Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak

Book V

546 Slave and idealist. – The human being after the model of Epictetus would certainly not be to the taste of those who strive after the ideal nowadays. The constant tension of his being, the unwearied glance turned inward, the reserve, caution, uncommunicativeness of his eye if it should even turn to view the outer world; not to speak of his silence or near-silence: all signs of the most resolute bravery- what could this mean to our idealists, who are above all greedy for expansion! In addition to all this, he is not fanatical, he hates the display and vainglory of our idealists: his arrogance, great though it is, has nonetheless no desire to disturb others, it admits a certain mild intimacy and wants to spoil no one’s good humour- it can, indeed, even smile! There is very much of the humanity of antiquity in this ideal! The fairest thing about it is, however, that it lacks all fear of God, that it believes strictly in reason, that it is no penitential preacher. Epictetus was a slave: his ideal human being is without class and possible in every class, but is to be sought above all in the depths of the masses as the silent, self-sufficient man within a universal enslavement who defends himself against the outside world and lives in a constant state of supreme bravery. He differs from the Christian, above all in that the Christian lives in hope, in the promise of’inexpressible glories’, in that he accepts gifts and expects and receives the best he knows at the hands ofdivine love and grace and not at his own hands: while Epictetus does not hope and does not accept the best he knows as a gift- he possesses it, he holds it bravely in his own hand, he defends it against the whole world if the world wants to rob him of it. Christianity was made for a different species of antique slave, for those weak in will and mind, that is to say for the great mass of slaves.