Friedrich
Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
[This document, which has been prepared by Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC, has certain copyright restrictions. For information, please consult Copyright. Editorial comments and translations in square brackets and italics are by Ian Johnston; comments in normal brackets are from Nietzsche's text. Last revised in January 2009]
Part
Nine
What is Noble?
257
Every
enhancement in the type “man” up to this point has been the work of an
aristocratic society—and that’s how it will always be, over and over again:
a society which believes in a long scale of rank ordering and differences in
worth between man and man and which, in some sense or other, requires slavery.
Without the pathos of distance, the sort which grows out of the deeply
rooted difference between the social classes, out of the constant gazing outward
and downward of the ruling caste on the subjects and work implements, and out of
their equally sustained practice of obedience and command, holding down and
holding at a distance, that other more mysterious pathos would have
no chance of growing at all, that longing for an ever new widening of
distances inside the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rarer, more
distant, more expansive, more comprehensive states, in short, simply the
enhancement in the type “man,” the constant “self-conquest of man,” to
cite a moral formula in a supra-moral sense. Of course, where the history of the
origins of aristocratic society is concerned (and thus the precondition for that
raising of the type “man”—), we should not surrender to humanitarian
illusions: truth is hard. So without further consideration, let’s admit to
ourselves how up to this point every higher culture on earth has started!
People with a still natural nature, barbarians in every dreadful sense of the
word, predatory men still in possession of an unbroken power of the will and a
desire for power, threw themselves on weaker, more civilized, more peaceful,
perhaps trading or cattle-raising races, or on old, worn cultures, in which at
that very moment the final forces of life were flaring up in a dazzling
fireworks display of spirit and corruption. At the start the noble caste has
always been the barbarian caste: its superiority has lain not primarily in
physical might but in spiritual power—it has been a matter of more complete
human beings (which at every level also means “more complete beasts”).
258
Corruption
as the expression of the fact that within the instincts anarchy is threatening
and that the foundation of the affects, what we call “life,” has been
shaken: according to the living structure in which it appears, corruption is
something fundamentally different. When, for example, an aristocracy, like
France’s at the start of the Revolution, throws away its privileges with a
sublime disgust and sacrifices itself to a dissipation of its moral feelings,
this is corruption:—essentially it was only the final act in that
centuries-long corruption, thanks to which step-by-step it gave up its ruling
authority and reduced itself to a function of the monarchy (finally even
to the monarch’s finery and display pieces). The essential thing in a good and
healthy aristocracy, however, is that it feels itself not as a function
(whether of a monarchy or of a community) but as its significance and
highest justification— that it therefore with good conscience accepts the
sacrifice of an enormous number of people, who for its sake must be
oppressed and reduced to incomplete men, slaves, and instruments of work. Its
fundamental belief must, in fact, be that the society should exist, not
for the sake of the society, but only as a base and framework on which an
exceptional kind of nature can raise itself to its higher function and, in
general, to a higher form of being, comparable to those heliotropic
climbing plants on Java—people call them Sipo Matador—whose branches
clutch an oak tree so much and for so long until finally, high over the tree but
supported by it, they can unfold their crowns in the open light and make a
display of their happiness.—
259
Mutually
refraining from wounding each other, from violence, and from exploitation, and
setting one’s will on the same level as others—these can in a certain crude
sense become good habits among individuals, if conditions exist for that
(namely, a real similarity in the quality of their power and their estimates of
value, as well as their belonging together within a single body). However, as
soon as people wanted to take this principle further and, where possible,
establish it as the basic principle of society, it immediately showed
itself for what it is, as the willed denial of life, as the principle of
disintegration and decay. Here we must think through to the fundamentals and
push away all sentimental weakness: living itself is essentially
appropriation from and wounding and overpowering strangers and weaker men,
oppression, hardness, imposing one’s own forms, annexing, and at the very
least, in its mildest actions, exploitation—but why should we always use these
precise words, which have from ancient times carried the stamp of a slanderous
purpose? Even that body in which, as previously mentioned, the individuals deal
with each other as equals—and that happens in every healthy aristocracy—must
itself, if it is a living body and not dying out, do to other bodies all those
things which the individuals in it refrain from doing to each other: it will
have to be the living will to power, it will grow, grab things around it, pull
to itself, and want to acquire predominance—not because of some morality or
immorality, but because it is alive and because living is simply
the will to power. But in no point is the common consciousness of the European
more reluctant to be instructed than here. Nowadays people everywhere, even
those in scientific disguises, are raving about the coming conditions of society
from which “the exploitative character” is to have disappeared:—to my ears
that sounds as if people had promised to invent a life which abstained from all
organic functions. The “exploitation” is not part of a depraved or
incomplete and primitive society: it belongs in the essential nature of
what is living, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the real
will to power, which is simply the will to live.—Assuming that this is
something new as a theory—it is, nonetheless, in reality the fundamental
fact of all history: we should at least be honest with ourselves to this
extent!
260
As
the result of a stroll though the many more sophisticated and cruder moral
systems which up to this point have ruled or still rule on earth, I found
certain characteristics routinely return with each other, bound up together,
until finally two basic types revealed themselves to me and a fundamental
difference sprang up. There is master morality and slave morality—to
this I immediately add that in all higher and mixed cultures attempts at a
mediation between both moralities make an appearance as well, even more often, a
confusion and mutual misunderstanding between the two, in fact, sometimes their
harsh juxtaposition—even in the same man, within a single soul. Distinctions
in moral value have arisen either among a ruling group, which was happily
conscious of its difference with respect to the ruled—or among the ruled, the
slaves and dependent people of every degree. In the first case, when it’s the
masters who establish the idea of the good, the elevated and proud conditions of
the soul emotionally register as the distinguishing and defining order of rank.
The noble man separates his own nature from that of people in whom the opposite
of such exalted and proud states expresses itself. He despises them. We should
notice at once that in this first kind of morality the opposites “good” and
“bad” mean no more than “noble” and “despicable”—the opposition
between “good” and “evil” has another origin. The despised one is the
coward, the anxious, the small, the man who thinks about narrow utility, also
the suspicious man with his inhibited look, the self-abasing man, the species of
human dogs who allow themselves to be mistreated, the begging flatterer, above
all, the liar:—it is a basic belief of all aristocrats that the common folk
are liars. “We tellers of the truth”—that’s what the nobility called
themselves in ancient Greece. It’s evident that distinctions of moral worth
everywhere were first applied to men and later were established for actions;
hence, it is a serious mistake when historians of morality take as a starting
point questions like “Why was the compassionate action praised?” The noble
kind of man experiences himself as a person who determines value and does
not need to have other people’s approval. He makes the judgment “What is
harmful to me is harmful in itself.” He understands himself as something which
in general first confers honour on things, as someone who creates values.
