目　录

与孤独为伍

Man Alone with Himself

企鹅口袋书系列·伟大的思想

与孤独为伍

（英汉双语）

［德］弗里德里希·尼采　著

马里昂·法博　斯蒂芬·莱曼

R. J. 霍林代尔　英译

孙若颖　汉译

中　国　出　版　集　团

中国对外翻译出版公司

目　录

一、与孤独为伍

二、在朋友们中间：结语

三、自由精神

四、来自高山：古抒情诗

返回总目录

一、与孤独为伍

1．真理之敌。信仰是比谎言更危险的真理之敌。

2．颠倒的世界。我们常会因为不喜欢某人的某个说法而严加苛责，其实我们更应该在相反的情况下这么做。

3．有个性的人。一个人看上去有个性，是因为他办事总是跟随自己的性情，而不是遵照原则。

4．必居其一。一个人如果生来不具有平易的性格，那么艺术与知识的陶冶必定可以使他变得性格平易。

5．对事业的激情。热爱事业（如科学、国家利益、文化、艺术）的人，往往对人比较冷漠（即便对其事业的代表，如政客、哲学家、艺术家也是如此）。

6．行动的冷静。瀑布在跌落时，变得舒缓飘逸；实干家在行动时，将强烈的渴望化为彻底的冷静。

7．浅显为妙。如果彻底了解，就很难忠诚。因为了解越深入，就越会接触到黑暗面。

8．理想主义者的误区。理想主义者们幻想自己投身的是天底下最伟大的事业，他们不愿相信，自己事业的壮大，也需要其他事业所必需的气味难闻的粪肥。

9．自我观察。人最善于防备自己，抵御自己的窥探和围攻；通常，他最多只能看清自己的外围城池。真正的堡垒他不但进不去，甚至看不见，除非朋友或敌人变成内应，带他从密道去那里。

10．合适的职业。男人们很少会忍受一项职业，除非他们相信或者说服自己相信，这项职业比其他的更重要。女人们在对待所爱的人时也是一样。

11．高尚的情操。高尚的情操大体上由善良和轻信构成，这正是贪婪和成功的人所不屑和鄙视的。

12．目的地和路。很多人会坚持走已经走上的路，对他们的目的地却很少这样坚持。

13．特立独行令人反感的地方。特立独行的人总是令人反感，因为他们与众不同的方式使周围的人感到自卑。

14．名人的特权。通过微不足道的礼物带给人无上的快乐，是名人的特权。

15．不经意的高尚。习惯给予而非索取的人，就具备了不经意的高尚。

16．成为英雄的条件。人如果想成为英雄，他的对手必须先从蛇变成龙，否则他就缺少一个合适的敌人。

17．朋友。分享喜悦而非同情，使人们成为朋友。

18．利用高潮与低潮。为了获得知识，要学会利用内在的潮汐，让自己顺势接近一件事物，一段时间以后，再顺势从那件事物上撤离。

19．爱自己。人们常说“爱事业”，实际上是爱自己，“爱事业”只是“爱自己”的表达方式。

20．谦逊之人。对人谦逊的人，往往对事物（城市、国家、社会、时代，或者人类）表现得格外傲慢。那是他的报复。

21．羡慕和嫉妒。羡慕和嫉妒是人类灵魂的私处。这个比方或许可以被推至更远。

22．最优雅的伪君子。完全不谈论自己是一种形式优雅的伪善。

23．烦恼。烦恼是一种生理疾病，不可能仅仅通过消灭其根源而消除它。

24．真理的代表。很难找到真理的拥趸，并非因为说出真理很危险，而是因为这件事本身很乏味。

25．比敌人还麻烦。当我们因为某些原因（比如感激）不得不和不投机的人维持热络的表象时，这些人对我们想象力的折磨比我们的敌人更甚。

26．走进大自然。我们喜欢走进大自然，因为它从不对我们评头论足。

27．寸有所长。在文明状态下，所有人都感到自己至少在某一方面比别人强，这是形成社会普遍亲善的基础：由于每个人在特定的情形下都可以向他人提供帮助，因而在接受他人的帮助时也就不会感到羞耻。

28．令人安慰的解释。某人故去时，我们通常需要令人安慰的解释，与其说是为了平复痛苦，不如说是为自己的痛苦轻易得到平复寻找借口。

29．忠实于信仰。事务繁忙的人，通常会保持基本理念和观点不变，这和为某种信念服务的人一样。他不再检验自己的信念，他没有时间这么做。事实上，连就此事进行考虑都与他的兴趣相违。

30．道德和数量。一个人比另一个更有道德，常常因为他的目标更多，后者因为在狭窄的圈子里忙于琐事而处于下风。

31．生命作为生命的作品。无论一个人在知识上多么广博，在他本人眼里多么客观，他最终只能收获自己的自传。

32．铁定的必然。透过历史的进程，人类了解到所谓“铁定的必然”，既非铁定也非必然。

33．经验之谈。不合理性不是一件事物消亡的理由，反而是其存在的条件。

34．真相。如今，没有人会因为某个致命的真相死去，因为解药太多。

35．基本观点。在真理的推广和人类的幸福之间，不存在预设的和谐。

36．人的宿命。进行过深入思考的人都知道，任何行为和判断都只能导致错误的结果。

37．真理如女巫。错误让动物变成人，真理是否会把人变回动物？

38．文化的危机。在我们的时代，文化面临被文化的手段摧毁的危险。

39．伟大意味着指出方向。没有哪条河流的伟大和充盈是单凭自身，能够吸纳众多的支流并带领它们前行才是其伟大之处。伟人也是一样。关键在于能指出一个众人追随的方向，至于他本人有没有足够的天赋，并不重要。

40．问心有愧。大谈自己对人类重要性的资本家，在信守约定或誓言方面会感到问心有愧。

41．要求被爱。要求别人爱自己是最大的傲慢。

42．蔑视他人。蔑视他人最明显的标志是只有在为了达成自己的目的时才会容忍他人。

43．政见相左的追随者。谁让别人对他暴跳如雷，谁就找到了追随自己的同伙。

44．忘记自己的经历。经常进行客观思考的人，容易忘记自己的经历，但不会忘记这些经历引发的思考。

45．固执己见。一个人固执己见，要么是因为他自己发现了这个观点而为之骄傲，要么是因为他经过努力理解了这个观点而为之骄傲，二者都出自于虚荣。

46．害怕曝光。善行同恶行一样害怕曝光。后者担心曝光会招致痛苦（作为惩罚）；前者担心曝光会让快乐（纯粹的快乐一旦掺杂了虚荣心的满足就会终止）消失。

47．一天的长度。如果一个人有很多事要往一天里塞，一天就会变出一百个口袋来装。

48．暴君天才。如果灵魂翻腾起无法遏制的欲望，想确立自己的绝对权威，并且一直保持着这股狂热，那么即便不值一提的天分（在政治家或艺术家中），也能演变成几乎无法抗拒的自然力。

49．敌人的生命。如果一个人活着是为了同敌人战斗，那么敌人活着对他来说就非常重要。

50．更重要的事。无法解释、晦暗不明的事常被认为比可以解释、清晰明朗的事更重要。

51．评估服务。我们评估某项服务，依据的是这项服务的标价，而不是服务本身对于我们的价值。

52．不幸。不幸是如此的光荣（幸福反而像是一种浅薄、平庸和缺乏抱负的标志），如果有人说“你肯定非常幸福”时，我们通常都会表示抗议。

53．恐惧的幻象。恐惧的幻象是一个骨瘦如柴的邪恶小妖，专拣人的承受力达到极限时跳到他的背上。

54．令人生厌的反对者的价值。有时我们保持对某项事业的忠诚，只是因为反对它的人总是令我们生厌。

55．职业的价值。职业使我们变得没有思想，而这正是它最伟大的赐福。它仿佛一道防御工事，我们陷入疑虑和不安的围攻时，就可以撤退到它的后面。

56．本领。某些人的本领看起来比实际上小，是因为他们给自己安排的任务太庞大。

57．年轻。年轻时代是令人不快的，想在任何方面获得成就，在当时既不可能也不合理。

58．过于宏大的目标。当众夸下海口的人，在意识到无法兑现承诺时，通常不会有勇气重提旧事，最终无可避免地变成伪君子。

59．在溪流中。强劲的水流会带走石子和灌木，强大的思想也会吸引许多愚蠢和昏乱的头脑。

60．思想解放的危险。当一个人热切地试图解放思想时，他的激情和欲望也暗暗希望能从中得利。

61．精神的体现。如果一个人经常进行聪明的思考，他的脸和身体也会看起来很聪明。

62．视力不好和听力不好。视力不好的人，看到的东西往往比别人少一些；听力不好的人，听到的东西往往比别人多一些。

63．虚荣的自得其乐。虚荣的人不但想高人一等，而且希望感觉到高人一等，因此不惜自欺欺人。他关心的不是别人的意见，而是他对别人意见的看法。

64．格外虚荣。自大的人在生病时会变得格外虚荣，更加在乎名声和赞誉。他在多大程度上迷失了自己，就会从外界利用他人的观点重新赢回来。

65．“机智”的人。寻求机智的人没有机智。

66．给党派领袖的提示。如果能迫使人们公开宣誓效忠，就基本等于让他们在私下里宣誓效忠，因为人们总是希望显得表里如一。

67．轻蔑。通常，人们对来自别人的轻蔑比对来自自己的轻蔑更加敏感。

68．感激的绳索。某些有奴性思想的人，感恩戴德过了头，无异于用感激的绳索将自己活活勒死。

69．预言家的诀窍。要预言普通人的行为就必须明白，他们很少花费精力去摆脱糟糕的境遇。

70．唯一的人权。背离传统的人成为传统的祭品，坚守传统的人成为传统的奴隶。无论哪种情况，毁灭都随之而来。

71．比动物还不如。一个人纵声大笑时的粗俗超过了所有动物。

72．不求甚解。只会说一点外文的人比外文说得好的人更乐在其中，愉悦与不求甚解相得甚欢。

73．危险的帮助。有些人想加剧人们生活的苦难，只是为了向他们提供摆脱苦难的药方——比如基督教。

74．勤奋和负责。勤奋和负责往往是对头。勤奋想在果实青涩的时候就把它们从树上摘下，负责则让果实过久地挂在树上，直到它们掉下来，落得一场空。

75．怀疑。对于无法忍受的人，我们就把他们变得可疑。

76．缺乏机遇。很多人一辈子都在等待施展抱负的机会。

77．缺乏朋友。缺乏朋友通常是因为嫉妒或者傲慢。很多人有朋友只是幸运地因为没有可以嫉妒的理由。

78．多的危险。多一件本事不如少一件容易有稳固的立足，好比四条腿的桌子不如三条腿的站得稳。

79．他人的榜样。想成为榜样的人，必须给自己的德行添点愚蠢，这样别人就可以模仿并且超过模仿的对象——人们喜欢做这样的事。

80．当做靶子。通常别人的恶毒言论并非真的针对我们，而是发泄他们由于其他原因感到的烦恼和不悦。

81．轻易认输。如果人能说服自己憎恨过去，就不会再受到未了心愿的折磨。

82．身处危险。我们刚刚躲过一辆汽车的时候最容易被车撞倒。

83．声音对应的角色。不得不违背习惯大声说话的人（比如面对一大群人或者听力不好的人），通常会夸大他要表达的东西。

某些人之所以成为恶毒的诽谤者、阴谋家或者同谋，只是因为他们的声音最适合轻声细语。

84．爱与恨。爱与恨本身并不盲目，只是被它们怀里的火焰蒙蔽了双眼。

85．于己有利的树敌。无法获得世人认可的人，设法四处树敌。这样他就可以宽慰自己，是外界的敌意妨碍他的价值被承认，并且别人也有同感。这么做大大加强了他的自信。

86．忏悔。忏悔之后，我们将罪行忘却，听取忏悔的人却记住了。

87．自负。自负就像传说中的金羊毛，能保护你免受鞭笞，却抵御不住微小的刺痛。

88．火焰中的阴影。火焰在自己的眼里没有在被它照耀的人眼里那样明亮：智者也是如此。

89．自己的观点。我们突然被提问时第一个想到的观点，通常不是自己的，而是与我们的身份、地位或出身相符的习惯性答案；我们自己的观点很少浮出水面。

90．勇气的来源。普通人在看不到危险的时候，会像英雄那样英勇无畏、刀枪不入。相反的，英雄唯一容易受到伤害的地方在背部，因为那里他无法看到。

91．就医的危险。人要么因医生而生，要么因医生而死。

92．神奇的虚荣心。准确预言天气三次的人，多少会迷信自己拥有预言的天赋。一旦虚荣心得到满足，我们就不再争论那到底是天赋还是巧合。

93．职业。职业是生活的脊梁。

94．个人影响的危险性。感到自己对他人有巨大影响的人，必须给予对方充分的自由，对于对方偶尔的反抗应该表示支持甚至鼓励，否则他会不可避免地成为那个人的敌人。

95．让接班人得到他应得的。拥有无私胸襟、创立伟大事业的人，会用心培养接班人。在所有可能的接班人身上看到对手的影子并严加防范，是专制和卑鄙的标志。

96．一知半解。一知半解比彻底了解更受欢迎：事情在一知半解的人那里被简化，结果得到了更容易让人理解和信服的观点。

97．不适合做党派成员。经常思考的人不适合做党派成员，因为他的思想很快就洞穿并且超越了党派。

98．糟糕的记性。糟糕记性的好处，在于同一件美事，可以像头次经历一样享受好几次。

99．令自己感到痛苦。不替别人考虑往往标志着渴望麻木的不和谐的内心状况。

100．殉道者。殉道者的信徒所承受的痛苦甚于殉道者本人。

101．残留的虚荣心。一些没必要虚荣的人虚荣，是由某个残留的习惯发展而来，这一习惯源自于他们尚无自信、只能通过乞求从别人那里一点一点获得信仰的时期。

102．激情引爆点。对于即将陷入愤怒或热恋的人来说，此时此刻他的灵魂犹如注满水的容器。只差最后一滴，即引爆激情的善的意志（通常也被称为恶的意志）。只有这一小滴是必不可少的，之后容器里的水就开始溢出。

