Human, All-Too-Human: A Book For Free Spirits; Part II

333

Intercourse as an Enjoyment. – If a man renounces the world and intentionally lives in solitude, he may come to regard intercourse with others, which he enjoys but seldom, as a special delicacy.

334

To Know how to Suffer in Public. – We must advertise our misfortunes and from time to time heave audible sighs and show visible marks of impatience. For if we could let others see how assured and happy we are in spite of pain and privation, how envious and ill-tempered they would become at the sight! – But we must take care not to corrupt our fellow-men; besides, if they knew the truth, they would levy a heavy toll upon us. At any rate our public misfortune is our private advantage.

335

Warmth on the Heights. – On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognises the full import of this simile.

336

To Will the Good and be Capable of the Beautiful. – It is not enough to practise the good one must have willed it, and, as the poet says, include the Godhead in our will. But the beautiful we must not will, we must be capable of it, in innocence and blindness, without any psychical curiosity. He that lights his lantern to find perfect men should remember the token by which to know them. They are the men who always act for the sake of the good and in so doing always attain to the beautiful without thinking of the beautiful. Many better and nobler men, from impotence or from want of beauty in their souls, remain unrefreshing and ugly to behold, with all their good will and good works. They rebuff and injure even virtue through the repulsive garb in which their bad taste arrays her.

337

Danger of Renunciation. – We must beware of basing our lives on too narrow a foundation of appetite. For if we renounce all the joys involved in positions, honours, associations, revels, creature comforts, and arts, a day may come when we perceive that this repudiation has led us not to wisdom but to satiety of life.

338

Final Opinion on Opinions. – Either we should hide our opinions or hide ourselves behind our opinions. Whoever does otherwise, does not know the way of the world, or belongs to the order of pious fire-eaters.

339

“Gaudeamus Igitur.” – Joy must contain edifying and healing forces for the moral nature of man. Otherwise, how comes it that our soul, as soon as it basks in the sunshine of joy, unconsciously vows to itself, “I will be good!” “I will become perfect!” and is at once seized by a premonition of perfection that is like a shudder of religious awe?

340

To One who is Praised. – So long as you are praised, believe that you are not yet on your own course but on that of another.

341

Loving the Master. – The apprentice and the master love the master in different ways.

342

All-too-Beautiful and Human. – “Nature is too beautiful for thee, poor mortal,” one often feels. But now and then, at a profound contemplation of all that is human, in its fulness, vigour, tenderness, and complexity, I have felt as if I must say, in all humility, “Man also is too beautiful for the contemplation of man!” Nor did I mean the moral man alone, but every one.

343

Real and Personal Estate. – When life has treated us in true robber fashion, and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health, and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the airs of a mighty real estate owner.

344

Involuntarily Idealised. – The most painful feeling that exists is finding out that we are always taken for something higher than we really are. For we must thereby confess to ourselves, “There is in you some element of fraud – your speech, your expression, your bearing, your eye, your dealings; and this deceitful something is as necessary as your usual honesty, but constantly destroys its effect and its value.”

345

Idealist and Liar. – We must not let ourselves be tyrannised even by that finest faculty of idealising things: otherwise, truth will one day part company from us with the insulting remark: “Thou arch-liar, what have I to do with thee?”

346

Being Misunderstood. – When one is misunderstood generally, it is impossible to remove a particular misunderstanding. This point must be recognised, to save superfluous expenditure of energy in self-defence.

347

The Water-Drinker Speaks. – Go on drinking your wine, which has refreshed you all your life – what affair is it of yours if I have to be a water-drinker? Are not wine and water peaceable, brotherly elements, that can live side by side without mutual recriminations?

348

From Cannibal Country. – In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many. Choose which you prefer.

349

The Freezing-Point of the Will. – “Some time the hour will come at last, the hour that will envelop you in the golden cloud of painlessness; when the soul enjoys its own weariness and, happy in patient playing with patience, resembles the waves of a lake, which on a quiet summer day, in the reflection of a many-hued evening sky, sip and sip at the shore and again are hushed – without end, without purpose, without satiety, without need – all calm rejoicing in change, all ebb and flow of Nature's pulse.” Such is the feeling and talk of all invalids, but if they attain that hour, a brief period of enjoyment is followed by ennui. But this is the thawing-wind of the frozen will, which awakes, stirs, and once more begets desire upon desire. – Desire is a sign of convalescence or recovery.

350

The Disclaimed Ideal. – It happens sometimes by an exception that a man only reaches the highest when he disclaims his ideal. For this ideal previously drove him onward too violently, so that in the middle of the track he regularly got out of breath and had to rest.

351

A Treacherous Inclination. – It should be regarded as a sign of an envious but aspiring man, when he feels himself attracted by the thought that with regard to the eminent there is but one salvation – love.

352

Staircase Happiness. – Just as the wit of many men does not keep pace with opportunity (so that opportunity has already passed through the door while wit still waits on the staircase outside), so others have a kind of staircase happiness, which walks too slowly to keep pace with swift-footed Time. The best that it can enjoy of an experience, of a whole span of life, falls to its share long afterwards, often only as a weak, spicy fragrance, giving rise to longing and sadness – as if “it might have been possible” – some time or other – to drink one's fill of this element: but now it is too late.

353

Worms. – The fact that an intellect contains a few worms does not detract from its ripeness.

354

The Seat of Victory. – A good seat on horseback robs an opponent of his courage, the spectator of his heart – why attack such a man? Sit like one who has been victorious!

355

Danger in Admiration. – From excessive admiration for the virtues of others one can lose the sense of one's own, and finally, through lack of practice, lose these virtues themselves, without retaining the alien virtues as compensation.

356

Uses of Sickliness. – He who is often ill not only has a far greater pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires a very keen sense of what is healthy or sickly in actions and achievements, both his own and others'. Thus, for example, it is just the writers of uncertain health – among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great writers must be classed – who are wont to have a far more even and assured tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and convalescence and in their teachers – morning, sunshine, forest, and fountain.

357

Disloyalty a Condition of Mastery. – It cannot be helped – every master has but one pupil, and he becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined for mastery.