Whatever he recognizes in himself he honours. Such a morality is
self-glorification. In the foreground stands the feeling of fullness, the power
which wants to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of
riches which wants to give and deliver:—the noble man also helps the
unfortunate, however not, or hardly ever, from pity, but more in response to an
impulse which the excess of power produces. The noble man honours the powerful
man in himself and also the man who has power over himself, who understands how
to speak and how to keep silent, who takes delight in dealing with himself
severely and toughly and respects, above all, severity and toughness. “Wotan
set a hard heart in my breast,” it says in an old Scandinavian saga: that’s
how poetry emerged, with justice, from the soul of a proud Viking. A man of this
sort is simply proud of the fact that he has not been made for pity.
That’s why the hero of the saga adds a warning, “In a man whose heart is not
hard when he is still young the heart will never become hard.” Noble and brave
men who think this way are furthest removed from that morality which sees the
badge of morality in pity or actions for others or désintéressement
[disinterestedness]. The belief in oneself, pride in oneself, a fundamental
hostility and irony against “selflessness”
belong to noble morality, just as much as an easy contempt and caution
before feelings of pity and the “warm heart.” Powerful men are the ones who understand
how to honour; that is their art, their realm of invention. The profound
reverence for age and for ancestral tradition—all justice stands on this
double reverence—the belief and the prejudice favouring forefathers and
working against newcomers are typical in the morality of the powerful, and when,
by contrast, the men of “modern ideas” believe almost instinctively in
“progress” and the “future” and increasingly lack any respect for age,
then in that attitude the ignoble origin of these “ideas” already reveals
itself well enough. However, a morality of the rulers is most alien and
embarrassing to present taste because of the severity of its basic principle
that man has duties only with respect to those like him, that man should act
towards those beings of lower rank, towards everything strange, at his own
discretion, or “as his heart dictates,” and, in any case, “beyond good and
evil.” Here pity and things like that may belong. The capacity for and
obligation to a long gratitude and to a long revenge—both only within the
circle of one’s peers—the sophistication in paying back again, the refined
idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as, so to speak,
drainage ditches for the feelings of envy, quarrelsomeness, and high
spirits—basically in order to be capable of being a good friend): all
those are typical characteristics of a noble morality, which, as indicated, is
not the morality of “modern ideas” and which is thus nowadays difficult to
sympathize with, as well as difficult to dig up and expose. Things are different
with the second type of moral system, slave morality. Suppose the
oppressed, depressed, suffering, and unfree people, those ignorant of themselves
and tired out, suppose they moralize: what will be the common feature of their
moral estimates of value? Probably a pessimistic suspicion directed at the
entire human situation will express itself, perhaps a condemnation of man, along
with his situation. The gaze of a slave is not well disposed towards the virtues
of the powerful; he possesses scepticism and mistrust; he has a subtlety
of mistrust against everything “good” which is honoured in it —he would
like to persuade himself that even happiness is not genuine there. By contrast,
those characteristics will be pulled forward and flooded with light which serve
to mitigate existence for those who suffer: here respect is given to pity, to
the obliging hand ready to help, to the warm heart, to patience, diligence,
humility, and friendliness—for these are here the most useful characteristics
and almost the only means to endure the pressure of existence. Slave morality is
essentially a morality of utility. Here is the focus for the origin of that
famous opposition of “good” and “evil”:—people sense power and
danger within evil, a certain terror, subtlety, and strength, which does not
permit contempt to spring up. According to slave morality, the “evil” man
thus inspires fear; according to master morality, it is precisely the “good”
man who inspires and desires to inspire fear, while the “bad” man will be
felt as despicable. This opposition reaches its peak when, in accordance with
the consequences of slave morality, finally a trace of disregard is also
attached to the “good” of this morality—it may be light and
benevolent—because within the way of thinking of the slave the good man must
definitely be the harmless man: he is good natured, easy to deceive,
perhaps a bit stupid, a bonhomme [good fellow]. Wherever slave morality
gains predominance the language reveals a tendency to bring the words “good”
and “stupid” into closer proximity. A final basic difference: the longing
for freedom, the instinct for happiness, and the refinements of the
feeling for freedom belong just as necessarily to slave morality and morals as
art and enthusiasm in reverence and in devotion are the regular symptoms of an
aristocratic way of thinking and valuing. From this we can without further ado
understand why love as passion—which is our European specialty— must
clearly have a noble origin: as is well known, its invention belongs to the
Provencal knightly poets, those splendidly inventive men of the “gay saber”
[gay science] to whom Europe owes so much— almost its very self.
261
Vanity
is among the things which are perhaps hardest for a noble man to understand: he
will be tempted even to deny its existence where another kind of man thinks he
has grasped it with both hands. For him the problem is imagining to himself
beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves, an opinion of themselves
which they do not have—and which, as a result, they also have not
“earned”—people who, nonetheless, themselves later believe in this
good opinion. Half of this seems to the noble man so tasteless and disrespectful
of oneself and the other half so unreasonably Baroque, that he would be happy to
understand vanity as an exception and has doubts about it in most cases when
people talk of it. For example, he’ll say: “I can make a mistake about my
own value and yet still demand that my value, precisely as I determine it, is
recognized by others—but that is not vanity (but arrogance or, in the more
frequent cases, something called “humility” and “modesty”). Or again,
“For many reasons I can take pleasure in the good opinion of others, perhaps
because I honour and love them and enjoy all of their pleasures, perhaps also
because their good opinion underscores and strengthens the faith I have in my
own good opinion of myself, perhaps because the good opinion of others, even in
cases where I do not share it, is still useful to me or promises to be useful—
but all that is not vanity.” The noble man must first compel himself,
particularly with the help of history, to see that since time immemorial, in all
the levels of people dependent in some way or other, the common man was
only what people thought of him:—not being at all accustomed to set
values himself, he measured himself by no value other than by how his masters
assessed him (that is the essential right of masters, to create values).