103．暴躁的想法。人或许可以被比做树林中堆积的炭木。年轻人只有在停止发红发热，并且化成炭后，才能变得有用。只要它们还在闷烧、冒烟，或许会更有趣，但一定毫无用处，并且经常带来麻烦。

人类无情地将每个人当做燃料，加热它庞大的机器。但是如果所有的人（也就是全人类）只是起到维持机器运转的作用，机器的意义何在？机器成为人类的最终目标——这就是人间喜剧吗？

104．生命的时针。生命中有一些罕见、孤立却意义非凡的时刻，还有不可胜数的间隔。最美好的间隔也不过是关于那些时刻的回味。爱情、春光、优美的旋律、山峦、月光、大海，所有这一切与心灵畅所欲言的机会只有一次，如果这样的机会确实存在的话，因为许多人根本没有经历过那样的时刻，他们本身就是生命这支交响曲中的间隔和幕间休息。

105．反对还是建设。我们通常犯的错误，是不顾一切地反对某个路线、党派或者时代，因为我们刚好撞见了它肤浅、不完善的一面，即所谓“美玉中的瑕疵”——或许是因为我们自己曾深入参与其中。于是我们背离它们，朝截然相反的方向走去。尽管去伪存真，取长补短才是更好的做法。当然，推进一项发展中的、不完善的事业，要比攻击它的不完善或抛弃它，需要更强的洞察力和意志力。

106．谦逊。真正的谦逊（即懂得我们不是自己的创造者）是有的，并且非常适合大人物，因为他最明白自己没有任何功劳（不管他作出过多么大的贡献）。大人物的自负之所以可憎，不是因为他在体验自己的力量，而是因为他在这样做时总是通过伤害和专横地对待他人或是试探对方承受力底线的方式。通常这只能证明他对自己的实力缺乏自信，反而令人质疑他的伟大。所以，明智的人要尽量避免自负。

107．一天的头一个想法。开始一天的最好方式，是在睡醒时思考我们能否在这一天给至少一个人带来欢乐。如果能用这种做法替代宗教祈祷，所有人都会从这项改变中受益。

108．傲慢作为最后的安慰。如果一个人将自身的不幸、智障或疾病，视为命中注定的劫难，或是对自己曾经做过的某件事的神秘惩罚，他等于是在拔高自己，幻想自己比别人优越。这种傲慢的罪人，在各种宗教派系中比比皆是。

109．幸福的生长。在人间的不幸经常光顾的火山带，人类建筑起小小的幸福花园。不论他以怎样的方式生活，是从存在中汲取知识，还是选择让步和屈从，抑或是以攻克难关为乐，他都会发现，幸福就在困境的边缘生长。越靠近危险的地方，越能收获巨大的幸福。不过，如果因此认为受苦是理所当然的，却很可笑。

110．祖辈之路。发展祖辈的技能而非另起炉灶是有道理的。否则就会失去在某一项技能上臻于完美的可能性。因此人们常说：该走哪条路？——走祖辈走过的路。

111．虚荣心和野心的教化。只要一个人尚未成为全人类正义事业的工具，野心就会折磨他；一旦他实现了这个野心，不得不像机器一样为大家服务，虚荣心又会来拜访。在野心完成了它那份艰苦的工作（让这个人变得有用）之后，虚荣心会在细小处感化他，让他变得更随和、宽容和周到。

112．哲学新手。刚刚从哲人那里分享了智慧的我们，走在大街上也能感觉到自己已经脱胎换骨，一变成为伟人。既然碰到的人对这份智慧一无所知，我们就必须发布关于一切的闻所未闻的新评判。因为对某部律法之书推崇备至，我们就认为自己也必须表现得像法官一样。

113．取悦于令人不悦。有些人想被关注，于是采取令人不悦的方式，这些人同那些不想被关注、只想取悦他人的人，需要的是同样的东西，只是程度上更强，方式上更间接，虽然这么做看似将他们带离了目标。由于想获得权力和影响力，他们表现得居高临下，尽管这会让人感到不悦。因为他们知道，最终得到权力的人，不论说或做什么，都会令人愉悦。即便他令人不悦，看上去也使人愉快。

自由精神的信奉者也想得到权力，为的是用来愉悦大众。如果他们由于自己的信仰而遭到威胁、迫害、监禁或者处决，他们会因为这有助于自己的信仰被铭刻在人类的丰碑上而欢喜。虽然那是推迟的奖赏，他们也欣然接受，并将其作为获取权力过程中痛苦而有效的途径。

114．宣战的借口以及诸如此类。为事先做好的决定寻找借口向邻国开战的君主，好比一个将继母作为既成事实强加给孩子的父亲。所有公开宣告的动机，不都是这类被强加于人的继母吗？

115．激情与权利。谈到权利，没有什么人比那个持怀疑态度的人更富于激情。他试图通过将激情拉到自己一边来削弱理智和疑虑。他因此无愧于良心并获得了人们的支持。

116．弃绝者的把戏。像天主教教士那样反对婚姻的人，会从最低级、庸俗的意义上理解婚姻。同样，拒绝同时代人尊敬的人，会从卑鄙的角度揣度人们的尊敬；唯有如此，他的弃绝和抗争才会变得相对容易。在大的方面克己的人，容易在小的方面纵容自己。可以想见，不为同时代人掌声所动的人，无法拒绝小的虚荣带来的满足。

117．傲慢年代。有才能的人的傲慢年代在二十六至三十岁之间到来。这是人的第一个成熟期，还带有很重的青涩味。这个时期的人往往根据自身的感受，要求那些对其才能不甚了解或一无所知的人，表现出尊敬和谦卑。由于这些表示并非总能如期而至，他有时会通过一个眼神，一个傲慢的手势或者某种声调来实施报复。观察细致的人能在他这段时期的所有作品，不论诗歌、哲学还是绘画和音乐中，辨认出这种痕迹。阅历丰富的长者往往对此会心一笑，同时满怀感触地回忆起这段美好时光。处于这个时期的人总感觉自己被大材小用了。或许他后来真的有所作为，但那种不可一世的自信已经一去不返，除非这个人一辈子都是虚荣心驱使下的不折不扣的小丑。

118．虚幻然而坚实。在深渊边缘行走或者跨越溪堑时，我们需要一个护栏，不是为了抓住它（因为它会立即同我们一起坠落），而是为了在视觉上感到安全。同样，我们年轻时，也需要那些能在无意中充当我们护栏的人；虽然如果我们真的碰到危险、需要依靠时，他们提供不了什么帮助，但是他们给了我们仿佛保护就在身边的那种安慰（比如父亲、老师、朋友，这三种人通常带给我们的感受）。

119．学会去爱。我们必须学会去爱，学会仁慈待人，而且要从小学起。如果教育和人生际遇没有提供给我们操练这些情感的机会，那么我们的灵魂就会变得干涸，甚至于无法理解关爱别人这样一件温柔的事。同样，仇恨也需要学习和培养，如果有人想精通此道的话。否则，仇恨的萌芽也会渐渐枯萎。

120．装饰性废墟。精神上历尽沧桑的人，早年留下的一些观点和习惯，会在他新的思考和行为中凸现出来，就像那些无法解释的古迹、灰色石雕，常常装点了整个地区。

121．爱与尊敬。爱使人渴望；害怕使人规避。这就是为什么我们不可能对同一个人既爱又尊敬。尊敬一个人、承认他的权威就等于畏惧他：这是一种敬畏之情。但是爱不承认权威，不接受任何区分，例如地位的高下。因为被爱意味着不被尊敬，所以野心家们或公开或私下里在爱的面前踌躇不前。

122．对冷漠者的偏爱。感情上热得快的人凉得也快，所以大体上不可靠。因此那些一直表现冷漠的人反而受到人们的偏爱，被认为靠得住和值得信赖。实际上，这是将他们同那些慢热并能长久保持热度的人搞混了。

123．自由见解的危险。自由见解那种娱乐性的随意，有如搔痒，如果你忍不住去挠它，最后就会赫然出现一个痛楚的伤口；换句话说，自由见解最终会搅扰我们对生活和人际关系的态度，造成我们在这方面的痛苦。

124．对强烈痛苦的渴望。猛烈的情感消逝之后，留下的是对她本身的隐秘渴望，消逝是她抛给我们的最后媚眼。受她的鞭笞，必定有令人感到快意的地方。与此相反，温和的情感令人感到索然无味。显然，在强烈的痛苦与微弱的愉悦之间，我们更倾向于选择前者。

125．对他人和世界的不满。我们经常迁怒于人，虽然我们烦恼的对象是自己。归根结底，我们是在努力混淆和欺骗自己的判断，用别人的疏忽和不足充当自己烦恼的根源，这样我们就可以不去追究自己。

宗教上自律甚严、经常苛责自己的人，最经常说人类的坏话。从来没有哪个圣人情愿将罪恶自己揽，美德全部让给别人。这样的人，只恐怕和那种谨遵菩萨教诲、于众人前隐匿起自己的长处而示人以不足的人，一样鲜见。

126．混淆因果。我们会不经意地找出符合自己脾胃的准则和信条，仿佛是那些准则和信条塑造了我们的性格，赋予它稳定性和确定性。真实的情形恰好相反。表面上，思考和判断塑造了我们的性格，事实上，正是性格决定了我们以何种方式思考和判断。

在这场无意识的喜剧中，是什么在操纵我们？除了懒惰和图省事的心理，还有在一切事情上维持前后一致、保持个性和思想上的统一的妄想：因为那会为我们赢得尊敬，带给我们信任和权力。

127．年纪与真相。年轻人喜欢有趣和古怪的东西，是真是假倒不关心。相对成熟的人喜欢真相中有趣和古怪的部分。完全成熟的人喜欢真相，即便真相显得平淡无奇、在普通人眼里枯燥而乏味。因为他们发现，真相倾向于透过朴素的伪装传递最高的智慧。

128．和蹩脚诗人一样的人们。正如蹩脚诗人在一句诗的后半段搜寻思想而迁就韵脚那样，人们在后半生，出于焦虑，也寻求起符合他们早年生活印记的活动、观点和朋友圈子，以便留下协调一致的外部印象。与此同时，他们不再拥有强大的思想来驾驭和重新定义他们的生命，取而代之的是搜寻韵脚的意向。

129．无聊与游戏。需求迫使我们从事能让需求得到满足的工作，我们习惯于在不断苏醒的新的需求下工作。但是在某些闲散的时刻，当我们的需求变得平静，仿佛睡去时，我们又开始受到无聊的侵扰。这是什么？这其实是工作的惯性，以一种新增的需求的形式表现出来。这种需求越大，工作的惯性也越大，需求带给我们的折磨也越大。为了摆脱无聊，人们要么在需求被满足的基础上继续工作，要么发明游戏，后者是一种为了满足工作的需要而设计的工作。厌烦了游戏，并且没有受新的需求烦恼的人，有时会充满了迈入第三种境界的渴望。这第三种境界同游戏的关系，就像飘浮同舞蹈，舞蹈同行走的关系，是一种喜悦、平和状态下的运动：这就是艺术家和哲学家眼中的幸福。

130．来自相片的启示。如果我们观察从孩童到成年的一系列相片，我们会欣喜地发现，成年后的我们更像童年时代而非青少年时代的我们。其可能的解释是，我们曾一度背离自己的本性，这种背离最终在意志力成熟的成年得到克服。青少年时代的我们，往往受到来自激情、导师或政治事件等强大影响的摆布，这些影响在成年后被压缩到一个有限的范围内。当然它们还会继续伴随并影响我们，但我们的内心感受和思考会占据主导。这些影响将被作为我们的力量源泉，但我们不会再像二十几岁时那样受其操控。就这样，我们在思想和情感上都与童年时代的我们更为接近——这一内在的回归，通过相片得到外化。

131．岁月的声音。少年人陈述、赞赏、谴责或撒谎的声音往往令上了年纪的人感到不悦，因为他们嗓门太大，同时又吐字不清，仿佛穹窿中的回音，因为空洞而引起共振。原来，少年人思考的东西，大部分不是个性丰盈的自然流露，而是在附和周围人的思想、言论和褒贬。由于情感（好恶）在他们内心引起的波澜，比伴随这些情感的理性思考来得更加猛烈，当他们表达自己时，就出现了这种含混、空洞的效果，暗示理性的缺席或匮乏。成年使人的声音变得铿锵有力、抑扬顿挫，声音虽不大，但像所有吐字清晰的发声一样，可以传递得很远。最后，老年通常会让声音带上一种温和与包容，闻之悦耳，当然某些时候也会变得乖戾。

