The Essential Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich NietzscheЧитать онлайн книгу.
the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes—what? perhaps a "world"?
151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends?
152. "Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise": so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.
153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.
156. Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.
158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.
159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?
160. One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.
161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.
162. "Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour's neighbour":—so thinks every nation.
163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character.
164. Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants;—love God as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals!"
165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY.—A shepherd has always need of a bell-wether—or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.
166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—and something precious.
168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.
170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.
172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual.
173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior.
174. Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE for your inclinations,—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable!
175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.
177. With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.
178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a forfeiture of the rights of man!
179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed."
180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.
181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be returned.
183. "I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you."
184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness.
185. "I dislike him."—Why?—"I am not a match for him."—Did any one ever answer so?
Chapter V.
The Natural History of Morals
186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science of Morals" belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:—an interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, "Science of Morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste,—which is always a foretaste of more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT is still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish—and perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of these living crystallizations—as preparation for a THEORY OF TYPES of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science: they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality—and every philosopher hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has been regarded as something "given." How far from their awkward pride was the seemingly insignificant problem—left in dust and decay—of a description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement—perhaps as the morality of their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of morals—problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals" hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there! That which philosophers called "giving a basis to morality," and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light, proved merely a learned form of good FAITH in prevailing morality, a new means of its EXPRESSION, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is LAWFUL for this morality to be called in question—and in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what innocence—almost worthy of honour—Schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a "Science" whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and old wives: "The principle," he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik),4 "the axiom about the purport of which all moralists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva—is REALLY the proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish, ... the REAL basis of ethics which has been sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries."—The difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great—it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, ACTUALLY—played the flute... daily after dinner: one may read about the matter in his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, a repudiator of God and of the world, who MAKES A HALT at morality—who assents