Human, All-Too-Human, Part II

They make use of all doubts about the limits of knowledge, of all sceptical excesses, in order to spread over every- thing the rumpled veil of uncertainty. For they desire that when this darkening process is complete their wizardry and soul-magic may be accepted without hesitation as the path to " true truth " and " real reality. Schopenhauer, whose profound under- standing of what is human and all-too-human and original sense for facts was not a little impaired by the bright leopard-skin of his metaphysic the skin must first be pulled off him if one wants to find the real moralist genius beneath Schopenhauermakes this admirable distinction, wherein he comes far nearer the mark than he would himself dare to ad- mit: Philosophic brains will accordingly be distinguished, from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical' significance of morality.

This must create between the two kinds of brain a gulf of a depth and un- bridgeableness of which the much-deplored gulf between "cultured " and " uncultured " scarcely gives a conception. It is true that many back doors, which the " philosophic brains," like Schopenhauer's own, have left for themselves, must be recognised as useless. None leads into the open, into the fresh air of the free will, but every door through which people had slipped hitherto showed behind it once more the gleaming brass wall of fate. For we are in a prison, and can only dream of freedom, not make ourselves free.

That the recognition of this fact cannot be resisted much longer is shown by the despairing and incredible postures and grimaces of those who still press against it and continue their wrestling-bout with it. Their attitude at present is something like this: And all is full of guilt and the consciousness of guilt?

But some one must be the sinner. Here is free will: It would be quite horrible if it were anything more than a logical pose, a hideous grimace of the underlying thought, perhaps the death-convulsion of the heart that seeks a remedy in its despair, the heart to which delirium whispers: Hence the philosopher must say, like Christ, " Judge not," and the final distinction between the philo- sophic brains and the others would be that the former wish to be just and the latter wish to be judges. You hold that sacrifice Is the hall- mark of moral action? Just consider whether in every action that is done with deliberation, in the best as in the worst, there be not a sacrifice.

One must know the best and the worst that a man is capable of in theory and in practice before one can judge how strong his moral nature is and can be. But this is an experiment that one can never carry out. Whetherwe have a serpent's tooth or not we cannot know before some one has set his heel upon our necks. A wife or a mother could say: Our character is determined more by the absence of certain ex- periences than by the experiences we have under- gone. We forget and purposely banish from our minds a good deal of our past. In other words, we wish our picture, that beams at us from the past, to belie us, to flatter our vanity we are constantly engaged in this self-deception.

And you who talk and boast so much of " self- oblivion in love," of the " absorption of the ego in the other person " you hold that this is something different? It seems to me that those who hide something of themselves from themselves, or hide their whole selves from themselves, are alike committing a theft from the treasury of knowledge. It is clear, then, against what transgression the maxim "Know thyself" is a warning. He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself.

To those arguments of our adversary against which our head feels too weak our heart replies by throwing suspicion on the motives of his arguments. An art that points out and glorifies the exceptional cases of morality where the good becomes bad and the unjust just should rarely be given a hearing: The only decisive argument that has always deterred men from drinking a poison is not that it is deadly, but that it has an unpleasant taste.

If men only committed such deeds as do not give rise to a bad conscience, the human world would still look bad and rascally enough, but not so sickly and pitiable as at present. Enough wicked men without conscience have existed at all times, and many good honest folk lack the feeling of pleasure in a good conscience. It is more convenient to follow one's conscience than one's intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and so few intelligent people.

One temperament finds it useful to be able to give vent to its disgust in words, being made sweeter by speech. Another reaches its full bitterness only by speaking out: To get bed-sores is unpleasant, but no proof against the merits of the cure that prescribes that you should take to your bed.

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Men who have long lived outside themselves, and have at last devoted themselves to the inward philosophic life, know that one can also get sores of character and intellect. This, again, is on the whole no argument against the chosen way of life, but necessitates a few small exceptions and apparent relapses. By an excess of effort they win leisure for them- selves, and then they can do nothing with it but count the hours until the tale is ended. Is not a man fairly well described, when we are told that he likes to walk between tall fields of golden corn: Yes, something of the man is described herewith, but the mirror of Nature does not say that the same man, with and not even " in spite of w all his idyllic sensibilities, might be disagreeable, stingy, and conceited.

Horace, who was a good judge of such matters, in his famous beatus ille qui procul negotiis puts the tenderest feeling for country life into the mouth of a Roman money-lender. Thestrongestcogni- tion that of the complete non-freedom of the human will is yet the poorest in results, for it has always had the mightiest of opponents human vanity. A beneficial influence on friends is exerted by one man unconsciously, through his nature ; by another consciously, through isolated actions.

Although the former nature is held to be the higher, the latter alone is allied to good conscience and pleasure the pleasure in justi- fication by good works, which rests upon a belief in the volitional character of our good and evil doing that is to say, upon a mistake. The injustice we have inflicted ourselves is far harder to bear than the injustice inflicted upon us by others not always from moral grounds, be it observed.