132．逆行之人和先行之人。那些不讨人喜欢的人，对人充满了不信任，妒忌对手和邻居的成功，听到不同意见就光火。这一切表明他处于文化发展的早期阶段，像是个出土文物。他同别人打交道的方式，适用于霸权统治盛行的时代，所以他是个逆行之人。第二种人，豪爽地分享他人的喜悦，到哪里都能赢得伙伴，热爱所有蓬勃发展的事物，欣赏别人的荣誉和成功，不但不妄称只有自己掌握真理，反而充满了谦逊的怀疑主义——这样的人是先行之人，他在朝更高阶段的人类文化迈进。前者生活的时期，人类交流的基础尚未建立；而后者则生活在这栋大厦的最顶端，离那些被锁在文化地基以下、在地窖中发狂、咆哮的野蛮生物，要多远有多远。

133．疑病症患者的慰藉。当一个伟大的思想者暂时性地受到疑病症的折磨时，他可能会这样宽慰自己：“这只寄生虫滋生于你的伟大，倘若你没有那么伟大，你所受的苦就会少些。”一名政客，当他的妒忌和复仇之心（即他作为一国代表必然谙熟的“一切人反对一切人的战争”的情绪）侵入到他的私人关系中、令他举步维艰时，也会说出同样的话。

134．从现实中抽离。偶尔从现实中抽离有莫大的好处。从现实的岸边驶离，进入旧有世界观的海洋，从那里反观岸边，会使我们第一次有幸一睹它的全貌。再次回到岸边的我们，比起那些从没有离开过的人，获得了对现实更好的理解。

135．用个人的不足来播种和收获。像卢梭这样的人，懂得如何利用自身的弱点、不足和罪愆，仿佛这些是滋养天才的沃土。卢梭哀叹社会的腐败和堕落，视其为文化导致的恶果，皆基于其自身的经历，其中的苦涩使他的批判一针见血，入木三分。他从个人角度寻求救治，认为自己找寻的药方能直接医治社会，并通过社会间接地医治自身。

136．哲学上的思维定式。人们总是力求在多变的人生境遇和事件面前保持不变的情感立场和观点，我们称之为哲学上的思维定式。但是与其维持自身的统一，不如聆听来自不同生命境遇、观点各异的低语，以丰富我们的阅历。通过拒绝成为僵化、不变通和孤立的个人，我们承认并分享了芸芸众生的生命和特质。

137．轻蔑之火。一旦一个人敢于发表会使自己蒙羞的观点，他就朝独立迈进了一步。那时，甚至他的朋友和熟人也开始感到焦虑不安。有天分的人必须迈过这道火焰，那以后，他就是自己的主人了。

138．牺牲。如果有选择，人们更愿意选择大的牺牲而不是小的，因为对于大的牺牲，我们可以用自我崇拜来补偿自己，而对于小的牺牲这却是不可能的。

139．爱作为一种手段。无论谁想真正了解一件新事物（不管是一个人、一件事，还是一本书），都需要用全部可能的爱来接纳它，尽可能忽视、忘记它的所有不友好、令人反感或虚假的部分。比如，我们会给予某本书的作者最大的起跑优势，接下来就像观看赛跑一样，心情忐忑地盼望他能到达终点。通过这么做，我们得以深入新事物的内核，进入它的动力中心，而这正是了解一件事物的内涵所在。一旦到达那个阶段，理智就会设定它的限度。过高的评价和批判机制的偶尔失衡，都是将事物的灵魂引诱到开阔地的手段。

140．把世界想象得太好或太坏。不管我们把世界想象得太好还是太坏，我们都会收获巨大的喜悦：如果预想得太好，我们等于给世界（经历）注入了比实际更多的美好；如果预想得太糟，我们会得到一个令人愉快的失望：世界的美好，会因为我们的惊喜而加倍放大。

顺便一提，病态的脾性在这两种情形下的经历正好相反。

141．深刻的人。以印象深刻见长的人（他们通常被称为“深刻的人”），在遭遇突发性事件时，通常会表现得相对有控制力和决断性。这是因为反应时间太短，印象尚未形成。然而长久期待的人或事，最能刺激这种个性的人，会使他们几乎无法在等候结束时保持镇定自若。

142．同“高我”的交流。每个人在找到自己的“高我”时，都有过辉煌。真正的人道，要求我们仅在一个人的这种时刻，而非在他仍处于受束缚、受奴役的状态下时对他进行评判。比如说，我们应该就一名画家领会和呈现的最高妙的图景给予评价或荣誉。但是人们自己在对待“高我”时，却采取了非常不同的做法。他们经常装腔作势，以致后来不断模仿自己在辉煌时期的样子。有些人面对自己的理想时会感到羞惭，想要否定它：他们害怕自己的“高我”，因为当“高我”发言时，它的要求很高。此外，“高我”拥有影子般的自由，可以自主去留。为此，它经常被称为神灵的礼物，而实际上其他的一切也都是神灵（机遇）的礼物：那就是人自身。

143．喜欢独处的人。有些人如此喜欢独处，他们从不拿自己与他人比较，而是平静、愉快地吐露生命的独白，与自己进行美好的交谈，甚至还会大笑起来。但是如果被迫和他人比较，他们多半会忧郁地得出一个过低的自我评价，并因此不得不从旁人那里学习关于自己的积极、公正的评价。甚至从这习得的评价中，他们也总是想做些减损。

所以我们必须允许某些人保留他们独处的习惯，而不是像经常发生的那样，愚蠢地对他们施以怜悯。

144．没有旋律。有些人拥有一种持续、内在的宁静，他们所有的能力和谐地分布，任何目的性很强的活动都与他们格格不入。他们就像一首乐曲，完全由连续、悦耳的和弦组成，没有一丁点旋律经过编排的痕迹。他们的小船会随着外界的任何动向，立即在由和谐之音构筑的海洋上获得新的平衡。现代人碰到这种天性的人通常极端没有耐心，因为他们不会成就任何事，虽然不能说他们啥也不是。某些情形下，他们的存在让人不禁发问：为何一定要有旋律？为何我们不满足于生命在深潭上投下宁静的倒影？

中世纪要比现在更盛产这种天性的人。现在我们很少有机会碰到这类人，他们即便身处乱世也能保持平和、愉悦的心态，像歌德对自己说的那样：最好的东西莫过于我在众人之中体验和养成的深深宁静，而我的收获则是他们无论用火还是剑都无法夺去的。

145．生活与经验。你是否注意到，有些人知道如何将自己的经历（他们微不足道的日常经历）变成一年收获三茬的富饶之地；而另一些人（他们的队伍如此壮大！），即便经历过最跌宕起伏的命运洗礼，见证过最变化莫测的时代或民族风云，却仍然轻飘飘地像木塞一样浮于表面。所以最终我们倾向于将人划分为两类：懂得如何变少为多的少数人和懂得如何变多为少的大多数。真的，那些变态的魔术师确有其人，他们非但不能无中生有，反而将有归于无。

146．游戏的严肃性。热那亚的日落时分，我听得一座高塔上钟声长鸣。它绵延不绝，盖过后街的嘈杂，仿佛总也听不够自己的声音。钟声在黄昏的天空和海边的空气中回荡，既可怕又孩子气，同时还很忧郁。我想起柏拉图的话，突然在心底里产生了共鸣：“说到底，人间之事没有一样值得当真；尽管如此……”

147．关于信仰与正义。冷静而清醒地兑现一个人在激情状态下做出的承诺和决定，是人类最可怕的重负之一。要人们永远为愤怒、狂热的复仇、炽烈的爱承担后果，会加剧对这类情感的抵触，特别是当这类情感已经广泛地成为人们尤其是艺术家崇拜的对象。艺术家们坚持不懈地播种着对激情的尊崇；当然他们没少为激情释放的可怕过程增添效果，诸如复仇导致的死亡、伤害，自我放逐和心碎后的弃绝。不管怎样，艺术家们维持着人们对激情的好奇，他们似乎想说：没有经历过激情，你就根本没有活过。

是否因为我们曾向某个纯粹想象的产物，比如上帝，宣誓效忠，或是曾在狂喜的盲目疯狂中将心交给某个君王、政党、女人、上帝，或是某个艺术家、思想家，认为他们配得上一切荣誉和牺牲，我们就永远负有义务？难道我们不是在自欺欺人？这样的承诺难道不应有个前提，即我们为之献身的对象真的如我们想象的一样？我们必须忠实于我们的过错吗，即便发现这种忠诚只能损害我们的“高我”？

不，不存在这样的约定、这样的义务。我们必须成为叛徒，采取不忠的做法，再三背弃我们的理想。我们从生命的一个阶段过渡到另一个，势必会带来背叛的痛楚，并为之受苦。我们是否必须严防情感的波澜以避免这类痛苦？世界难道不会因此变得过于黯淡和可怖？我们宁可自问，由信仰改变引发的痛苦是否必要，其依据是否是种错误的看法和判断？为什么我们钦佩坚守信仰的人而鄙视改变信仰的人？恐怕答案就在于，所有人都认为这种改变源自卑下的利益驱动或个人恐惧。也就是说，我们骨子里认为，如果一个人的信仰对其有利无害，没有人会改变信仰。但如果真是这样，就否定了一切信仰在精神层面的意义。让我们检视一下各种信仰产生的过程，看看它们是否被过分夸大，并借由这个办法揭示出，衡量信仰改变的标准的谬误，以及到目前为止，我们为这类改变所蒙受的不白之冤。

148．信仰就是相信某人在某项知识上拥有绝对真理。它假定：首先，绝对真理是存在的；此外，得出绝对真理的正确方法已经找到；最后，持有信仰的人运用的方法是正确的。此三项假定一出，即证明信仰之人不具备科学的思想方法；不管在别的方面有多成熟，他在理论上仍然处于幼稚阶段，还是个孩子。然而数千年来，人们一直生活在这种孩子气的假定中，它成为人类最强大的力量源泉。无数为信仰献身的人，认为自己是在为某种绝对真理服务。他们都错了：或许根本就没有人为真理做出过牺牲；其信仰武断的表述方式至少是不科学或不完全科学的。但实际上，人们不想出错是因为知道自己不可以出错。剥除他们的信仰，意味着动摇他们永恒的福祉。在意义如此重大的事情上，“意志”成为理智鲜明的指挥棒。每个教派的信徒都认为自己不可能被驳倒。如果反论据显得过于强大，他仍然可以从普遍意义上诋毁理智，甚至举起极端宗教狂热的大旗——“不合理故我信”。历史如此暴戾，不是因为理念之争，而是由于对理念的信仰之间的冲突，即信仰之争。如果那些将信仰视如珍宝、不惜牺牲荣誉、身体甚至生命为之服务的人，愿意花一半气力弄明白，他们凭什么恪守这样或那样的信仰，他们何以得出这样或那样的结论，人类历史就会变得平和许多！知识也会增进许多！所有对于异教徒的残酷迫害都可以被避免。原因有二：其一，宗教法官会首先扪心自问，从而不再傲慢地认为自己是在捍卫绝对真理；其二，异教徒们在研究过那些宗派主义者和所谓“正统派”漏洞百出的信条之后，不会再屑于去关注它们。

149．在人们以为他们掌握着绝对真理的时代，任何涉及到知识层面上的怀疑主义和相对主义立场都会招致深刻的不安。通常我们倾向于无条件地臣服于权威们（父亲、朋友、导师、君主）的信仰。如果我们不那么做，反而会感到良心不安。这种倾向情有可原，但我们不能因为它的影响就对人类理性的发展大加批判。最终人类的科学精神会引导出审慎的克制，这种中庸的美德在实践上比在理论上更为人所知。比如歌德笔下的安东尼奥，就是这种美德的典范，他成为代表愚昧、消极个性的塔索们共同憎恶的对象。信仰之人有权不去理解那个思维审慎、满腹经纶的安东尼奥；另一方面，讲求科学的人却没有权力因此斥责信仰之人；安东尼奥谅解塔索，并且知道这个人有可能信靠他，就像最终发生的那样。

150．如果一个人没有经历过不同的信仰，而是陷在第一个信仰的罗网里，那么无论如何，就因为这个不变性，他都是落后文化的代表。和此人在教育（总是以可教育性为前提）上的匮乏相一致的是，他刻薄、不明智、不可教、粗暴、生性多疑、无所顾忌，为了推行自己的观点而不择手段，因为他无法理解别的观点也有权存在。在这一方面，他可能成为力量的源泉，在变得过于自由和松散的文化中甚至是有益的，但这仅仅是因为他有效地激起了反抗：新兴文化的稚嫩结构正是在同他的对抗中变得强壮起来。

151．本质上，我们和宗教改革时代的人没什么两样——怎么会不一样呢？不过我们不再允许自己使用某些手段以证明自己是对的：这使得我们有别于那个时代，并表明我们属于一个更高的文化层面。现在，如果一个人仍然像宗教改革时代的人那样，通过怀疑和发怒来攻击和压制不同的意见，就表明如果他生活在别的时代，他可能会烧死他的反对者；如果他是一名宗教改革的反对者，他可能会动用宗教裁判所的全部手段。宗教裁判所在自己所处的时代是合理的，因为它不过是以整个教会领域为对象的普通军事管制，而且就像所有的军事管制一样，它为极端手段的采取做了辩护，即假定（如今我们已经不再苟同那些人的假定）教会拥有真理并且为了人类的救赎必须不惜一切代价捍卫它。不过现在，我们不再轻易地认为任何人拥有真理；宗教侦审的严酷做法已经播下了足够的不信任和警惕，任何通过激烈言行推行其观点的人，都让我们感到有可能是现有文化的敌人，或者至少是个逆行之人。事实上，拥有真理的热情，在今天同另一种热情比起来已经乏善可陈，这种热情更加柔和、安静，那就是孜孜不倦地学习、验证新知识的寻找真理的热情。

