for power, threw
themselves upon weaker, more
moral, more peaceful races (perhaps
trading or cattle-rearing
communities), or upon old mellow
civilisations in which the final vital
force was flickering out in brilliant
fireworks of wit and depravity. At the
commencement, the noble caste was
always the barbarian caste: their
superiority did not consist first of all
in their physical, but in their
psychical power--they were more
complete men (which at every point
also implies the same as "more
complete beasts").

258.

Corruption--as the indication that
anarchy threatens to break out
among the instincts, and that the
foundation of the emotions, called
"life," is convulsed--is something
radically different according to the
organisation in which it manifests
itself. When, for instance, an
aristocracy like that of France at the
beginning of the Revolution, flung
away its privileges with sublime
disgust and sacrificed itself to an
excess of its moral sentiments, it was
corruption:-- it was really only the
closing act of the corruption which
had existed for centuries, by virtue of
which that aristocracy had abdicated
step by step its lordly prerogatives
and lowered itself to a function of
royalty (in the end even to its
decoration and parade-dress). The
essential thing, however, in a good
and healthy aristocracy is that it
should not regard itself as a function
either of the kingship or the
commonwealth, but as the
significance and highest justification
thereof--that it should therefore
accept with a good conscience the
sacrifice of a legion of individuals,
who, for its sake, must be suppressed
and reduced to imperfect men, to
slaves and instruments. Its
fundamental belief must be precisely
that society is not allowed to exist for
its own sake, but only as a foundation
and scaffolding, by means of which a
select class of beings may be able to
elevate themselves to their higher
duties, and in general to a higher
existence: like those sun-seeking
climbing plants in Java--they are
called Sipo Matador, --which
encircle an oak so long and so often
with their arms, until at last, high
above it, but supported by it, they can
unfold their tops in the open light,
and exhibit their happiness.

259.

To refrain mutually from injury, from
violence, from exploitation, and put
one's will on a par with that of others:
this may result in a certain rough
sense in good conduct among
individuals when the necessary
conditions are given (namely, the
actual similarity of the individuals in
amount of force and degree of worth,
and their co-relation within one
organisation). As soon, however, as
one wished to take this principle
more generally, and if possible even
as the fundamental principle of
society, it would immediately disclose
what it really is--namely, a Will to
the denial of life, a principle of
dissolution and decay. Here one must
think profoundly to the very basis
and resist all sentimental weakness:
life itself is essentially appropriation,
injury, conquest of the strange and
weak, suppression, severity,
obtrusion of peculiar forms,
incorporation, and at the least,
putting it mildest, exploitation;--but
why should one for ever use precisely
these words on which for ages a
disparaging purpose has been
stamped? Even the organisation
within which, as was previously
supposed, the individuals treat each
other as equal--it takes place in
every healthy aristocracy--must
itself, if it be a living and not a dying
organisation, do all that towards
other bodies, which the individuals
within it refrain from doing to each
other: it will have to be the
incarnated Will to Power, it will
endeavour to grow, to gain ground,
attract to itself and acquire
ascendency--not owing to any
morality or immorality, but because
it lives, and because life is precisely
Will to Power. On no point, however,
is the ordinary consciousness of
Europeans more unwilling to be
corrected than on this matter; people
now rave everywhere, even under the
guise of science, about coming
conditions of society in which "the
exploiting character" is to be
absent:-- that sounds to my ears as if
they promised to invent a mode of life
which should refrain from all organic
functions. "Exploitation" does not
belong to a depraved, or imperfect
and primitive society: it belongs to
the nature of the living being as a
primary organic function; it is a
consequence of the intrinsic Will to
Power, which is precisely the Will to
Life.--Granting that as a theory this
is a novelty--as a reality it is the
fundamental fact of all history: let us
be so far honest towards ourselves!

260.