After all, the doer is always thesufferer thatis,if hebecapable of feeling the sting of conscience or of perceiving that by his action he has armed society against himself and cut himself off. For this reason we should be- ware still more of doing than of suffering injustice, for the sake of our own inward happiness so as not to lose our feeling of well-being quite apart from any consideration of the precepts of religion and morality. Not a few are skilled in the impure self-deception that enables them to transform every injustice of their own into an injustice inflicted upon them from without, and to reserve for their own acts the exceptional right to the plea of self-defence.

Their object, of course, is to make their own burden lighter. Ordinary envy is wont to cackle when the envied hen has laid an egg, thereby relieving itself and be- coming milder. But there is a yet deeper envy that in such a case becomes dead silent, desiring that every mouth should be sealed and always more and more angry because this desire is not gratified. Silent envy grows in silence. Anger exhausts the soul and brings its very dregs to light.

Hence, if we know no other means of gaining certainty, we must under- stand how to arouse anger in our dependents and adversaries, in order to learn what is really done and thought to our detriment. The sword of attack is honest and broad, the sword of defence usually runs out to a needle point.

One who is openly honest towards himself ends by being rather conceited about this honesty. He knows only too well why he is honest for the same reason that another man prefers outward show and hypocrisy. The heaping of coals of fire on another's head is generally misunderstood and falls flat, because the other knows himself to be just as much in the right, and on his side too has thought of collecting coals.

Altered opinions alter not at all or very little the character of a man: We simulate pity when we wish to show ourselves superior to the feeling of animosity, but generally in vain. This point is not noticed without a considerable enhancement of that feeling of animosity. At the moment when a man openly makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter.

Sometimes, however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free from the tortures of sup- pressed envy. In the darkest hour of depression, sickness, and guilt, we are still glad to see others taking a light from us and making use of us as of the disk of the moon.

By this round- about route we derive some light from our own illu- minating faculty. But to picture to oneself the joy of others and to rejoice thereat is the highest privilege of the highest animals, and again, amongst them, is the property only of the most select specimens accordingly a rare " human thing. Those who have arrived at works and deeds are in an obscure way, they know not how, all the more pregnant with them, as if to prove supplementarily that these are their children and not those of chance.

Just as justice is so often a cloak for weakness, so men who are fairly intelligent, but weak, sometimes attempt dis- simulation from ambitious motives and purposely show themselves unjust and hard, in order to leave behind them the impression of strength. If in a large sack of profit we find a single grain of humiliation we still make a wry face even at our good luck. The fact that all that is weak and in need of help appeals to the heart induces in us the habit of designating by diminutive and softening terms all that appeals to our hearts and accordingly making such things weak and clinging to our imaginations.

For, wishing to help at all costs, sympathy is in no perplexity either as to the means of assist- ance or as to the nature and cause of the disease, and goes on courageously administering all its quack medicines to restore the health and reputa- tion of the patient. There is even an importunacy in relation to works, and the act of associating one- self from early youth on an intimate footing with the illustrious works of all times evinces an entire absence of shame.

Others are only importunate from ignorance, not knowing with whom they have to do for instance classical scholars young and old in relation to the works of the Greeks. In all coolness we make reasonable plans against our passions. But we make the most serious mis- take in this connection in being often ashamed, when the design has to be carried out, of the cool- ness and calculation with which we conceived it.

So we do just the unreasonable thing, from that sort of defiant magnanimity that every passion in- volves.

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He who takes his morality solemnly and seriously is enraged against the sceptics in the domain of morals. For where he lavishes all his force, he wishes others to marvel but not to investigate and doubt Then there are natures whose last shred of morality is just the belief in morals. They behave in the same way towards sceptics, if possible still more passion- ately. All moralists are shy, because they know they are confounded with spies and traitors, so soon as their penchant is noticed. Besides, they are generally conscious of being impotent in action, for in the midst of work the motives of their activity almost withdraw their attention from the work.

It is an unpardonable offence when one discovers that where one was con- vinced of being loved, one is only regarded as a household utensil and decoration, whereby the master of the house can find an outlet for his vanity before his guests. What else is love but understanding and rejoicing that another lives, works, and feels in a different and opposite way to ourselves? That love may be able to bridge over the contrasts by joys, we must not remove or deny those contrasts. Even self-love presupposes an irre- concileable duality or plurality in one person.

What one sometimes does not know and feel accurately in waking hours whether one has a good or a bad conscience as regards some person is revealed completely and unambiguously by dreams. Not joy but joylessness is the mother of debauchery. No one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. All complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise. Whether we do one or the other, we always make some one responsible. We sometimes advance truth by a twofold injustice: Self-mistrust does not always pro- ceed uncertainly and shyly, but sometimes in a furious rage, having worked itself into a frenzy in order not to tremble.

If you want to be a personality you must even hold your shadow in honour. We must know how to emerge cleaner from unclean conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves even with dirty water. The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go. There is a slow, grad- ual path to vice and rascality of every description. In the end, the traveller is quite abandoned by the insect-swarms of a bad conscience, and although a thorough scoundrel he walks in innocence. Making plans and conceiving projects involves many agreeable sentiments.

