Human, All-Too-Human: A Book For Free Spirits; Part II

334

To Know how to Suffer in Public. – We must advertise our misfortunes and from time to time heave audible sighs and show visible marks of impatience. For if we could let others see how assured and happy we are in spite of pain and privation, how envious and ill-tempered they would become at the sight! – But we must take care not to corrupt our fellow-men; besides, if they knew the truth, they would levy a heavy toll upon us. At any rate our public misfortune is our private advantage.

335

Warmth on the Heights. – On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognises the full import of this simile.

336

To Will the Good and be Capable of the Beautiful. – It is not enough to practise the good one must have willed it, and, as the poet says, include the Godhead in our will. But the beautiful we must not will, we must be capable of it, in innocence and blindness, without any psychical curiosity. He that lights his lantern to find perfect men should remember the token by which to know them. They are the men who always act for the sake of the good and in so doing always attain to the beautiful without thinking of the beautiful. Many better and nobler men, from impotence or from want of beauty in their souls, remain unrefreshing and ugly to behold, with all their good will and good works. They rebuff and injure even virtue through the repulsive garb in which their bad taste arrays her.

337

Danger of Renunciation. – We must beware of basing our lives on too narrow a foundation of appetite. For if we renounce all the joys involved in positions, honours, associations, revels, creature comforts, and arts, a day may come when we perceive that this repudiation has led us not to wisdom but to satiety of life.

338

Final Opinion on Opinions. – Either we should hide our opinions or hide ourselves behind our opinions. Whoever does otherwise, does not know the way of the world, or belongs to the order of pious fire-eaters.

339

“Gaudeamus Igitur.” – Joy must contain edifying and healing forces for the moral nature of man. Otherwise, how comes it that our soul, as soon as it basks in the sunshine of joy, unconsciously vows to itself, “I will be good!” “I will become perfect!” and is at once seized by a premonition of perfection that is like a shudder of religious awe?

340

To One who is Praised. – So long as you are praised, believe that you are not yet on your own course but on that of another.

341

Loving the Master. – The apprentice and the master love the master in different ways.

342

All-too-Beautiful and Human. – “Nature is too beautiful for thee, poor mortal,” one often feels. But now and then, at a profound contemplation of all that is human, in its fulness, vigour, tenderness, and complexity, I have felt as if I must say, in all humility, “Man also is too beautiful for the contemplation of man!” Nor did I mean the moral man alone, but every one.

343

Real and Personal Estate. – When life has treated us in true robber fashion, and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health, and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the airs of a mighty real estate owner.

344

Involuntarily Idealised. – The most painful feeling that exists is finding out that we are always taken for something higher than we really are. For we must thereby confess to ourselves, “There is in you some element of fraud – your speech, your expression, your bearing, your eye, your dealings; and this deceitful something is as necessary as your usual honesty, but constantly destroys its effect and its value.”

345

Idealist and Liar. – We must not let ourselves be tyrannised even by that finest faculty of idealising things: otherwise, truth will one day part company from us with the insulting remark: “Thou arch-liar, what have I to do with thee?”

346

Being Misunderstood. – When one is misunderstood generally, it is impossible to remove a particular misunderstanding. This point must be recognised, to save superfluous expenditure of energy in self-defence.

347

The Water-Drinker Speaks. – Go on drinking your wine, which has refreshed you all your life – what affair is it of yours if I have to be a water-drinker? Are not wine and water peaceable, brotherly elements, that can live side by side without mutual recriminations?

348

From Cannibal Country. – In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many. Choose which you prefer.

349

The Freezing-Point of the Will. – “Some time the hour will come at last, the hour that will envelop you in the golden cloud of painlessness; when the soul enjoys its own weariness and, happy in patient playing with patience, resembles the waves of a lake, which on a quiet summer day, in the reflection of a many-hued evening sky, sip and sip at the shore and again are hushed – without end, without purpose, without satiety, without need – all calm rejoicing in change, all ebb and flow of Nature's pulse.” Such is the feeling and talk of all invalids, but if they attain that hour, a brief period of enjoyment is followed by ennui. But this is the thawing-wind of the frozen will, which awakes, stirs, and once more begets desire upon desire. – Desire is a sign of convalescence or recovery.

350

The Disclaimed Ideal. – It happens sometimes by an exception that a man only reaches the highest when he disclaims his ideal. For this ideal previously drove him onward too violently, so that in the middle of the track he regularly got out of breath and had to rest.

351

A Treacherous Inclination. – It should be regarded as a sign of an envious but aspiring man, when he feels himself attracted by the thought that with regard to the eminent there is but one salvation – love.