In a tour through the many finer and
coarser moralities which have
hitherto prevailed or still prevail on
the earth, I found certain traits
recurring regularly together, and
connected with one another, until
finally two primary types revealed
themselves to me, and a radical
distinction was brought to light.
There is master-morality and
slave-morality; --I would at once
add, however, that in all higher and
mixed civilisations, there are also
attempts at the reconciliation of the
two moralities; but one finds still
oftener the confusion and mutual
misunderstanding of them, indeed
sometimes their close
juxtaposition--even in the same man,
within one soul. The distinctions of
moral values have either originated
in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious
of being different from the ruled--or
among the ruled class, the slaves and
dependents of all sorts. In the first
case, when it is the rulers who
determine the conception "good," it is
the exalted, proud disposition which
is regarded as the distinguishing
feature, and that which determines
the order of rank The noble type of
man separates from himself the
beings in whom the opposite of this
exalted, proud disposition displays
itself: he despises them. Let it at once
be noted that in this first kind of
morality the antithesis "good" and
"bad" means practically the same as
"noble" and "despicable";--the
antithesis "good" and "evil" is of a
different origin. The cowardly, the
timid, the insignificant, and those
thinking merely of narrow utility are
despised; moreover, also, the
distrustful, with their constrained
glances, the self-abasing, the
dog-like kind of men who let
themselves be abused, the mendicant
flatterers, and above all the liars:--it
is a fundamental belief of all
aristocrats that the common people
are untruthful. "We truthful
ones"--the nobility in ancient Greece
called themselves. It is obvious that
everywhere the designations of
moral value were at first applied to
men; and were only derivatively and
at a later period applied to actions; it
is a gross mistake, therefore, when
historians of morals start with
questions like, "Why have sympathetic
actions been praised?" The noble type
of man regards himself as a
determiner of values; he does not
require to be approved of; he passes
the judgment: "What is injurious to me
is injurious in itself"; he knows that it
is he himself only who confers
honour on things; he is a creator of
values. He honours whatever he
recognises in himself: such morality
equals self-glorification. In the
foreground there is the feeling of
plenitude, of power, which seeks to
overflow, the happiness of high
tension, the consciousness of a wealth
which would fain give and
bestow:--the noble man also helps
the unfortunate, but not--or
scarcely--out of pity, but rather from
an impulse generated by the
super-abundance of power. The
noble man honours in himself the
powerful one, him also who has
power over himself, who knows how
to speak and how to keep silence,
who takes pleasure in subjecting
himself to severity and hardness, and
has reverence for all that is severe
and hard. "Wotan placed a hard heart
in my breast," says an old
Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly
expressed from the soul of a proud
Viking. Such a type of man is even
proud of not being made for
sympathy; the hero of the Saga
therefore adds warningly: "He who
has not a hard heart when young, will
never have one." The noble and brave
who think thus are the furthest
removed from the morality which
sees, precisely in sympathy, or in
acting for the good of others, or in
desinteressement, the characteristic
of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in
oneself, a radical enmity and irony
towards "selflessness," belong as
definitely to noble morality, as do a
careless scorn and precaution in
presence of sympathy and the "warm
heart."--It is the powerful who know
how to honour, it is their art, their
domain for invention. The profound
reverence for age and for
tradition--all law rests on this
double reverence,--the belief and
prejudice in favour of ancestors and
unfavourable to newcomers, is
typical in the morality of the
powerful; and if, reversely, men of
"modern ideas" believe almost
instinctively in progress and the
"future," and are more and more
lacking in respect for old age, the
ignoble origin of these "ideas" has
complacently betrayed itself thereby.
A morality of the ruling class,
however, is more especially foreign
and irritating to present-day taste in
the sternness of its principle that one
has duties only to one's equals; that
one may act towards beings of a
lower rank, towards all that is
foreign, just as seems good to one, or
"as the heart desires," and in any case
"beyond good and evil": it is here that
sympathy and similar sentiments can
have a place. The ability and
obligation to exercise prolonged
gratitude and prolonged revenge
both only within the circle of
equals,--artfulness in retaliation,
raffinement of the idea in friendship,
a certain necessity to have enemies
(as outlets for the emotions of envy,
quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact,
in order to be a good friend)a: all
these are typical characteristics of
the noble morality, which, as has
been pointed out, is not the morality
of "modern ideas," and is therefore at
present difficult to realise, and also
to unearth and disclose.--It is
otherwise with the second type of
morality, slave-morality. Supposing
that the abused, the oppressed, the
suffering, the unemancipated, the
weary, and those uncertain of
themselves should moralise, what
will be the common element in their
moral estimates? Probably a
pessimistic suspicion with regard to
the entire situation of man will find
expression, perhaps a condemnation
of man, together with his situation.
The slave has an unfavourable eye for
the virtues of the powerful; he has a
scepticism and distrust, a refinement
of distrust of everything "good" that is
there honoured--he would fain
persuade himself that the very
happiness there is not genuine. On
the other hand, those qualities which
serve to alleviate the existence of
sufferers are brought into
prominence and flooded with light; it
is here that sympathy, the kind,
helping hand, the warm heart,
patience, diligence, humility, and
friendliness attain to honour; for
here these are the most useful
qualities, and almost the only means
of supporting the burden of
existence. Slave-morality is
essentially the morality of utility.
Here is the seat of the origin of the
famous antithesis "good" and "evil":
--power and dangerousness are
assumed to reside in the evil, a
certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and
strength, which do not admit of being
despised. According to
slave-morality, therefore, the "evil"
man arouses fear; according to
master-morality, it is precisely the
"good" man who arouses fear and
seeks to arouse it, while the bad man
is regarded as the despicable being.
The contrast attains its maximum
when, in accordance with the logical
consequences of slave- morality, a
shade of depreciation--it may be
slight and well-intentioned--at last
attaches itself to the "good" man of
this morality; because, according to
the servile mode of thought, the good
man must in any case be the safe man:
he is good-natured, easily deceived,
perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme.
Everywhere that slave-morality
gains the ascendency, language shows
a tendency to approximate the
significations of the words "good" and
"stupid."--A last fundamental
difference: the desire for freedom, the
instinct for happiness and the
refinements of the feeling of liberty
belong as necessarily to slave-morals
and morality, as artifice and
enthusiasm in reverence and
devotion are the regular symptoms of
an aristocratic mode of thinking and
estimating.--Hence we can
understand without further detail
why love as a passion--it is our
European specialty--must absolutely
be of noble origin; as is well known,
its invention is due to the Provencal
poet-cavaliers, those brilliant,
ingenious men of the "gai saber," to
whom Europe owes so much, and
almost owes itself.

261.

Vanity is one of the things which are
perhaps most difficult for a noble
man to understand: he will be
tempted to deny it, where another
kind of man thinks he sees it
self-evidently. The problem for him
is to represent to his mind beings who
seek to arouse a good opinion of
themselves which they themselves do
not possess--and consequently also
do not "deserve,"--and who yet
believe in this good opinion
afterwards. This seems to him on the
one hand such bad taste and so
self-disrespectful, and on the other
hand so grotesquely unreasonable,
that he would like to consider vanity
an exception, and is doubtful about it
in most cases when it is spoken of. He
will say, for instance: "I may be
mistaken about my value, and on the
other hand may nevertheless demand
that my value should be
acknowledged by others precisely as I
rate it:--that, however, is not vanity
(but self-conceit, or, in most cases,
that which is called 'humility,' and
also 'modesty')." Or he will even say:
"For many reasons I can delight in the
good opinion of others, perhaps
because I love and honour them, and
rejoice in all their joys, perhaps also
because their good opinion endorses
and strengthens my belief in my own
good opinion, perhaps because the
good opinion of others, even in cases
where I do not share it, is useful to
me, or gives promise of
usefulness:--all this, however, is not
vanity." The man of noble character
must first bring it home forcibly to
his mind, especially with the aid of
history, that, from time immemorial,
in all social strata in any way
dependent, the ordinary man was
only that which he passed for:--not
being at all accustomed to fix values,
he did not assign even to himself any
other value than that which his
master assigned to him (it is the
peculiar right of masters to create
values). It may be looked upon as the
result of an extraordinary atavism,
that the ordinary man, even at
present, is still always waiting for an
opinion about himself and then
instinctively submitting himself to it;
yet by no means only to a "good"
opinion, but also to a bad and unjust
one (think, for instance, of the
greater part of the self-appreciations
and self-depreciations which
believing women learn from their
confessors, and which in general the
believing Christian learns from his
Church). In fact, conformably to the
slow rise of the democratic social
order (and its cause, the blending of
the blood of masters and slaves), the
originally noble and rare impulse of
the masters to assign a value to
themselves and to "think well" of
themselves, will now be more and
more encouraged and extended; but
it has at all times an older, ampler,
and more radically ingrained
propensity opposed to it--and in the
phenomenon of 'vanity" this older
propensity overmasters the younger.
The vain person rejoices over every
good opinion which he hears about
himself (quite apart from the point of
view of its usefulness, and equally
regardless of its truth or falsehood),
just as he suffers from every bad
opinion: for he subjects himself to
both, he feels himself subjected to
both, by that oldest instinct of
subjection which breaks forth in
him.--It is "the slave" in the vain
man's blood, the remains of the
slave's craftiness--and how much of
the "slave" is still left in woman, for
instance!--which seeks to seduce to
good opinions of itself; it is the slave,
too, who immediately afterwards
falls prostrate himself before these
opinions, as though he had not called
them forth.--And to repeat it again:
vanity is an atavism.

