The Dawn of Day

Evil through Exuberance. – “Oh, that we should not feel too happy!” – such was the secret fear of the Greeks in their best age. That is why they preached moderation to themselves. And we?

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The Worship of Natural Sounds. – What signification can we find in the fact that our culture is not only indulgent to the manifestations of grief, such as tears, complaints, reproaches, and attitudes of rage and humility, but even approves them and reckons them among the most noble and essential things? – while, on the other hand, the spirit of ancient philosophy looked down upon them with contempt, without admitting their necessity in any way. Let us remember how Plato – who was by no means one of the most inhuman of the philosophers – speaks of the Philoctetus of the tragic stage. Is it possible that our modern culture is wanting in “philosophy”? or, in accordance with the valuations of those old philosophers, do we perhaps all form part of the “mob”?

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The Climate for Flattery. – In our day flatterers should no longer be sought at the courts of kings, since these have all acquired a taste for militarism, which cannot tolerate flattery. But this flower even now often grows in abundance in the neighbourhood of bankers and artists.

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The Revivers. – Vain men value a fragment of the past more highly from the moment when they are able to revive it in their imagination (especially if it is difficult to do so), they would even like if possible to raise it from the dead. Since, however, the number of vain people is always very large, the danger presented by historical studies, if an entire epoch devotes its attention to them, is by no means small: too great an amount of strength is then wasted on all sorts of imaginable resurrections. The entire movement of romanticism is perhaps best understood from this point of view.

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Vain, Greedy, and not very Wise. – Your desires are greater than your understanding, and your vanity is even greater than your desires, – to people of your type a great deal of Christian practice and a little Schopenhauerian theory may be strongly recommended.

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Beauty corresponding to the Age. – If our sculptors, painters, and musicians wish to catch the significance of the age, they should represent beauty as bloated, gigantic, and nervous: just as the Greeks, under the influence of their morality of moderation, saw and represented beauty in the Apollo di Belvedere. We should, indeed, call him ugly! But the pedantic “classicists” have deprived us of all our honesty!

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The Irony of the Present Time. – At the present day it is the habit of Europeans to treat all matters of great importance with irony, because, as the result of our activity in their service, we have no time to take them seriously.

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Against Rousseau. – If it is true that there is something contemptible about our civilisation, we have two alternatives: of concluding with Rousseau that, “This despicable civilisation is to blame for our bad morality,” or to infer, contrary to Rousseau's view, that “Our good morality is to blame for this contemptible civilisation. Our social conceptions of good and evil, weak and effeminate as they are, and their enormous influence over both body and soul, have had the effect of weakening all bodies and souls and of crushing all unprejudiced, independent, and self-reliant men, the real pillars of a strong civilisation: wherever we still find the evil morality to-day, we see the last crumbling ruins of these pillars.” Thus let paradox be opposed by paradox! It is quite impossible for the truth to lie with both sides: and can we say, indeed, that it lies with either? Decide for yourself.

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Perhaps Premature. – It would seem at the present time that, under many different and misleading names, and often with a great want of clearness, those who do not feel themselves attached to morals and to established laws are taking the first initial steps to organise themselves, and thus to create a right for themselves; whilst hitherto, as criminals, free-thinkers, immoral men and miscreants, they have lived beyond the pale of the law, under the bane of outlawry and bad conscience, corrupted and corrupting. On the whole, we should consider this as right and proper, although it may result in insecurity for the coming century and compel every one to bear arms. – There is thereby a counterforce which continually reminds us that there is no exclusively moral-making morality, and that a morality which asserts itself to the exclusion of all other morality destroys too much sound strength and is too dearly bought by mankind. The non-conventional and deviating people, who are so often productive and inventive, must no longer be sacrificed: it must never again be considered as a disgrace to depart from morality either in actions or thought; many new experiments must be made upon life and society, and the world must be relieved from a huge weight of bad conscience. These general aims must be recognised and encouraged by all those upright people who are seeking truth.

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A Morality which does not bore one. – The principal moral commandments which a nation permits its teachers to emphasise again and again stand in relation to its chief defects, and that is why it does not find them tiresome. The Greeks, who so often failed to employ moderation, coolness, fair-mindedness, and rationality in general, turned a willing ear to the four Socratic virtues, – they stood in such need of them, and yet had so little talent for them!

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At the Parting of the Ways. – Shame! You wish to form part of a system in which you must be a wheel, fully and completely, or risk being crushed by wheels! where it is understood that each one will be that which his superiors make of him! where the seeking for “connections” will form part of one's natural duties! where no one feels himself offended when he has his attention drawn to some one with the remark, “He may be useful to you some time”; where people do not feel ashamed of paying a visit to ask for somebody's intercession, and where they do not even suspect that by such a voluntary submission to these morals, they are once and for all stamped as the common pottery of nature, which others can employ or break up of their free will without feeling in any way responsible for doing so, – just as if one were to say, “People of my type will never be lacking, therefore, do what you will with me! Do not stand on ceremony!”

