From this it follows that, on the whole, science has up to the present remained in a rather backward state owing to the moral narrow–mindedness of its disciples, and that henceforth it will have to be pursued from a higher and more generous motive. “What do I matter?” is written over the door of the thinker of the future.
548.
VICTORY OVER POWER.—If we consider all that has been venerated up to the present as “superhuman intellect” or “genius,” we must come to the sad conclusion that, considered as a whole, the intellectuality of mankind must have been extremely low and poor: so little mind has hitherto been necessary in order to feel at once considerably superior to all this! Alas for the cheap glory of “genius”! How quickly has it been raised to the throne, and its worship grown into a custom! We still fall on our knees before power—according to the old custom of slaves—and nevertheless, when the degree of venerability comes to be determined, only the degree of reason in the power will be the deciding factor. We must find out, indeed, to how great an extent power has been overcome by something higher, which it now obeys as a tool and instrument.
As yet, however, there have been too few eyes for such investigations: even in the majority of cases the mere valuation of genius has almost been looked upon as blasphemy. And thus perhaps everything that is most beautiful still takes place in the midst of darkness and vanishes in endless night almost as soon as it has made its appearance,—I refer to the spectacle of that power which a genius does not lay out upon works, but upon himself as a work, that is, his own self–control, the purifying of his own imagination, the order and selection in his inspirations and tasks. The great man ever remains invisible in the greatest thing that claims worship, like some distant star: his victory over power remains without witnesses, and hence also without songs and singers. The hierarchy of the great men in all the past history of the human race has not yet been determined.
549.
FLIGHT FROM ONE’S SELF.—Those sufferers from intellectual spasms who are impatient towards themselves and look upon themselves with a gloomy eye—such as Byron or Alfred de Musset—and who, in everything that they do, resemble runaway horses, and from their own works derive only a transient joy and an ardent passion which almost bursts their veins, followed by sterility and disenchantment—how are they able to bear up! They would fain attain to something “beyond themselves.” If we happen to be Christians, and are seized by such a desire as this, we strive to reach God and to become one with Him; if we are a Shakespeare we shall be glad to perish in images of a passionate life; if we are like Byron we long for actions, because these detach us from ourselves to an even greater extent than thoughts, feelings, and works.
And should the desire for performing great deeds really be at bottom nothing but a flight from our own selves?—as Pascal would ask us. And indeed this assertion might be proved by considering the most noble representations of this desire for action: in this respect let us remember, bringing the knowledge of an alienist to our aid, that four of the greatest men of all ages who were possessed of this lust for action were epileptics—Alexander the Great, Cæsar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; and Byron likewise was subject to the same complaint.
550.
KNOWLEDGE AND BEAUTY.—If men, as they are still in the habit of doing, reserve their veneration and feelings of happiness for works of fancy and imagination, we should not be surprised if they feel chilled and displeased by the contrary of fancy and imagination. The rapture which arises from even the smallest, sure, and definite step in advance into insight, and which our present state of science yields to so many in such abundance—this rapture is in the meantime not believed in by all those who are in the habit of feeling enraptured only when they leave reality altogether and plunge into the depths of vague appearance—romanticism. These people look upon reality as ugly, but they entirely overlook the fact that the knowledge of even the ugliest reality is beautiful, and that the man who can discern much and often is in the end very far from considering as ugly the main items of that reality, the discovery of which has always inspired him with the feeling of happiness.
Is there anything “beautiful in itself”? The happiness of those who can recognise augments the beauty of the world, bathing everything that exists in a sunnier light: discernment not only envelops all things in its own beauty, but in the long run permeates the things themselves with its beauty—may ages to come bear witness to the truth of this statement! In the meantime let us recall an old experience: two men so thoroughly different in every respect as Plato and Aristotle were agreed in regard to what constituted superior happiness—not merely their own and that of men in general, but happiness in itself, even the happiness of the gods. They found this happiness to lie in knowledge, in the activity of a well practised and inventive understanding (not in “intuition” like the German theologians and semi–theologians; not in visions, like the mystics; and not in work, like the merely practical men). Similar opinions were expressed by Descartes and Spinoza. What great delight must all these men have felt in knowledge! and how great was the danger that their honesty might give way, and that they themselves might become panegyrists of things!
551.
FUTURE VIRTUES.—How has it come about that, the more intelligible the world has become, the more all kinds of ceremonies have diminished? Was fear so frequently the fundamental basis of that awe which overcame us at the sight of anything hitherto unknown and mysterious, and which taught us to fall upon our knees before the unintelligible, and to beg for mercy? And has the world, perhaps, through the very fact that we have grown less timid, lost some of the charms it formerly had for us? Is it not possible that our own dignity and stateliness, our formidable character, has decreased together with our spirit of dread? Perhaps we value the world and ourselves less highly since we have begun to think more boldly about it and ourselves? Perhaps there will come a moment in the future when this courageous spirit of thinking will have reached such a point that it will feel itself soaring in supreme pride, far above men and things—when the wise man, being also the boldest, will see himself and even more particularly existence, the lowest of all beneath himself?
This type of courage, which is not far removed from excessive generosity, has been lacking in humanity up to the present.—Oh, that our poets might once again become what they once were: seers, telling us something about what might possibly happen! now that what is real and what is past are being ever more and more taken from them, and must continue to be taken from them—for the time of innocent counterfeiting is at an end! Let them try to enable us to anticipate future virtues, or virtues that will never be found on earth, although they may exist somewhere in the world!—purple–glowing constellations and whole Milky Ways of the beautiful! Where are ye, ye astronomers of the ideal?