352

Staircase Happiness. – Just as the wit of many men does not keep pace with opportunity (so that opportunity has already passed through the door while wit still waits on the staircase outside), so others have a kind of staircase happiness, which walks too slowly to keep pace with swift-footed Time. The best that it can enjoy of an experience, of a whole span of life, falls to its share long afterwards, often only as a weak, spicy fragrance, giving rise to longing and sadness – as if “it might have been possible” – some time or other – to drink one's fill of this element: but now it is too late.

353

Worms. – The fact that an intellect contains a few worms does not detract from its ripeness.

354

The Seat of Victory. – A good seat on horseback robs an opponent of his courage, the spectator of his heart – why attack such a man? Sit like one who has been victorious!

355

Danger in Admiration. – From excessive admiration for the virtues of others one can lose the sense of one's own, and finally, through lack of practice, lose these virtues themselves, without retaining the alien virtues as compensation.

356

Uses of Sickliness. – He who is often ill not only has a far greater pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires a very keen sense of what is healthy or sickly in actions and achievements, both his own and others'. Thus, for example, it is just the writers of uncertain health – among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great writers must be classed – who are wont to have a far more even and assured tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and convalescence and in their teachers – morning, sunshine, forest, and fountain.

357

Disloyalty a Condition of Mastery. – It cannot be helped – every master has but one pupil, and he becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined for mastery.

358

Never in Vain. – In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either you already reach a higher point to-day, or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher to-morrow.

359

Through Grey Window-Panes. – Is what you see through this window of the world so beautiful that you do not wish to look through any other window – ay, and even try to prevent others from so doing?

360

A Sign of Radical Changes. – When we dream of persons long forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have suffered radical changes, and that the soil on which we live has been completely undermined. The dead rise again, and our antiquity becomes modernity.

361

Medicine of the Soul. – To lie still and think little is the cheapest medicine for all diseases of the soul, and, with the aid of good-will, becomes pleasanter every hour that it is used.

362

Intellectual Order of Precedence. – You rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule.

363

The Fatalist. – You must believe in fate – science can compel you thereto. All that develops in you out of that belief – cowardice, devotion or loftiness, and uprightness – bears witness to the soil in which the grain was sown, but not to the grain itself, for from that seed anything and everything can grow.

364

The Reason for Much Fretfulness. – He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world.

365

Excess as a Remedy. – We can make our own talent once more acceptable to ourselves by honouring and enjoying the opposite talent for some time to excess. – Using excess as a remedy is one of the more refined devices in the art of life.

366

“Will a Self.” – Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, “Know thyself,” but as if always confronted with the command, “Will a self, so you will become a self.” – Fate seems always to have left them a choice. Inactive, contemplative natures, on the other hand, reflect on how they have chosen their self “once for all” at their entry into life.

367

To Live as Far as Possible without a Following. – How small is the importance of followers we first grasp when we have ceased to be the followers of our followers.

368

Obscuring Oneself. – We must understand how to obscure ourselves in order to get rid of the gnat-swarms of pestering admirers.

369

Ennui. – There is an ennui of the most subtle and cultured brains, to which the best that the world can offer has become stale. Accustomed to eat ever more and more recherché fare and to feel disgust at coarser diet, they are in danger of dying of hunger. For the very best exists but in small quantities, and has sometimes become inaccessible or hard as stone, so that even good teeth can no longer bite it.

370

The Danger in Admiration. – The admiration of a quality or of an art may be so strong as to deter us from aspiring to possess that quality or art.

371

What is Required of Art. – One man wants to enjoy himself by means of art, another for a time to get out of or above himself. – To meet both requirements there exists a twofold species of artists.

372

Secessions. – Whoever secedes from us offends not us, perhaps, but certainly our adherents.

373

After Death. – It is only long after the death of a man that we find it inconceivable that he should be missed – in the case of really great men, only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when any one dies that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh.

374

Leaving in Hades. – We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with cruel lust after our blood.

375

Near to Beggary. – Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to the room in which his hoarded treasures repose. He is then like the poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living.

376

Chain-Thinkers. – To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought that he hears or reads at once assumes the form of a chain.

377

Pity. – In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy.

378

What is Genius? – To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.

379

Vanity of Combatants. – He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting should be admired.

380

The Philosophic Life Misinterpreted. – At the moment when one is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing the reverse.

381

Imitation. – By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit – especially in art.

382

Final Teaching of History. – “Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past, we shall rather cry out at the end, “Anything but a return to that! The spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pass the same verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under such conditions was intolerable. “And yet every one can endure his own times?” Yes, because the spirit of his age not only lies upon him but is in him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear itself.

383

Greatness as a Mask. – By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes; by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us. For envy levels and makes equal; it is an unconscious, plaintive variety of modesty. – It may be indeed that here and there, for the sake of the above-named advantage, envy has been assumed as a mask by those who are not envious. Certainly, however, greatness in comportment is often used as the mask of envy by ambitious men who would rather suffer drawbacks and embitter their foes than let it be seen that they place them on an equal footing with themselves.

