501.
MORTAL SOULS.—Where knowledge is concerned perhaps the most useful conquest that has ever been made is the abandonment of the belief in the immortality of the soul. Humanity is henceforth at liberty to wait: men need no longer be in a hurry to swallow badly–tested ideas as they had to do in former times. For in those times the salvation of this poor “immortal soul” depended upon the extent of the knowledge which could be acquired in the course of a short existence: decisions had to be reached from one day to another, and “knowledge” was a matter of dreadful importance!
Now we have acquired good courage for errors, experiments, and the provisional acceptance of ideas—all this is not so very important!—and for this very reason individuals and whole races may now face tasks so vast in extent that in former years they would have looked like madness, and defiance of heaven and hell. Now we have the right to experiment upon ourselves! Yes, men have the right to do so! the greatest sacrifices have not yet been offered up to knowledge—nay, in earlier periods it would have been sacrilege, and a sacrifice of our eternal salvation, even to surmise such ideas as now precede our actions.
502.
ONE WORD FOR THREE DIFFERENT CONDITIONS.—When in a state of passion one man will be forced to let loose the savage, dreadful, unbearable animal. Another when under the influence of passion will raise himself to a high, noble, and lofty demeanour, in comparison with which his usual self appears petty. A third, whose whole person is permeated with nobility of feeling, has also the most noble storm and stress: and in this state he represents Nature in her state of savageness and beauty, and stands only one degree lower than Nature in her periods of greatness and serenity, which he usually represents. It is while in this state of passion, however, that men understand him better, and venerate him more highly at these moments—for then he is one step nearer and more akin to them. They feel at once delighted and horrified at such a sight and call it—divine.
503.
FRIENDSHIP.—The objection to a philosophic life that it renders us useless to our friends would never have arisen in a modern mind: it belongs rather to classical antiquity. Antiquity knew the stronger bonds of friendship, meditated upon it, and almost took it to the grave with it. This is the advantage it has over us: we, on the other hand, can point to our idealisation of sexual love. All the great excellencies of ancient humanity owed their stability to the fact that man was standing side by side with man, and that no woman was allowed to put forward the claim of being the nearest and highest, nay even sole object of his love, as the feeling of passion would teach. Perhaps our trees do not grow so high now owing to the ivy and the vines that cling round them.
504.
RECONCILIATION.—Should it then be the task of philosophy to reconcile what the child has learnt with what the man has come to recognise? Should philosophy be the task of young men because they stand midway between child and man and possess intermediate necessities? It would almost appear to be so if you consider at what ages of their life philosophers are now in the habit of setting forth their conceptions: at a time when it is too late for faith and too early for knowledge.
505.
PRACTICAL PEOPLE.—We thinkers have the right of deciding good taste in all things, and if necessary of decreeing it. The practical people finally receive it from us: their dependence upon us is incredibly great, and is one of the most ridiculous spectacles in the world, little though they themselves know it and however proudly they like to carp at us unpractical people. Nay, they would even go so far as to belittle their practical life if we should show a tendency to despise it—whereto at times we might be urged on by a slightly vindictive feeling.
506.
THE NECESSARY DESICCATION OF EVERYTHING GOOD.—What! must we conceive of a work exactly in the spirit of the age that has produced it? but we experience greater delight and surprise, and get more information out of it when we do not conceive it in this spirit! Have you not remarked that every new and good work, so long as it is exposed to the damp air of its own age is least valuable—just because it still has about it all the odour of the market, of opposition, of modern ideas, and of all that is transient from day to day? Later on, however, it dries up, its “actuality” dies away: and then only does it obtain its deep lustre and its perfume—and also, if it is destined for it, the calm eye of eternity.
507.
AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF TRUTH.—Even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions as truth, we should nevertheless not wish them alone to exist. I cannot see why we should ask for an autocracy and omnipotence of truth: it is sufficient for me to know that it is a great power. Truth, however, must meet with opposition and be able to fight, and we must be able to rest from it at times in falsehood—otherwise truth will grow tiresome, powerless, and insipid, and will render us equally so.
508.
NOT TO TAKE A THING PATHETICALLY.—What we do to benefit ourselves should not bring us in any moral praise, either from others or from ourselves, and the same remark applies to those things which we do to please ourselves. It is looked upon as bon ton among superior men to refrain from taking things pathetically in such cases, and to refrain from all pathetic feelings: the man who has accustomed himself to this has retrieved his naïveté.
509.
THE THIRD EYE.—What! You are still in need of the theatre! are you still so young? Be wise, and seek tragedy and comedy where they are better acted, and where the incidents are more interesting, and the actors more eager. It is indeed by no means easy to be merely a spectator in these cases—but learn! and then, amid all difficult or painful situations, you will have a little gate leading to joy and refuge, even when your passions attack you. Open your stage eye, that big third eye of yours, which looks out into the world through the other two.
510.
ESCAPING FROM ONE’S VIRTUES.—Of what account is a thinker who does not know how to escape from his own virtues occasionally! Surely a thinker should be more than “a moral being”!
511.
THE TEMPTRESS.—Honesty is the great temptress of all fanatics.[15] What seemed to tempt Luther in the guise of the devil or a beautiful woman, and from which he defended himself in that uncouth way of his, was probably nothing but honesty, and perhaps in a few rarer cases even truth.
512.
BOLD TOWARDS THINGS.—The man who, in accordance with his character, is considerate and timid towards persons, but is courageous and bold towards things, is afraid of new and closer acquaintances, and limits his old ones in order that he may thus make his incognito and his inconsiderateness coincide with truth.
513.
LIMITS AND BEAUTY.—Are you looking for men with a fine culture? Then you will have to be satisfied with restricted views and sights, exactly as when you are looking for fine countries.—There are, of course, such panoramic men: they are like panoramic regions, instructive and marvellous: but not beautiful.
514.
TO THE STRONGER.—Ye stronger and arrogant intellects, we ask you for only one thing: throw no further burdens upon our shoulders, but take some of our burdens upon your own, since ye are stronger! but ye delight in doing the exact contrary: for ye wish to soar, so that we must carry your burden in addition to our own—we must crawl!
515.
THE INCREASE OF BEAUTY.—Why has beauty increased by the progress of civilisation? because the three occasions for ugliness appear ever more rarely among civilised men: first, the wildest outbursts of ecstasy; secondly, extreme bodily exertion, and, thirdly, the necessity of inducing fear by one’s very sight and presence—a matter which is so frequent and of so great importance in the lower and more dangerous stages of culture that it even lays down the proper gestures and ceremonials and makes ugliness a duty.
15
Hence the violence of all fanatics, who do not wish to shout down the outer world so much as to shout down their own inner enemy, viz. truth.—TR.