He that had the strength to be nothing but a contriver of plans all his life would be a happy man. But one must occasionally have a rest from this activity by carrying a plan into execution, and then comes anger and sobriety. Every effi- cient man is blocked by his efficiency and cannot look out freely from its prison.

Had he not also a goodly share of imperfection, he could, by reason of his virtue, never arrive at an intellectual or moral freedom. Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal. The whole way in which a man thinks of death during the prime of his life and strength is very expressive and sig- nificant for what we call his character.

But the hour of death itself, his behaviour on the death-bed, is almost indifferent. The exhaustion of waning life, especially when old people die, the irregular or in- sufficient nourishment of the brain during this last period, the occasionally violent pain, the novel and untried nature of the whole position, and only too often the ebb and flow of superstitious impressions and fears, as if dying were of much consequence and meant the crossing of bridges of the most terrible kind all this forbids our using death as a testimony concerning the living.

Nor is it true that the dying man is generally more honest than the living. On the contrary, through the solemn attitude of the bystanders, the repressed or flowing streams of tears and emotions, every one is inveigled into a comedy of vanity, now conscious, now unconscious. The serious way in which every dying man is treated must have been to many a poor despised devil the highest joy of his whole life and a sort of compensa- tion and repayment for many privations.

The origin of morality may be traced to two ideas: Even if the individual suffers by an arrangement that suits the mass, even if he is depressed and ruined by it, morality must be maintained and the victim brought to the sacrifice.

But the philosophy of the sacrificial victim always finds voice too late, and so victory remains with morals and morality: Hence it constantly happens that the individual makes himself into a majority by means of his morality. Science, which is certainly a very good thing, has come into the world without such a conscience and quite free from all pathos, rather clandestinely, by roundabout ways, walking with shrouded or masked face like a sinner, and always with the feeling at least of being a smuggler.

Good conscience has bad conscience for its stepping- stone, not for its opposite. For all that is good has at one time been new and consequently strange, anti-moral, immoral, and has gnawed like a worm at the heart of the fortunate discoverer. We should not shrink from treading the road to a virtue, even when we see clearly that nothing but egotism, and accordingly utility, personal comfort, fear, con- siderations of health, reputation, or glory, are the impelling motives.

These motives are styled ignoble and selfish. Very well, but if they stimulate us to some virtue for example, self-denial, dutifulness, order, thrift, measure, and moderation let us listen to them, whatever their epithets may be! For if we reach the goal to which they summon us, then the virtue we have attained, by means of the pure air it makes us breathe and the spiritual well-being it communicates, ennobles the remoter impulses of our action, and afterwards we no longer perform those actions from the same coarse motives that inspired us before.

So that is your Christianity! To annoy humanity you praise " God and His Saints," and again when you want to praise humanity you go so far that God and His Saints must be annoyed. I wish you would at least learn Christian manners, as you are so deficient in the civility of the Christian heart.

A true believer must be to us an object of veneration, but the same holds good of a true, sincere, convinced unbeliever. With men of the latter stamp we are near to the high mountains where mighty rivers have their source, and with believers we are under vigorous, shady, restful trees. In both cases a man willed to die, and in both cases he let his breast be pierced by the sword in the hand of human injustice.

Hence it became the lyric religion whereas in its two other creations Semitism bestowed heroico-epical religions upon the world.

1. The Art of Lying.
2. St. Barts High: Clash of the Classes!
3. Human All-Too-Human!

In the word " love " there is so much meaning, so much that stimulates and appeals to memory and hope, that even the meanest intelli- gence and the coldest heart feel some glimmering of its sense. The cleverest woman and the lowest man think of the comparatively unselfish moments of their whole life, even if with them Eros never soared high: In Christianity there is also an Epicurean trend of thought, starting from the idea that God can only demand of man, his creation and his image, what it is possible for man to fulfil, and accordingly that Christian virtue and perfection are attainable and often attained.

Now, for instance, the belief in loving one's enemies even if it is only a belief or fancy, and by no means a psychological reality a real love gives unalloyed happiness, so long as it is genuinely believed. As to the reason of this, psychologist and Christian might well differ. Thus error can make Christ's promise come true. We may be allowed to form a conjecture as to the dis- appearance of Christianity and as to the places where it will be the slowest to retreat, if we con- sider where and for what reasons Protestantism spread with such startling rapidity.

As is well known, Protestantism promised to do far more cheaply all that the old Church did, without costly masses, pilgrimages, and priestly pomp and circum- stance.

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

It spread particularly among the Northern nations, which were not so deeply rooted as those of the South in the old Church's symbolism and love of ritual. In the South the more powerful pagan religion survived in Christianity, whereas in the North Christianity meant an opposition to and a break with the old-time creed, and hence was from the first more thoughtful and less sensual, but for that very reason, in times of peril, more fanatical and more obstinate. If from the stand- point of thought we succeed in uprooting Christi- anity, we can at once know the point where it will begin to disappear the very point at which it will be most stubborn in defence.

In other places it will bend but not break, lose its leaves but burst into leaf afresh, because the senses, and not thought, have gone over to its side. Yet what does one hold leisure or semi-idleness to be worth, when once one has be- come accustomed to it?