262.

A species originates, and a type
becomes established and strong in the
long struggle with essentially
constant unfavourable conditions. On
the other hand, it is known by the
experience of breeders that species
which receive super-abundant
nourishment, and in general a surplus
of protection and care, immediately
tend in the most marked way to
develop variations, and are fertile in
prodigies and monstrosities (also in
monstrous vices). Now look at an
aristocratic commonwealth, say an
ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a
voluntary or involuntary contrivance
for the purpose of rearing human
beings; there are there men beside
one another, thrown upon their own
resources, who want to make their
species prevail, chiefly because they
must prevail, or else run the terrible
danger of being exterminated. The
favour, the super-abundance, the
protection are there lacking under
which variations are fostered; the
species needs itself as species, as
something which, precisely by virtue
of its hardness, its uniformity, and
simplicity of structure, can in general
prevail and make itself permanent in
constant struggle with its neighbours,
or with rebellious or
rebellion-threatening vassals. The
most varied experience teaches it
what are the qualities to which it
principally owes the fact that it still
exists, in spite of all Gods and men,
and has hitherto been victorious:
these qualities it calls virtues, and
these virtues alone it develops to
maturity. It does so with severity,
indeed it desires severity; every
aristocratic morality is intolerant in
the education of youth, in the control
of women, in the marriage customs,
in the relations of old and young, in
the penal laws (which have an eye
only for the degenerating): it counts
intolerance itself among the virtues,
under the name of "justice." A type
with few, but very marked features, a
species of severe, warlike, wisely
silent, reserved, and reticent men
(and as such, with the most delicate
sensibility for the charm and nuances
of society) is thus established,
unaffected by the vicissitudes of
generations; the constant struggle
with uniform unfavourable
conditions is, as already remarked,
the cause of a type becoming stable
and hard. Finally, however, a happy
state of things results, the enormous
tension is relaxed; there are perhaps
no more enemies among the
neighbouring peoples, and the means
of life, even of the enjoyment of life,
are present in super abundance. With
one stroke the bond and constraint of
the old discipline severs: it is no
longer regarded as necessary, as a
condition of existence--if it would
continue, it can only do so as a form
of luxury, as an archaising taste.
Variations, whether they be
deviations (into the higher, finer, and
rarer), or deteriorations and
monstrosities, appear suddenly on
the scene in the greatest exuberance
and splendour; the individual dares
to be individual and detach himself.
At this turning-point of history there
manifest themselves, side by side, and
often mixed and entangled together,
a magnificent, manifold,
virgin-forest-like up-growth and
up-striving, a kind of tropical tempo
in the rivalry of growth, and an
extraordinary decay and
self-destruction, owing to the
savagely opposing and seemingly
exploding egoisms, which strive with
one an other "for sun and light," and
can no longer assign any limit,
restraint, or forbearance for
themselves by means of the hitherto
existing morality. It was this morality
itself which piled up the strength so
enormously, which bent the bow in so
threatening a manner:--it is now "out
of date," it is getting "out of date." The
dangerous and disquieting point has
been reached when the greater, more
manifold, more comprehensive life is
lived beyond the old morality; the
"individual" stands out, and is obliged
to have recourse to his own
law-giving, his own arts and artifices
for self-preservation, self-elevation,
and self-deliverance. Nothing but
new "Whys," nothing but new "Hows,"
no common formulas any longer,
misunderstanding and disregard in
league with each other, decay,
deterioration, and the loftiest desires
frightfully entangled, the genius of
the race overflowing from all the
cornucopias of good and bad, a
portentous simultaneousness of
Spring and Autumn, full of new
charms and mysteries peculiar to the
fresh, still inexhausted, still
unwearied corruption. Danger is
again present, the mother of
morality, great danger; this time
shifted into the individual, into the
neighbour and friend, into the street,
into their own child, into their own
heart, into all the most personal and
secret recesses of their desires and
volitions. What will the moral
philosophers who appear at this time
have to preach? They discover, these
sharp onlookers and loafers, that the
end is quickly approaching, that
everything around them decays and
produces decay, that nothing will
endure until the day after
to-morrow, except one species of
man, the incurably mediocre. The
mediocre alone have a prospect of
continuing and propagating
themselves--they will be the men of
the future, the sole survivors; "be like
them! become mediocre!" is now the
only morality which has still a
significance, which still obtains a
hearing.--But it is difficult to preach
this morality of mediocrity! it can
never avow what it is and what it
desires! it has to talk of moderation
and dignity and duty and brotherly
love--it will have difficulty in
concealing its irony!

263.

There is an instinct for rank, which
more than anything else is already
the sign of a high rank; there is a
delight in the nuances of reverence
which leads one to infer noble origin
and habits. The refinement, goodness,
and loftiness of a soul are put to a
perilous test when something passes
by that is of the highest rank, but is
not yet protected by the awe of
authority from obtrusive touches and
incivilities: something that goes its
way like a living touchstone,
undistinguished, undiscovered, and
tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled
and disguised. He whose task and
practice it is to investigate souls, will
avail himself of many varieties of this
very art to determine the ultimate
value of a soul, the unalterable,
innate order of rank to which it
belongs: he will test it by its instinct
for reverence. Différence engendre
haine: the vulgarity of many a nature
spurts up suddenly like dirty water,
when any holy vessel, any jewel from
closed shrines, any book bearing the
marks of great destiny, is brought
before it; while on the other hand,
there is an involuntary silence, a
hesitation of the eye, a cessation of all
gestures, by which it is indicated that
a soul feels the nearness of what is
worthiest of respect. The way in
which, on the whole, the reverence
for the Bible has hitherto been
maintained in Europe, is perhaps the
best example of discipline and
refinement of manners which Europe
owes to Christianity: books of such
profoundness and supreme
significance require for their
protection an external tyranny of
authority, in order to acquire the
period of thousands of years which is
necessary to exhaust and unriddle
them. Much has been achieved when
the sentiment has been at last
instilled into the masses (the
shallow-pates and the boobies of
every kind) that they are not allowed
to touch everything, that there are
holy experiences before which they
must take off their shoes and keep
away the unclean hand--it is almost
their highest advance towards
humanity. On the contrary, in the
so-called cultured classes, the
believers in "modern ideas," nothing
is perhaps so repulsive as their lack
of shame, the easy insolence of eye
and hand with which they touch,
taste, and finger everything; and it is
possible that even yet there is more
relative nobility of taste, and more
tact for reverence among the people,
among the lower classes of the
people, especially among peasants,
than among the newspaper-reading
demimonde of intellect, the cultured
class.

