Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human II

The Wanderer and His Shadow

183 Getting angry and punishing have their time. -Getting angry and punishing are our gifts from the animal world. Humans first come of age when they return this gift from the cradle to the animals. -Herein lies buried one of the greatest thoughts that humans can have, the thought of344 an advance upon all advancements. -Let us go forward a few millennia with one another, my friends! There is a great deal of joy still reserved for humans, the scent of which has not yet blown as far as our contemporaries! And indeed, we might expect to have this joy, even promise it to ourselves and testify to it as something necessary, if only the development of human reason does not stand still! Some day, we will no longer have the heart for the logical sin that lies concealed in anger and punishment, whether practiced individually or socially: some day, when heart and head have learned to dwell as closely to each other as they now still stand apart. That they no longer stand as far apart as they originally did becomes fairly visible by gazing upon the whole path of humanity; and the individual who surveys a life of inward work will become aware with a proud joy of the distance that has been overcome, the approach that has been accomplished and he can, upon this basis, risk having even greater hopes.