The senses plead against a dechristianised world, saying that there would be too much work to do in it and an insufficient supply of leisure. They take the part of magic that is, they let God work himself oremus nos, Deus laboret. There is no book that contains in such abundance or expresses so faithfully all that man occasionally finds salutary ecstatic inward happiness, ready for sacrifice or death in the belief in and contemplation of his truth as the book that tells of Christ.

From that book a clever man may learn all the means whereby a book can be made into a world-book, a vade-mecum for all, and especially that master-means of representing every- thing as discovered, nothing as future and uncertain. All influential books try to leave the same impres- sion, as if the widest intellectual horizon were cir- cumscribed here and as if about the sun that shines here every constellation visible at present or in the future must revolve. Must not then all purely scientific books be poor in influence on the same grounds as such books are rich in influence?

Is not the book fated to live humble and among humble folk, in order to be crucified in the end and never resurrected? Can any religion demand more self-denial and draw the selfish out of themselves more inexorably than science? This and similar things we may say, in any case with a certain theatricality, when we have to defend ourselves against believers, for it is impossible to conduct a defence without a certain amount of theatricality. But between ourselves our language must be more honest, and we employ a freedom that those be- lievers are not even allowed, in their own interests, to understand.

Away, then, with the monastic cowl of self-denial, with the appearance of humility! Much more and much better so rings our truth! If science were not linked with the pleasure of knowledge, the utility of the thing known, what should we care for science? If a little faith, love, and hope did not lead our souls to knowledge, what would attract us to science? And if in science the ego means nothing, still the inventive, happy ego, every upright and industrious ego, means a great deal in the republic of the men of science.

The homage of those who pay homage, the joy of those whom we wish well or honour, in some cases glory and a fair share of immortality, is the personal reward for every suppression of personality: If we had not remained in some degree unscientific, what would science matter to us? We are content with less. But should one of them cry out to us: But you, if your faith makes you happy, show yourselves to be happy. Your faces have always done more harm to your faith than our reasons!

If that glad message of your Bible were written in your faces, you would not need to de- mand belief in the authority of that book in such stiff-necked fashion. Your words, your actions should continually make the Bible superfluous in fact, through you a new Bible should continually come into being. As it is, your apologia for Christianity is rooted in your unchristianity, and with your defence you write your own condemna- tion.

If you, however, should wish to emerge from your dissatisfaction with Christianity, you should ponder over the experience of two thousand years, which, clothed in the modest form of a question, may be voiced as follows: Nor should this be so done as if the poet, like an imaginative political economist, had to anticipate a more favourable national and social state of things and picture their realisation. Rather will he, just as the earlier poets portrayed the images of the Gods, portray the fair images of men. He will divine those cases where, in the midst of our modern world and reality which will not be shirked or repudiated in the usual poetic fashion , a great, noble soul is still possible, where it may be embodied in harmonious, equable conditions, where it may become perma- nent, visible, and representative of a type, and so, by the stimulus to imitation and envy, help to create the future.

The poems of such a poet would be distinguished by appearing secluded and protected from the heated atmosphere of the passions. The irremediable failure, the shattering of all the strings of the human instrument, the scornful laughter and gnashing of teeth, and all tragedy and comedy in the usual old sense, would appear by the side of this new art as mere archaic lumber, a blurring of the outlines of the world-picture. Strength, kind- ness, gentleness, purity, and an unsought, innate moderation in the personalities and their action: Many roads to this poetry of the future start from Goethe, but the quest needs good pathfinders and above all a far greater strength than is possessed by modern poets, who unscrupulously represent the half-animal and the immaturity and intemperance that are mistaken by them for power and naturalness.

But it can be a tragic and also a comic finale. If the beautiful is to be identified with that which gives pleasure and thus sang the Muses once the useful is often the necessary circuitous path to the beautiful, and has a perfect right to spurn the short-sighted censure of men who live for the moment, who will not wait, and who think "that they can reach all good things without ever taking a circuitous path. In any case he has but a limited measure of strength, and how could the proportion of strength that he spends on himself be of any benefit to his work or vice versa? If we have sat- isfied the best people of our time with our art, it is a sign that we shall not satisfy the best people of the succeeding period.

We have indeed " lived for all time," and the applause of the best people ensures our fame. If we are of one substance with a book or a work of art, we think in our heart of hearts that it must be excellent, and are offended if others find it ugly, over-spiced, or pretentious. That speech is not given to us to communicate our emotions may be seen from the fact that all simple men are ashamed to seek for words to express their deeperfeelings.

After all, among poets, to whom God generally denies this shame, the more noble are more mono- syllabic in the language of emotion, and evince a certain constraint: He that has not for a long time been completely weaned from an art, and is still always at home in it, has no idea how small a privation it is to live without that art. A work that is meant to give an impression of health should be produced with three-quarters, at the most, of the strength of its creator. If he has gone to his farthest limit, the work excites the observer and disconcerts him by its tension.