We should understand that, as the consequence of an immense atavism, the common
man even today still always waits first for an opinion about himself and
then instinctively submits himself to it: however, that is by no means merely a
“good” opinion, but also a bad and unreasonable one (think, for example, of
the greatest part of the self-assessment and self-devaluing which devout women
absorb from their father confessors and the devout Christian in general absorbs
from his church). Now, in accordance with the slow arrival of the democratic
order of things (and its cause, the blood mixing between masters and slaves),
the originally noble and rare impulse to ascribe to oneself a value on one’s
own and “to think well” of oneself will really become more and more
encouraged and widespread. But in every moment it has working against it an
older, more extensive, and more deeply incorporated tendency—and where the
phenomenon of “vanity” is concerned, this older tendency will become master
over the more recent one. The vain man takes pleasure in every good
opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from all considerations of its
utility and equally apart from its truth or falsity), just as he suffers from
every bad opinion. For he submits to both; he feels himself subjected to
them on the basis of that oldest of instincts for submission which breaks out in
him. It is “the slave” in the blood of the vain man, a trace of the
slave’s roguishness—and how much of the “slave” still remains nowadays
in woman, for example!—that tries to tempt him into good opinions of
himself; in the same way it’s the slave who later prostrates himself
immediately in front of these opinions, as if he had not summoned them up. —To
state the matter once again: vanity is an atavism.
262
A
species arises, a type becomes established and strong, under the long
struggle with essentially unchanging, unfavourable conditions. By
contrast, we know from the experience of breeders that species which receive an
ultra-abundant nourishment and, in general, an increase in protection and care
immediately tend towards variety in the type in the strongest manner and are
rich in wonders and monstrosities (as well as monstrous vices). Now, let’s
look for a moment at an aristocratic commonwealth, for example, an ancient Greek
polis [city state] or Venice, as an organization, whether
voluntary or involuntary, for the purpose of breeding. There are men
there living together who rely upon themselves and who want their species to
succeed mainly because it has to succeed or run the fearful risk of being
annihilated. Here there is a lack of that advantage, that abundance, that
protection under which variations are encouraged. The species senses the need
for itself as a species, as something which, particularly thanks to its
hardness, uniformity, simplicity of form, can generally succeed and enable
itself to keep going in the constant struggles with neighbours or with the
rebellious oppressed people or with those who threaten rebellion. The most
varied experience teaches them which characteristics they have to thank, above
all, for the fact that they are still there, in spite of all the gods and men,
that they have always been victorious. These characteristics they call virtues,
and they cultivate only these virtues to any great extent. They do that with
force—in fact, they desire force. Every aristocratic morality is intolerant in
its education of the young, its provisions for women, its marriage customs, its
relationships between young and old, its penal laws (which fix their eyes only
on those who are deviants)—it reckons intolerance itself among the virtues,
under the name “justice.” A type with few but very strong characteristics, a
species of strict, war-like, shrewdly laconic people, united and reserved (and,
as such, having the most sophisticated feelings for the magic and nuances
of society) will in this way establish itself over the succession of
generations. The constant struggle with unvarying, unfavourable
conditions is, as mentioned, the factor that makes a type fixed and hard.
Finally, however, at some point a fortunate time arises, which lets the immense
tension ease. Perhaps there are no more enemies among the neighbours, and the
means for living, even for enjoying life, are there in abundance. With one blow
the bond and the compulsion of the old discipline are torn apart: that
discipline no longer registers as necessary, as a condition of existence—if it
wished to remain in existence, it could do so only as a form of luxury,
as an archaic taste. Variation, whether as something abnormal (something
higher, finer, rarer) or as degeneration and monstrosity, suddenly bursts onto
the scene in the greatest abundance and splendour; the individual dares to be
individual and stand out. At these historical turning points there appear
alongside each other and often involved and mixed up together marvellous,
multifaceted, jungle-like growths, an upward soaring, a kind of tropical
tempo in competitiveness for growing and an immense annihilation and
self-destruction, thanks to the wild egoisms turned against each other and, as
it were, exploding, which wrestle with one another “for sun and light” and
no longer know how to derive any limit, any restraint, or any consideration from
the morality they have had up to that point. This very morality was the one
which built up such immense power, which bent the bow in such a threatening
manner— now, at this moment, it has become “outdated.” The dangerous and
disturbing point is reached where the greater, more multifaceted, and more
comprehensive life lives over and above the old morality; the
“individual” stands there, forced to give himself his own laws, his own arts
and tricks for self-preservation, self-raising, self-redemption. Nothing but new
what-for’s, nothing but new how-to’s, no common formula any
more, misunderstanding and contempt bound up together, decay, spoilage, and the
highest desires tied together in a ghastly way, the genius of the race brimming
over from all the horns of plenty with good and bad, a catastrophic simultaneous
presence of spring and autumn, full of new charms and veils, characteristic of
young, still unexhausted, still unwearied depravity. Once again there’s danger
there, the mother of morality, great danger, this time transferred into the
individual, into one’s neighbour and friend, into the alleyways, into one’s
own child, into one’s own heart, into all the most personal and most secret
wishes and desires. What will the moral philosophers who emerge at such a time
now have to preach? They discover, these keen observers and street loafers, that
things are quickly coming to an end, that everything around them is going rotten
and spreading corruption, that nothing lasts until the day after tomorrow,
except for one kind of person, the incurably mediocre. Only the mediocre
have the prospect of succeeding, of reproducing themselves—they are the people
of the future, the only survivors, “Be like them! Become mediocre!”—from
now on that’s the only morality which still makes sense, which people still
hear.—But it is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity!—it may
never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and
worth and duty and love of one’s neighbour—it will have difficulty concealing
its irony!