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Unconditional Homage. – When I think of the most read German philosopher, the most popular German musician, and the most distinguished German statesman, I cannot but acknowledge that life is now rendered unusually arduous for these Germans, this nation of unconditional sentiments, and that, too, by their own great men. We see three magnificent spectacles spread out before us: on each occasion there is a river rushing along in the bed which it has made for itself, and even so agitated that one thinks at times it intends to flow uphill. And yet, however we might admire Schopenhauer, who would not, all things considered, like to have other opinions than his? Who in all greater and smaller things would now share the opinions of Richard Wagner, although there may be truth in the view expressed by some one: viz. that wherever Wagner gave or took offence some problem lay hidden, – which, however, he did not unearth for us. And, finally, how many are there who would be willing and eager to agree with Bismarck, if only he could always agree with himself, or were even to show some signs of doing so for the future! It is true that it is by no means astonishing to find statesmen without principles, but with dominant instincts; a versatile mind, actuated by these dominant and violent instincts, and hence without principles – these qualities are looked upon as reasonable and natural in a statesman. But, alas, this has up to the present been so un-German; as un-German as the fuss made about music and the discord and bad temper excited around the person of the musician; or as un-German as the new and extraordinary position taken up by Schopenhauer: he did not feel himself to be either above things or on his knees before them – one or other of these alternatives might still have been German – but he assumed an attitude against things! How incredible and disagreeable! to range one's self with things and nevertheless be their adversary, and finally the adversary of one's self, – what can the unconditional admirer do with such an example? And what, again, can he do with three such examples who cannot keep the peace towards one another! Here we see Schopenhauer as the antagonist of Wagner's music, Wagner attacking Bismarck's politics, and Bismarck attacking Wagnerism and Schopenhauerism. What remains for us to do? Where shall we flee with our thirst for wholesale hero-worship! Would it not be possible to choose from the music of the musician a few hundred bars of good music which appealed to the heart, and which we should like to take to heart because they are inspired by the heart, – could we not stand aside with this small piece of plunder, and forget the rest? And could we not make a similar compromise as regards the philosopher and the statesman, – select, take to heart, and in particular forget the rest?

Yes, if only forgetfulness were not so difficult! There was once a very proud man who would never on any account accept anything, good or evil, from others, – from any one, indeed, but himself. When he wanted to forget, however, he could not bestow this gift upon himself, and was three times compelled to conjure up the spirits. They came, listened to his desire, and said at last, “This is the only thing it is not in our power to give!” Could not the Germans take warning by this experience of Manfred? Why, then, should the spirits be conjured up? It is useless. We never forget what we endeavour to forget. And how great would be the “balance” which we should have to forget if we wished henceforth to continue wholesale admirers of these three great men! It would therefore be far more advisable to profit by the excellent opportunity offered us to try something new, i. e. to advance in the spirit of honesty towards ourselves and become, instead of a nation of credulous repetition and of bitter and blind animosity, a people of conditional assent and benevolent opposition. We must come to learn in the first place, however, that unconditional homage to people is something rather ridiculous, that a change of view on this point would not discredit even Germans, and that there is a profound and memorable saying: “Ce qui importe, ce ne sont point les personnes: mais les choses.” This saying is like the man who uttered it – great, honest, simple, and silent, – just like Carnot, the soldier and Republican. But may I at the present time speak thus to Germans of a Frenchman, and a Republican into the bargain? Perhaps not: perhaps I must not even recall what Niebuhr in his time dared to say to the Germans: that no one had made such an impression of true greatness upon him as Carnot.

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A Model. – What do I like about Thucydides, and how does it come that I esteem him more highly than Plato? He exhibits the most wide-spread and artless pleasure in everything typical in men and events, and finds that each type is possessed of a certain quantity of good sense: it is this good sense which he seeks to discover. He likewise exhibits a larger amount of practical justice than Plato; he never reviles or belittles those men whom he dislikes or who have in any way injured him in the course of his life. On the contrary: while seeing only types, he introduces something noble and additional into all things and persons; for what could posterity, to which he dedicates his work, do with things not typical! Thus this culture of the disinterested knowledge of the world attains in him, the poet-thinker, a final marvellous bloom, – this culture which has its poet in Sophocles, its statesman in Pericles, its doctor in Hippocrates, and its natural philosopher in Democritus: this culture which deserves to be called by the name of its teachers, the Sophists, and which, unhappily, from the moment of its baptism at once begins to grow pale and incomprehensible to us, – for henceforward we suspect that this culture, which was combated by Plato and all the Socratic schools, must have been very immoral! The truth of this matter is so complicated and entangled that we feel unwilling to unravel it: so let the old error (error veritate simplicior) run its old course.