All good things have some-: As refined fare serves a hungry man as well as and no better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist will not dream of inviting the hungry man to his meal. The pirate-genius in art, who even knows how to deceive subtle minds, arises when some one unscrupulously and from youth up- wards regards all good things, that are not protected by law, as the property of a particular person, as his legitimate spoil.

Now all the good things of past ages and masters lie free around us, hedged about and protected by the reverential awe of the few who know them. To these few our robber-genius, by the force of his impudence, bids defiance and ac- cumulates for himself a wealth that once more calls forth homage and awe. In the gar- dens of modern poetry it will clearly be observed that the sewers of great towns are too near.

With the fragrance of flowers is mingled something that betrays abomination and putrescence. With pain I ask: Are you obliged to dress your noble goddess in a hood of devilry and caricature? But whence this necessity, this obligation? No one has ever explained why the Greek writers, having at com- mand such an unparalleled wealth and power of language, made so sparing a use of their resources that every post-classical Greek book appears by comparison crude, over-coloured, and extravagant.

It is said that towards the North Polar ice and in the hottest countries salt is becoming less and less used, whereas on the other hand the dwellers on the plains and by the coast in the more temper- ate zones use salt in great abundance. Is it possible that the Greeks from a twofold reason because their intellect was colder and clearer but their fun- damental passionate nature far more tropical than ours did not need salt and spice to the same extent that we do?

In a book for free spirits one cannot avoid mention of Laurence Sterne, the man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of his century. May he be satisfied with the honour of being called the freest writer of all times, in com- parison with whom all others appear stiff, square- toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case we should not speak of the clear and rounded but of "the endless melody" if by this phrase we arrive at a name for an artistic style in which the definite form is continually broken, thrust aside and trans- ferred to the realm of the indefinite, so that it signifies one and the other at the same time.

We may give up for lost the reader who always wants to know exactly what Sterne thinks about a matter, and whether he be making a serious or a smiling face for he can do both with one wrinkling of his features ; he can be and even wishes to be right and wrong at the same moment, to interweave profundity and farce.

His digressions are at once continuations and further developments of the story, his maxims contain a satire on all that is sententious, his dislike of seriousness is bound up with a disposition to take no matter merely externally and on the surface. So in the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a feeling most closely akin to that of floating in the air. He, the most versatile of writers, communicates some- thing of this versatility to his reader. Yes, Sterne unexpectedly changes the parts, and is often as much reader as author, his book being like a pi-ay within a play, a theatre audience before another theatre audi- ence.

We must surrender at discretion to the mood of Sterne, although we can always expect it to be gracious. It is strangely instructive to see how so great a writer as Diderot has affected this double entendre of Sterne's to be equally ambiguous throughout is just the Sternian super-humour. Did Diderot imitate, admire, ridicule, or parody Sterne in hisfacgues le Fatalistel One cannot be exactly certain, and this uncertainty was perhaps intended by the author.

For humour and especially for this humorous attitude towards humour itself the French are too serious. Is it necessary to add that of all great authors Sterne is the worst model, in fact the inimitable author, and that even Diderot had to pay for his daring? What the worthy Frenchmen and before them some Greeks and Romans aimed at and attained in prose is the very opposite of what Sterne aims at and attains. He raises himself as a masterly exception above all that artists in writing demand of them- selves propriety, reserve, character, steadfastness of purpose, comprehensiveness, perspicuity, good deportment in gait and feature.

Unfortunately Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely, related to Sterne the writer. His squirrel-soul' sprang with insatiable unrest from branch to branch ; he knew what lies between sublimity and rascality ; he had sat on every seat, always with un- abashed watery eyes and mobile play of feature. He was if language does not revolt from such a combination of a hard-hearted kindness, and in the midst of the joys of a grotesque and even cor- rupt imagination he showed the bashful grace of innocence.

Such a carnal and spiritual hermaphro- ditism, such untrammelled wit penetrating into every vein and muscle, was perhaps never possessed by any other man. Only reality, though by a long way not every reality but a choice reality. Side by side with the genuine species of art, those of great repose and great movement, there are degenerate species weary, blasd art and excited art. Both would have their weakness taken for strength and wish to be confounded with the genuine species.

The typical poets and artists of our age like to compose their pictures upon a background of shim- mering red, green, grey, and gold, on the back- ground of nervous sensuality a condition well understood by the children of this century. The drawback comes when we do not look at these pic- tures with the eyes of our century. At the beginnings of art the very reverse conditions sometimes appear.

History and experience tell us that the significant grotesque- ness that mysteriously excites the imagination and carries one beyond everyday reality, is older and grows more luxuriantly than the beautiful and re- verence for the beautiful in art: For the vast majority of mankind this grotesque seems to be a higher need than the beautiful, presumably because it contains a coarser narcotic. If we consider the primary germs of the artistic sense, and ask ourselves what are the various kinds of joy produced by the firstlings of art as, for example, among savage tribes we find first of all the joy of understanding what another means.

Art in this case is a sort of conundrum, which causes its solver pleasure in his own quick and keen perceptions. Then the roughest works of art remind us of the pleasant things we have actually experienced, and so give joy as, for example, when the artist alludes to a chase, a victory, a wedding. Here the enjoyment lies in the ex- citement itself, in the victory over tedium.