264.

It cannot be effaced from a man's soul
what his ancestors have preferably
and most constantly done: whether
they were perhaps diligent
economisers attached to a desk and a
cash-box, modest and citizen-like in
their desires, modest also in their
virtues; or whether they were
accustomed to commanding from
morning till night, fond of rude
pleasures and probably of still ruder
duties and responsibilities; or
whether, finally, at one time or
another, they have sacrificed old
privileges of birth and possession, in
order to live wholly for their
faith--for their "God,"--as men of an
inexorable and sensitive conscience,
which blushes at every compromise.
It is quite impossible for a man not to
have the qualities and predilections
of his parents and ancestors in his
constitution, whatever appearances.
may suggest to the contrary. This is
the problem of race. Granted that one
knows something of the parents, it is
admissible to draw a conclusion
about the child: any kind of offensive
incontinence, any kind of sordid
envy; or of clumsy self-vaunting--the
three things which together have
constituted the genuine plebeian type
in all times--such must pass over to
the child, as surely as bad blood; and
with the help of the best education
and culture one will only succeed in
deceiving with regard to such
heredity.--And what else does
education and culture try to do
nowadays! In our very democratic, or
rather, very plebeian age, "education"
and "culture" must be essentially the
art of deceiving--deceiving with
regard to origin, with regard to the
inherited plebeianism in body and
soul. An educator who nowadays
preached truthfulness above
everything else, and called out
constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be
natural! Show yourselves as you
are!"--even such a virtuous and
sincere ass would learn in a short
time to have recourse to the furca of
Horace, naturam expellere: with what
results? "Plebeianism" usque recurret.

265.

At the risk of displeasing innocent
ears, I submit that egoism belongs to
the essence of a noble soul, I mean the
unalterable belief that to a being such
as "we," other beings must naturally
be in subjection, and have to sacrifice
themselves. The noble soul accepts
the fact of his egoism without
question, and also without
consciousness of harshness,
constraint, or arbitrariness therein,
but rather as something that may
have its basis in the primary law of
things:--if he sought a designation
for it he would say: "It is justice itself."
He acknowledges under certain
circumstances, which made him
hesitate at first, that there are other
equally privileged ones; as soon as he
has settled this question of rank, he
moves among those equals and
equally privileged ones with the same
assurance, as regards modesty and
delicate respect, which he enjoys in
intercourse with himself--in
accordance with an innate heavenly
mechanism which all the stars
understand. It is an additional
instance of his egoism, this artfulness
and self-limitation in intercourse
with his equals--every star is a
similar egoist, he honours himself in
them, and in the rights which he
concedes to them, he has no doubt
that the exchange of honours and
rights, as the essence of all
intercourse, belongs also to the
natural condition of things. The noble
soul gives as he takes, prompted by
the passionate and sensitive instinct
of requital, which is at the root of his
nature. The notion of "favour" has,
inter pares, neither significance nor
good repute; there may be a sublime
way of letting gifts as it were light
upon one from above, and of drinking
them thirstily like dew-drops; but for
those arts and displays the noble soul
has no aptitude. His egoism hinders
him here: in general, he looks "aloft"
unwillingly--he looks either forward,
horizontally and deliberately, or
downwards--he knows that he is on a
height.

266.

"One can only truly esteem him who
does not look out for
himself"--Goethe to Rath Schlosser.

267.

The Chinese have a proverb which
mothers even teach their children:
"Siao-sin" ("make thy heart small").
This is the essentially fundamental
tendency in latter-day civilisations. I
have no doubt that an ancient Greek,
also, would first of all remark the
self-dwarfing in us Europeans of
to-day--in this respect alone we
should immediately be "distasteful" to
him.

268.

What, after all, is
ignobleness?--Words are vocal
symbols for ideas; ideas, however,
are more or less definite mental
symbols for frequently returning and
concurring sensations, for groups of
sensations. It is not sufficient to use
the same words in order to
understand one another: we must
also employ the same words for the
same kind of internal experiences, we
must in the end have experiences in
common. On this account the people
of one nation understand one another
better than those belonging to
different nations, even when they use
the same language; or rather, when
people have lived long together
under similar conditions (of climate,
soil, danger, requirement, toil) there
originates therefrom an entity that
"understands itself"--namely, a
nation. In all souls a like number of
frequently recurring experiences
have gained the upper hand over
those occurring more rarely: about
these matters people understand one
another rapidly and always more
rapidly--the history of language is
the history of a process of
abbreviation; on the basis of this
quick comprehension people always
unite closer and closer. The greater
the danger, the greater is the need of
agreeing quickly and readily about
what is necessary; not to
misunderstand one another in
danger--that is what cannot at all be
dispensed with in intercourse. Also in
all loves and friendships one has the
experience that nothing of the kind
continues when the discovery has
been made that in using the same
words, one of the two parties has
feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes,
or fears different from those of the
other. (The fear of the "eternal
misunderstanding": that is the good
genius which so often keeps persons
of different sexes from too hasty
attachments, to which sense and
heart prompt them--and not some
Schopenhauerian "genius of the
species"!) Whichever groups of
sensations within a soul awaken most
readily, begin to speak, and give the
word of command--these decide as
to the general order of rank of its
values, and determine ultimately its
list of desirable things. A man's
estimates of value betray something
of the structure of his soul, and
wherein it sees its conditions of life,
its intrinsic needs. Supposing now
that necessity has from all time
drawn together only such men as
could express similar requirements
and similar experiences by similar
symbols, it results on the whole that
the easy communicability of need,
which implies ultimately the
undergoing only of average and
common experiences, must have been
the most potent of all the forces
which have hitherto operated upon
mankind. The more similar, the more
ordinary people, have always had and
are still having the advantage; the
more select, more refined, more
unique, and difficult to comprehend,
are liable to stand alone; they
succumb to accidents in their
isolation, and seldom propagate
themselves. One must appeal to
immense opposing forces, in order to
thwart this natural, all-too-natural
progressus in simile, the evolution of
man to the similar, the ordinary, the
average, the gregarious--to the
ignoble!-

269.

