The Dawn of Day

The number of these petty vengeful people, and, even more, the number of their petty acts of revenge, is incalculable. The air around us is continually whizzing with the discharged arrows of their malignity, so that the sun and the sky of their lives become darkened thereby, – and, alas! not only theirs, but more often ours and other men's: and this is worse than the frequent wounds which they make on our skins and hearts. Do we not occasionally deny the existence of the sun and sky merely because we have not seen them for so long? – Well then, solitude! because of this, solitude!

324

The Psychology of the Actor. – It is the blissful illusion of all great actors to imagine that the historical personages whom they are representing were really in the same state of mind as they themselves are when interpreting them – but in this they are very much mistaken. Their powers of imitation and divination, which they would fain exhibit as a clairvoyant faculty, penetrate only far enough to explain gestures, accent, and looks, and in general anything exterior: that is, they can grasp the shadow of the soul of a great hero, statesman, or warrior, or of an ambitious, jealous, or desperate person – they penetrate fairly near to the soul, but they never reach the inmost spirit of the man they are imitating.

It would, indeed, be a fine thing to discover that instead of thinkers, psychologists, or experts we required nothing but clairvoyant actors to throw light upon the essence of any condition. Let us never forget, whenever such pretensions are heard, that the actor is nothing but an ideal ape – so much of an ape is he, indeed, that he is not capable of believing in the “essence” or in the “essential”: everything becomes for him merely performance, intonation, attitude, stage, scenery, and public.

325

Living and Believing Apart. – The means of becoming the prophet and wonder-worker of one's age are the same to-day as in former times: one must live apart, with little knowledge, some ideas, and a great deal of presumption – we then finish by believing that mankind cannot do without us, because it is clear that we can do without it. When we are inspired with this belief we find faith. Finally, a piece of advice to him who needs it (it was given to Wesley by Boehler, his spiritual teacher): “Preach faith until you have it; then you will preach it because you have it!”

326

Knowing our Circumstances. – We may estimate our powers, but not our power. Not only do circumstances conceal it from us and show it to us time about, but they even exaggerate or diminish it. We must consider ourselves as variable quantities whose productive capacity may in favourable circumstances reach the greatest possible heights: we must therefore reflect upon these circumstances, and spare no pains in studying them.

327

A Fable. – The Don Juan of knowledge – no philosopher or poet has yet succeeded in discovering him. He is wanting in love for the things he recognises, but he possesses wit, a lust for the hunting after knowledge, and the intrigues in connection with it, and he finds enjoyment in all these, even up to the highest and most distant stars of knowledge – until at last there is nothing left for him to pursue but the absolutely injurious side of knowledge, just as the drunkard who ends by drinking absinthe and aquafortis. That is why last of all he feels a longing for hell, for this is the final knowledge which seduces him. Perhaps even this would disappoint him, as all things do which one knows! and then he would have to stand still for all eternity, a victim to eternal deception, and transformed into his enemy, the Stony Guest, who longs for an evening meal of knowledge which will never more fall to his share! for the whole world of things will not have another mouthful left to offer to these hungry men.

328

What Idealistic Theories Disclose. – We are most certain to find idealistic theories among unscrupulously practical men; for such men stand in need of the lustre of these theories for the sake of their reputation. They adopt them instinctively without by any means feeling hypocritical in doing so – no more hypocritical than Englishmen with their Christianity and their Sabbath-keeping. On the other hand, contemplative natures who have to keep themselves on the guard against all kinds of fantasies and who dread to be reputed as enthusiasts, are only to be satisfied with hard realistic theories: they take possession of them under the same instinctive compulsion without thereby losing their honesty.

329

The Calumniators of Cheerfulness. – People who have been deeply wounded by the disappointments of life look with suspicion upon all cheerfulness as if it were something childish and puerile, and revealed a lack of common sense that moves them to pity and tenderness, such as one would experience when seeing a dying child caressing his toys on his death-bed. Such men appear to see hidden graves under every rose; rejoicings, tumult, and cheerful music appear to them to be the voluntary illusions of a man who is dangerously ill and yet wishes to take a momentary draught from the intoxicating cup of life. But this judgment about cheerfulness is merely the reflection of the latter on the dark background of weariness and ill-health: in itself it is something touching, irrational, and pitiable, even childlike and puerile, but connected with that second childhood which follows in the train of old age, and is the harbinger of death.

330

Not yet Enough! – It is not sufficient to prove a case, we must also tempt or raise men to it: hence the wise man must learn to convey his wisdom; and often in such a manner that it may sound like foolishness!