The memory, too, of unpleasant things, so far as they have been overcome or make us appear interesting to the listener as subjects for art as when the singer describes the mishaps of a daring seaman , can inspire great joy, the credit for which is given to art, A more subtle variety is the joy that arises at the sight of all that is regular and sym- metrical in lines, points, and rhythms. For by a certain analogy is awakened the feeling for all that is orderly and regular in life, which one has to thank alone for all well-being.

So in the cult of symmetry we unconsciously do homage to rule and proportion as the source of our previous happiness, and the joy in this case is a kind of hymn of thanksgiving. Only when a certain satiety of the last-mentioned joy arises does a more subtle feeling step in, that enjoyment might even lie in a violation of the symmetrical and regular.

This feeling, for example, impels us to seek reason in apparent unreason, and the sort of aesthetic riddle-guessing that results is in a way the higher species of the first-named artistic joy. He who pursues this speculation still further will know what kind of hypotheses for the ex- planation of aesthetic phenomena are hereby funda- mentally rejected.

It is a disadvantage for good thoughts when they follow too closely on one another, for they hide the view from each other. That is why great artists and writers have made an abundant use of the mediocre. Artists of all periods have made the discovery that in roughness lies a certain strength, and that not every one can be rough who wants to be: From this source are derived many artistic substi- tutes, which not even the greatest and most con- scientious artists can abstain from using.

Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good. Great artists fancy that they have taken full pos- session of a soul. In reality, and often to their painful disappointment, that soul has only been made more capacious and insatiable, so that a dozen greater artists could plunge into its depths without filling it up.

The anxiety lest people may not believe that their figures are alive can mis- lead many artists of declining taste to portray these figures so that they appear as if mad. He who follows a philosophy or a genre of art to the end of its career and beyond, understands from inner ex- perience why the masters and disciples who come after have so often turned, with a depreciatory ges- ture, into a new groove.

The circle must be de- scribed but the individual, even the greatest, sits firm on his point of the circumference, with an in- exorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle ought never to be completed. Since every art becomes more and more adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the more lively, delicate, energetic, and passionate states, the later masters, spoilt by these means of expres- sion, do not feel at their ease in the presence of the old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients had merely been lacking in the "means of making their souls speak clearly, also perhaps in some neces- sary technical preliminaries.

They think that they must render some assistance in this quarter, for they believe in the similarity or even unity of all souls. Knowing this, are we to deny those that come after the right to animate the older works with their soul? No, for these works can only survive through our giving them our soul, and our blood alone enables them to speak to us. The real "historic" discourse would talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the great artists less by that barren timidity that allows every word, every note to remain intact than by energetic endeavours to aid them continually to a new life.

True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life and hear one of his works performed with that modern animation and nervous refinement that bring glory to our masters of execution, he would probably be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should raise his hand to curse or to bless, but perhaps say at last: That is neither I nor not-I, but a third thing it seems to me, too, something right, if not just the right thing. But you must know your- selves what to do, as in any case it is you who have to listen.

The reader, however, who is a novice in this field and has never considered the case in point, sees something embryonic in all brief dicta, not without a reproachful hint to the author, request- ing him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared food. Do you think it is piece-work because it is and must be offered you in pieces? The worst readers of aphorisms are the friends of the author, if they make a point of referring the general to the particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin.

This namby-pamby attitude brings all the author's trouble to naught, and instead of a philosophic lesson and a philosophic frame of mind, they deservedly gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curi- osity. The reader offers a two- fold insult to the author by praising his second book at the expense of his first or vice versa and by ex- pecting the author to be grateful to him on that account.

We see that the bow must snap, and that the so-called " loose " composition, with the wonderful means of expression smothered and concealed in this particular case the florid style of Asianism , was once necessary arid almost beneficial. The knowledge of this fact spells humilia- tion. But the enthusiast wears his hump with pride and pleasure, and you have the consolation of feeling that you have increased the world's happiness. The real fanatics of an artistic school are perhaps those utterly in- artistic natures that are not even grounded in the elements of artistic study and creation, but are im- pressed with the strongest of all the elementary influences of an art For them there is no aesthetic conscience hence nothing to hold them back from fanaticism.

Jl lucidly termed " endless melody," can be understood by going into the sea, gradually losing one's firm tread on the bottom, and finally surrendering uncon- ditionally to the fluid element. One has to swim. In the previous, older music one was forced, with delicate or stately or impassioned movement, to dance. The measure necessary for dancing, the ob- servance of a distinct balance of time and force in the soul of the hearer, imposed a continual self- control.

Through the counteraction of the cooler draught of air which came from this caution and the warmer breath of musical enthusiasm, that music exercised its spell. Richard Wagner aimed at a different excitation of the soul, allied, as above said, to swimming and floating. This is perhaps the most essential of his innovations. His famous method, originating from this aim and adapted to it the " endless melody " strives to break and sometimes even to despise all mathematical equilibrium of time and force.