The more a psychologist--a born, an
unavoidable psychologist and
soul-diviner--turns his attention to
the more select cases and individuals,
the greater is his danger of being
suffocated by sympathy: he needs
sternness and cheerfulness more than
any other man. For the corruption,
the ruination of higher men, of the
more unusually constituted souls, is
in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have
such a rule always before one's eyes.
The manifold torment of the
psychologist who has discovered this
ruination, who discovers once, and
then discovers almost repeatedly
throughout all history, this universal
inner "desperateness" of higher men,
this eternal "too late!" in every
sense--may perhaps one day be the
cause of his turning with bitterness
against his own lot, and of his making
an attempt at self-destruction--of his
"going to ruin" himself. One may
perceive in almost every psychologist
a tell-tale inclination for delightful
intercourse with commonplace and
well-ordered men; the fact is thereby
disclosed that he always requires
healing, that he needs a sort of flight
and forgetfulness, away from what
his insight and incisiveness--from
what his "business"--has laid upon his
conscience. The fear of his memory is
peculiar to him. He is easily silenced
by the judgment of others; he hears
with unmoved countenance how
people honour, admire, love, and
glorify, where he has perceived--or
he even conceals his silence by
expressly assenting to some plausible
opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his
situation becomes so dreadful that,
precisely where he has learnt great
sympathy, together with great
contempt, the multitude, the
educated, and the visionaries, have
on their part learnt great
reverence--reverence for "great
men" and marvellous animals, for the
sake of whom one blesses and
honours the fatherland, the earth, the
dignity of mankind, and one's own
self, to whom one points the young,
and in view of whom one educates
them. And who knows but in all great
instances hitherto just the same
happened: that the multitude
worshipped a God, and that the "God"
was only a poor sacrificial animal!
Success has always been the greatest
liar--and the "work" itself is a
success; the great statesman, the
conqueror, the discoverer, are
disguised in their creations until they
are unrecognisable; the "work" of the
artist, of the philosopher, only
invents him who has created it, is
reputed to have created it; the "great
men, as they are reverenced, are poor
little fictions composed afterwards;
in the world of historical values
spurious coinage prevails. Those
great poets, for example, such as
Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist,
Gogol (I do not venture to mention
much greater names, but I have them
in my mind), as they now appear, and
were perhaps obliged to be: men of
the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous,
and childish, light-minded and
impulsive in their trust and distrust;
with souls in which usually some flaw
has to be concealed; often taking
revenge with their works for an
internal defilement, often seeking
forgetfulness in their soaring from a
too true memory, often lost in the
mud and almost in love with it, until
they become like the
Will-o'-the-Wisps around the
swamps, and pretend to be stars--the
people then call them
idealists,--often struggling with
protracted disgust, with an
ever-reappearing phantom of
disbelief, which makes them cold, and
obliges them to languish for gloria
and devour "faith as it is" out of the
hands of intoxicated
adulators:--what a torment these
great artists are and the so-called
higher men in general, to him who
has once found them out! It is thus
conceivable that it is just from
woman--who is clairvoyant in the
world of suffering, and also
unfortunately eager to help and save
to an extent far beyond her
powers--that they have learnt so
readily those outbreaks of boundless
devoted sympathy, which the
multitude, above all the reverent
multitude, do not understand, and
overwhelm with prying and
self-gratifying interpretations. This
sympathising invariably deceives
itself as to its power; woman would
like to believe that love can do
everything--it is the superstition
peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows
the heart finds out how poor,
helpless, pretentious, and blundering
even the best and deepest love is--he
finds that it rather destroys than
saves!--It is possible that under the
holy fable and travesty of the life of
Jesus there is hidden one of the most
painful cases of the martyrdom of
knowledge about love: the martyrdom
of the most innocent and most
craving heart, that never had enough
of any human love, that demanded
love, that demanded inexorably and
frantically to be loved and nothing
else, with terrible outbursts against
those who refused him their love; the
story of a poor soul insatiated and
insatiable in love, that had to invent
hell to send thither those who would
not love him--and that at last,
enlightened about human love, had to
invent a God who is entire love,
entire capacity for love--who takes
pity on human love, because it is so
paltry, so ignorant! He who has such
sentiments, he who has such
knowledge about love--seeks for
death!--But why should one deal
with such painful matters? Provided,
of course, that one is not obliged to
do so.

270.

The intellectual haughtiness and
loathing of every man who has
suffered deeply--it almost
determines the order of rank how
deeply men can suffer--the chilling
certainty, with which he is
thoroughly imbued and coloured,
that by virtue of his suffering he
knows more than the shrewdest and
wisest can ever know, that he has
been familiar with, and "at home" in,
many distant, dreadful worlds of
which "you know nothing"!--this
silent intellectual haughtiness of the
sufferer, this pride of the elect of
knowledge, of the "initiated," of the
almost sacrificed, finds all forms of
disguise necessary to protect itself
from contact with officious and
sympathising hands, and in general
from all that is not its equal in
suffering. Profound suffering makes
noble: it separates.--One of the most
refined forms of disguise is
Epicurism, along with a certain
ostentatious boldness of taste, which
takes suffering lightly, and puts itself
on the defensive against all that is
sorrowful and profound. They are
"gay men" who make use of gaiety,
because they are misunderstood on
account of it--theywish to be
misunderstood. There are "scientific
minds" who make use of science,
because it gives a gay appearance,
and because scientificness leads to
the conclusion that a person is
superficial--they wish to mislead to a
false conclusion. There are free
insolent minds which would fain
conceal and deny that they are
broken, proud, incurable hearts (the
cynicism of Hamlet--the case of
Galiani); and occasionally folly itself
is the mask of an unfortunate
over-assured knowledge.--From
which it follows that it is the part of a
more refined humanity to have
reverence "for the mask," and not to
make use of psychology and curiosity
in the wrong place.

271.