263
There
is an instinct for rank which, more than anything, is already an
indication of a high rank. There is a delight in the nuances of
respect which permits us to surmise a noble origin and habits. The refinement,
good, and loftiness of a soul are put to a dangerous test when something goes
past in front of it which is of the first rank, but which is not yet protected
by the shudders of authority from prying clutches and crudities: something that
goes its way unmarked, undiscovered, tempting, perhaps arbitrarily disguised and
hidden, like a living touchstone. The man whose task and practice is to
investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different forms in
order to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of
rank to which it belongs: he will put it to the test for its instinct of
reverence. Différence engendre haine [difference engenders hatred]:
the nastiness of some natures suddenly spurts out like dirty water when some
sacred container, some precious object from a locked shrine, some book with
marks of a great destiny is carried by. On the other hand, there is an
involuntary falling silent, a hesitation in the eye, an end to all gestures,
things which express that a soul feels close to something most worthy of
reverence. The way in which reverence for the Bible in Europe has, on the
whole, been maintained so far is perhaps the best piece of discipline and
refinement of tradition for which Europe owes a debt of thanks to Christianity:
such books of profundity and ultimate significance need for their protection an
externally imposed tyranny of authority in order to last for those
thousands of years which are necessary to exhaust them and sort out what they
mean. Much has been achieved when in the great mass of people (the shallow ones
and all sorts of people with diarrhoea) that feeling has finally been cultivated
that they are not permitted to touch everything, that there are sacred
experiences before which they have to pull off their shoes and which they must
keep their dirty hands off—this is almost the highest intensification of their
humanity. By contrast, perhaps nothing makes the so-called educated people,
those who have faith in “modern ideas,” so nauseating as their lack of
shame, the comfortable impudence in their eyes and hands, with which they touch,
lick, and grope everything, and it is possible that these days among a people,
one still finds in the common folk, particularly among the peasants, more relative
nobility of taste and tactful reverence than among the newspaper-reading demi-monde
of the spirit, among the educated.
264
One
cannot erase from a human being’s soul those actions which his ancestors loved
most and carried out most steadfastly: whether they were, for example,
industrious savers attached to a writing table and money box, modest and
bourgeois in their desires, as well as modest in their virtues, or whether they
were accustomed to live giving orders from morning until night, fond of harsh
entertainment and, along with that, perhaps of even harsher duties and
responsibilities; or whether, finally, they had at some time or other once
sacrificed the old privileges of their birth and possessions in order to live
entirely for their faith—their “God”—as men of an unrelenting and
delicate conscience, which blushes when confronted with any compromise. It is in
no way possible that a man does not possess in his body the
characteristics and preferences of his parents and forefathers, no matter what
appearance might say to the contrary. This is the problem of race. If we know
something about the parents, then we may draw a conclusion about the child: some
unpleasant excess or other, some lurking envy, a crude habit of
self-justification—as these three together have at all times made up the
essential type of the rabble—something like that must be passed onto the child
as surely as corrupt blood, and with the help of the best education and culture
people will succeed only in deceiving others about such heredity. And
nowadays what else does education and culture want! In our age, one very much of
the people—I mean to say our uncouth age—“education” and “culture” must
basically be the art of deception—to mislead about the origin of the inherited
rabble in one’s body and soul. Today an educator who preached truthfulness
above everything else and constantly shouted at his students “Be true! Be
natural! Act as you really are!”—even such a virtuous and true-hearted
jackass would after some time learn to take hold of that furca [pitchfork]
of Horace, in order to naturam expellere [drive out nature]. With what
success? “Rabble” usque recurret [always returns].*
265
At
the risk of annoying innocent ears, I propose the following: egoism belongs to
the nature of the noble soul; I mean that unshakeable faith that to a being such
as “we are” other beings must be subordinate by nature and have to sacrifice
themselves. The noble soul takes this fact of its egoism without any question
mark and without the feeling that there is anything harsh, compelled, or
arbitrary in it, much more as something that may be established in the
fundamental law of things. If he sought out a name for this, he would say “It
is justice itself.” In some circumstances which make him hesitate at first, he
admits that there are those with rights equal to his own. As soon as he has
cleared up this question of rank, he moves among these equals who have the same
rights as his with the same confident modesty and sophisticated reverence which
he has in his dealings with himself—in accordance with an inborn heavenly
mechanism which all the stars understand. It is one more part of his
egoism, this sophistication and self-restraint in his relations with his
equals—every star is such an egoist—: it honours itself in them and
in the rights which it concedes to them. It has no doubt that the exchange of
respect and rights, as the essential quality of all interactions, also
belongs to the natural condition of things. The noble soul gives as it takes,
out of the passionate and sensitive instinct for repayment, which lies deep
within it. The idea “favour” has no sense and agreeable fragrance inter
pares [among equals]; there may be a sublime manner of allowing presents
from above to wash over one, as it were, and of drinking them up thirstily like
water drops, but for this art and gesture the noble soul has no skill. Here its
egoism hinders it: in general, it is not happy to look “up above”—instead
it looks either directly forward, horizontally and slowly, or down—it knows
that it is on a height.
266
“We
can only truly respect highly the man who is not seeking himself”
Goethe to Rat Schlosser.
267
There
is a saying among the Chinese that mothers really teach their children: siao-sin,
“Make your heart small!” This is the essential and basic tendency of
late civilizations: I have no doubt that an ancient Greek would recognize this
self-diminution in us contemporary Europeans as well—and for that reason alone
we would already go “against his taste.”
268
Ultimately,
what does it mean to be ignoble?—Words are sound signals for ideas, but ideas
are more or less firm image signs for sensations which return frequently and
occur together, for groups of sensations. To understand each other, it is not
yet sufficient that people use the same words; they must use the same words also
for the same form of inner experiences; ultimately they must hold their
experience in common with each other. That’s why human beings belonging
to a single people understand each other better among themselves than
associations of different peoples, even when they themselves use the same
language; or rather, when human beings have lived together for a long time under
similar conditions (climate, soil, danger, needs, work), then something arises
out of that which “understands itself,” a people. In all souls, a similar
number of frequently repeating experiences have won the upper hand over those
which come more rarely; people understand each other on the basis of the former,
quickly and with ever-increasing speed—the history of language is the history
of a process of abbreviation. On the basis of this rapid understanding, people
bind with one another, closely and with ever-increasing closeness. The greater
the danger, the greater the need quickly and easily to come to agreement over
what needs to be done; not to misunderstand each other when in danger is what
people simply cannot do without in their interactions. With every friendship or
love affair people still make this test: nothing of that sort lasts as soon as
people reach the point where, with the same words, one of the two feels, means,
senses, wishes, or fears something different from the other one. (The fear of
the “eternal misunderstanding”: that is the benevolent genius which so often
prevents people of different sexes from over-hasty unions, to which their senses
and hearts urge them—and not some Schopenhauerish “genius of the
species”!—). Which groups of sensations within the soul wake up most
rapidly, seize the word, give the order—that decides about the whole rank
ordering of its values, that finally determines its tables of goods. The
assessments of value in a man reveal something about the structure of his
soul and where it looks for its conditions of life, its essential needs. Now,
assume that need has always brought together only such people as could indicate
with similar signs similar needs, similar experiences, then it would generally
turn out that the easy ability to communicate need, that is, in the last
analysis, familiarity with only average and common experiences, must have
been the most powerful of all the forces which have so far determined things
among human beings. People who are more similar and more ordinary were and
always have been at an advantage; the more exceptional, more refined, rarer, and
more difficult to understand easily remain isolated; in their isolation they are
subject to accidents and rarely propagate themselves. People have to summon up
huge counter-forces to cross this natural, all-too-natural progressus in
simile [advance into similarity], the further training of human beings into
what’s similar, ordinary, average, herd-like—into what’s common.