He is only too rich in the invention of such effects, which sound to the old school like rhythmic paradoxes and blasphemies. He dreads petrifaction, crystallisation, the development of music into the architectural. He accordingly sets up a three-time rhythm in opposition to the double- time, not infrequently introduces five-time and seven- time, immediately repeats a plirase, but with a pro- lation, so that its time is again doubled and trebled. From an easy-going imitation of such art may arise a great danger to music, for by the side of the super- abundance of rhythmic emotion demoralisation and decadence lurk in ambush.

The Muse of the poet who is not in love with reality will not be reality, and will bear him children with hollow eyes and all too tender bones. In art the end does not justify the means, but holy means can justify the end. The worst readers are those who act like plundering soldiers. They take out some things that they might use, cover the rest with filth and confusion, and blaspheme about the whole.

Good writers have two things in common: They seek auxiliary powers, advocates, hiding-places such is the case with the poet who calls in philosophy, the musician who calls in th drama, and the thinker who calls inrhetoricto his aid. When his book opens its mouth, the author must shut his. All poets and men of letters who are in love with the superlative want to do more than they can.

The deep thinker reckons on readers who feel with him the happiness that lies in deep thinking. Hence a book that looks cold and sober, if seen in the right light, may seem bathed in the sunshine of spiritual cheerfulness and become a genuine soul-comforter. The slow- witted thinker generally allies himself with loqua- city and ceremoniousness.

By the former he thinks he is gaining mobility and fluency, by the latter he gives his peculiarity the appearance of being a result of free will and artistic purpose, with a view to dignity, which needs slow movement. For, after all, his object is to make himself understood and to carry the day by force, and he is indifferent whether, as shep- herd, he honestly guides to himself the hearts of his fellow-men, or, as robber, he captures them by sur- prise. This is true of the plastic arts as of music: The baroque style always arises at the time of decay of a great art, when the demands of art in classical expression have become too great.

It is a natural phenomenon which will be observed with melancholy for it is a forerunner of the night but at the same time with admiration for its peculiar compensatory arts of ex- pression and narration. To this style belongs, firstly, a choice of material and subjects of the highest dramatic tension, at which the heart trembles even when there is no art, because heaven and hell are all too near the emotions: Such luxuries hang long on the tree like forbidden fruit. Just now, when music is passing into this last phase, we may learn to know the phenomenon of the baroque style in peculiar splendour, and, by comparison, find much that is instructive for earlier ages.

For from Greek times onward there has often been a baroque style, in poetry, oratory, prose writing, sculpture, and, as is well known, in architecture. This style, though wanting in the highest nobility, the nobility of an innocent, unconscious, triumphant perfection, has nevertheless given pleasure to many of the best and most serious minds of their time.

Hence, as afore- said, it is presumptuous to depreciate it without re- serve, however happy we may feel because our taste for it has not made us insensible to the purer and greater style. Against a book, however, we let ourselves go, however restrained we may be in our relations with men. Individual fine passages, an exciting general tenor, a moving and absorbing finale so much of a work of art is ac- cessible even to most laymen.

1. Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2 by Nietzsche.
2. Herrschaft und Fall des Marcus Opellius Macrinus (German Edition);
3. Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part II from Project Gutenberg.
4. Puro veleno (Indicativo presente) (Italian Edition).
5. Tears For Eternity.
6. Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2 by Nietzsche - Free Ebook.
7. An Introduction to International Economics.

In an art period when it is desired to win over the great majority of the laymen to the side of the artists and to make a party perhaps for the very preservation of art, the creative artist will do well to offer nothing more than the above. Then he will not be a squanderer of his strength, in spheres where no one is grateful to him. For to perform the remaining functions, the imi- tation of Nature in her organic development and growth, would in that case be like sowing seeds in water. Every later master who leads the taste of art-lovers into his channel unconsciously gives rise to a selection and revaluation of the older masters and their works.

Whatever in them is conformable and akin to him, and anticipates and foreshadows him, appears henceforth as the only important ele- ment in them and their works a fruit in which a great error usually lies hidden like a worm. Criticism, one-sided and unjust as well as intelligent criticism, gives so much pleasure to him who exercises it that the world is indebted to every work and every action that in- spires much criticism and many critics. For criti- cism draws after it a glittering train of joyousness, wit, self-admiration, pride, instruction, designs of im- provement. The God of joy created the bad and the mediocre for the same reason that he created the good.

When an artist wants to be more than an artist for example, the moral awakener of his people he at last falls in love, as a punishment, with a monster of moral substance. The Muse laughs, for, though a kind-hearted God- dess, she can also be malignant from jealousy. Milton and Klopstock are cases in point.

The tendency of a talent towards moral subjects, characters, motives, towards the " beautiful soul " of the work of art, is often only a glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful soul. It may result, though rarely, that his eye finally becomes living Nature, if indeed it be Nature with a somewhat troubled look. But the ordinary result is that the whole world thinks it sees Nature where there is only cold glass. Writing should always indicate a victory, indeed a conquest of oneself which must be communicated to others for their behoof. There are, however, dyspeptic authors who only write when they cannot digest something, or when something has remained stuck in their teeth.