That which separates two men most
profoundly is a different sense and
grade of purity. What does it matter
about all their honesty and reciprocal
usefulness, what does if matter about
all their mutual good-will: the fact
still remains--they "cannot smell
each other!" The highest instinct for
purity places him who is affected with
it in the most extraordinary and
dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it
is just holiness--the highest
spiritualisation of the instinct in
question. Any kind of cognisance of
an indescribable excess in the joy of
the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst
which perpetually impels the soul out
of night into the morning, and out of
gloom, out of "affliction" into
clearness, brightness, depth, and
refinement:--just as much as such a
tendency distinguishes--it is a noble
tendency--it also separates.--The
pity of the saint is pity for the filth of
the human, all-to-human. And there
are grades and heights where pity
itself is regarded by him as impurity,
as Filth.

272.

Signs of nobility: never to think of
lowering our duties to the rank of
duties for everybody; to be unwilling
to renounce or to share our
responsibilities; to count our
prerogatives, and the exercise of
them, among our duties.

273.

A man who strives after great things,
looks upon every one whom he
encounters on his way either as a
means of advance, or a delay and
hindrance--or as a temporary
resting-place. His peculiar lofty
bounty to his fellow-men is only
possible when he attains his elevation
and dominates. Impatience, and the
consciousness of being always
condemned to comedy up to that
time--for even strife is a comedy, and
conceals the end, as every means
does--spoil all intercourse for him;
this kind of man is acquainted with
solitude, and what is most poisonous
in it.

274.

The Problem of Those Who
Wait.--Happy chances are necessary,
and many incalculable elements, in
order that a higher man in whom the
solution of a problem is dormant,
may yet take action, or "break forth,"
as one might say--at the right
moment. On an average it does not
happen; and in all corners of the
earth there are waiting ones sitting
who hardly know to what extent they
are waiting, and still less that they
wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the
waking call comes too late--the
chance which gives "permission" to
take action--when their best youth,
and strength for action have been
used up in sitting still; and how many
a one, just as he "sprang up," has
found with horror that his limbs are
benumbed and his spirits are now too
heavy! "It is too late," he has said to
himself--and has become
self-distrustful and henceforth for
ever useless.--In the domain of
genius, may not the "Raphael without
hands" (taking the expression in its
widest sense) perhaps not be the
exception, but the rule?--Perhaps
genius is by no means so rare: but
rather the five hundred hands which
it requires in order to tyrannise over
the "the right time"--in order to take
chance by the forelock!

275.

He who does not wish to see the
height of a man, looks all the more
sharply at what is low in him, and in
the foreground--and thereby betrays
himself.

276.

In all kinds of injury and loss the
lower and coarser soul is better off
than the nobler soul: the dangers of
the latter must be greater, the
probability that it will come to grief
and perish is in fact immense,
considering the multiplicity of the
conditions of its existence.--In a
lizard a finger grows again which has
been lost; not so in man.--

277.

It is too bad! Always the old story!
When a man has finished building his
house, he finds that he has learnt
unawares something which he ought
absolutely to have known before
he--began to build. The eternal, fatal
"Too late!" The melancholia of
everything completed!--

278.

--Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee
follow thy path without scorn,
without love, with unfathomable
eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which
has returned to the light unsated out
of every depth--what did it seek
down there?--with a bosom that
never sighs, with lips that conceal
their loathing, with a hand which only
slowly grasps: who art thou? what
hast thou done? Rest thee here: this
place has hospitality for every
one--refresh thyself! And whoever
thou art, what is it that now pleases
thee? What will serve to refresh thee?
Only name it, whatever I have I offer
thee! "To refresh me? To refresh me?
Oh, thou prying one, what sayest
thou! But give me, I pray thee--"
What? what? Speak out! "Another
mask! A second mask!"

279.

Men of profound sadness betray
themselves when they are happy: they
have a mode of seizing upon
happiness as though they would
choke and strangle it, out of
jealousy--ah, they know only too
well that it will flee from them!

280.

"Bad! Bad! What? Does he not--go
back?" Yes! But you misunderstand
him when you complain about it. He
goes back like every one who is about
to make a great spring.

281.

--"Will people believe it of me? But I
insist that they believe it of me: I have
always thought very unsatisfactorily
of myself and about myself, only in
very rare cases, only compulsorily,
always without delight in 'the
subject,' ready to digress from
'myself,' and always without faith in
the result, owing to an unconquerable
distrust of the possibility of
self-knowledge, which has led me so
far as to feel a contradicio in adjecto
even in the idea of 'direct knowledge'
which theorists allow
themselves:--this matter of fact is
almost the most certain thing I know
about myself. There must be a sort of
repugnance in me to believe anything
definite about myself.--Is there
perhaps some enigma therein?
Probably; but fortunately nothing for
my own teeth.--Perhaps it betrays
the species to which I belong?--but
not to myself as is sufficiently
agreeable to me."

282.

--"But what has happened to
you?"--"I do not know," he said,
hesitatingly; "perhaps the Harpies
have flown over my table."--It some
times happens nowadays that a
gentle, sober, retiring man becomes
suddenly mad, breaks the plates,
upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and
shocks everybody--and finally
withdraws, ashamed, and raging at
himself--hither? for what purpose?
To famish apart? To suffocate with
his memories? To him who has the
desires of a lofty and dainty soul, and
only seldom finds his table laid and
his food prepared, the danger will
always be great--nowadays,
however, it is extraordinarily so.
Thrown into the midst of a noisy and
plebeian age, with which he does not
like to eat out of the same dish, he
may readily perish of hunger and
thirst--or, should he nevertheless
finally "fall to," of sudden
nausea.--We have probably all sat at
tables to which we did not belong;
and precisely the most spiritual of us,
who are most difficult to nourish,
know the dangerous dyspepsia which
originates from a sudden insight and
disillusionment about our food and
our messmates--the after-dinner
nausea.

283.

If one wishes to praise at all, it is a
delicate and at the same time a noble
self-control, to praise only where
one does not agree--otherwise in fact
one would praise oneself, which is
contrary to good taste:--a
self-control, to be sure, which offers
excellent opportunity and
provocation to constant
misunderstanding. To be able to
allow oneself this veritable luxury of
taste and morality, one must not live
among intellectual imbeciles, but
rather among men whose
misunderstandings and mistakes
amuse by their refinement--or one
will have to pay dearly for it!--"He
praises me, therefore he
acknowledges me to be right"--this
asinine method of inference spoils
half of the life of us recluses, for it
brings the asses into our
neighbourhood and friendship.

284.