269
The
more a psychologist—a born and inevitable psychologist and analyst of the
soul—turns himself towards exceptional examples and human beings, the greater
the danger to him of suffocation from pity. He has to be hard and
cheerful, more so than another man. For the corruption and destruction of
loftier men, of the stranger type of soul, is the rule: it is terrible to have
such a rule always before one’s eyes. The multifaceted torture of the
psychologist who has uncovered this destructiveness, who once discovers and then
almost always rediscovers throughout all history this entire inner
“hopelessness” of the loftier people, this eternal “too late!” in every
sense, can perhaps one day come to the point where he turns with bitterness
against his own lot and attempts self-destruction—where he “corrupts”
himself. With almost every psychologist we will see a revealing inclination for
and delight in associating with ordinary and well-adjusted people: that
indicates that he always needs healing, that he requires some sort of refuge and
forgetting, far from what his insights and incisions, his “trade,” has laid
on his conscience. Fear of his memory is characteristic of him. He is easily
reduced to silence before the judgments of others; he listens with an unmoving
face as people revere, admire, love, and transfigure where he has seen,
or he even hides his silence, while he expressly agrees with some foreground
point of view or other. Perhaps the paradox of his situation gets so terrible
that the crowd, the educated, and the enthusiasts learn great admiration
precisely where he has learned great pity as well as great contempt—the
admiration for “great men” and miraculous animals for whose sake people
bless and honour the fatherland, the earth, the value of humanity, and
themselves, those to whom they draw the attention of the young and whom they use
as role models in their education . . . And who knows whether in all great
examples up to this point the very same thing has not happened: the crowd
worshipped a god—and 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 is disguised in his creation to
the point where he is unrecognizable; the “work” of the artist and the
philosopher first invents the man who has created it or is supposed to have
created it; the “great men,” as they are honoured, are small inferior works
of fiction in the background; in the world of historical values counterfeit is
king. These great poets, for example, this Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi,
Kleist, Gogol (I don’t dare mention greater names, but I have them in
mind)—perhaps have to be the way they are now: men of the moment,
enthusiastic, sensuous, childish, careless and sudden with trust and mistrust;
with souls in which some fracture or other normally has to be concealed; often
taking revenge in their works for an inner slur, often seeking with their
flights upward to forget some all-too-true memory, often lost in the mud and
almost infatuated, until they become like will o’ the wisps around a swamp and
pretend that they are stars—then the populace may well call them
idealists—often struggling against a long disgust, with a recurring ghost of
unbelief which makes them cold and forces them to yearn for gloria [glory]
and to gobble up “belief in themselves” from the hands of intoxicated
flatterers—what torture are these great artists and the loftier human
beings in general for the man who has once guessed who they are! It is so
understandable that these artists should so readily experience from woman—who
is clairvoyant in the world of suffering and who unfortunately also seeks to
help and to save far beyond her powers—those eruptions of unlimited and most
devoted pity which the crowd, above all the worshipping masses, does not
understand and which it showers with curious and complacent interpretations.
This pity regularly deceives itself about its power; woman may believe that love
can do everything—that’s a belief essential to her. Alas,
anyone who knows about the heart can guess how poor, stupid, helpless,
presumptuous, mistaken, more easily destroyed than saved even the best and most
profound love is! It is possible that beneath the sacred story and disguise of
the life of Jesus there lies hidden one of the most painful examples of the
martyrdom of knowledge about love: the martyrdom of the most innocent and
most desiring heart, which was never satisfied with any human love, which demanded
love, to be loved and nothing else, with hardness, with madness, with fearful
outbreaks against those who denied him love; the history of a poor man
unsatisfied and insatiable with love, who had to invent hell in order to send
there those who did not wish to love him—and who finally, having grown
to understand human love, had to invent a God who is entirely love, who is capable
of total love—who takes pity on human love because it is so pathetic, so
unknowing! Anyone who feels this way, who knows about love in this way—seeks
death.—But why dwell on such painful things? Assuming we don’t have to.—
270
The
spiritual arrogance and disgust of every man who has suffered deeply—how
profoundly men can suffer almost determines their order of rank—his chilling
certainty, with which he is thoroughly soaked and coloured, that thanks to his
suffering he knows more than the cleverest and wisest can know, that he
has known and at some point been “at home” in many terrible far-off worlds,
about which “you know nothing!” . . . this spiritual and silent
arrogance of the sufferer, this pride of the one chosen to know, of the
“initiate,” of the one who has almost been sacrificed, finds all kinds of
disguises necessary to protect himself from contact with prying and
compassionate hands and, in general, from everything which is not his equal in
pain. Profound suffering ennobles; it separates. One of the most sophisticated
forms of disguise is Epicureanism and a certain future courageousness in taste
adopted as a show, which takes suffering lightly and resists everything sad and
deep. There are “cheerful men” who use cheerfulness because it makes them
misunderstood—they want to be misunderstood. There are “scientific
men” who use science because that provides a cheerful appearance and because
being scientific enables one to infer that the man is superficial—they want
to tempt people to a false conclusion. There are free, impudent spirits who
would like to hide and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts; and
now and then even foolishness is a mask for an unholy, all-too-certain
knowledge. Hence, it follows that it’s part of a more sophisticated humanity
to have reverence “for the mask” and not to pursue psychology and curiosity
in the wrong place.
271
What
most profoundly divides two men is a different sense and degree of cleanliness.