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The Greek Genius Foreign to us. – Oriental or modern, Asiatic or European: compared with the ancient Greeks, everything is characterised by enormity of size and by the revelling in great masses as the expression of the sublime, whilst in Paestum, Pompeii, and Athens we are astonished, when contemplating Greek architecture, to see with what small masses the Greeks were able to express the sublime, and how they loved to express it thus. In the same way, how simple were the Greeks in the idea which they formed of themselves! How far we surpass them in the knowledge of man! Again, how full of labyrinths would our souls and our conceptions of our souls appear in comparison with theirs! If we had to venture upon an architecture after the style of our own souls – (we are too cowardly for that!) – a labyrinth would have to be our model. That music which is peculiar to us, and which really expresses us, lets this be clearly seen! (for in music men let themselves go, because they think there is no one who can see them hiding behind their music).

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Another Point of View. – How we babble about the Greeks! What do we understand of their art, the soul of which was the passion for naked masculine beauty! It was only by starting therefrom that they appreciated feminine beauty. For the latter they had thus a perspective quite different from ours. It was the same in regard to their love for women: their worship was of a different kind, and so also was their contempt.

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The Food of the Modern Man. – He has learned to digest many things; nay, almost everything; it is his ambition to do so. He would, however, be really of a higher order if he did not understand this so well: homo pamphagus is not the finest type of the human race. We live between a past which had a more wayward and deranged taste than we, and a future which will possibly have a more select taste, – we live too much midway.

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Tragedy and Music. – Men of essentially warlike disposition, such, for example, as the ancient Greeks in the time of Æschylus, are difficult to rouse, and when pity once triumphs over their hardness they are seized as by a kind of giddiness or a “demoniacal power,” – they feel themselves overpowered and thrilled by a religious horror. After this they become sceptical about their condition; but as long as they are in it they enjoy the charm of being, as it were, outside themselves, and the delight of the marvellous mixed with the bitterest gall of suffering: this is the proper kind of drink for fighting men, – something rare, dangerous, and bitter-sweet, which does not often fall to one's lot.

Tragedy appeals to souls who feel pity in this way, to those fierce and warlike souls which are difficult to overcome, whether by fear or pity, but which lose nothing by being softened from time to time. Of what use, however, is tragedy to those who are as open to the “sympathetic affections” as the sails of a ship to the wind! When at the time of Plato the Athenians had become more softened and sensitive, oh, how far they were still removed from the gushing emotions of the inhabitants of our modern towns and villages! And yet even then the philosophers were beginning to complain of the injurious nature of tragedy. An epoch full of danger such as that now beginning, in which bravery and manliness are rising in value, will perhaps again harden souls to such an extent that they will once more stand in need of tragic poets: but in the meantime these are somewhat superfluous, to put it mildly. For music, too, a better age may be approaching (it will certainly be a more evil age!) when artists will have to make their music appeal to strongly individual beings, beings which will have become hard and which will be dominated by the gloomy earnestness of their own passion; but of what use is music to the little souls of the present age which is fast passing away, souls that are too unsteady, ill-developed, half-personal, inquisitive, and covetous of everything?

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The Flatterers of Work. – In the glorification of “work” and the never-ceasing talk about the “blessing of labour,” I see the same secret arrière-pensée as I do in the praise bestowed on impersonal acts of a general interest, viz. a fear of everything individual. For at the sight of work – that is to say, severe toil from morning till night – we have the feeling that it is the best police, viz. that it holds every one in check and effectively hinders the development of reason, of greed, and of desire for independence. For work uses up an extraordinary proportion of nervous force, withdrawing it from reflection, meditation, dreams, cares, love, and hatred; it dangles unimportant aims before the eyes of the worker and affords easy and regular gratification. Thus it happens that a society where work is continually being performed will enjoy greater security, and it is security which is now venerated as the supreme deity. – And now, horror of horrors! it is the “workman” himself who has become dangerous; the whole world is swarming with “dangerous individuals,” and behind them follows the danger of dangers —the individuum!