To live in a vast and proud
tranquillity; always beyond ... To
have, or not to have, one's emotions,
one's For and Against, according to
choice; to lower oneself to them for
hours; to seat oneself on them as
upon horses, and often as upon
asses:--for one must know how to
make use of their stupidity as well as
of their fire. To conserve one's three
hundred foregrounds; also one's
black spectacles: for there are
circumstances when nobody must
look into our eyes, still less into our
"motives." And to choose for company
that roguish and cheerful vice,
politeness. And to remain master of
one's four virtues, courage, insight,
sympathy, and solitude. For solitude
is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent
and bias to purity, which divines that
in the contact of man and man--in
society"--it must be unavoidably
impure. All society makes one
somehow, somewhere, or
sometime--"commonplace."

285.

The greatest events and
thoughts--the greatest thoughts,
however, are the greatest
events--are longest in being
comprehended: the generations
which are contemporary with them
do not experience such events--they
live past them. Something happens
there as in the realm of stars. The
light of the furthest stars is longest in
reaching man; and before it has
arrived man denies--that there are
stars there. "How many centuries
does a mind require to be
understood?"--that is also a standard,
one also makes a gradation of rank
and an etiquette therewith, such as is
necessary for mind and for star.

286.

"Here is the prospect free, the mind
exalted "--But there is a reverse kind
of man, who is also upon a height, and
has also a free prospect--but looks
downwards.

287.

--What is noble? What does the word
"noble" still mean for us nowadays?
How does the noble man betray
himself, how is he recognised under
this heavy overcast sky of the
commencing plebeianism, by which
everything is rendered opaque and
leaden?--It is not his actions which
establish his claim--actions are
always ambiguous, always
inscrutable; neither is it his "works."
One finds nowadays among artists
and scholars plenty of those who
betray by their works that a profound
longing for nobleness impels them;
but this very need of nobleness is
radically different from the needs of
the noble soul itself, and is in fact the
eloquent and dangerous sign of the
lack thereof. It is not the works, but
the belief which is here decisive and
determines the order of rank--to
employ once more an old religious
formula with a new and deeper
meaning--it is some fundamental
certainty which a noble soul has
about itself, something which is not to
be sought, is not to be found, and
perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--The
noble soul has reverence for itself.--

288.

There are men who are unavoidably
intellectual, let them turn and twist
themselves as they will, and hold
their hands before their treacherous
eyes--as though the hand were not a
betrayer; it always comes out at last
that they have something which they
hide--namely, intellect. One of the
subtlest means of deceiving, at least
as long as possible, and of
successfully representing oneself to
be stupider than one really is--which
in everyday life is often as desirable
as an umbrella,--is called
enthusiasm, including what belongs
to it, for instance, virtue. For as
Galiani said, who was obliged to
know it: vertu est enthousiasme.

289.

In the writings of a recluse one
always hears something of the echo
of the wilderness, something of the
murmuring tones and timid vigilance
of solitude; in his strongest words,
even in his cry itself, there sounds a
new and more dangerous kind of
silence, of concealment. He who has
sat day and night, from year's end to
year's end, alone with his soul in
familiar discord and discourse, he
who has become a cave-bear, or a
treasure-seeker, or a
treasure-guardian and dragon in his
cave--it may be a labyrinth, but can
also be a gold-mine--his ideas
themselves eventually acquire a
twilight-colour of their own, and an
odour, as much of the depth as of the
mould, something uncommunicative
and repulsive, which blows chilly
upon every passerby. The recluse
does not believe that a
philosopher--supposing that a
philosopher has always in the first
place been a recluse--ever expressed
his actual and ultimate opinions in
books: are not books written
precisely to hide what is in
us?--indeed, he will doubt whether a
philosopher can have "ultimate and
actual" opinions at all; whether
behind every cave in him there is not,
and must necessarily be, a still deeper
cave: an ampler, stranger, richer
world beyond the surface, an abyss
behind every bottom, beneath every
"foundation." Every philosophy is a
foreground philosophy--this is a
recluse's verdict: "There is something
arbitrary in the fact that the
philosopher came to a stand here,
took a retrospect, and looked around;
that he here laid his spade aside and
did not dig any deeper--there is also
something suspicious in it." Every
philosophy also conceals a
philosophy; every opinion is also a
lurking-place, every word is also a
mask.

290.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of
being understood than of being
misunderstood. The latter perhaps
wounds his vanity, but the former
wounds his heart, his sympathy,
which always says: "Ah, why
wouldyou also have as hard a time of
it as I have?"

291.

Man, a complex, mendacious, artful,
and inscrutable animal, uncanny to
the other animals by his artifice and
sagacity, rather than by his strength,
has invented the good conscience in
order finally to enjoy his soul as
something simple; and the whole of
morality is a long, audacious
falsification, by virtue of which
generally enjoyment at the sight of
the soul becomes possible. From this
point of view there is perhaps much
more in the conception of "art" than is
generally believed.

292.

A philosopher: that is a man who
constantly experiences, sees, hears,
suspects, hopes, and dreams
extraordinary things; who is struck
by his own thoughts as if they came
from the outside, from above and
below, as a species of events and
lightning-flashes peculiar to him;
who is perhaps himself a storm
pregnant with new lightnings; a
portentous man, around whom there
is always rumbling and mumbling and
gaping and something uncanny going
on. A philosopher: alas, a being who
often runs away from himself, is often
afraid of himself--but whose
curiosity always makes him "come to
himself" again.

293.

A man who says: "I like that, I take it
for my own, and mean to guard and
protect it from every one"; a man who
can conduct a case, carry out a
resolution, remain true to an opinion,
keep hold of a woman, punish and
overthrow insolence; a man who has
his indignation and his sword, and to
whom the weak, the suffering, the
oppressed, and even the animals
willingly submit and naturally
belong; in short, a man who is a
master by nature--when such a man
has sympathy, well! that sympathy
has value! But of what account is the
sympathy of those who suffer! Or of
those even who preach sympathy!
There is nowadays, throughout
almost the whole of Europe, a sickly
irritability and sensitiveness towards
pain, and also a repulsive
irrestrainableness in complaining, an
effeminising, which, with the aid of
religion and philosophical nonsense,
seeks to deck itself out as something
superior--there is a regular cult of
suffering. The unmanliness of that
which is called "sympathy" by such
groups of visionaries, is always, I
believe, the first thing that strikes the
eye.--One must resolutely and
radically taboo this latest form of bad
taste; and finally I wish people to put
the good amulet, "gai saber" ("gay
science," in ordinary language), on
heart and neck, as a protection
against it.

294.