What help is all honesty and mutual utility, what help is all the good will for
each other: in the end the fact remains—they “can’t stand each other’s
smell!” The highest instinct for cleanliness puts the person marked by it in
the strangest and most dangerous isolation, as a saint: for that’s simply what
saintliness is—the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any
awareness of an indescribable abundance of pleasure in the bath, any lust and
thirst which constantly drives the soul out of the night into the morning and
out of cloudiness, the “affliction,” into what is bright, gleaming,
profound, fine; just as such a tendency singles out—it is a noble
tendency—so it also separates. The pity of the saint is pity for the dirt
of those who are human, all-too-human. And there are degrees and heights where
the saint feels pity itself as contamination, as dirt . . .
272
Signs
of nobility: never thinking of reducing our duties to duties for everyone; not
wanting to give up one’s own responsibility, not wanting to share it; to
include one’s privileges and acting on them among one’s duties.
273
A
human being who strives for something great looks at everyone he meets along his
way either as a means or as a delay and an obstacle—or as a temporary place to
rest. His characteristic high-quality goodness towards his fellow men is
first possible when he has reached his height and governs. His impatience and
his awareness that until that point he is always sentenced to comedy—for even
war is a comedy and conceals, just as every means hides the end—corrupt all
contacts for him: this kind of man knows loneliness and what is most poisonous
in it.
274
The
problem for those who wait.—For
a higher man in whom the solution to a problem lies asleep, strokes of luck and
all sorts of unpredictable things are necessary for him to swing into action at
just the right time—“for an eruption,” as we could say. Ordinarily it does
not happen, and in all the corners of the earth sit people waiting, who
hardly know to what extent they are waiting, but even less that they are waiting
in vain. From time to time the call to wake up, that chance which provides the
“permission” for action comes too late—at a time when the best youth and
power for action have already been used up in sitting still. And many a man, in
the very moment he “sprang up,” has found to his horror that his limbs have
gone to sleep and his spirit is already too heavy! “It is too late,” he says
to himself, having lost faith in himself, and is now forever useless. —In the
realm of the genius, could “Raphael without hands,” taking that phrase in
the widest sense, perhaps not be the exception but the rule?*—Genius
is perhaps not really so rare, but the five hundred hands needed to
tyrannize the kairos, “the right time,” to seize chance by the
forelock!
275
Anyone
who does not want to see the height of a man looks all the more keenly at
what is low and in his foreground—and in the process gives himself away.
276
With
all kinds of injury and loss the lower and cruder soul is better off than the
more noble one: the dangers for the latter must be greater; the probability that
it will go wrong and die is even immense, given the multifaceted nature of its
living conditions.—With a lizard a finger which has been lost grows back: not
so with a man.
277
Bad
enough! The old story again! When we have finished building our house, we
suddenly notice that we have learned something in the process, something we
simply had to know before we started to build. The eternally tiresome
“Too late!”—The melancholy of everything finished! . . .
278
Wanderer,
who are you? I see you going on your way, without scorn, without love, with
unfathomable eyes, damp and sad like a lead sinker which has come back
unsatisfied from every depth into the light—what was it looking for down
there?—with a breast which does not sigh, with a lip which hides its disgust,
with a hand which now grasps only slowly: Who are you? What have you been doing?
Have a rest here: this place is hospitable to everyone—relax! And whoever you
happen to be, what would you like now? What do you need to recuperate? Just name
it: what I have I’ll offer you! “For relaxation? For recuperation? O you
inquisitive man, what are you talking about! But give me, I beg . . .” What?
What? Say it!—“One more mask! A second mask!” . . . .
279
Men
of profound sorrow betray themselves when they are happy: they have a way of
grabbing happiness as if they would like to overwhelm and strangle it from
jealousy—alas, they know too well that it’s running away from them!
280
“Bad!
Bad! What? Is he not going—back?”—Yes! But you understand him badly if you
complain about it. He’s going back, as every man does who wants to make a huge
jump.—
281
“Will
people believe me? But I demand that people believe me: I have always thought
only badly of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only when under
compulsion, always without delight ‘for the subject,’ ready to wander off
from ‘myself,’ always without faith in the conclusion, thanks to the
uncontrollable mistrust of the possibility of self-knowledge which has
taken me so far that I find even the idea of ‘immediate knowledge,’ which
the theoreticians allow themselves, a contradictio in adjecto [contradiction
in terms]: this entire fact is almost the surest thing I know about myself.
Within me there must be some kind of aversion to believing anything
definite about myself. Is a riddle perhaps hidden in that? Probably, but
fortunately nothing for my own teeth. Perhaps it reveals the species to which I
belong?—But not to me: and that’s enough to satisfy me.”
282
“But
what has happened to you?”—“I don’t know,” he said, hesitating;
“perhaps the harpies have flown over my table.”* Occasionally
nowadays it happens that a mild, moderate, reserved man suddenly becomes
violent, smashes plates, throws over the table, screams, stomps around, slanders
the entire world—and finally goes to the side ashamed, furious with
himself.—Where? What for? To starve off on his own? To suffocate on his
memory? Anyone who has the desires of a lofty discriminating soul and only
rarely finds his table set and his nourishment ready will be in great danger at
all times: but today the danger is extraordinary. Thrown into a noisy and
uncouth age, with which he does not want to eat out of the same dish, he can
easily perish from hunger and thirst, or, if he finally nonetheless “catches
on,”—from sudden disgust.—All of us have probably already sat at tables
where we did not belong; and it’s precisely the most spiritual ones among us
who are the most difficult to feed, who know that dangerous dyspepsia which
comes from a sudden insight and disappointment about our food and those sitting
next to us at the table—the after-dinner disgust.
283
Assuming
that one wants to praise at all, there’s a refined and at the same time noble
self-control which always gives praise only where one does not
agree:—in other cases one would really be praising oneself, something that
contradicts good taste—naturally, a self-control which provides a good
opportunity and provocation for one to be constantly misunderstood. In
order to permit oneself this true luxury of taste and morality, one must not
live among spiritual fools, but rather among people whose misunderstandings and
false ideas are still amusing for their sophistication—or one will have to pay
dearly for it!—“He is praising me: thus, he admits I’m
right”—this asinine way of making conclusions ruins half of life for us
hermits, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and friendship.
