The Joyous Science Page 4
If you have brains, you must be on your guard!
First they adore you, then tear you to shreds,
Devotees haven’t a brain in their heads!
38
The Pious Speak
God loves us, and that’s why He made us! –
‘We made God’, the wits reply.
Should we not love what we have made?
What we’ve made we should hence deny?
The devil’s hoof8 that thought displays.
39
In the Summer
In fields, by the sweat of our brows,9
They say we should eat our bread?
In fields you should not eat and plough,
Or so the physician said.
With what are we still not endowed?
The Dog Star with its fiery sign,
In fields, by the sweat of our brows,
Tells us we should drink our wine!
40
Without Envy
His unenvious eyes you all greatly admire,
But he never sought that to which you all aspire;
His eagle eye seeks only that which is far,
He does not see you! He sees only stars.
41
Heraclitism
All happiness on earth, my friends,
Only comes from struggle!
Yes, to be a faithful friend,
It takes the smoke of battle!
Only one in three are friends:
Brothers to their final breath,
Equals before enemies;
Free – in facing death!
42
Principle of the Too Well-Mannered
Rather on one’s tiptoes
Than crawling on all fours!
Best to peep through keyholes
Than gape at open doors!
43
Encouragement
Have you now set your sights on fame?
To what I teach take heed:
In due course, you must waive all claim
To honour, if you would succeed.
44
The Thorough
You call me a scholar? You are far too kind! –
I’m just heavy-laden with many a pound!
Tumbling downwards, I draw ever closer,
But sooner or later, I do hit the ground!
45
For ever
‘I come today, it’s opportune’ –
Thinks one who won’t be leaving soon.
What’s it to him if they all prate:
‘You come too soon! You come too late!’
46
Judgements of the Weary
Against the sun they remonstrate,
And love trees only for their shade!
47
Sunset
‘He sinks, he falls,’ they ridicule,
In truth he condescends to you.
Overjoyed, he sought his doom,
Overbright, he pierced your gloom.
48
Against Laws
From now on, around my neck,
A little clock hangs by a thread:
The sun and stars stop in their tracks,
No cock crows, shadows are not cast,
And what was once declared by time,
To me is now deaf, dumb and blind –
Despite our steady old tick-tock,
Nature knows no law or clock.
49
The Sage Speaks
Strange to the crowd but of use to the crowd,
I go my own way, under sun, under cloud –
But always above and beyond that same crowd!
50
Lost His Head
She’s had some brains ever since she was wed,
Recently she made a man lose his head,
Before this diversion, with thoughts he was rife:
His mind’s gone to hell – no! no! to his wife!
51
Wishful Thinking
May all the keys that still exist
Come to be mislaid,
And for the empty keyholes
Some brand-new pick-locks made.
That’s how every era talks,
Which finds it’s good at picking locks.
52
Writing with Feet
Pen in hand, all my writing begins,
But my feet, they would like to join in,
Running free, they’re so fleet and so brave,
Crossing fields and crossing the page.
53
Human, All Too Human. A Book
As long as you dwell on the past,
you’re filled with doubt and sorrow.
As long as you trust in yourself,
then you trust in tomorrow:
Bird, do you belong
among the eagles taking flight?
Or are you just Minerva’s pet10 –
spreading wings at fall of night?
54
My Readers
May my readers be granted strong stomachs,
May my readers be granted sharp teeth.
If this book is one that they can stomach,
Then surely they can stomach me!
55
Realist Painters
‘Be true to nature!’ – That’s how they began:
How could one exhaust her in art made by man?
The world’s inexhaustible, in every piece!
All that they do is to paint what they please.
And what gives them pleasure? To paint what they can!
56
Poetic Vanity
All I need is glue; I find
I’ve got the wooden fragments!
Making sense from silly rhymes:
It is no mean achievement!
57
Picky Taste
If I could pick my favourite spot,
I think the place I’d cultivate,
Is in the midst of Paradise,
Or better still – outside the gate!
58
The Broken Nose
His nostrils are always flaring with scorn,
This proud little man, this rhino sans horn.
He turns up his nose at the whole human race,
And therefore he always falls flat on his face!
Thus the one with the other invariably goes:
An arrogant posture, and oft-broken nose.
59
The Pen Scribbles
The pen keeps scribbling: this is hell!
To scribble, am I now condemned? –
I boldly reach for my inkwell,
And let the ink flow forth again.
The quantity’s considerable,
And everything goes brilliantly.
But while it’s not quite legible –
Who cares? What I write, no one reads!
60
Higher Man
His climb towards the heights is justly acclaimed;
The other, he nobly descends.
He has dispensed with the need for acclaim,
The base he already transcends!
61
The Sceptic Speaks
Half of your life is now over,
The hour hand moves as you tremble with fear!
Over the earth you have wandered,
And though you found nothing you still tarry here.
Half of your life is now over,
It was suffering and error, day in and day out.
What more do you hope to discover?
Just this: to know what the whole thing was about!