152．顺便一提，对于真理研究方法的追寻，是信仰自相残杀时代的产物。如果个人对于自己的“真理”，即他最终的正确性，不关心，就根本不会存在对方法的调查。但是，正因为存在不同个人关于绝对真理归属的永恒争夺，人类才一步步前行，试图找到那无可辩驳的方法来验证这些言论的公正性，以结束争端。起初，决定是由权威们做出的；后来，各种伪真理就彼此发现的方式和手段展开相互攻讦；中间有一个时期，人们总结出敌对教义的影响，证明它们有害无益；结果所有人都认为对手的信仰有错误。最终，思想家们的个人奋斗磨练了他们的方法，以至于真理真的可以被发现，于是早期方法的偏差也就大白于天下。

153．总而言之，科学的方法至少和任何调查的结果一样重要。因为科学精神建立在对方法的深入了解之上，如果那些方法丢失了，科学的全部结论也无法阻止迷信和谬论的新一轮胜利。聪明人可以尽情学习科学的结论，但我们仍然能从他们的对话，尤其是对话的假设中看出其科学精神的匮乏。他们不具备对错误思维方式本能的不信任，这种不信任，作为长期操练的结果，已经深深地扎根于每一个具有科学态度的人的灵魂。对前者来说，一件事物只要找到一种假设就足够了；他们会为之热血沸腾，认为大功告成。对他们而言，拥有观点意味着为它疯狂，并像对待信仰一样将其珍藏心中。如果一件事物没有解释，他们会为头一个进入脑海的类似于解释的概念兴奋不已；而这往往会导致最恶劣的后果，尤其是在政治领域。

因此，所有人都应该至少掌握一门科学的基础；然后他就会知道什么是方法，以及最极端的审慎有多么必要。这个忠告尤其应该给予女人，她们现在是各种臆测，尤其是那些貌似睿智、令人兴奋、激动、蛊惑人心的臆测的无助的牺牲品。事实上，如果仔细观察，我们会发现大部分受过教育的人仍然渴望信仰，但仅限于从思想家那里获得的信仰，只有极少数人想得到确定性。前者想获得当头棒喝，借以提升自身的力量；后者则带有就事论事的兴趣，无视私人利益，甚至上面提到的力量的提升。不论何处，只要思想家表现得像个天才，并自诩为天才，像个理应获得权威的更高存在那样俯视众人，他就在依靠那个占有压倒性多数的群体。这种天才维持着信仰的热度，引起了具有科学审慎和谦逊精神的人的不信任，在这个意义上，他是真理之敌，不管他如何认为自己是真理的追随者。

154．当然，还有另一种类型的天才，那就是公正的天才。没有任何理由认为这类天才不及哲学、政治或是艺术方面的天才。他回避任何有可能妨碍和混淆我们对事物的判断的东西，并从心底里感到憎恶。所以他是信仰的敌人。因为他希望公平对待一切事物，不管是活的还是死的，真实的还是虚构的。为了这么做，他必须洞察一切。因此他将每一样事物放置在最明亮的光线下，然后从各个角度用心观察。最后，他甚至会给他的敌人——那盲目或短视的“信仰”（这是男人的叫法；女人管它叫“忠诚”）一个公平的机会——为了真理的缘故。

155．主张从激情中产生；精神上的懒惰使这些主张僵化为信仰。

不过，谁要是感到自己拥有无拘无束、活力四射的精神，他可以通过不断的变化来避免这种僵化；谁要是在思维上是个不折不扣的滚雪球的人，那么他的头脑中就根本不会有任何观点，有的只是确定性和精确计算过的可能性。

但是像我们这样性质混合的人，有时激情似火，有时却又被理智冷却，我们想跪在公正的面前，尊奉她为我们唯一的女神。通常，内心的火焰会令我们不公正，在女神的眼里，也就是不纯洁；处于这种状态下的我们，永远无法触摸女神的手，她也永远不会愉悦地对我们露出庄严的微笑。我们敬拜她为我们生命中戴着面纱的伊希斯
①

。当内心之火烧灼我们，试图吞噬我们时，羞愧的我们将自身的痛苦作为赎罪品和牺牲品祭献给她。是理智拯救了我们，使我们免于化为焦炭。它不断地将我们从公正的祭坛上拉走，或者将我们置于石棉的包裹之中。从火中得到拯救的我们，在理智的驱使下，在不同的主张之间大步前行，变换着阵营，我们是高尚的变节者，背叛所有可以背叛的一切，同时问心无愧。

156．流浪者。仅仅在一定程度上获得理性自由的人，只能感到自己是一名流浪者——而不是朝着某个终极目标行进的旅行者，因为这目标不存在。不过他确实想睁大眼睛观察在这个世界上真实发生的一切。因此他不可以将心太紧地束缚在某一件私人物品上，他的内心必有东西在游走，这种东西以变化和转瞬即逝为乐。当然，这样的人会经历糟糕的夜晚：精疲力竭之时，却发现原本应该为他提供休息的城市已经关上了大门。也许除此之外，就像在东方那样，沙漠一直延伸到城门脚下，掠食性动物的嚎叫时远时近，狂风肆虐，强盗牵走了他的驮畜。对他而言，可怕的夜晚犹如第二座沙漠降临在沙漠之上，而他的心已厌倦了漂泊。接着，早晨的太阳升起来，像愤怒的神灵一样发着光，城市敞开了大门，如果他在城市居民的脸上看到的沙漠、灰尘、欺骗、犹疑比城市外面还要多——那么白天几乎比夜晚还要糟糕。流浪者有时会碰到这样的情形，但是作为补偿，他在别的地方迎来了令人欣喜的早晨。就在附近，在黎明的曙光中，他看见一群群缪斯跳着舞在山岚中从他的身边经过。那之后，他在上午灵魂的平衡状态下安静地散步，从枝繁叶茂的树上撒下来的都是美好、明亮的东西，那是所有那些在山上、林间、在孤寂中甘之若饴的自由精灵的馈赠，他们和他一样，时而欢欣时而沉思，既是流浪者也是哲学家。在黎明的神秘中诞生的他们，思考着怎样才能让这一天在十点和十二点之间拥有纯净、清澈、美妙而欢欣的脸孔——他们在寻找上午的哲学。

注　释

①
伊希斯是埃及古代宗教里的女神，被认为是贤妻良母的典范、自然和魔法的保护者，受到统治阶级和劳苦大众的一致欢迎，被尊奉为生育、魔法和丰产女神。

二、在朋友们中间：结语

1

彼此沉默，很好

相视而笑，更好——

天空如丝的帐幔下

斜倚着书本和青苔

朋友们纵声大笑

大家都露出雪白的牙齿。

如果我做得好，让我们保持沉默，

如果我做得不好，让我们开怀大笑

一分为二，再次弄糟，

做得越糟糕，笑得越厉害，

直到我们钻进墓穴。

好啦，朋友们，你们觉得怎样？

阿门！来日再相逢！

2

不要找寻借口！不要宽恕！

你们这些开心的，不为爱所困的人

请给予我这本荒唐的书

你们的耳朵、心灵和庇护！

真的，朋友们，我自身的愚蠢

并没有全然白费！

我已经找到的和正在寻找的——

可曾在书里存在过？

向这个愚人阵营的来客致敬吧！

从这本愚人的书中了解

理性如何被教会——“推理”！

那么，朋友们，你们觉得怎样？

阿门！来日再相逢。

三、自由精神

1．噢，神圣的单纯！人类生活在怎样的天真和虚妄中啊！一旦我们认识到这一点，就会对此连连称奇。我们是怎样将周遭的一切变得简单明了、自由随意！我们是如何让感觉对一切肤浅之物敞开大门，让思想耽溺于天马行空的联想和错误的推断！——我们是如何设法从一开始就保留无知，以享受生命那难以想象的磅礴恣肆、酣畅淋漓，亦即享受生命本身！而只有在无知那如花岗岩般坚实的地基上，知识才能巍然屹立；求知的意志是以更为强大的求无知、求不确定性、求不真实的意志为基础！不是作为后者的对立面，而是作为其升华！即便语言在此处就像在别处一样无法克服自身的粗鄙，将程度的不同和细微的差别说成对立，即便人类根深蒂固的伪善，扭曲了我们之中智者的话语，我们也能不时心领神会，然后抚掌大笑：正是最高妙的知识试图将我们束缚在这个被简化的，不自然的，伪造的和被扭曲的世界。它义无反顾地热爱错误，因为作为一个生命体，它热爱生活。

2．欢快的绪言之后是庄严的敬告：这是说给最严肃的人听的。要小心，哲学家和热爱知识的朋友们，警惕殉道者的做法！警惕“为真理之故”受苦，警惕为自己辩驳！它会损毁你良心全部的纯真和公正，使你无法容忍任何不同和反对的意见；它会使你在同危险、诽谤、猜忌、驱逐甚至更大的敌意作斗争时变得愚蠢、野蛮和无情，你不得不摆出人间真理守护人的姿态——仿佛“真理”如此幼稚、无能，以至于需要人守护！而你，我亲爱的无所事事的朋友和精神上的阴谋家，就成了众人中那个面露愁苦的骑士！毕竟你心里清楚，众人之中你自己正确与否根本不重要；你知道迄今为止没有哲学家能够被证明是正确的，而你在钟爱的词句和学说（有时是你自己）后面打上的每个问号，或许比你在控诉人和法庭面前做出的所有肃穆的手势和狡黠的答辩，都更为诚实和令人钦佩。不如避开！逃走，躲起来！运用你的面具和手腕，让自己受到误解或是别人的敬畏！别忘了花园，那个有着金色棚架的花园！接近那些像花园一样的人，或是那些让你想起黄昏时分水面上飘过的音乐的人。选择有益的独处，自由、随意、惬意的独处会让你在某种程度上保持美好！每一场漫长而隐秘的战争都会让人变得无比恶毒、狡猾和卑鄙！在时刻警惕敌人和可能的敌人中被拉伸的恐惧，让人变得富于攻击性！这些被社会驱逐的人，受到长期迫害和大力追捕的人，还有像斯宾诺莎
①

和乔尔丹诺·布鲁诺
②

那样被迫遁世的人，最终都会变成精明的复仇者和恶念的传播者，即便他们顶着最超凡脱俗的伪装，甚至于自己也蒙在鼓中（让我们揭示斯宾诺莎的伦理学和神学基础吧！）——更不用说道德义愤的愚蠢性，它准确无误地表明一个哲学家已经丧失其哲学式幽默。一个哲学家的殉道，他的“为真理之故牺牲”，暴露出他人格中潜藏的煽动者和演员的一面。如果到目前为止，我们只是出于艺术的好奇在审视他，结合众多哲学家的案例，很容易理解那种想偶尔瞥见堕落状态下的他（堕落成“殉道者”，堕落成在舞台和讲坛上豪言壮语的人）的危险欲望。只是有必要澄清我们将要看到的是什么：不过是一场“羊人剧”
③

，一出放在正剧结尾的闹剧，不过是再次证明那个真正的绵长的悲剧已经结束：假定每部哲学起初都是一部长长的悲剧的话。

3．每个优秀的人都会本能地寻求一座秘密堡垒，在那里他可以摆脱人群、民众和大多数；在那里，置身事外的他可以忘记人类的规则——除非，作为一名卓尔不群的博学之士，他会在更强大的本能驱使下，径直奔向这一规则。任何在和人打交道时没有流露出沮丧，表现出嫌恶、厌腻、怜悯、阴郁和孤单情绪的人，必定不具备精致的品位；但是如果他不去主动承担这份不快而是不断地规避它，坚持安静而骄傲地躲在自己的堡垒里，那么可以肯定：知识不适合他。否则总有一天，他会不得不对自己说：让我的品位见鬼去吧！规则比例外——比我这个例外本身，更有趣！他会选择走“下来”和走“进去”。哲学家对普通人的研究漫长而严肃，其中充斥着的掩饰、自我征服、亲昵和不良结交——和不相称的人结交都可以算做不良结交——构成了他人生经历中不可或缺的部分，并且可能是最令人不快、发狂和失望的部分。如果哲学家像知识最钟爱的孩子那样足够幸运，他就会遇见帮助他完成任务的捷径——即所谓的玩世不恭者，这些人早已看穿了自身的蒙昧、平庸和驯顺，却仍能保持在人前谈论自己的冲动——有时他们甚至在书中打滚，就像在自己的排泄物中一样。玩世不恭是普通人接近真诚的唯一形式；杰出的人必须在玩世不恭面前竖起耳朵，不论它是粗俗还是高雅；而在某个丑角或者科学“羊人”不知羞耻地夸夸其谈时，暗自感到庆幸。当然有时厌恶中会混合着着迷：因为某些不可知的原因，这些不知天高地厚的山羊和猴子有时颇具天分。比如加利亚尼神父
④

，这个思想无比深刻、目光无比犀利的人，同时也可能是他那个世纪最肮脏的人——他远比伏尔泰更深刻，因此也更沉默。科学的头颅经常被安到猴子身上，超凡的领悟力常被装配到平庸的灵魂上——这在物理学家和伦理生理学家中比比皆是。不论何时，如果有人以不含私怨、无伤大雅的方式将人类比喻成有两种需求的肚子和一种需求的头脑；不论何处，如果有人看到、寻求和想看到的只有食、色和虚荣，仿佛这些是人类行为真实和唯一的动机；总之，任何时候，如果有人对人类大加嘲讽但并非中伤诽谤时，热爱知识的人就应该认真倾听；只要有人不带情绪地说话，他就应该关注。那些处于激愤状态，不停地用牙齿撕扯自己（或者世界、上帝、社会）的人，从道德上讲，也许确实比那些哈哈大笑、洋洋自得的“羊人”站得更高，但在任何别的意义上，他都更加平庸、乏味和无益，而且愤怒的人比任何人说的谎都更多。