284
To
live with an immense and proud composure: always beyond.—To have and not have
one’s feelings, one’s for and against, voluntarily, to condescend to them
for hours, to sit on them, as if on a horse, often as if on a
donkey:—for one needs to know how to use their stupidity as well as their
fire. To preserve one’s three hundred foregrounds, as well as one’s dark
glasses: for there are occasions when no one should be allowed to look into our
eyes, even less into our “reasons.” And to select for company that
mischievous and cheerful vice, courtesy. And to remain master of one’s four
virtues: courage, insight, sympathy, and loneliness. For solitude is a virtue
with us, as a sublime tendency and impulse for cleanliness, which senses how
contact between one person and another—“in society”—must inevitably
bring impurity with it. Every community somehow, somewhere, sometime makes
people— “common.”
285
The
greatest events and ideas—but the greatest ideas are the greatest events—are
understood last of all: the generations contemporary with them do not experience
such events—they go on living past them. What happens then is something like
in the realm of the stars. The light of the most distant star comes to men last
of all: and before that light arrives, men deny that there are stars
there. “How many centuries does a spirit need in order to be
understood?”—that is also a standard with which people construct a rank
ordering and etiquette, as is necessary, for spirits and stars.—
286
“Here
the view is free, the spirit elevated.”—But there is a reverse kind of
person who is also on the heights and also has a free view—but who looks down.
287
What
is noble? What does the word “noble” still mean to us nowadays? What reveals
the noble human being, how do people recognize him, under this heavy, oppressive
sky at the beginning of the rule of the rabble, which is making everything
opaque and leaden?—It is not the actions which prove him—actions are always
ambiguous, always inscrutable—; nor is it the “works.” Among artists and
scholars today we find a sufficient number of those who through their works
reveal how a profound desire for what is noble drives them: but this very need for
what is noble is fundamentally different from the needs of the noble soul itself
and is really the eloquent and dangerous indication that such a soul is lacking.
It’s not the works; it’s the belief which decides here, which here
establishes the order of rank, to take up once more an old religious formula
with a new and more profound understanding: some basic certainty which a noble
soul has about itself, something which does not allow itself to be sought out or
found or perhaps even to be lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself.—
288
There
are human beings who have spirit in an inevitable way. They may toss and turn as
they wish and hold their hands in front of their tell-tale eyes (—as if the
hand were not a give away!—): finally it always comes out that they have
something which they are hiding, that is, spirit. One of the most sophisticated
ways to deceive, at least for as long as possible, and to present oneself
successfully as stupider than one is—what in common life is often as desirable
as an umbrella—is called enthusiasm, including what belongs with it,
for example, virtue. For, as Galiani, who must have known, says:—vertu est
enthousiasme [virtue is enthusiasm].
289
In
the writings of a hermit we always hear something of the echo of desolation,
something of the whispers and the timid gazing around of isolation; from his
strongest words, even from his screaming, still resounds a new and dangerous
kind of silence, of concealment. Whoever has sat down, year in and year out, day
and night, alone in an intimate dispute and conversation with his soul, whoever
has become a cave bear or digger for treasure or guardian of treasure and dragon
in his own cavern—it can be a labyrinth but also a gold mine—such a man’s
very ideas finally take on a distinct twilight colouring and smell as much of
mould as they do of profundity, something incommunicable and reluctant, which
blows cold wind over everyone passing by. The hermit does not believe that a
philosopher—assuming that a philosopher has always first been a hermit—has
ever expressed his real and final opinion in his books. Don’t people write
books expressly to hide what they have stored inside them?—In fact, he will
have doubts whether a philosopher could generally have “real and
final” opinions, whether in his case behind every cave there does not still
lie, and must lie, an even deeper cavern—a more comprehensive, stranger,
richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every reason, under every
“foundation.” Every philosophy is a foreground-philosophy—that is the
judgment of a hermit: “There is something arbitrary about the fact that he
remained here, looked back, looked around, that at this point he set his
shovel aside and did not dig more deeply—there is also something suspicious
about it.” Every philosophy also hides a philosophy; every opinion is
also a hiding place, every word is also a mask.
290
Every
deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than being misunderstood. In the
latter case, perhaps his vanity suffers, but the former hurts his heart, his
sympathy, which always says, “Alas, why do you want to have it as hard
as I did?”
291
Man,
a multifaceted, lying, artificial, and impenetrable animal, who spooks other
animals less by his power than by his cunning and intelligence, has invented
good conscience in order to enjoy his own soul for once as something simple;
and all of morality is a long spirited falsification, thanks to which it’s at
all possible to enjoy a glimpse at the soul. From this point of view, perhaps
much more belongs to the idea of “art” than people commonly believe.
292
A
philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects,
hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his very own thoughts
as if from outside, as if from above and below, as if they are experiences and
lightning strikes tailor-made for him; who himself is perhaps a storm
which moves along pregnant with new lightning flashes; a fateful man, around
whom things always rumble and mutter and gape and mysteriously close. A
philosopher: alas, a being which often runs away from itself, often is afraid of
itself—but which is too curious not to “come back to itself” again and
again. . .
293
A
man who says, “That pleases me. I take that for my own and will protect it and
defend it against everyone”; a man who can carry out a task, put a decision
into effect, remain true to an idea, hold on to a woman, punish and cast down an
insolent person; a man who has his anger and his sword and to whom the weak, the
suffering, the distressed, and even the animals are happy to go and belong to by
nature—in short, a man who is by nature a master—when such a man has
pity, well, this pity is worth something! But what is there in the pity
of those who suffer! Or even of those who preach pity! Today in almost all of
Europe there is a pathological susceptibility and sensitivity to pain, as well
as a nasty lack of restraint in complaining, a mollycoddling, which likes to
dress itself up with religion and philosophical bits and pieces as something
loftier—there is a formal culture of suffering. In my view, the unmanliness
of what is christened “pity” in such enthusiastic circles is what always
strikes the eye first.—We must excommunicate this latest form of bad taste,
powerfully and thoroughly; and finally I wish that people would set against
their hearts and throats the good amulet “gai saber,”—gay
science”, to clarify this matter for the Germans.
294
The
Olympian vice.—In spite of
that philosopher who, as a genuine Englishman, tried to make laughing a
defamation of character among all thinking men—“Laughter is a serious
infirmity of human nature which every thinking man will strive to overcome”
(Hobbes)—I would really allow myself to order the ranks of philosophers
according to the rank of their laughter—right up to those who are capable of golden
laughter.*
And assuming that the gods also practise philosophy, a fact
which many conclusions have already driven me to—I don’t doubt
that in the process they know how to laugh in a superhuman and new
way—and at the expense of all serious things! Gods delight in making fun: even
where sacred actions are concerned, it seems they cannot stop laughing.
