The Portable Nietzsche (55 page)

Another mode of convalescence—under certain circumstances even more to my liking—is
sounding out idols.
There are more idols than realities in the world: that is
my
“evil eye” for this world; that is also my “evil
ear.”
For once to pose questions here with a
hammer
, and, perhaps, to hear as a reply that famous hollow sound which speaks of bloated entrails—what a delight for one who has ears even behind his ears, for me, an old psychologist and pied piper before whom just that which would remain silent must become outspoken.

This essay too—the title betrays it—is above all a recreation, a spot of sunshine, a leap sideways into the idleness of a psychologist. Perhaps a new war, too? And are new idols sounded out? This little essay is a great declaration of war; and regarding the sounding out of idols, this time they are not just idols of the age, but eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork: there are altogether no older, no more convinced, no more puffed-up idols—and none more hollow. That does not prevent them from being those in which people have the most faith; nor does one ever say “idol,” especially not in the most distinguished instance.

 

Turin, September 30
,
1888,

on the day when the first book
¹⁶
of the
Revaluation of All Values
was completed.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

1

Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? Should psychology be a vice?
¹⁷

 

2

Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for that which he really knows.

 

3

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both —a philosopher.

 

4

“All truth is simple.” Is that not doubly a lie?

 

5

I want, once and for all, not to know many things. Wisdom sets limits to knowledge too.

 

6

In our own wild nature we find the best recreation from our un-nature, from our spirituality.

 

7

What? Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?

 

8

Out of life's school of war
: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

 

9

Help yourself, then everyone will help you. Principle of neighbor-love.

 

10

Not to perpetrate cowardice against one's own acts! Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite of conscience is indecent.

 

11

Can an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher.

 

12

If we have our own
why
of life, we shall get along with almost any
how.
Man does
not
strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.

 

13

Man has created woman—out of what? Out of a rib of his god—of his “ideal.”

 

14

What? You search? You would multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? Seek
zeros
!

 

15

Posthumous men—I, for example—are understood worse than timely ones, but
heard
better. More precisely: we are never understood—
hence
our authority.

 

16

Among women:
“Truth? Oh, you don't know truth! Is it not an attempt to assassinate all our
pudeurs?
”

 

17

That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art
—panem et Circen.
¹⁸

 

18

Whoever does not know how to lay his will into things, at least lays some
meaning
into them: that means, he has the faith that they already obey a will. (Principle of “faith.”)

 

19

What? You elected virtue and the swelled bosom and yet you leer enviously at the advantages of those without qualms? But virtue involves
renouncing
“advantages.” (Inscription for an anti-Semite's door.)

 

20

The perfect woman perpetrates literature as she perpetrates a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, looking around to see if anybody notices it—and to make sure that somebody does.

 

21

To venture into all sorts of situations in which one may not have any sham virtues, where, like the tightrope walker on his rope, one either stands or falls—or gets away.

 

22

“Evil men have no songs.” How is it, then, that the Russians have songs?

 

23

“German spirit”: for the past eighteen years a contradiction in terms.

 

24

By searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backward; eventually he also
believes
backward.

 

25

Contentment protects even against colds. Has a woman who knew herself to be well dressed ever caught cold? I am assuming that she was barely dressed.

 

26

I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.

 

27

Women are considered profound. Why? Because one never fathoms their depths. Women aren't even shallow.

 

28

If a woman has manly virtues, one feels like running away; and if she has no manly virtues, she herself runs away.

 

29

“How much conscience has had to chew on in the past! And what excellent teeth it had! And today—what is lacking?” A dentist's question.

 

30

One rarely rushes into a single error. Rushing into the first one, one always does too much. So one usually perpetrates another one—and now one does too little.

 

31

When stepped on, a worm doubles up. That is clever. In that way he lessens the probability of being stepped on again. In the language of morality:
humility.

 

32

There is a hatred of lies and simulation, stemming from an easily provoked sense of honor. There is another such hatred, from cowardice, since lies are
forbidden
by a divine commandment. Too cowardly to lie.

 

33

How little is required for pleasure! The sound of a bagpipe. Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs.

 

34

On ne peut penser et écrire qu'assis
¹⁹
(G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.