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The Moral Fashion of a Commercial Community. – Behind the principle of the present moral fashion: “Moral actions are actions performed out of sympathy for others,” I see the social instinct of fear, which thus assumes an intellectual disguise: this instinct sets forth as its supreme, most important, and most immediate principle that life shall be relieved of all the dangerous characteristics which it possessed in former times, and that every one must help with all his strength towards the attainment of this end. It is for that reason that only those actions which keep in view the general security and the feeling of security of society are called “good.” How little joy must men now have in themselves when such a tyranny of fear prescribes their supreme moral law, if they make no objection when commanded to turn their eyes from themselves and to look aside from themselves! And yet at the same time they have lynx eyes for all distress and suffering elsewhere! Are we not, then, with this gigantic intention of ours of smoothing down every sharp edge and corner in life, utilising the best means of turning mankind into sand! Small, soft, round, infinite sand! Is that your ideal, ye harbingers of the “sympathetic affections”? In the meantime even the question remains unanswered whether we are of more use to our neighbour in running immediately and continually to his help, – which for the most part can only be done in a very superficial way, as otherwise it would become a tyrannical meddling and changing, – or by transforming ourselves into something which our neighbour can look upon with pleasure, – something, for example, which may be compared to a beautiful, quiet, and secluded garden, protected by high walls against storms and the dust of the roads, but likewise with a hospitable gate.

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Fundamental Basis of a Culture of Traders. – We have now an opportunity of watching the manifold growth of the culture of a society of which commerce is the soul, just as personal rivalry was the soul of culture among the ancient Greeks, and war, conquest, and law among the ancient Romans. The tradesman is able to value everything without producing it, and to value it according to the requirements of the consumer rather than his own personal needs. “How many and what class of people will consume this?” is his question of questions. Hence, he instinctively and incessantly employs this mode of valuation and applies it to everything, including the productions of art and science, and of thinkers, scholars, artists, statesmen, nations, political parties, and even entire ages: with respect to everything produced or created he inquires into the supply and demand in order to estimate for himself the value of a thing. This, when once it has been made the principle of an entire culture, worked out to its most minute and subtle details, and imposed upon every kind of will and knowledge, this is what you men of the coming century will be proud of, – if the prophets of the commercial classes are right in putting that century into your possession! But I have little belief in these prophets. Credat Judæus Apella– to speak with Horace.

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The Criticism of our Ancestors. – Why should we now endure the truth, even about the most recent past? Because there is now always a new generation which feels itself in contradiction to the past and enjoys in this criticism the first-fruits of its sense of power. In former times the new generation, on the contrary, wished to base itself on the old and began to feel conscious of its power, not only in accepting the opinions of its ancestors but, if possible, taking them even more seriously. To criticise ancestral authority was in former times a vice; but at the present time our idealists begin by making it their starting-point.

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To learn Solitude. – O ye poor fellows in the great centres of the world's politics, ye young and talented men, who, urged on by ambition, think it your duty to propound your opinion of every event of the day, – for something is always happening, – who, by thus making a noise and raising a cloud of dust, mistake yourselves for the rolling chariot of history; who, because ye always listen, always suit the moment when ye can put in your word or two, thereby lose all real productiveness. Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event, – poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.

178

Daily Wear and Tear. – These young men are lacking neither in character, nor talent, nor zeal, but they have never had sufficient time to choose their own path; they have, on the contrary, been habituated from the most tender age to have their path pointed out to them. At the time when they were ripe enough to be sent into the “desert,” something else was done with them. They were turned to account, estranged from themselves, and brought up in such a way that they became accustomed to be worn out by their daily toil. This was imposed on them as a duty, and now they cannot do without it; they would not wish it to be otherwise. The only thing that cannot be refused to these poor beasts of burden is their “holidays” – such is the name they give to this ideal of leisure in an overworked century; “holidays,” in which they may for once be idle, idiotic, and childish to their heart's content.

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As little State as possible! – All political and economic matters are not of such great value that they ought to be dealt with by the most talented minds: such a waste of intellect is at bottom worse than any state of distress. These matters are, and ever will be, the province of smaller minds, and others than the smaller minds should not be at the service of this workshop: it would be better to let the machinery work itself to pieces again! But as matters stand at the present time, when not only do all people believe that they must know all about it day by day, but wish likewise to be always busy about it, and in so doing neglect their own work, it is a great and ridiculous mistake. The price that has to be paid for the “public safety” is far too high, and, what is maddest of all, we effect the very opposite of “public safety” a fact which our own dear century has undertaken to prove, as if this had never been proved before! To make society secure against thieves and fire, and to render it thoroughly fit for all kinds of trade and traffic, and to transform the State in a good and evil sense into a kind of Providence – these aims are low, mediocre, and not by any means indispensable; and we should not seek to attain them by the aid of the highest means and instruments which exist – means which we should reserve precisely for our highest and rarest aims! Our epoch, however much it may babble about economy, is a spendthrift: it wastes intellect, the most precious thing of all.

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