4．人们很难理解我们：尤其当你像急逝的恒河之水一样思考和生活，而周围的人却采取截然不同的方式：他们像乌龟一样缓慢，或者至多是“像青蛙那样蹦跳”——当然我这是在努力让自己难于被理解！——我们应该对旁人委婉善意的诠释表示由衷的感激。至于我们的“好友”，他们总是太懒惰，认为作为好友，他们有权好逸恶劳：如果我们从一开始就给他们一些误解的空间和自由会好得多——这样我们就可以对他们大加嘲笑；——或者索性摆脱掉这些好友，而仍然保持欢笑！

5．从一种语言翻译成另一种语言，最难传递的莫过于风格的节奏感，它源自于种族的个性，用生理学上的话说，就是“新陈代谢”的平均速度。有一些以忠实于原文为初衷的翻译，结果不自觉地将原文庸俗化，几乎成为歪曲，就是因为要同时翻译出勇敢而欢快的节奏（它跳跃着将一切事物和词语中暗含的危险抛在身后）是不可能的。德国人几乎无法用自己的语言快速说话，由此可以推断，他们对于表达自由、无拘无束的思想中那些最大胆、愉悦的情绪也大多无能为力。例如歌剧中的滑稽男低音和戏剧中的“羊人”，无论是在形体还是道德上都会令德国人感到陌生，所以阿里斯托芬
⑤

和佩特罗尼乌斯
⑥

对他们来说是不可翻译的。一切以静止、慵懒、肃穆、冗长和乏味为特征的风格，在德国蓬勃发展——请原谅我指出，即便是歌德的散文，融合了优雅与生硬，也不例外。它是其所属的那个“辉煌年代”的映像，是对“德国趣味”尚存的年代的一种德国式的表达：即道德和艺术上的洛可可式风格。莱辛是个例外，这要归功于他的历史性，他博古通今并且在很多方面造诣很高：他成为贝尔的译者并非偶然，他喜欢狄德罗和伏尔泰，更喜爱罗马喜剧家——在节奏感方面，莱辛崇尚无拘无束，竭力摆脱德国式的拘谨。但即便在他的散文中，德语也无法模仿马基雅维里的节奏感，后者的《君主论》让我们呼吸到佛罗伦萨的干爽空气，并且忍不住要将最严肃的事用最活泼、最轻快的方式表达。其中或许不无居心叵测的艺术家对反差效果的追求——一边是冗长、艰深、危险的思想，一边是飞驰的节奏和恣意的欢娱。谁会冒险用德文翻译佩特罗尼乌斯呢，他在创作、理念、词汇方面比迄今的任何一位音乐家都更深谙快板的精髓——如果我们能拥有他那风一样的轻盈步履，那样的气流和呼吸，那种风的解放性的藐视，以及风的那种让一切奔跑起来而获得健康的力量，所有那些邪恶病态世界中的沼泽，甚至“古代世界”中的沼泽又算得了什么？至于阿里斯托芬，由于他的贡献和补充，我们可以原谅希腊的存在（假定我们非常清楚需要原谅和改观的是什么）。临终前的柏拉图，枕下放的既不是《圣经》，也不是任何一本埃及的书，更不是毕达哥拉斯或柏拉图自己的著作，而是一本阿里斯托芬喜剧。没有什么比这个流传的轶事更能激发我对柏拉图那讳莫如深的行为方式和他那斯芬克斯式个性的思考。如果没有阿里斯托芬，即便是柏拉图，也无法忍受他的人生——那被他否定的希腊式人生！

6．适合独立的人寥寥无几——那是强者的特权。任何人，即便有充分的理由，只要不是迫于无奈而主动尝试独立，就证明他不但是个强者，而且大胆到近乎莽撞的地步。他会从此踏进一座迷宫，在这里，生活本身的危险被放大了一千倍，没有人清楚他是怎样和在哪里迷了路，变得孑然一身，最后被良心的牛头怪
⑦

撕成碎片。假使这样的人被摧毁，人们将难以理解、无法感受也不会寄予同情——而他则再也回不去！甚至连人们的怜悯也得不到！

7．当我们最了不起的见解，未经允许就出现在不喜欢它们和不适合听到它们的人的耳朵里时，听上去肯定会像是疯话，甚至是罪恶。哲学家们曾在希腊人、波斯人和穆斯林中分别进行“显白教诲”和“隐微教诲”，发现只要人们信仰等级秩序而非权利平等，二者的区分并不在于“显白教诲”是从外部而非内部观察、评价、估量和判断。其根本区别在于，“显白教诲”是从下面看事物，而“隐微教诲”是从上面看事物！在灵魂的某些高度上，连悲剧看起来也不可悲；即便集合世上所有的惨状，谁又敢确定它们一定会令我们心生怜悯，从而分外悲伤？……在高层次的人看来是营养品的东西，对于低层次和全然不同的人来说可能是毒药。普通人的美德在哲学家身上可能恰恰意味着恶习和缺陷；一个高层次的人可能只有在堕落和毁灭时，才会获得某些令俗世尊奉他为圣人的属性。同样的书，对于不同层次人的灵魂和健康，作用可能正好相反，要看读者究竟是低层次、生命力暗弱的人，还是高层次、生命力强悍的人。在前一种情形下，这些书是危险的，有可能导致人的崩溃和毁灭；在后一种情形下，它们会成为先驱的号角，激励勇者鼓起他们的勇气。给所有人读的书总是令人掩鼻：因为有渺小者的气味吸附在上面。凡是众人吃喝乃至敬拜的地方，都有臭味。谁要想呼吸纯净的空气，就不要去教堂。

8．人年轻时，无论是崇拜还是鄙视，都缺乏分寸，善于掌握分寸是生命最大的奖赏。我们必须为自己用简单的对错来评判人和事付出高昂的代价，也只有这样才算公平。在这段时期，最差的品味，即对于绝对的偏好，总是被残忍地滥用，出尽洋相，直到我们学会在感情中加入一点艺术，甚至冒险尝试一些刻意的东西：就像真正的生活艺术家做的那样。年轻人高涨的愤怒和虔敬，似乎一定要把人和事伪造成他们情感的宣泄对象方才罢休——在这一点上，年轻意味着伪造和欺骗。待年轻的灵魂被失望磨折，最终将怀疑的矛头指向自己，那处于自我怀疑和良心拷问中的自己，依然血性而野蛮。现在它是多么地痛恨自己，它是那么不耐烦地撕扯自己，它要为长期以来的自我欺骗狠狠地报复自己，仿佛这是有预谋的自我蒙蔽！在这一转变中，我们通过不信任自己的感情来惩罚自己；我们用怀疑来折磨自己的热情；事实上，连问心无愧也会被感到是种危险，仿佛这也是一种自我蒙蔽，是正义感开始变得倦怠的标志。最重要的是，我们开始划分阵营，并从原则上与年轻为敌。——十年以后，我们才知道，所有这些仍然是年轻的举动。

9．在人类历史中最漫长的一段时期——即所谓的史前时期——一件行为是否有价值，由它的结果来决定。行为本身及其动机并不在人们的考虑范围之内，就像在中国，儿女的荣辱直接反映到父母身上，人们通过追溯成败的根源来对行为做出肯定或否定的评价。让我们把这个时期叫做人类的道德前期：那时“了解你自己！”这句训诫尚不为人知。另一方面，地球上的某些地方在过去一万年中逐步改变认识，认为决定行为价值的不再是结果而是动机。总体上，这是一件大事，是视野和标准上精进的结果，体现了处于统治地位的贵族价值观和血统迷信所带来的影响，它标志着狭义上的道德时期的到来：这是人们自我认知的初步尝试。人们不再考虑结果而是动机：多么伟大的视角转换！这是在经历了长期挣扎和游移之后才取得的！当然，一种灾难性的新迷信，即狭隘的诠释从此成为主导：一件行为的动机被明确地诠释为意图的动机。人们达成共识，认为行为的价值即存在于其背后的意图的价值。意图被看做是行为的全部动机和背景——正是在这种偏见的左右下，人们进行道德上的褒贬、裁夺和哲学式推究直至今日。可是，伴随着人类新一轮自省和见解的深化，我们今天难道不是有必要再次做出价值颠覆和翻转的决定？我们难道不是应该站在一个被称为超道德时期（这个叫法起初有点贬义）的起点？今天，至少在我们这些“非道德者”中间，出现了一种猜测，即决定性的行为价值恰恰存在于它的非意图部分；而所有意图部分，所有可以被看见、了解和“感知”的部分，仍然停留于它的表层和皮毛——像所有的皮毛那样，它泄露出一些秘密，但隐藏的更多。简言之，我们认为意图只是一种有待诠释的符号，由于表征的对象太过丰富而致使本意丧失。传统意义上的道德，即意图的道德，是一种偏见，一种仓促、苟且之举，类似天文学、炼金术，无论如何都必须被征服。征服道德，某种意义上也是道德的自我征服，就让它作为灵魂的试金石，成为最敏锐、最诚挚和最恶毒的良心长期秘密劳作的代名词。

10．全心奉献、为他人牺牲自己，整套关于无私的伦理都缺乏确凿的论据支持，必须受到严厉的诘问和审判；同样还有宣扬“视角公正”的美学，它被今日的艺术解放运动用来装点门面，以令其心安理得。在“舍己为人”这类情感中存有太多的糖分和妖术，让人不得不起双倍的戒心，自问：“这些会不会是诱饵？”确实，这类情感能够取悦拥有这类情感的人、从中获益的人以及观众，但这并不能提供于其有利的论据，反而提醒我们要戒备。所以还是让我们小心些吧！

11．无论今日我们在哲学上采取何种立场，从任何角度看，这个世界的错误性是我们能见到的最确定无疑的东西——层出不穷的解释诱使我们认为“事物本质”就具有欺骗性。而自觉或不自觉的“上帝代言人”，认为我们的思考本身，即“理性”，要为世界的虚假性负责，这是他们在这个问题上选择的体面出路。他们认为这个世界，包括空间、时间、结构、运动在内的一切，都是一种错误的推断。这样的人有充分的理由对思考产生怀疑：不正是思考本身让我们蒙受更大的欺骗吗？谁能保证思考不会再犯同样的错误？说实在的，思想者们的天真令人感动并心生敬意，今天他们依然会走上前去请求意识给予他们诚实的回答，比如它是否是“真的”，比如为什么它坚决拒外部世界于千里之外，等等诸如此类的问题。对于“直接的确定性”的信仰是一种道德上的天真，是我们哲学家的光荣：但是，我们不应成为“仅仅是道德的”人！除去道德的层面，这种信仰是一种蠢行，没有给我们带来任何荣耀！在日常生活中，如果有人总是抱着怀疑的态度，会被看做是“不良个性”的表现，因此是不明智的。而我们这些人，既然超越了世俗世界及其是非评判，为什么不可以冒昧地说：哲学家，作为目前为止世上受骗最多的生物，有权拥有这个“不良个性”——他有义务抱持怀疑态度，从每个怀疑的深渊狞笑着向外窥探。——请大家务必原谅我用这副幽默的嘴脸来进行表述：长期以来，在对待欺骗和被欺骗的问题上，我学会采取与以往不同的方式进行思考和评判；对于某些盲目抗拒被欺骗的哲学家，我也准备了几句友善的提醒。为什么不呢？认为“真相比表象更有价值”，不过是道德上的偏见，甚至是世界上论证得最差的假定。让我们至少承认：如果没有全面的评估和表象作为基础，根本不会有生命；如果我们像某些哲学家那样，仅凭一腔热情就笨拙地想要废止整个“表象世界”，好吧，假设你可以这么做——但你的“真相”也会化为乌有！说实在的，是什么让我们认为在“真”与“假”之间存在着实质性的不同？难道承认存在清晰程度上的不同还不够吗，就好比外观上不同程度的深浅和色调，用画家的术语来说就是不同的值？为什么我们的世界不能是虚构的？有人反对道：可是所有虚构的东西都有作者。对此，我们何不简单地反问：为什么？这种“都有”不也是一种虚构吗？现在我们不可以对主语，也像对谓语和宾语那样感到一丝讽刺吗？难道哲学家不应当凌驾于对语法的信仰之上吗？家庭教师们请恕我冒昧，可是现在，不正是哲学同家庭教师们的信仰，决裂的时候了吗？

12．噢，伏尔泰！噢，人性！噢，愚钝！“真相”和关于真相的寻求需要注意。如果一个人以太人性的方式来寻求——“他找寻真相只是为了行善”——我敢打赌，他什么也找不到！

13．假设除我们的欲望和情感世界以外，没有东西“生来”是真的，假设我们不可能上升或下降到除了冲动以外的任何其他“现实”——因为思维只是这些冲动之间的相互联系。是不是可以尝试着这样提问：这种“生来”的东西是否足以提供对所谓客观（或者“物质”）世界的理解？我不是指贝克莱
⑧