331

Right and Limits. – Asceticism is the proper mode of thinking for those who must extirpate their carnal instincts, because these are ferocious beasts, – but only for such people!

332

The Bombastic Style. – An artist who does not wish to put his elevated feelings into a work and thus unburden himself, but who rather wishes to impart these feelings of elevation to others, becomes pompous, and his style becomes the bombastic style.

333

“Humanity.” – We do not consider animals as moral beings. But do you think that animals consider us as moral beings? An animal which had the power of speech once said: “Humanity is a prejudice from which we animals at least do not suffer.”

334

The Charitable Man. – The charitable man gratifies a need of his own inward feelings when doing good. The stronger this need is the less does such a man try to put himself in the place of those who serve the purpose of gratifying his desire: he becomes indelicate and sometimes even offensive. (This remark applies to the benevolence and charity of the Jews, which, as is well known, is somewhat more effusive than that of other peoples.)10

335

That Love may be felt as Love. – We must be honest towards ourselves, and must know ourselves very well indeed, to be able to practise upon others that humane dissimulation known as love and kindness.

336

What are we capable of? – A man who had been tormented all day by his wicked and malicious son slew him in the evening, and then with a sigh of relief said to the other members of his family: “Well now we can sleep in peace.” Who knows what circumstances might drive us to!

337

“Natural.” – To be natural, at least in his deficiencies, is perhaps the last praise that can be bestowed upon an artificial artist, who is in other respects theatrical and half genuine. Such a man will for this very reason boldly parade his deficiencies.

338

Conscience-Substitute. – One man is another's conscience: and this is especially important when the other has none else.

339

The Transformation of Duties. – When our duties cease to be difficult of accomplishment, and after long practice become changed into agreeable delights and needs, then the rights of others to whom our duties (though now our inclinations) refer change into something else: that is, they become the occasion of pleasant feelings for us. Henceforth the “other,” by virtue of his rights, becomes an object of love to us instead of an object of reverence and awe as formerly. It is our own pleasure we seek when we recognise and maintain the extent of his power. When the Quietists no longer felt their Christian faith as a burden, and experienced their delight only in God, they took the motto: “Do all to the glory of God.” Whatever they performed henceforth in this sense was no longer a sacrifice, it was as much as to say, “Everything for the sake of our pleasure.” To demand that duty should be always rather burdensome, as Kant does, is to demand that it shall never develop into a habit or custom. There is a small residue of ascetic cruelty in this demand.

340

Appearances are against the Historian. – It is a sufficiently demonstrated fact that human beings come from the womb; nevertheless when children grow up and stand by the side of their mother this hypothesis appears very absurd – all appearances are against it.

341

The Advantage of Ignorance. – Some one has said that in his childhood he experienced such a contempt for the caprices and whims of a melancholy temperament that, until he had grown up and had become a middle-aged man, he did not know what his own temperament was like: it was precisely a melancholy temperament. He declared that this was the best of all possible kinds of ignorance.

342

Do not be deceived! – Yes, he examined the matter from every side and you think him to be a man of profound knowledge. But he only wishes to lower the price – he wants to buy it!

343

A Moral Pretence. – You refuse to be dissatisfied with yourselves or to suffer from yourselves, and this you call your moral tendency! Very well; another may perhaps call it your cowardice! One thing, however, is certain, and that is that you will never take a trip round the world (and you yourselves are this world), and you will always remain in yourselves an accident and a clod on the face of the earth! Do you fancy that we who hold different views from you are merely exposing ourselves out of pure folly to the journey through our own deserts, swamps, and glaciers, and that we are voluntarily choosing grief and disgust with ourselves, like the Stylites?

344

Subtlety in Mistakes. – If Homer, as they say, sometimes nodded, he was wiser than all the artists of sleepless ambition. We must allow admirers to stop for a time and take breath by letting them find fault now and then; for nobody can bear an uninterruptedly brilliant and untiring excellence – and instead of doing good such a master would merely become a taskmaster, whom we hate while he precedes us.

345

Our Happiness is not an Argument either Pro or Con. – Many men are only capable of a small share of happiness: and it is not an argument against their wisdom if this wisdom is unable to afford them a greater degree of happiness, any more than it is an argument against medical skill that many people are incurable, and others always ailing. May every one have the good fortune to discover the conception of existence which will enable him to realise his greatest share of happiness! though this will not necessarily prevent his life from being miserable and not worth envying.

346

The Enemies of Women. – “Woman is our enemy” – The man who speaks to men in this way exhibits an unbridled lust which not only hates itself but also its means.

347

The School of the Orator. – When a man has kept silence for a whole year he learns to stop chattering, and to discourse instead. The Pythagoreans were the best statesmen of their age.