62
Ecce Homo11
Yes! I know from whence I came!
An insatiable flame,
Glowing and consuming me.
Everything I touch burns brighter,
All I leave are dying embers;
Flame I am assuredly.
63
Star Morals
To a star’s path preordained,
How could the darkness leave you pained?
/> So pass right through this age in bliss,
A stranger to its wretchedness!
For the farthest world you shine:
The sin of pity you abjure!
Your sole commandment is: be pure!
Book I
* * *
1
The Teachers of the Purpose of Life
Whether I look upon men with a good or evil eye, I always find them engaged in but one task, each and every one of them: the preservation of the human race. And certainly not from any great love for it, but simply because nothing in them is older, stronger, more inexorable or invincible than that instinct – because this instinct is precisely the nature of our species and herd. With our usual short-sightedness, we are quick to divide our neighbours rather neatly into beneficial and injurious, into good and evil men; however, upon a great reckoning, when we further consider the whole, we become suspicious of this neat division, and in the end abandon it. Even the most injurious man may still be the most beneficial of all, with respect to the preservation of the human race; for he preserves in himself, or by his effect on others, impulses without which mankind might long since have languished or decayed. Hatred, malicious glee, rapacity and ambition and whatever else is called evil belong to this remarkable economy of preservation; to be sure, a costly, extravagant and on the whole rather foolish economy – but one which has thus far been proven to preserve our kind. My dear neighbour and fellow man, I doubt whether you even can live to the detriment of your species, that is to say ‘unreasonably’ and ‘badly’; perhaps that which could have damaged it died out thousands of years ago, and is now among things which are no longer possible even for God. Indulge your best or worst desires, and above all perish! Either way, you’re probably still somehow the patron and benefactor of mankind, and thus entitled to your eulogists – as well as your detractors! That said, you will never find anyone who could give you, the individual, even at your best, the ridicule which you deserve. You will never find anyone who could impress upon you how frog-like, how gnat-like, how boundlessly paltry you are, enough as is consistent with the truth! To laugh at yourself as you would have to laugh, to laugh out of the whole truth – so far, for that the best had not enough of a faculty for truth and the gifted far too little genius! Perhaps even laughter still has a future! Then, when mankind has subscribed to the proposition ‘the species is everything, the individual is always nothing’ – and for every man, the way is open at all times to this final liberation and irresponsibility – perhaps then laughter will be allied with wisdom, perhaps then there will be nothing but ‘Joyous Science’. For the time being, things are quite different; for the time being, the comedy of life has not yet ‘become conscious’ of itself; for the time being, it is still the age of tragedy, the age of moralities and religions. What does it indicate, this endless procession of moral and religious founders, authors of strife over moral standards, teachers of remorse and religious war? What does it indicate, this succession of heroes on the stage? For thus far they have been its heroes, and everything else that is alone visible and in the limelight for a time has only served to set the stage for these heroes, whether as theatrical machinery and backdrop, or in the role of confidants and valets. (The poets, for example, have always been the valets of some morality or other.)
It goes without saying that these tragedians also work in the interest of our species, even though they may believe themselves to be promoting the interest of God and serving as His emissaries. They also contribute to the life of the race by encouraging belief in life. ‘Life is worth living’ – they all cry – ‘there is something about this life, something behind and beneath it: beware!’ That impulse, which prevails in the highest and the basest alike, the impulse to preservation, breaks forth from time to time as reason and intellectual passion; it has about it then a brilliant host of reasons, and tries with all its might to make us forget that at bottom it is impulse, instinct, folly and baselessness. Life should be loved, because! Man should help himself and his neighbour, because! And what do all these ‘shoulds’ and ‘becauses’ mean, and what might they mean in the future! In order that whatever happens, necessarily and always, of its own accord and without purpose, may from now on appear to be done on purpose, and may be intelligible to men as rational and obligatory – to that end, the ethical teacher arises who teaches the purpose of life; to that end, he devises a second and different life, and by means of this new mechanism he lifts the old common life off its old common hinges. He certainly does not want us to laugh at life, at ourselves – or at him; to him an individual is always an individual, something first and last and tremendous, to him there are no species, no sums, no zeroes. However foolish and rapturous his inventions and enthusiasms may be, however much he may misunderstand the course of nature and deny its conditions – and all systems of ethics hitherto have been foolish and unnatural to such a degree that if any of them had taken possession of mankind, we would have perished – nevertheless! Whenever ‘the hero’ appeared on the stage, something new was achieved, the thrilling counterpart of laughter, the profound shock of many individuals at the thought: ‘Yes, life is worth living! I am worthy of living!’ Life and you and I and all of us together once again became interesting to us for a while.