、叔本华
⑨

口中的假象、“表象”或者“观念”，而是和我们的情感拥有相同真实程度的——一种形式更为原始的情感世界，这个世界中的一切仍然处于高度的统一中，然后在有机过程中实现分化和发展（自然也变得更脆弱和敏感），作为一种本能的生命，它的全部有机功能诸如自我调节、同化、吸收、排泄和新陈代谢，仍然被综合绑定在一起——犹如生命的早期形式？——最终，这个实验不仅被允许，而且受到方法的道义的驱策。不要设想有几种因果律，只要拿一种因果律进行尝试的实验还没有被推至极端（到荒唐的地步，如果可以这么说的话）。那是一种我们现在无法驳斥的方法的道义——它由“定义”而来，像数学家说的那样。最后，问题变成我们是否真的认为意志是有效的，我们是否相信意志的因果律。如果我们相信——从根本上说，对这一点的相信正是对因果律本身的相信——那么我们就必须试着假设意志的因果律为唯一的因果律。“意志”当然只能作用于“意志”——而不能作用于“物质”（不能作用于“神经”，比如说）。总而言之，我们必须冒险试一下那个假设，即只要发现“效果”的地方，意志就正在作用于意志——而一切机械现象，只要有力活跃于其中，都是意志的力量，意志的效果。——假设最终我们成功地将我们整个本能的生命解释为意志一种基本形式的发展和衍生——即我所提出的强力意志；——假设我们可以从一切有机过程中追溯到这个强力意志，并且能够在其中找到繁殖和营养问题——它们其实是同一个问题——的解决办法，我们就有权将一切有效力量毫不含糊地定义为：强力意志。从内部观察到的世界，根据其“悟性”描述和定义的世界——只能是“强力意志”而非任何别的东西。

14．“什么？说难听点不就是：上帝被驳倒了，而魔鬼没有？”正相反！正相反，我的朋友！见鬼，谁让你说得那么难听！

15．在我们这个时代发生的法国大革命是一场可怕的闹剧，从近处审视则会发现完全是多余的。然而全欧洲高尚而热情的观众，却远隔千里，长久而富于激情地用自己的义愤和狂喜诠释着这场革命，以至于文本在诠释之下消失了。这样，高尚的后代就可以再次误读整个过去，或许只有这样，历史的样貌才可以被忍受。还是说：这一切已经发生？我们自己是否就是那“高尚的后代”？根据我们的理解，这个过程岂不是在此刻已经完成？

16．没有人会因为一个学说仅仅有助于改善人的心情和品德，就认为它是真理。或许可爱的“理想主义者们”除外，这些人为一切真善美的事物激动不已，让各种五颜六色的一厢情愿在他们的池塘里游来游去。快乐和美德并不能令人信服。不过即便思维缜密的人也倾向于忘记，不快和邪恶同样是站不住脚的抗辩。有些事尽管极为有害和危险，却可能蕴含着真相。事实上，这或许是存在的基本特性，即获得关于它的全部真相，会毁掉一个人——因此，一个人精神力量的大小可以通过他所能接受的“真相”的多少来衡量，或者说，他需要“真相”在多大程度上被稀释、遮掩、粉饰、钝化和篡改。无疑，对于某些真相的发现，邪恶而不快乐的人处于更为有利的位置，成功的可能性更大。更不用说那些邪恶并快乐的人——对于这类人，道德学家们只能保持缄默。也许严酷和狡猾的个性在造就坚强、独立的人格和哲学家方面更有优势，而温和亲切、谦恭礼让、举重若轻这些品质在学者身上更受珍视，也更有意义。假设“哲学家”这个概念并不局限于写书的哲学家——或者更糟，就自己的哲学写书的哲学家！——司汤达为具有自由精神的哲学家的形象添上了这最后一笔，鉴于德国趣味，我不得不进行强调——因为它同德国趣味背道而驰。这位最后的伟大的心理学家说：要成为好的哲学家，必须眼光犀利透彻，不受幻象所左右。一个发迹的银行家，具有进行哲学发现的一个必备特质，那就是甄别事物本质的能力。

17．所有深刻的东西都喜欢面具。最深刻的东西甚至憎恶映像和比喻。难道上帝掩饰其羞耻的伪装不正应是某种同羞耻截然相反的东西吗？这是一个可疑的疑问，如果某些神秘主义者没有思考过这些事，反而是奇怪的。有些事情表述起来如此微妙，我们宁可粗鲁地进行掩饰，使其面目全非。有时在富于爱和慷慨的举动后，最明智的做法莫过于拿起棍棒，把目击者一顿好揍，以混淆其记忆。有些人懂得如何混淆和虐待自己的记忆，这样至少可以报复这个唯一的知情者——羞辱感是富于创造力的。令我们最感羞耻的并非是最糟糕的事：面具背后不只有欺瞒——狡猾中有诸多良善。我能想象有珍贵、脆弱之物需要守护的人，在生活中可能表现得粗枝大叶，好像一只陈旧、发绿，上着厚厚铁箍的酒桶——他精致的羞耻感使他不得不如此。一个有着深刻羞耻感的人，他与命运狭路相逢的地方人迹罕至，这种地方连他的至交和邻人也一无所知。他不让他们看到自己的致命之处，以及他重新获得的对生命的把握。这样一个深藏不露的人，本能地用言语掩饰沉默和隐瞒，想方设法规避交流，他需要一个面具代替他进入朋友的大脑和内心游荡，并确保它切实有效。假设有一天他不想再要这个面具，但他会发现面具已经在那儿了——而这是一件好事。每个深刻的人都需要一个面具：不但如此，在深刻思想的周围，面具会不断扩大，这要感谢那不停编织着的谎言，即对于他所说的每个词，走过的每一步，给出的每一个生命迹象的肤浅诠释。

18．我们必须考验自己是否适合独立和掌控；而且必须在合适的时间这样做。我们不应该规避这项考验，虽然它是一个人可能碰到的最危险的游戏，并且我们自己才是最终唯一的裁判。不要成为他人的附庸，即便是你最心爱的人——每个人都是监狱，也是庇护所；不要成为祖国的附庸，即便它正在遭受苦难，亟待援助——既然胜利的祖国很少令人牵挂；不要成为怜悯的附庸，即便怜悯的对象是大人物，我们只是碰巧撞见了他少有的磨难和无助；不要成为一门科学的附庸，即便它用最珍贵的发现作为诱饵，并且看似专为我们而预备；不要成为超脱的附庸，那种鸟类的超然绝尘，为了视野更开阔而越飞越高——这是飞行者的危险；不要变成自身美德的附庸，成为我们某个部分的牺牲品，比如“好客”的牺牲品，这是富有而高尚的人面临的危险中的危险，他们出手阔绰，几乎无动于衷，将慷慨这一美德推至不道德的境地。我们必须知道如何保重自己：这就是独立人格最严苛的考验。

19．一类新的哲学家正在出现：我冒昧地给这类哲学家起个不无危险的名字。根据我对他们的猜测，以及他们允许别人对他们的猜测——他们在本性上希望保留某些方面的神秘——这些未来的哲学家可以被正确地，但也许是错误地，描述为尝试者。这个名字本身也仅仅是个尝试，或者是个引诱，如果你愿意的话。

20．这些未来的哲学家是“真理”的新朋友吗？很可能是：因为迄今为止所有的哲学家都爱他们的真理。不过当然，他们不会成为独断论者。如果他们的真理成为所有人的真理，这对他们的骄傲和品味来说是个侮辱，而这恰恰是迄今为止所有独断论者的隐秘欲望和潜台词。“我的判断是我个人的判断：别人不能轻易拥有它”——一位未来的哲学家可能会这样说。我们必须改掉希望和多数人意见一致的坏毛病。当“善”从你邻居的口中说出时，“善”将不再是善。怎么可能存在一种“共同的善”？这个表述本身就是自相矛盾的，共同的东西从来就少有价值。最终还是和现在以及过去一直以来的情形一样：伟大的人收获伟大，深刻的人窥见深刻，讲究的人得到战栗和精致。总而言之，罕见的人得到罕见的东西。

21．说了上述这些话后，我觉得没必要再说明，这些未来的哲学家也会成为自由、非常自由的精灵——同样可以肯定，他们将超越自由精灵本身，变得更加高贵、伟大、卓尔不群，根本不会被误认为是任何别的东西。不过这么说了以后，我感到自己有责任——不仅对他们也对作为他们的前驱和先行者的我们，我们这些自由的精灵——从我们所有人身上消除一种古老而愚蠢的偏见和误解，长久以来它像雾霭一样遮蔽了“自由精神”这个概念。在现今的欧洲各国和美国，这个名词遭到一类非常狭隘、封闭和奴性的人滥用，他们想要的东西和我们的意图乃至本能截然相反——更不用说对于初露头角的新型哲学家们，他们就好比关上的窗、插上的门。简言之，他们令人遗憾地属于平均主义者，这些被错误地定名为“自由精灵”的人——是民主趣味及其“现代理念”伶牙俐齿、笔耕不辍的奴隶，这些人都没有孤独，没有属于自己的孤独，他们好心而笨拙，既不缺乏勇气也不缺乏令人尊敬的体面，只是他们不自由，肤浅得可笑，尤其是他们试图在现存的社会形态中找到所有人类失败和不幸的症结的固有倾向：而这正好颠倒了事实真相！他们努力奋斗的目标是绿色牧场上羊群的普遍幸福，即每个人都拥有稳定、放心、舒适和安逸的生活。他们最经常挂在嘴边的两句口号是“权利平等”和“同情一切受苦受难的人”——他们认为受苦本身是需要被废止的。我们，作为这一观点的反对者，在“人”这种植物究竟在哪里和怎样才能生长得最茁壮这个问题上，已经茅塞顿开。我们认为个人的成长总是发生在相反的情形下，他所处的境遇必须变得异常艰险，他的创造力和掩饰力（也就是他的“精神”）必须在长期的压力和约束下演化成精明和大胆，他的生命意志必须被强化为无条件的强力意志——我们认为街道上和内心里都存在的严酷、力量、奴性、危险，以及各色伪装、禁欲主义，实验艺术，各种恶行，人身上所有的邪恶、可怕、暴戾、凶残和恶毒的东西，都能像它们的反面一样，起到提升人类的作用——即便说了这么多，我们也没有说得完全。不管怎样，在我们就这一点发表和未发表的言论中，我们都站在所有现代意识形态和羊群急需品的另一端：或许与之截然对立？难怪我们这些“自由精灵”并不一定是最健谈的人，我们不想透露一丁点儿关于自由精灵享受的自由和受到的制约。至于那句危险的惯用语“超越善恶”，我们用它来避免自己的意思被曲解：我们是和这些可敬的“现代理念”代言人自称的“自由思想者”，或者诸如此类的称谓，不同的人。我们以自由精神的国度为家，或至少曾在那里做客；我们一次次逃离那些散发着霉味的舒适的庇护所；我们曾因偏好、偏见、年轻、出身、邂逅的人、读过的书，甚至流浪的疲惫而羁留于此。对于荣誉、金钱、地位、感官享受中的奴性诱惑，我们充满憎恶；对于悲苦和变化无常的疾病，我们心存感激，因为它们总能将我们从某些规则及其“偏见”中解放出来；我们对身体里的上帝、魔鬼、绵羊和蛀虫同样感念，我们好奇到堕落的地步，穷根究底到残忍的地步，拥有捉住难以捉摸事物的大胆手指，消化不易消化事物的牙齿和肠胃；多亏了“自由意志”的丰盈，我们做好准备从事一切要求敏锐洞察力的工作，以及参与一切冒险。我们拥有正、反两面灵魂，没有人能够轻易参透我们的最终意图，我们拥有前、后双重背景，没有人能穷尽它的边缘；藏在灯罩背后的我们是征服者，尽管我们一天到晚看上去像是继承人、浪荡子、收藏家和经办人，是自家财宝和橱柜的守财奴，在学习与遗忘之间精打细算，在设想上敢于创新，有时为各类数据洋洋自得，有时显得迂腐，有时甚至勤勉得像大白天里的夜猫子。是的，如果有必要，我们还是稻草人——而现在就有这个必要：我们生来就是自身最深沉、最黑暗、最明亮的孤独那宣了誓的、富于妒忌心的朋友——我们这些自由精灵，就是这样一类人！也许你们这些后来者，你们这些新型哲学家，也会有些类似之处？

注　释

①
巴鲁赫·斯宾诺莎，十七世纪荷兰哲学家。因怀有异端思想被犹太教会革除教籍、逐出社团，以磨镜片为生，在隐居中进行哲学研究。

②
乔尔丹诺·布鲁诺，意大利文艺复兴时期的思想家和哲学家，因反对地心说、坚持日心说，被宗教裁判所囚禁八年，后被烧死在罗马鲜花广场。

③
“羊人剧”，古希腊悲剧的雏形，由装扮成半人半兽的演员演出而得名。一般是轻松的短剧，在一个悲剧三联剧后上演，作为调剂和对悲剧的讽刺。

④
费迪南多·加利亚尼，意大利经济学家。尼采曾称他为十八世纪“最精致、最挑剔的头脑”。

⑤
阿里斯托芬，古希腊早期喜剧代表作家，相传写有四十四部喜剧，有“喜剧之父”之称。

⑥
佩特罗尼乌斯，古罗马作家，暴君尼禄的廷臣，主管宫中娱乐，著有长篇讽刺小说《萨蒂利孔》。

⑦
牛头怪（弥诺陶洛斯），古希腊神话中的人身牛头怪物，被禁闭在弥诺斯的迷宫中，吞食雅典进贡的童男童女。

⑧
乔治·贝克莱，英国主观唯心主义哲学家、主教。他认为世界上只存在能进行思考的心灵，和不能进行思考、只存在于心灵之中的观念。

⑨
亚瑟·叔本华，德国哲学家。他认为世界分为两部分：一方面是表象，一方面是控制表象世界的意志。

四、来自高山：古抒情诗

噢，生命的正午！噢，节日！噢，夏日的花园！我在不安的狂喜中等待，我站立着，观望着，等候着——朋友们，你们在哪儿？我日夜殷勤等候的就是你们。现在来吧！是你们出现的时候了！