 

35

There are cases in which we are like horses, we psychologists, and become restless: we see our own shadow wavering up and down before us. A psychologist must turn his eyes from himself to eye anything at all.

 

36

Whether we immoralists are
harming
virtue? Just as little as anarchists harm princes. Only since the latter are shot at do they again sit securely on their thrones. Moral:
morality must be shot at.

 

37

You run
ahead?
Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be the fugitive.
First
question of conscience.

 

38

Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor.
Second
question of conscience.

 

39

The disappointed one speaks
. I searched for great human beings; I always found only the
apes
of their ideals.

 

40

Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off?
Third
question of conscience.

 

41

Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know
what
one wants and
that
one wants.
Fourth
question of conscience.

 

42

Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them: to that end I had to pass over them. Yet they thought that I wanted to retire on them.

 

43

What does it matter if
I
remain right. I am much too right. And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.

 

44

The formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a
goal
.

1

Concerning life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike:
it is no good.
Always and everywhere one has heard the same sound from their mouths—a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of resistance to life. Even Socrates said, as he died: “To live—that means to be sick a long time: I owe Asclepius the Savior a rooster.” Even Socrates was tired of it. What does that evidence? What does it evince? Formerly one would have said (—oh, it has been said, and loud enough, and especially by our pessimists): “At least something of all this must be true! The consensus of the sages evidences the truth.” Shall we still talk like that today?
May
we? “At least something must be
sick
here,”
we
retort. These wisest men of all ages—they should first be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? late? tottery? decadents? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a raven, inspired by a little whiff of carrion?

 

2

This irreverent thought that the great sages are
types of decline
first occurred to me precisely in a case where it is most strongly opposed by both scholarly and unscholarly prejudice: I recognized Socrates and Plato to be symptoms of degeneration, tools of the Greek dissolution, pseudo-Greek, anti-Greek (
Birth of Tragedy,
1872). The consensus of the sages—I comprehended this ever more clearly—proves least of all that they were right in what they agreed on: it shows rather that they themselves, these wisest men, agreed in some
physiological
respect, and hence adopted the same negative attitude to life—
had to
adopt it. Judgments, judgments of value, concerning life, for it or against it, can, in the end, never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they are worthy of consideration only as symptoms; in themselves such judgments are stupidities. One must by all means stretch out one's fingers and make the attempt to grasp this amazing finesse,
that the value of life cannot be estimated.
Not by the living, for they are an interested party, even a bone of contention, and not judges; not by the dead, for a different reason. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life is thus an objection to him, a question mark concerning his wisdom, an un-wisdom. Indeed? All these great wise men—they were not only decadents but not wise at all? But I return to the problem of Socrates.

 

3

In origin, Socrates belonged to the lowest class: Socrates was plebs. We know, we can still see for ourselves, how ugly he was. But ugliness, in itself an objection, is among the Greeks almost a refutation. Was Socrates a Greek at all? Ugliness is often enough the expression of a development that has been crossed,
thwarted
by crossing. Or it appears as
declining
development. The anthropologists among the criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly:
monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo.
But the criminal is a decadent. Was Socrates a typical criminal? At least that would not be contradicted by the famous judgment of the physiognomist which sounded so offensive to the friends of Socrates. A foreigner who knew about faces once passed through Athens and told Socrates to his face that he
was a monstrum—
that he harbored in himself all the bad vices and appetites. And Socrates merely answered: “You know me, sir!”

 

4

Socrates' decadence is suggested not only by the admitted wantonness and anarchy of his instincts, but also by the hypertrophy of the logical faculty and that
sarcasm of the rachitic
which distinguishes him. Nor should we forget those auditory hallucinations which, as “the
daimonion
of Socrates,” have been interpreted religiously. Everything in him is exaggerated,
buffo,
a caricature; everything is at the same time concealed, ulterior, subterranean. I seek to comprehend what idiosyncrasy begot that Socratic equation of reason, virtue, and happiness: that most bizarre of all equations, which, moreover, is opposed to all the instincts of the earlier Greeks.

 

5

With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dialectics. What really happened there? Above all, a
noble
taste is thus vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, dialectic manners were repudiated in good society: they were considered bad manners, they were compromising. The young were warned against them. Furthermore, all such presentations of one's reasons were distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got
himself taken seriously:
what really happened there?