There is no denying that in the long run every one of these great teachers of purpose so far has been overcome by laughter and reason and nature: in the end the brief tragedy always turned and returned to the eternal comedy of life; and the ‘waves of countless laughter’1 – to speak with Aeschylus – must eventually shipwreck even the greatest of these tragedians. Notwithstanding all this laughter serving as a corrective, human nature has been wholly transformed by the endless procession of those teachers of the purpose of life – human nature now has a further need, precisely the need for an endless procession of such teachers and doctrines of ‘purpose’. Man has gradually become a fanciful animal, who has one more condition of existence to fulfil than other animals: from time to time, man must think he knows why he exists; the human race cannot flourish without periodically renewed trust in life! Without believing in the reason in life! And again and again humankind will decree from time to time: ‘There is something at which you are henceforth absolutely forbidden to laugh!’ And the canniest philanthropist will add: ‘not only laughter and joyous wisdom, but also the tragic with all its sublime unreasonableness are among the necessities and means of preservation!’
And consequently! Consequently! Consequently! Do you understand me, my brothers? Do you understand this new law of ebb and flow? Our time will come!
2
The Intellectual Conscience
Experience teaches me again and again and always I resist the conclusion, not wanting to believe it even though it is palpable: the majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seemed to me that one with such demands is as alone in the most populous cities as in a desert. Everyone looks at you with a puzzled expression and still holds their scales, calling this good and that evil; and no one would blush if you were to say that they use false weights – nor is there any indignation against you; perhaps they laugh at your doubts. I mean to say: the majority do not find it contemptible to believe this or that, and live accordingly, without ascertaining in advance what speaks for and against it, and without even bothering to do so after the fact – the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this ‘majority’. But what are kind-heartedness, sophistication and genius to me, if a person with these virtues tolerates a lackadaisical sensibility in belief and judgement, and does not consider the demand for certainty their innermost desire and profoundest need – as that which separates the higher from the lower! Among the pious, in some I have found a hostility to reason, and was well disposed to them for it: at least this still revealed their intellectual bad conscience! But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors2 and all the wonderful uncertainty and ambiguity of life, and not question, not to tremble with curiosity and the passion for enquir
y, not even to hate those who do – perhaps even to find them mildly amusing – that is what I feel to be contemptible, and it is this sentiment which I first look for in everyone – some foolishness never fails to persuade me that every man as such has this sentiment. This is my kind of injustice.
3
Noble and Common
To common natures all noble, magnanimous sentiments appear inexpedient and therefore incredible: they blink their eyes when they hear of suchlike, and seem inclined to say, ‘there is probably some advantage to be had from them, not every wall can have a window’3 – they are jealous of the noble person, as if he sought a clandestine advantage. When they are quite clearly convinced of the absence of selfish intentions and gains, they regard the noble person as a kind of fool: they despise him in his joy, and laugh at his shining eyes. ‘How can someone enjoy being at a disadvantage, how can someone seek his own disadvantage with open eyes! The noble affection must involve a disease of reason’ – so they think, and they look down on it; just as they look down on the enjoyment the madman derives from his obsession. The common person is distinguished by the fact that he keeps his advantage steadily in view, and that this thought of the practical end and advantage is even stronger than his strongest impulse: not to be misled by his impulses to acts that are inexpedient – in this does his self-respect and wisdom consist. By contrast, the higher nature is more unreasonable – for the noble, magnanimous and self-sacrificing person is in fact governed by his impulses, and in his best moments his reason pauses. An animal, which risks its life to protect its young, or in the mating season follows the female even to the death, does not think of danger and death; its reason likewise pauses, because it is preoccupied with its pleasure in its offspring, or in the female, and the fear of being deprived of this pleasure; it becomes more stupid than usual, like the noble and magnanimous person. Such people have a few feelings of pleasure and pain so intense that the intellect either falls silent before them, or lends itself to their service: the heart overtakes the head, and then one speaks of ‘passion’. (Occasionally, we find what is arguably the opposite case, and what you might call the ‘inversion of passion’, for example with Fontenelle, on whose heart someone once laid their hand and said, ‘What you have there, my good man, is also brain.’)4 It is passion’s unreasonableness, its being at cross-purposes with reason, which the common despises in the noble, especially when it is directed towards objects whose value seems to be quite fantastic and arbitrary. He is irked at one who is governed by the passions of the belly, but he understands the appeal of what there plays the tyrant; but he cannot grasp how one could, for example, gamble with one’s health and honour for the sake of a passion for knowledge. The taste of the higher nature is directed towards the exceptional, towards things that usually leave people cold and seem to lack sweetness; the higher nature has a distinctive standard of value. Yet he is for the most part convinced that his idiosyncrasies of taste do not manifest a distinctive standard of value; he takes what he regards as worthy or unworthy to be generally valid, and thus what he wants becomes incomprehensible and impracticable. It is very rare that a higher nature has enough sense to see everyday human beings for what they are and treat them accordingly: at the very most he believes in his passion as the hidden passion of all, and in this faith he is especially full of fervour and eloquence. Now if such exceptional men do not feel themselves to be exceptions, how can they ever hope to understand the common natures and obtain a fair assessment of the norm? Thus it is that they also speak of the folly, perversity and delusions of mankind, filled with amazement at how mad the course of the world is, and that it will not own up to what ‘needs to be done’.