297 Do not wish to see premature. As long as we are experiencing something, we must give ourselves over to the experience and close our eyes, and thus, while still in it, not make ourselves already the observer of it. That would, of course, disturb our good digestion of the experience; instead of a bit of wisdom, we would take away a bit of indigestion.
367 Living, if possible, without followers. -We only grasp how little it means to have followers when we have ceased to be the follower of our followers.
263 Path to equality. -A few hours of mountain climbing make a rogue and a saint into two fairly similar creatures. Exhaustion is the shortest path to equality and brotherhood-and freedom is finally added in by sleep.
35 Feelings and their origination in judgments. – ‘Trust your feelings!’ – But feelings are nothing final or original; behind feelings there stand judgments and evaluations which we inherit in the form of feelings (inclinations, aversions). The inspiration born of a feeling is the grandchild of a judgment – and often of a false judgment! – and in any event not a child of your own! To trust one’s feelings – means to give more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience.
Book I
17 Nature, good and evil – At first, men imagined themselves into nature: they saw everywhere themselves and their kind, especially their evil and capricious qualities, as it were hidden among the clouds, storms, beasts of prey, trees and plants: it was then they invented ‘ evil nature’. Then there came along an age when they again imagined themselves out of nature, the age of Rousseau: they were so fed up with one another they absolutely had to have a corner of the world into which man and his torments could not enter: they invented ‘ good nature’.
107 Three-quarter strength. -A work that is supposed to make an impression of health should be produced at no more than three-quarters of its creator’s strength. If, on the contrary, he has gone to his furthest limit, the work will stimulate the spectator so much that he will find its tension alarming. All good things have something negligent about them and lie like cows upon the meadow.
107 Whenever you reach a decision, close your ears to even the best objections: this is the sign of a strong character. Which means: an occasional will to stupidity.
I6. Upward
‘How do I best get to the top of this hill?’
‘Climb it, don’t think it, and maybe you will.’
16. Aufwärts.
“Wie komm ich am besten den Berg hinan?”
Steig nur hinauf und denk nicht dran!
8 In the night. -As soon as night falls, our feeling about the nearest of things is changed. There is the wind, which travels as if upon forbidden paths, whispering as if seeking something, annoyed because it does not find it. There is the lamplight, with a gloomy, reddish gleam, gazing wearily, striving unwillingly against the night, an impatient slave of wakeful human beings. There are the breaths of someone sleeping, their shuddering rhythm to which an ever-returning care seems to sound the melody-we do not hear it, but if the breast of the sleeper rises up, we feel our heart constricted and if the breath sinks down and almost dies into a deathly stillness, we say to ourselves, “rest a while, you poor, tormented spirit!” -we wish for an eternal peace for all living things, because they live so oppressed; night is persuasive about death. -If humans do without the sun and lead the battle against the night with moonlight and oil, what philosophy would wrap its veil around them! We already perceive how living half of their lives veiled by darkness and deprivation of sunlight casts a pall upon the whole of humans’ spiritual and psychic nature.
17 Finding a motive for one ‘s poverty. – There is clearly no trick that enables us to turn a poor virtue into a rich and overflowing one, but we can surely reinterpret its poverty nicely into a necessity, so that its sight no longer offends us and we no longer make reproachful faces at fate on its account. That is what the wise gardener does when he places the poor little stream in his garden in the arms of a nymph and thus finds a motive for its poverty: and who wouldn’t need nymphs as he does?
214 The discoverers of trivialities. -Subtle spirits, for whom nothing lies farther afield than a triviality, often discover one of these after following all sorts of roundabout ways and mountain trails and take great pleasure therein, to the amazement of those who are not subtle
238 The striving for charm. – If a strong nature is not inclined to cruelty and is not always occupied with itself, it involuntarily strives after charm – this is its characteristic sign. Weak characters, on the other hand, love harsh judgments-they ally themselves with the heroes of misanthropy, with the religious or philosophical blackeners of existence, or withdraw behind stern customs and demanding ‘life-tasks’: thus they try to create for themselves a character and a kind of strength. And this they likewise do involuntarily.
278 – Wanderer, who are you? I watch you go on your way, without scorn, without love, with impenetrable eyes – damp and downhearted, like a plumb line that returns unsatisfied from every depth back into the light (what was it looking for down there?), with a breast that does not sigh, with lips that hide their disgust,with a hand that only grips slowly:who are you? What have you done? Take a rest here, this spot is hospitable to everyone, – relax! And whoever you may be: what would you like now? What do you find relaxing? Just name it: I’ll give you whatever I have! – “Relaxing? Relaxing? How inquisitive you are! What are you saying! But please, give me – –” What? What? Just say it! – “Another mask! A second mask!” …
32 The brake.- To suffer for the sake of morality and then to be told that this kind of suffering is founded on an error: this arouses indignation. For there is a unique consolation in affirming through one’s suffering a ‘profounder world of truth’ than any other world is, and one would much rather suffer and thereby feel oneself exalted above reality (through consciousness of having thus approached this ‘profounder world of truth’) than be without suffering but also without this feeling that one is exalted. It is thus pride, and the customary manner in which pride is gratified, which stands in the way of a new understanding of morality. What force, therefore, will have to be employed if this brake is to be removed? More pride? A new pride?
219 Not settled. -We are glad to live in a small town; but from time to time, it drives us out into the most solitary and unexposed parts of nature: especially when the town has become too transparent for us once again. Finally, we go to a large city in order to recover, in turn, from nature. A few gulps of the latter -and we sense the dregs of its cup -and the circle begins anew, with the small town at the beginning. -This is how modern people live: who are somewhat too thorough about everything to be as settled as people were in other times.
7 The error of free will. Today we no longer have any pity for the concept of “free will”: we know only too well what it really is–the foulest of all theologians’ artifices aimed at making mankind “responsible” in their sense, that is, dependent upon them. Here I simply supply the psychology of all “making responsible.”
Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at work. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when any being-such-and-such is traced back to will, to purposes, to acts of responsibility: the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because one wanted to impute guilt. The entire old psychology, the psychology of will, was conditioned by the fact that its originators, the priests at the head of ancient communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish–or wanted to create this right for God. Men were considered “free” so that they might be judged and punished–so that they might become guilty: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental counterfeit in psychologicis was made the principle of psychology itself).
Today, as we have entered into the reverse movement and we immoralists are trying with all our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of the world again, and to cleanse psychology, history, nature, and social institutions and sanctions of them, there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue with the concept of a “moral world-order” to infect the innocence of becoming by means of “punishment” and “guilt.” Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman.
Nochrisis 