295
The
genius of the heart, as that great hidden presence possesses it, the tempter-god
and born pied piper of the conscience, whose voice knows how to climb down into
the underworld of every soul, who does not say a word or cast a glance in which
there does not lie some concern with and trace of temptation, whose mastery
includes the fact that he understands how to seem—and not what he is, but what
for those who follow him is one more compulsion to press themselves
always closer to him, to follow him ever more inwardly and fundamentally:—that
genius of the heart, who makes all noise and self-satisfaction fall silent and
teaches it to listen, who smooths out the rough souls and gives them a new
desire to taste,—to lie still as a mirror so that the deep heaven reflects
itself in them—; the genius of the heart who teaches the foolish and
over-hasty hand to hesitate and reach out more delicately; who senses the hidden
and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under the
thick cloudy ice and is a divining rod for every grain of gold which has lain
buried for a long time in a dungeon crammed with mud and sand; the genius of the
heart, at whose touch everyone goes forward richer, not divinely gifted and
surprised, not as if delighted and oppressed with strange, fine things, but
richer in his own self, newer to himself than previously, broken open, blown
upon and sounded out by a thawing wind, more uncertain perhaps, more tender,
more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes which as yet have no names, full of
new will and flowing, full of new dissatisfactions and opposing currents . . .
But what am I doing, my friends? Whom am I speaking to you about? Have I
forgotten myself so much that I have not once named him to you? It could be that
you have already guessed for yourself who this dubious spirit and god is who
wants to be praised in such a way. For just as things go with anyone who
from the time he walked on childish legs has always been on the move and through
alien territory, so many strange and not un-dangerous spirits have crossed my
path, too, above all the one I have just been speaking about, who has come again
and again, namely, no less a spirit than the god Dionysus, that
enormously ambiguous and tempter god, to whom in earlier times, as you know, I
offered up my first work, in all secrecy and reverence—as the last person, so
I thought, who had offered a sacrifice to him: for I found no one who
understood what I was doing then.*
Meanwhile I learned a great deal, much too much, about the philosophy of this
god, and, as mentioned, from mouth to mouth—I, the last disciple and initiate
of the god Dionysus: and I might well at last begin to give you, my friends, a
little taste of this philosophy, as much as I am permitted? In a hushed voice,
as is reasonable: for this concerns a number of things which are secret, new,
strange, odd, mysterious. Even the fact that Dionysus is a philosopher and that
the gods also carry on philosophy seems to me a novelty which is not harmless
and which perhaps might excite mistrust precisely among philosophers—among
you, my friends it has less against it, although it could be that it comes too
late and not at the right moment: for people have revealed to me that nowadays
you are not happy to believe in god and gods. Also perhaps the fact that in my
explanation I must proceed with more candour than is always pleasing to the
strict habits of your ears? Certainly the god under discussion went further,
very much further, in conversations like this and was always several steps ahead
of me . . . in fact, if it were permitted, I would, following human practices,
attach to him beautifully solemn names of splendour and virtue; I would have to
provide a great deal of praise for his courage as an explorer and discoverer,
for his daring honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a god has no
idea how to begin with all this venerable rubbish and pageantry. “Keep
that,” he would say, “for yourself and people like you and anyone else who
needs it! I have no reason to decorate my nakedness!”—Do people sense that
this type of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame? He said it this way
once, “In some circumstances, I love human beings”—and in saying that, he
was alluding to Ariadne, who was present—“for me a human being is a
pleasant, brave, inventive animal which has no equal on earth; it finds the
right path even in every labyrinth. I like him: I often reflect how I could
bring him further forwards and make him stronger, more evil, and more profound
than he is.”—“Stronger, more evil, and more profound?” I asked shocked.
“Yes,” he said once more, “stronger, more evil, and more profound, also
more beautiful”—and with that the tempter god smiled with his halcyon smile,
as if he had just uttered an enchanting compliment We can see here also that it
is not just shame this divinity lacks—; and there are in general good reasons
to suppose that in some things the gods collectively could learn from us human
beings. We human beings are—more human. . .*
296
Alas,
what are you then, my written and painted thoughts! It’s not so long ago that
you were still so colourful, young, and malicious, full of stings and secret
seasonings, so that you made me sneeze and laugh.—And now? You have already
stripped off your novelty and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths:
you already look so immortal, so heartbreakingly honest, so boring! And was it
ever different? What things we transcribe in our writing and painting, we
mandarins with a Chinese paintbrush, we immortalizers of things which let
themselves be written—what are the only things we are capable of painting?
Alas, always only what is just about to fade and is beginning to lose its
fragrance! Alas, always only storms which are worn out and withdrawing and old
yellow feelings! Alas, always only birds which have exhausted themselves flying
and lost their way and now let themselves be caught by hand—by our
hand! We immortalize what can no longer live and fly, only tired and crumbling
things! And it is only your afternoon, my written and painted thoughts,
for which I alone have colours, many colours perhaps, many colourful caresses
and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds:—but no one will sense from
me how you looked in your dawn, you sudden sparks and miracles of my loneliness,
you, my old loved ones—my wicked thoughts!
Notes
.
. . Horace: Quintus Horatius
Flaccus (65-8 BC) an important poet in classical Rome. [Back
to Text]
.
. . Raphael (1483-1520):
major Italian painter of the Renaissance, who died at age thirty-seven. [Back
to Text]
.
. harpies: winged monsters
from Greek mythology who steal food. [Back
to Text]
What
Nietzsche offers here in German as a quotation from Hobbes is not, according to
Walter Kaufmann, found in any of Hobbes’ works, although Hobbes does discuss
laughter on a number of occasions (see Kaufmann’s translation of Beyond
Good and Evil, 231). [Back
to Text]
The
“first work” Nietzsche is referring to is his Birth of Tragedy,
published in 1872, in which he proposes the struggle between the Apollonian and
Dionysian. [Back
to Text]
.
. . Ariadne: in Greek
mythology the daughter of Minos, king of Crete. She helped Theseus kill the
Minotaur in the Labyrinth and escaped with him. When Theseus abandoned Ariadne,
Dionysus fell in love with her. [Back
to Text]
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