难道不是因为你，冰川在今日将它的灰白换成了玫瑰红？溪流追随着你，风和云朵不断爬上蓝天更高处，满怀热望地寻找你。

为了你，我在最高的高处摆好了筵席——和我一样，你生活的地方和星星相隔咫尺，或者说和深渊的深处相隔咫尺？我的帝国——可曾有帝国如此幅员辽阔？我的蜜汁——可曾有人尝到过它的甜蜜？

——朋友们，你们来了！——但是，哎呀，我不就是你们要拜访的那个人吗？你们踌躇着，瞪大眼睛——不，还是愤怒好了！我不再是——我了吗？我的手、步伐和面孔改变了吗？在你们眼里，我不是——我了吗？

我是另一个人吗？一个我自己的陌生人？从我自身里冒出来？一个经常打败自己的摔跤运动员？经常自己和自己过不去，被自己的胜利制约和伤害？

我曾寻找风刮得最猛烈的地方，学会在不毛之地生存，忘记祈祷和诅咒，忘记人和神，变成冰川之上飞掠而过的幽灵？

——老朋友们！你们看上去多么苍白，充满爱与惊恐！不——走吧！不要生气！在这里——你们不会感觉宾至如归：在这片坚冰与岩石的遥远国度，你必须成为一名猎手，并且喜欢阿尔卑斯山的山羊。

我变成了一名邪恶的猎手！——瞧瞧我的弓有多满，拉满这张弓的必定是男人中最强有力的那一个——可是那支箭，哎呀——啊，没有哪支箭比那一支更危险——闪开！快走！为了你们自己的性命！……

你转过脸来？——噢，心脏，你表现得很坚强，你的希望仍然强大：现在让你的心扉向新朋友敞开吧！不要抓住过去不放！不要抓住回忆不放！如果你曾经年轻，那么现在——你更加年轻！

曾经联结我们的东西，那由一个希望构成的纽带——谁还能读懂曾镌刻其上、如今业已模糊的爱的符号？它就像一张羊皮纸——褪色，枯黄——伸过去的手也会缩回来。

不再是朋友，可是——我该如何称呼他们？——他们是朋友的幽灵，暗夜里叩响我的心扉，注视着我说：“我们曾经是朋友吗？”——噢，褪色的词句，曾经如玫瑰一般芬芳！

噢，青春的憧憬，往往并不自知！那些我曾经仰慕和崇敬的人，变成了我的亲人——他们的老去成为他们被放逐的理由：只有那不断变化的人才保持着和我的相似。

噢，生命的正午！噢，第二次青春！噢，夏日的花园！我在不安的狂喜中等待，我站立着，观望着，等候着——我在等候朋友，新的朋友，不分日夜殷勤守候。现在来吧！是你们出现的时候了！

这首歌已经完成——欲望的甜蜜喊叫死在了嘴唇上：这是一个男巫干的，一个适时的朋友，正午之友——不！不要问他是谁——它在正午时发生，在正午时，一个人变成了两个……

现在，对胜利成竹在胸的我们，庆祝盛事中的盛事：我们的朋友查拉图斯特拉
①

来了，他是贵宾中的贵宾！既然全世界都在大笑，可怖的幕布被租来，婚礼之日迎来光明与黑暗……

注　释

①
查拉图斯特拉，公元前七到六世纪的古代波斯宗教改革者。尼采在其作品《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中假借他的名义说出自己的哲学思想。

Friedrich Nietzsche

Man Alone with Himself

TRANSLATED BY MARION FABER, STEPHEN LEHMANN AND R. J. HOLLINGDALE

PENGUIN BOOKS - GREAT IDEAS

CONTENTS

1　Man Alone with Himself

2　Among Friends: An Epilogue

3　The Free Spirit

4　From High Mountains: Epode

返回总目录

The numbering system, starting at one, used for the individual sections is specific to this edition, as it was too cumbersome to begin the book with, for example, Enemies of Truth as number 483 as in the original work.

1　Man Alone with Himself

1

Enemies of truth. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

2

Topsy-turvy world. We criticize a thinker more sharply when he proposes a tenet that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonable to do this when we find his tenet agreeable.

3

A person of character. It is much more common for a person to appear to have character because he always acts in accord with his temperament, rather than because he always acts in accord with his principles.

4

The one necessary thing. A person must have one or the other: either a disposition which is easygoing by nature, or else a disposition eased by art and knowledge.

5

Passion for things. He who directs his passion to things (the sciences, the national good, cultural interests, the arts) takes much of the fire out of his passion for people (even when they represent those things, as statesmen, philosophers, and artists represent their creations).

6

Calm in action. As a waterfall becomes slower and more floating as it plunges, so the great man of action will act with greater calm than could be expected from his violent desire before the deed.

7

Not too deep. People who comprehend a matter in all its depth seldom remain true to it forever. For they have brought its depths to the light; and then there is always much to see about it that is bad.

8

Idealists' delusion. All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are significantly better than the other causes in the world; they do not want to believe that if their cause is to flourish at all, it needs exactly the same foul-smelling manure that all other human undertakings require.

9

Self-observation. Man is very well defended against himself, against his own spying and sieges; usually he is able to make out no more of himself than his outer fortifications. The actual stronghold is inaccessible to him, even invisible, unless friends and enemies turn traitor and lead him there by a secret path.

10

The right profession. Men seldom endure a profession if they do not believe or persuade themselves that it is basically more important than all others. Women do the same with their lovers.

11

Nobility of mind. To a great degree, nobility of mind consists of good nature and lack of distrust, and thus contains precisely that which acquisitive and successful people so like to treat with superiority and scorn.

12

Destination and paths. Many people are obstinate about the path once it is taken, few people about the destination.

13

The infuriating thing about an individual way of living. People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.

14

Privilege of greatness. It is the privilege of greatness to grant supreme pleasure through trifling gifts.

15

Unwittingly noble. A man's behavior is unwittingly noble if he has grown accustomed never to want anything from men, and always to give to them.

16

Condition for being a hero. If a man wants to become a hero, the snake must first become a dragon: otherwise he is lacking his proper enemy.

17

Friend. Shared joy, not compassion, makes a friend.

18

Using high and low tides. For the purpose of knowledge, one must know how to use that inner current that draws us to a thing, and then the one that, after a time, draws us away from it.

19

Delight in oneself. 'Delight in an enterprise,' they say; but in truth it is delight in oneself, by means of an enterprise.

20

The modest one. He who is modest with people shows his arrogance all the more with things (the city, state, society, epoch, or mankind). That is his revenge.

21

Envy and jealousy. Envy and jealousy are the pudenda of the human soul. The comparison can perhaps be pursued further.

22

The most refined hypocrite. To speak about oneself not at all is a very refined form of hypocrisy.

23

Annoyance. Annoyance is a physical illness that is by no means ended simply by eliminating the cause of the annoyance.

24

Representatives of truth. The champions of truth are hardest to find, not when it is dangerous to tell it, but rather when it is boring.

25

More troublesome than enemies. When some reason (e.g., gratitude) obliges us to maintain the appearance of unqualified congeniality with people about whose own congenial behavior we are not entirely convinced, these people torment our imagination much more than do our enemies.

26

Out in nature. We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion about us.

27

Everyone superior in one thing. In civilized circumstances, everyone feels superior to everyone else in at least one way; this is the basis of the general goodwill, inasmuch as everyone is someone who, under certain conditions, can be of help, and need therefore feel no shame in allowing himself to be helped.

28

Reasons for consolation. When someone dies, we usually need reasons to be consoled, not so much to soften the force of our pain, as to excuse the fact that we feel consoled so easily.

29

Loyal to their convictions. The man who has a lot to do usually keeps his general views and opinions almost unchanged; as does each person who works in the service of an idea. He will never test the idea itself any more; he no longer has time for that. Indeed, it is contrary to his interest even to think it possible to discuss it.

30

Morality and quantity. One man's greater morality, in contrast to another's, often lies only in the fact that his goals are quantitatively larger. The other man is pulled down by occupying himself with small things, in a narrow sphere.

31

Life as the product of life. However far man may extend himself with his knowledge, however objective he may appear to himself - ultimately he reaps nothing but his own biography.

32

Iron necessity. Over the course of history, men learn that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

33

From experience. That something is irrational is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition for it.

34

Truth. No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.

35

Basic insight. There is no pre-established harmony between the furthering of truth and the good of mankind.

36

Human lot. Whoever thinks more deeply knows that he is always wrong, whatever his acts and judgments.

37

Truth as Circe. Error has turned animals into men; might truth be capable of turning man into an animal again?

38

Danger of our culture. We belong to a time in which culture is in danger of being destroyed by the means of culture.

39

Greatness means: to give a direction. No river is great and bounteous through itself alone, but rather because it takes up so many tributaries and carries them onwards: that makes it great. It is the same with all great minds. All that matters is that one man give the direction, which the many tributaries must then follow; it does not matter whether he is poorly or richly endowed in the beginning.

40

Weak conscience. Men who talk about their importance for mankind have a weak conscience about their common bourgeois honesty in keeping contracts or promises.

41

Wanting to be loved. The demand to be loved is the greatest kind of arrogance.

42

Contempt for people. The least ambiguous sign of a disdain for people is this: that one tolerates everyone else only as a means to his end, or not at all.

43

Disciples out of disagreement. Whoever has brought men to a state of rage against himself has always acquired a party in his favor, too.

44

Forgetting one's experiences. It is easy for a man who thinks a lot - and objectively - to forget his own experiences, but not the thoughts that were evoked by them.

45

Adhering to an opinion. One man adheres to an opinion because he prides himself on having come upon it by himself; another because he has learned it with effort, and is proud of having grasped it: thus both out of vanity.

46

Shunning the light. The good deed shuns the light as anxiously as the evil deed: the latter fears that, if it is known, pain (as punishment) will follow; the former fears that, if it is known, joy (that pure joy in oneself, which ceases as soon as it includes the satisfaction of one's vanity) will disappear.

47

The day's length. If a man has a great deal to put in them, a day will have a hundred pockets.

48

Tyrant-genius. If the soul stirs with an ungovernable desire to assert itself tyranically, and the fire is continually maintained, then even a slight talent (in politicians or artists) gradually becomes an almost irresistible force of nature.

49

The life of the enemy. Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.

50

More important. The unexplained, obscure matter is taken as more important than the explained, clear one.

51

Evaluating services rendered. We evaluate services someone renders us according to the value that person places on them, not according to the value they have for us.

52

Unhappiness. The distinction that lies in being unhappy (as if to feel happy were a sign of shallowness, lack of ambition, ordinariness) is so great that when someone says, 'But how happy you must be!' we usually protest.

53

Fantasy of fear. The fantasy of fear is that malevolent, apelike goblin which jumps onto man's back just when he already has the most to bear.

54

Value of insipid opponents. Sometimes we remain true to a cause only because its opponents will not stop being insipid.

55

Value of a profession. A profession makes us thoughtless: therein lies its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark, behind which we are allowed to withdraw when qualms and worries of a general kind attack us.

56

Talent. The talent of some men appears slighter than it is because they have always set themselves tasks that are too great.

57

Youth. The time of youth is disagreeable, for then it is not possible, or not reasonable, to be productive in any sense.

58

Goals too great. Who publicly sets himself great goals, and later realizes privately that he is too weak to accomplish them, does not usually have enough strength to revoke those goals publicly, either, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.

59

In the stream. Strong currents draw many stones and bushes along with them; strong minds many stupid and muddled heads.

60

Danger of intellectual liberation. When a man tries earnestly to liberate his intellect, his passions and desires secretly hope to benefit from it also.

61

Embodiment of the spirit. When a man thinks much and cleverly, not only his face, but also his body takes on a clever look.

62

Seeing poorly and hearing poorly. He who sees little, always sees less; he who hears poorly, always hears something more.

63

Self-enjoyment in vanity. The vain man wants not only to stand out, but also to feel outstanding, and therefore rejects no means to deceive and outwit himself. Not the opinion of others, but his opinion of their opinion is what he cares about.

64

Vain by way of an exception. When he is physically ill, the man who is usually self-sufficient is vain by way of an exception and responsive to fame and praise. In the proportion that he is losing himself, he must try to regain himself from the outside, using strangers' opinions.

65

The 'witty' ones. The man who seeks wit has no wit.

66

Hint for party chiefs. If we can force people to declare themselves publicly for something, we have usually also brought them to the point of declaring themselves for it privately; they want to continue to be perceived as consistent.

67

Contempt. Man is more sensitive to contempt from others than to contempt from himself.

68

Rope of gratitude. There are slavish souls who carry their thanks for favors so far that they actually strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

69

Trick of the prophet. In order to predict the behavior of ordinary men, we must assume that they always expend the least possible amount of intellect to free themselves from a disagreeable situation.

70

The only human right. He who strays from tradition becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who remains in tradition is its slave. Destruction follows in any case.

71

Lower than the animal. When man howls with laughter, he surpasses all animals by his coarseness.

72

Superficial knowledge. He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.

73

Dangerous helpfulness. There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier - their Christianity, for example.

74

Industriousness and conscientiousness. Industriousness and conscientiousness are often antagonists, in that industriousness wants to take the fruits off the tree while still sour, but conscientiousness lets them hang too long, until they drop off the tree and come to nothing.

75

Suspicion. People whom we cannot tolerate, we try to make suspect.

76

Lacking the circumstances. Many men wait all their lives for the opportunity to be good in their way.

77

Want of friends. A want of friends points to envy or arrogance. Many a man owes his friends simply to the fortunate circumstance that he has no cause for envy.