348

The Feeling of Power. – Note the distinction: the man who wishes to acquire the feeling of power seizes upon any means, and looks upon nothing as too petty which can foster this feeling. He who already possesses power, however, has grown fastidious and refined in his tastes; few things can be found to satisfy him.

349

Not so very Important. – When we are present at a death-bed there regularly arises in us a thought that we immediately suppress from a false sense of propriety: the thought that the act of dying is less important than the customary veneration of it would wish us to believe, and that the dying man has probably lost in his life things which were more important than he is now about to lose by his death. In this case the end is certainly not the goal.

350

The best way to Promise. – When a man makes a promise it is not merely the word that promises, but what lies unexpressed behind the word. Words indeed weaken a promise by discharging and using up a power which forms part of that power which promises. Therefore shake hands when making a promise, but put your finger on your lips – in this way you will make the safest promises.

351

Generally Misunderstood. – In conversation we sometimes observe people endeavouring to set a trap in which to catch others – not out of evil-mindedness, as one might suppose, but from delight in their own shrewdness. Others again prepare a joke so that some one else may utter it, they tie the knot so that others may undo it: not out of goodwill, as might be supposed, but from wickedness, and their contempt for coarse intellects.

352

Centre. – The feeling, “I am the centre of the world,” forcibly comes to us when we are unexpectedly overtaken by disgrace: we then feel as if we were standing dazed in the midst of a surge, and dazzled by the glance of one enormous eye which gazes down upon us from all sides and looks us through and through.

353

Freedom of Speech. – “The truth must be told, even if the world should be shivered in fragments” – so cries the eminent and grandiloquent Fichte. – Yes, certainly; but we must have it first. – What he really means, however, is that each man should speak his mind, even if everything were to be turned upside down. This point, however, is open to dispute.

354

The Courage for Suffering. – Such as we now are, we are capable of bearing a tolerable amount of displeasure, and our stomach is suited to such indigestible food. If we were deprived of it, indeed, we should perhaps think the banquet of life insipid; and if it were not for our willingness to suffer pain we should have to let too many pleasures escape us!

355

Admirers. – The man who admires up to the point that he would be ready to crucify any one who did not admire, must be reckoned among the executioners of his party – beware of shaking hands with him, even when he belongs to your own side.

356

The Effect of Happiness. – The first effect of happiness is the feeling of power, and this feeling longs to manifest itself, whether towards ourselves or other men, or towards ideas and imaginary beings. Its most common modes of manifestation are making presents, derision, and destruction – all three being due to a common fundamental instinct.

357

Moral Mosquitoes. – Those moralists who are lacking in the love of knowledge, and who are only acquainted with the pleasure of giving pain, have the spirit and tediousness of provincials. Their pastime, as cruel as it is lamentable, is to observe their neighbour with the greatest possible closeness, and, unperceived, to place a pin in such position that he cannot help pricking himself with it. Such men have preserved something of the wickedness of schoolboys, who cannot amuse themselves without hunting and torturing either the living or the dead.

358

Reasons and their Unreason. – You feel a dislike for him, and adduce innumerable reasons for this dislike, but I only believe in your dislike and not in your reasons! You flatter yourself by adducing as a rational conclusion, both to yourself and to me, that which happens to be merely a matter of instinct.

359

Approving of Something. – We approve of marriage in the first place because we are not yet acquainted with it, in the second place because we have accustomed ourselves to it, and in the third place because we have contracted it – that is to say, in most cases. And yet nothing has been proved thereby in favour of the value of marriage in general.

360

No Utilitarians. – “Power which has greatly suffered both in deed and in thought is better than powerlessness which only meets with kind treatment” – such was the Greek way of thinking. In other words, the feeling of power was prized more highly by them than any mere utility or fair renown.

361

Ugly in Appearance. – Moderation appears to itself to be quite beautiful: it is unaware of the fact that in the eyes of the immoderate it seems coarse and insipid, and consequently ugly.

362

Different in Their Hatred. – There are men who do not begin to hate until they feel weak and tired: in other respects they are fair-minded and superior. Others only begin to hate when they see an opportunity for revenge: in other respects they carefully avoid both secret and open wrath, and overlook it whenever there is any occasion for it.

363

Men of Chance. – It is pure hazard which plays the essential part in every invention, but most men do not meet with this hazard.