The Olympian Vice. --Despite the
philosopher who, as a genuine
Englishman, tried to bring laughter
into bad repute in all thinking
minds--"Laughing is a bad infirmity
of human nature, which every
thinking mind will strive to
overcome" (Hobbes),--I would even
allow myself to rank philosophers
according to the quality of their
laughing--up to those who are
capable of golden laughter. And
supposing that Gods also
philosophise, which I am strongly
inclined to believe, owing to many
reasons--I have no doubt that they
also know how to laugh thereby in an
overman-like and new fashion--and
at the expense of all serious things!
Gods are fond of ridicule: it seems
that they cannot refrain from
laughter even in holy matters.

295.

The genius of the heart, as that great
mysterious one possesses it, the
tempter-god and born rat-catcher of
consciences, whose voice can descend
into the nether-world of every soul,
who neither speaks a word nor casts a
glance in which there may not be
some motive or touch of allurement,
to whose perfection it pertains that
he knows how to appear,--not as he
is, but in a guise which acts as an
additional constraint on his followers
to press ever closer to him, to follow
him more cordially and
thoroughly;--the genius of the heart,
which imposes silence and attention
on everything loud and
self-conceited, which smooths rough
souls and makes them taste a new
longing--to lie placid as a mirror,
that the deep heavens may be
reflected in them;--the genius of the
heart, which tea
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me which teaches the clumsy and
too hasty hand to hesitate, and to
grasp more delicately; which scents
the hidden and forgotten treasure,
the drop of goodness and sweet
spirituality under thick dark ice, and
is a divining-rod for every grain of
gold, long buried and imprisoned in
mud and sand; the genius of the heart,
from contact with which every one
goes away richer; not favoured or
surprised, not as though gratified and
oppressed by the good things of
others; but richer in himself, newer
than before, broken up, blown upon,
and sounded by a thawing wind; more
uncertain, perhaps, more delicate,
more fragile, more bruised, but full
of hopes which as yet lack names, full
of a new will and current, full of a
new ill-will and counter-current ...
but what am I doing, my friends? Of
whom am I talking to you? Have I
forgotten myself so far that I have not
even told you his name? Unless it be
that you have already divined of your
own accord who this questionable
God and spirit is, that wishes to be
praised in such a manner? For, as it
happens to every one who from
childhood onward has always been on
his legs, and in foreign lands, I have
also encountered on my path many
strange and dangerous spirits; above
all, however, and again and again, the
one of whom I have just spoken: in
fact, no less a personage than the God
Dionysus, the great equivocator and
tempter, to whom, as you know, I
once offered in all secrecy and
reverence my first-fruits--the last,
as it seems to me, who has offered a
sacrifice to him, for I have found no
one who could understand what I was
then doing. In the meantime,
however, I have learned much, far
too much, about the philosophy of
this God, and, as I said, from mouth to
mouth--I, the last disciple and
initiate of the God Dionysus: and
perhaps I might at last begin to give
you, my friends, as far as I am
allowed, a little taste of this
philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is
but seemly: for it has to do with much
that is secret, new, strange,
wonderful, and uncanny. The very
fact that Dionysus is a philosopher,
and that therefore Gods also
philosophise, seems to me a novelty
which is not unensnaring, and might
perhaps arouse suspicion precisely
among philosophers;--among you,
my friends, there is less to be said
against it, except that it comes too
late and not at the right time; for, as it
has been disclosed to me, you are loth
nowadays to believe in God and gods.
It may happen, too, that in the
frankness of my story I must go
further than is agreeable to the strict
usages of your ears? Certainly the
God in question went further, very
much further, in such dialogues, and
was always many paces ahead of me ...
Indeed, if it were allowed, I should
have to give him, according to human
usage, fine ceremonious titles of
lustre and merit, I should have to
extol his courage as investigator and
discoverer, his fearless honesty,
truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But
such a God does not know what to do
with all that respectable trumpery
and pomp. "Keep that," he would say,
"for thyself and those like thee, and
whoever else require it! I--have no
reason to cover my nakedness!" One
suspects that this kind of divinity and
philosopher perhaps lacks shame?--
He once said: "Under certain
circumstances I love mankind"--and
referred thereby to Ariadne, who was
present; "in my opinion man is an
agreeable, brave, inventive animal,
that has not his equal upon earth, he
makes his way even through all
labyrinths. I like man, and often think
how I can still further advance him,
and make him stronger, more evil,
and more profound."--"Stronger,
more evil, and more profound?" I
asked in horror. 'Yes," he said again,
"stronger, more evil, and more
profound; also more beautiful"--and
thereby the tempter-god smiled with
his halcyon smile, as though he had
just paid some charming compliment.
One here sees at once that it is not
only shame that this divinity
lacks;--and in general there are good
grounds for supposing that in some
things the Gods could all of them
come to us men for instruction. We
men are--more human.--

296.

Alas! what are you, after all, my
written and painted thoughts! Not
long ago you were so variegated,
young and malicious, so full of thorns
and secret spices, that you made me
sneeze and laugh--and now? You
have already doffed your novelty,
and some of you, I fear, are ready to
become truths, so immortal do they
look, so pathetically honest, so
tedious! And was it ever otherwise?
What then do we write and paint, we
mandarins with Chinese brush, we
immortalisers of things which lend
themselves to writing, what are we
alone capable of painting? Alas, only
that which is just about to fade and
begins to lose its odour! Alas, only
exhausted and departing storms and
belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only
birds strayed and fatigued by flight,
which now let themselves be
captured with the hand--with our
hand! We immortalise what cannot
live and fly much longer, things only
which are exhausted and mellow! And
it is only for your afternoon, you, my
written and painted thoughts, for
which alone I have colours, many
colours, perhaps, many variegated
softenings, and fifty yellows and
browns and greens and reds;--but
nobody will divine thereby how ye
looked in your morning, you sudden
sparks and marvels of my solitude,
you, my old, beloved--evil thoughts!
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??? Vampire 010329
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eclecticsynesthesia these people
they're not invincible
just walking upright over me

i'd be noble so much more if
no one ever knows how much i give for so little i say

god its such a line
i was more noble in grade five
just to be friends with richard
when everybody else was a jerk
030107
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thunderbuck ram OK I admit it, I came straight to the end of this blathe beacuase I couldn't face the thought of reading that very long one. Not very noble of me, but hey......... 040916
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Q By "nobel" surely you intended - noble - and what "nebulously" has to do with it is a mystery that must await intelligent discussion, hopefully much sooner than later. 051120
what's it to you?
who go
blather
from