Through their anger they try un- consciously to disgust the reader too, and to exercise violence upon him that is, they desire victory, but victory over others. Every good book tastes bitter when it first comes out, for it has the defect of newness. Moreover, it suffers damage from its living author, if he is well known and much talked about. For all the world is accustomed to confuse the author with his work.

Many hours must pass, many a spider must have woven its web about the book. A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents. Artists well understand the idea of using extrava- gance as an artistic means in order to convey an impression of wealth. This is one of those innocent wiles of soul-seduction that the artist must know, for in his world, which has only appearance in view, the means to appearance need not necessarily be genuine. Genius, by virtue of its more ample drapery, knows better than talent how to hide its barrel-organ.

Yet after all it too can only play its seven old pieces over and over again. It is now a matter of custom and almost of duty for the author's name to appear on the book, and this is a main cause of the fact that books have so little influence. If they are good, they are worth more than the personalities of their authors, of which they are the quintessences.

It is the ambition of the intellect no longer to appear individual. We make the most cutting criticism of a man or a book when we indicate his or its ideal. Its re- putation accordingly rests on a narrow basis and must be built up by degrees. The mediocre and bad book is mediocre and bad because it seeks to please, and does please, a great number. The danger of the new music lies in the fact that it puts the cup of rapture and exaltation to the lips so invitingly, and with such a show of moral ecstasy, that even the noble and temperate man always drinks a drop too much.

This minimum of intemperance, constantlyrepeated, can in the end bring about a deeper convulsion and destruction of mental health than any coarse excess could do. A book full of intellect communicates something thereof even to its opponents. This book represents the beginning of Nietzsche's "middle period", with a break from German Romanticism and from Wagner and with a definite positivist slant. Reluctant to construct a systematic philosophy, this book comprises more a collection of debunkings of unwarranted assumptions than an interpretation and "contains the seeds of concepts crucial to Nietzsche's later philosophy, such as the need to transcend conventional Christian morality"; [6]: In this first section Nietzsche deals with metaphysics , specifically its origins as relating to dreams, the dissatisfaction with oneself, and language as well.

When we see a waterfall, we think we see freedom of will and choice in the innumerable turnings, windings, breakings of the waves; but everything is necessary; each movement can be calculated mathematically. Thus it is with human actions; if one were omniscient, one would be able to calculate each individual action in advance, each step in the progress of knowledge, each error, each act of malice. To be sure the acting man is caught in his illusion of volition; if the wheel of the world were to stand still for a moment and an omniscient, calculating mind were there to take advantage of this interruption, he would be able to tell into the farthest future of each being and describe every rut that wheel will roll upon.

The acting man's delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculable mechanism. Nietzsche uses this section to denounce the idea of divine inspiration in art, claiming that great art is the result of hard work, not a higher power or " genius ". Here Nietzsche criticizes Darwin, as he frequently does, as naive and derivative of Hobbes and early English economists and without an account of life from the "inside.

Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or "moral" loss without an advantage somewhere else.

In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man may see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better.

Full text of "Human All Too Human Part II"

To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race. The essential thing to keep in mind in considering Zarathustra, in particular, is that Nietzsche presents Zarathustra as failing. These two sections are made up of very short aphorisms on men's, women's and the child's nature or their "evolution," in Nietzsche's subtle, anti-Darwinian sense.

Like sections six and seven, Nietzsche's aphorisms here are mostly short, but also poetic and at times could be interpreted as semi-autobiographical, in anticipation of the next volumes: Nietzsche also distinguishes the obscurantism of the metaphysicians and theologians from the more subtle obscurantism of Kant 's critical philosophy and modern philosophical skepticism , claiming that obscurantism is that which obscures existence rather than obscures ideas alone: Within his lifetime, prior to his mental breakdown in , few of Nietzsche's books sold particularly well, and Human, All Too Human was no exception.

The first installment was originally printed in 1, copies in , and sold only of these, and still less than half of these by when it was resold as the complete two-volume set. Kerr - a small but notable publishing house of socially progressive literature [18]. Following this, a translation by writer Helen Zimmern as part of a complete edition of Nietzsche's books in English, but was never translated by Walter Kaufmann when he translated most of Nietzsche's works into English in the s and '60s. Finally, in the s the first part was translated by Marion Faber and completely translated by R.

Hollingdale the same decade. Marion Faber was critical of Zimmern's " antiquated Victorian style" which made Nietzsche "sound in her translation like a fusty contemporary of Matthew Arnold. Most notoriously, Human, All Too Human was used by archivist Max Oehler , a strong supporter of Hitler , as supposed evidence of Nietzsche's support for nationalism and anti-Semitism, both of which he writes against. Oehler wrote an entire book, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Deutsche Zukunft , dealing with Nietzsche and his connection to nationalism specifically National Socialism and anti-Semitism, using quotes from Human, All Too Human , though out of context.

It wasn't until much of Walter Kaufmann's work in the s through the s that Nietzsche was able to shed this connection with nationalism and anti-Semitism. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. April first part Ernst Schmeitzner [2] English translation [1]. Library of Congress Online Catalog. Retrieved 5 July