384

Unpardonable. – You gave him an opportunity of displaying the greatness of his character, and he did not make use of the opportunity. He will never forgive you for that.

385

Contrasts. – The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, “The ego is always hateful,” the most childish in the still more famous saying, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” – With the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun.

386

A Defective Ear. – “We still belong to the mob so long as we always shift the blame on to others; we are on the track of wisdom when we always make ourselves alone responsible; but the wise man finds no one to blame, neither himself nor others.” – Who said that? Epictetus, eighteen hundred years ago. – The world has heard but forgotten the saying. – No, the world has not heard and not forgotten it: everything is not forgotten. But we had not the necessary ear, the ear of Epictetus. – So he whispered it into his own ear? – Even so: wisdom is the whispering of the sage to himself in the crowded market-place.

387

A Defect of Standpoint, not of Vision. – We always stand a few paces too near ourselves and a few paces too far from our neighbour. Hence we judge him too much in the lump, and ourselves too much by individual, occasional, insignificant features and circumstances.

388

Ignorance about Weapons. – How little we care whether another knows a subject or not! – whereas he perhaps sweats blood at the bare idea that he may be considered ignorant on the point. Yes, there are exquisite fools, who always go about with a quiverful of mighty, excommunicatory utterances, ready to shoot down any one who shows freely that there are matters in which their judgment is not taken into account.

389

At the Drinking-Table of Experience. – People whose innate moderation leads them to drink but the half of every glass, will not admit that everything in the world has its lees and sediment.

390

Singing-Birds. – The followers of a great man often put their own eyes out, so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.

391

Beyond our Ken. – The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our ken.

392

Rule as Mother or as Child. – There is one condition that gives birth to rules, another to which rules give birth.

393

Comedy. – We sometimes earn honour or love for actions and achievements which we have long since sloughed as the snake sloughs his skin. We are hereby easily seduced into becoming the comic actors of our own past, and into throwing the old skin once more about our shoulders – and that not merely from vanity, but from good-will towards our admirers.

394

A Mistake of Biographers. – The small force that is required to launch a boat into the stream must not be confounded with the force of the stream that carries the boat along. Yet this mistake is made in nearly all biographies.

395

Not Buying too Dear. – The things that we buy too dear we generally turn to bad use, because we have no love for them but only a painful recollection. Thus they involve a twofold drawback.

396

The Philosophy that Society always Needs. – The pillars of the social structure rest upon the fundamental fact that every one cheerfully contemplates all that he is, does, and attempts, his sickness or health, his poverty or affluence, his honour or insignificance, and says to himself, “After all, I would not change places with any one!” – Whoever wishes to add a stone to the social structure should always try to implant in mankind this cheerful philosophy of contentment and refusal to change places.

397

The Mark of a Noble Soul. – A noble soul is not that which is capable of the highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living always in a free and bright atmosphere and altitude.

398

Greatness and its Contemplator. – The noblest effect of greatness is that it gives the contemplator a power of vision that magnifies and embellishes.

399

Being Satisfied. – We show that we have attained maturity of understanding when we no longer go where rare flowers lurk under the thorniest hedges of knowledge, but are satisfied with gardens, forests, meadows, and ploughlands, remembering that life is too short for the rare and uncommon.

400

Advantage in Privation. – He who always lives in the warmth and fulness of the heart, and, as it were, in the summer air of the soul, cannot form an idea of that fearful delight which seizes more wintry natures, who for once in a way are kissed by the rays of love and the milder breath of a sunny February day.

401

Recipe for the Sufferer. – You find the burden of life too heavy? Then you must increase the burden of your life. When the sufferer finally thirsts after and seeks the river of Lethe, then he must become a hero to be certain of finding it.

402

The Judge. – He who has seen another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge, and as it were his evil conscience.

403

The Utility of Great Renunciation. – The useful thing about great renunciation is that it invests us with that youthful pride through which we can thenceforth easily demand of ourselves small renunciations.

404

How Duty Acquires a Glamour. – You can change a brazen duty into gold in the eyes of all by always performing something more than you have promised.

405

Prayer to Mankind. – “Forgive us our virtues” – so should we pray to mankind.

406

They that Create and They that Enjoy. – Every one who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed. – Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.

407

The Glory of all Great Men. – What is the use of genius if it does not invest him who contemplates and reveres it with such freedom and loftiness of feeling that he no longer has need of genius? – To make themselves superfluous is the glory of all great men.

408

The Journey to Hades. – I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus, and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say, conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those eight and see their eyes fastened on mine. – May the living forgive me if I look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and, alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point: what matters “eternal life,” or indeed life at all?