364

Choice of Environment. – We should beware of living in an environment where we are neither able to maintain a dignified silence nor to express our loftier thoughts, so that only our complaints and needs and the whole story of our misery are left to be told. We thus become dissatisfied with ourselves and with our surroundings, and to the discomfort which brings about our complaints we add the vexation which we feel at always being in the position of grumblers. But we should, on the contrary, live in a place where we should be ashamed to speak of ourselves and where it would not be necessary to do so. – Who, however, thinks of such things, or of the choice in such things? We talk about our “fate,” brace up our shoulders, and sigh, “Unfortunate Atlas that I am!”

365

Vanity. – Vanity is the dread of appearing to be original. Hence it is a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.

366

The Criminal's Grief. – The criminal who has been found out does not suffer because of the crime he has committed, but because of the shame and annoyance caused him either by some blunder which he has made or by being deprived of his habitual element; and keen discernment is necessary to distinguish such cases. Every one who has had much experience of prisons and reformatories is astonished at the rare instances of really genuine “remorse,” and still more so at the longing shown to return to the old wicked and beloved crime.

367

Always appearing Happy. – When, in the Greece of the third century, philosophy had become a matter of public emulation, there were not a few philosophers who became happy through the thought that others who lived according to different principles, and suffered from them, could not but feel envious of their happiness. They thought they could refute these other people with their happiness better than anything else, and to achieve this object they were content to appear to be always happy; but, following this practice, they were obliged to become happy in the long run! This, for example, was the case of the cynics.

368

The Cause of much Misunderstanding. – The morality of increasing nervous force is joyful and restless; the morality of diminishing nervous force, towards evening, or in invalids and old people, is passive, calm, patient, and melancholy, and not rarely even gloomy. In accordance with what we may possess of one or other of these moralities, we do not understand that which we lack, and we often interpret it in others as immorality and weakness.

369

Raising one's self above one's own Lowness. – “Proud” fellows they are indeed, those who, in order to establish a sense of their own dignity and importance, stand in need of other people whom they may tyrannise and oppress – those whose powerlessness and cowardice permits some one to make sublime and furious gestures in their presence with impunity, so that they require the baseness of their surroundings to raise themselves for one short moment above their own baseness! – For this purpose one man requires a dog, another a friend, a third a wife, a fourth a party, a fifth, again, one very rarely to be met with, a whole age.

370

To what extent the Thinker loves his Enemy. – Make it a rule never to withhold or conceal from yourself anything that may be thought against your own thoughts. Vow it! This is the essential requirement of honest thinking. You must undertake such a campaign against yourself every day. A victory and a conquered position are no longer your concern, but that of truth – and your defeat also is no longer your concern!

371

The Evil of Strength. – Violence as the outcome of passion, for example, of rage, must be understood from the physiological point of view as an attempt to avoid an imminent fit of suffocation. Innumerable acts arising from animal spirits and vented upon others are simply outlets for getting rid of sudden congestion by a violent muscular exertion: and perhaps the entire “evil of strength” must be considered from this point of view. (This evil of strength wounds others unintentionally – it must find an outlet somewhere; while the evil of weakness wishes to wound and to see signs of suffering.)

372

To the Credit of the Connoisseur. – As soon as some one who is no connoisseur begins to pose as a judge we should remonstrate, whether it is a male or female whipper-snapper. Enthusiasm or delight in a thing or a human being is not an argument; neither is repugnance or hatred.

373

Treacherous Blame. – “He has no knowledge of men” means in the mouth of some “He does not know what baseness is”; and in the mouths of others, “He does not know the exception and knows only too well what baseness means.”

374

The Value of Sacrifice. – The more the rights of states and princes are questioned as to their right to sacrifice the individual (for example, in the administration of justice, conscription, etc.), the more will the value of self-sacrifice rise.

375

Speaking too distinctly. – There are several reasons why we articulate our words too distinctly: in the first place, from distrust of ourselves when using a new and unpractised language; secondly, when we distrust others on account of their stupidity or their slowness of comprehension. The same remark applies to intellectual matters: our communications are sometimes too distinct, too painful, because if it were otherwise those to whom we communicate our ideas would not understand us. Consequently the perfect and easy style is only permissible when addressing a perfect audience.

376

Plenty of Sleep. – What can we do to arouse ourselves when we are weary and tired of our ego? Some recommend the gambling table, others Christianity, and others again electricity. But the best remedy, my dear hypochondriac, is, and always will be, plenty of sleep in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. Thus another morning will at length dawn upon us. The knack of worldly wisdom is to find the proper time for applying this remedy in both its forms.

377

What we may conclude from fantastic Ideals. – Where our deficiencies are, there also is our enthusiasm. The enthusiastic principle “love your enemies” had to be invented by the Jews, the best haters that ever existed; and the finest glorifications of chastity have been written by those who in their youth led dissolute and licentious lives.