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whoever, with an Asiatic and super-Asiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of all possible modes of thought—beyond good and evil, and no longer like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of morality,—whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again AS IT WAS AND IS,
The distance, and as it were the space around man, grows with the strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into view.
Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetual readiness for the "coming of God"), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is DISHONOURING—that it vulgarizes body and soul—is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy, time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates and
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—they live too much apart and outside to feel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINST in such matters.
his whole profession (and as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness" of spirit which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong to the Church.
childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and ABOVE which he himself has developed—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of "modern ideas"!
Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and false.
It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which divines that truth might be attained TOO soon, before man has become strong enough, hard enough, artist enough....
To love mankind FOR GOD'S SAKE—this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an ADDITIONAL folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a higher inclination—whoever
And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls.
There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live—this very difficulty being necessary.
the hitherto PARAMOUNT religions—to give a general appreciation of them—are among the principal causes which have kept the type of "man" upon a lower level—they have preserved too much THAT WHICH SHOULD HAVE PERISHED.
And to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering, and imperious—all instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful type of "man"—into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all love of the earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into hatred of the earth and earthly things—THAT
Christ offers the profoundest hope, and He did so on earth
does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a SUBLIME ABORTION of man?
Men, not great enough, nor hard enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning MAN;
men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man:—SUCH men, with their "equality before God," have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day.
THE SAGE AS ASTRONOMER.—So long as thou feelest the stars as an "above thee," thou lackest the eye of the discerning one.
He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a despiser.
The same emotions are in man and woman, but in different TEMPO, on that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other.
One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become embarrassed.
Intelligence is not wisdom
The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.
What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own ideal.
Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today—burning us.
Poppycock
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.
To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.
The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better.
Again with the "if God were real he would be obvious to us."
What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent decreases,—when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.
He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal.
From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth.
In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.
Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the origin of many systems of morals.
Sin is so difficult to resist
Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the SECONDARY role.
Jeez
And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.
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!"
One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior.
One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.
The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed."
It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
Why?
The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be returned.
There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness.
every philosopher hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has been regarded as something "given."
the REAL basis of ethics which has been sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries."—The
There are systems of morals which are meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied; with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction,—this system of morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant
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submission to arbitrary laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves "free," even free-spirited.
teaches the NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES,