78

Danger in multiplicity. With one talent the more, one often stands less secure than with one talent the less: as the table stands better on three legs than on four.

79

Model for others. He who wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue; then others can imitate and, at the same time, rise above the one being imitated - something which people love.

80

Being a target. Often, other people's vicious talk about us is not actually aimed at us, but expresses their annoyance or ill humor arising from quite different reasons.

81

Easily resigned. A man suffers little from unfulfilled wishes if he has trained his imagination to think of the past as hateful.

82

In danger. When we have just gotten out of the way of a vehicle, we are most in danger of being run over.

83

The role according to the voice. He who is forced to speak more loudly than is his habit (as in front of someone hard of hearing, or before a large audience) generally exaggerates what he has to communicate.

Some people become conspirators, malicious slanderers, or schemers, merely because their voice is best suited to a whisper.

84

Love and hatred. Love and hatred are not blind, but are blinded by the fire they themselves carry with them.

85

Made an enemy to one's advantage. Men who are unable to make their merit completely clear to the world seek to awaken an intense enmity towards themselves. Then they have the comfort of thinking that this stands between their merit and its recognition - and that other people assume the same thing, which is of great advantage to their own importance.

86

Confession. We forget our guilt when we have confessed it to another, but usually the other person does not forget it.

87

Self-sufficiency. The golden fleece of self-sufficiency protects against thrashings, but not against pin-pricks.

88

Shadow in the flame. The flame is not so bright to itself as to those on whom it shines: so too the wise man.

89

Our own opinions. The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about a matter is usually not our own, but only the customary one, appropriate to our caste, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim near the surface.

90

Origin of courage. The ordinary man is courageous and invulnerable like a hero when he does not see the danger, when he has no eyes for it. Conversely, the hero's one vulnerable spot is on his back; that is, where he has no eyes.

91

Danger in the doctor. A man is either born for his doctor, or else he perishes by his doctor.

92

Magical vanity. He who has boldly prophesied the weather three times and has been successful, believes a bit, at the bottom of his heart, in his own prophetic gift. We do not dispute what is magical or irrational when it flatters our self-esteem.

93

Profession. A profession is the backbone of life.

94

Danger of personal influence. He who feels that he exercises a great inner influence on another must leave him quite free rein, indeed must look with favor on his occasional resistance and even bring it about: otherwise he will inevitably make himself an enemy.

95

Giving the heir his due. Whoever has established something great with a selfless frame of mind takes care to bring up heirs. It is the sign of a tyrannical and ignoble nature to see one's opponents in all the possible heirs of one's work and to live in a state of self-defense against them.

96

A little knowledge. A little knowledge is more successful than complete knowledge: it conceives things as simpler than they are, thus resulting in opinions that are more comprehensible and persuasive.

97

Not suited to be a party member. He who thinks much is not suited to be a party member: too soon, he thinks himself through and beyond the party.

98

Bad memory. The advantage of a bad memory is that, several times over, one enjoys the same good things for the first time.

99

Causing oneself pain. Inconsiderate thinking is often the sign of a discordant inner state which craves numbness.

100

Martyr. The disciple of a martyr suffers more than the martyr.

101

Residual vanity. The vanity of some people, who should not need to be vain, is the left-over and full-grown habit stemming from that time when they still had no right to believe in themselves, and only acquired their belief from others, by begging it in small change.

102

Punctum saliens of passion. He who is about to fall into a state of anger or violent love reaches a point where his soul is full like a vessel; but it needs one more drop of water: the good will to passion (which is generally also called the bad will). Only this little point is necessary; then the vessel runs over.

103

Bad-tempered thought. People are like piles of charcoal in the woods. Only when young people have stopped glowing, and carbonized, as charcoal does, do they become useful. As long as they smolder and smoke they are perhaps more interesting, but useless, and all too often troublesome.

Mankind unsparingly uses every individual as material to heat its great machines; but what good are the machines when all individuals (that is, mankind) serve only to keep them going? Machines that are their own end - is that the umana commedia?

104

The hour-hand of life. Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea - all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life.

105

To set against or set to work. We often make the mistake of actively opposing a direction, or party, or epoch, because we coincidentally get to see only its superficial side, its stunted aspect, or the inescapable 'faults of its virtues,' - perhaps because we ourselves have participated to a large degree in them. Then we turn our back on them and seek an opposite direction; but it would be better to look for the strong, good sides, or to develop them in ourselves. To be sure, it takes a stronger gaze and a better will to further that which is evolving and imperfect, rather than to penetrate its imperfection and reject it.

106

Modesty. True modesty (that is, the knowledge that we are not our own creations) does exist, and it well suits the great mind, because he particularly can comprehend the thought of his complete lack of responsibility (even for whatever good he creates). One does not hate the great man's immodesty because he is feeling his strength, but rather because he wants to feel it primarily by wounding others, treating them imperiously and watching to see how much they can stand. Most often, this actually proves that he lacks a secure sense of his strength, and makes men doubt his greatness. To this extent, cleverness would strongly advise against immodesty.

107

The first thought of the day. The best way to begin each day well is to think upon awakening whether we could not give at least one person pleasure on this day. If this practice could be accepted as a substitute for the religious habit of prayer, our fellow men would benefit by this change.

108

Arrogance as the last means of comfort. If a man accounts for a misfortune, or his intellectual inadequacies, or his illness by seeing them as his predetermined fate, his ordeal, or mysterious punishment for something he had done earlier, he is thereby making his own nature interesting, and imagining himself superior to his fellow men. The proud sinner is a familiar figure in all religious sects.

109

Growth of happiness. Near to the sorrow of the world, and often upon its volcanic earth, man has laid out his little gardens of happiness; whether he approaches life as one who wants only knowledge from existence, or as one who yields and resigns himself, or as one who rejoices in a difficulty overcome - everywhere he will find some happiness sprouting up next to the trouble. The more volcanic the earth, the greater the happiness will be - but it would be ludicrous to say that this happiness justified suffering per se.

110

The street of one's ancestors. It is reasonable to develop further the talent that one's father or grandfather worked hard at, and not switch to something entirely new; otherwise one is depriving himself of the chance to attain perfection in some one craft. Thus the saying: 'Which street should you take? - that of your ancestors.'

111

Vanity and ambition as educators. So long as a man has not yet become the instrument of the universal human good, ambition may torment him; but if he has achieved that goal, if of necessity he is working like a machine for the good of all, then vanity may enter; it will humanize him in small matters, make him more sociable, tolerable, considerate, once ambition has completed the rough work (of making him useful).

112

Philosophical novices. If we have just partaken of a philosopher's wisdom, we go through the streets feeling as if we had been transformed and had become great men; for we encounter only people who do not know this wisdom, and thus we have to deliver a new, unheard-of judgment about everything; because we have acknowledged a book of laws, we also think we now have to act like judges.

113

Pleasing by displeasing. People who prefer to be noticed, and thereby displease, desire the same thing as those who do not want to be noticed, and want to please, only to a much greater degree and indirectly, by means of a step that seems to be distancing them from their goal. Because they want to have influence and power, they display their superiority, even if it is felt as disagreeable: for they know that the man who has finally gained power pleases in almost everything he does and says, that even when he displeases, he seems nevertheless to be pleasing.

Both the free spirit and the true believer want power, too, in order to use it to please; if they are threatened because of their doctrines with a dire fate, persecution, prison, or execution, they rejoice at the thought that this will enable their doctrines to be engraved and branded upon mankind; although it is delayed acting, they accept it as a painful but potent means to attain power after all.

114

Casus belli and the like. The prince who discovers a casus belli for an earlier decision to wage war against his neighbor is like a father who imposes a mother upon his child, to be henceforth accepted as such. And are not almost all publicly announced motives for our actions such imposed mothers?

115

Passions and rights. No one speaks more passionately about his rights than the man who, at the bottom of his heart, doubts them. In drawing passion to his side, he wants to deaden reason and its doubts: he thus gains a good conscience, and, along with it, success with his fellow men.

116

The renouncing man's trick. He who protests against marriage, in the manner of Catholic priests, will seek to understand it in its lowest, most vulgar sense. Likewise, he who refuses the respect of his contemporaries will conceive it in a base way; he thus makes his renunciation of it and the fight against it easier for himself. Incidentally, he who denies himself much in large matters will easily indulge himself in small matters. It is conceivable that the man who is above the applause of his contemporaries is nevertheless unable to refuse himself the satisfaction of little vanities.

117

The age of arrogance. The true period of arrogance for talented men comes between their twenty-sixth and thirtieth year; it is the time of first ripeness, with a good bit of sourness still remaining. On the basis of what one feels inside himself, one demands from other people, who see little or nothing of it, respect and humility; and because these are not at first forthcoming, one takes vengeance with a glance, an arrogant gesture, or a tone of voice. This a fine ear and eye will recognize in all the products of those years, be they poems, philosophies, or paintings and music. Older, experienced men smile about it, and remember with emotion this beautiful time of life, in which one is angry at his lot of having to be so much and seem so little. Later, one really seems to be more - but the faith in being much has been lost, unless one remain throughout his life vanity's hopeless fool.

118

Deceptive and yet firm. When walking around the top of an abyss, or crossing a deep stream on a plank, we need a railing, not to hold on to (for it would collapse with us at once), but rather to achieve the visual image of security. Likewise, when we are young, we need people who unconsciously offer us the service of that railing; it is true that they would not help us if we really were in great danger and wanted to lean on them; but they give us the comforting sensation of protection nearby (for example, fathers, teachers, friends, as we generally know all three).

119

Learning to love. We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from earliest youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our soul becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people. Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater: otherwise the germ for that, too, will gradually wither.

120

Ruins as decoration. People who go through many spiritual changes retain some views and habits from earlier stages, which then jut out into their new thinking and acting like a bit of inexplicable antiquity and gray stonework, often ornamenting the whole region.

121

Love and respect. Love desires; fear avoids. That is why it is impossible, at least in the same time span, to be loved and respected by the same person. For the man who respects another, acknowledges his power; that is, he fears it: his condition is one of awe. But love acknowledges no power, nothing that separates, differentiates, ranks higher or subordinates. Because the state of being loved carries with it no respect, ambitious men secretly or openly balk against it.

122

Prejudice in favor of cold people. People who catch fire rapidly quickly become cold, and are therefore by and large unreliable. Therefore, all those who are always cold, or act that way, benefit from the prejudice that they are especially trustworthy, reliable people: they are being confused with those others who catch fire slowly and burn for a long time.

123

What is dangerous about free opinions. The casual entertainment of free opinions is like an itch; giving in to it, one begins to rub the area; finally there is an open, aching wound; that is, the free opinion finally begins to disturb and torment us in our attitude to life, in our human relationships.

124

Desire for deep pain. When it has gone, passion leaves behind a dark longing for itself, and in disappearing throws us one last seductive glance. There must have been a kind of pleasure in having been beaten with her whip. In contrast, the more moderate feelings appear flat; apparently we still prefer a more violent displeasure to a weak pleasure.

125

Annoyance with others and the world. When, as happens so often, we let our annoyance out on others, while we are actually feeling it about ourselves, we are basically trying to cloud and delude our judgment; we want to motivate our annoyance a posteriori by the oversights and inadequacies of others, so we can lose sight of ourselves.

Religiously strict people, who judge themselves without mercy, are also those who have most often spoken ill of mankind in general. There has never been a saint who reserves sins to himself and virtues to others: he is as rare as the man who, following Buddha's precept, hides his goodness from people and lets them see of himself only what is bad.

126

Cause and effect confused. Unconsciously we seek out the principles and dogmas that are in keeping with our temperament, so that in the end it looks as if the principles and dogmas had created our character, given it stability and certainty, while precisely the opposite has occurred. It seems that our thinking and judging are to be made the cause of our nature after the fact, but actually our nature causes us to think and judge one way or the other.

And what decides us on this almost unconscious comedy? Laziness and convenience, and not least the vain desire to be considered consistent through and through, uniform both in character and thought: for this earns us respect, brings us trust and power.

127

Age and truth. Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

128

People as bad poets. Just as bad poets, in the second half of a line, look for a thought to fit their rhyme, so people in the second half of their lives, having become more anxious, look for the actions, attitudes, relationships that suit those of their earlier life, so that everything will harmonize outwardly. But then they no longer have any powerful thought to rule their life and determine it anew; rather, in its stead, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.

129

Boredom and play. Need forces us to do the work whose product will quiet the need; we are habituated to work by the ever-new awakening of needs. But in those intervals when our needs are quieted and seem to sleep, boredom overtakes us. What is that? It is the habit of working as such, which now asserts itself as a new, additional need; the need becomes the greater, the greater our habit of working, perhaps even the greater our suffering from our needs. To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general. He who is tired of play, and has no reason to work because of new needs, is sometimes overcome by the longing for a third state that relates to play as floating does to dancing, as dancing does to walking, a blissful, peaceful state of motion: it is the artist's and philosopher's vision of happiness.

130

Instruction from pictures. If we consider a series of pictures of ourselves from the time of childhood to that of manhood, we are agreeably surprised to find that the man resembles the child more than the adolescent: probably corresponding to this occurrence, then, there has been a temporary alienation from our basic character, now overcome again by the man's collected, concentrated strength. This perception agrees with the one that all those strong influences of our passions, our teachers, or political events, which pull us about in our adolescence, later seem to be reduced to a fixed measure. Certainly, they continue to live and act in us, but our basic feeling and basic thinking have the upper hand; these influences are used as sources of power, but no longer as regulators, as happens in our twenties. Thus man's thinking and feeling appear again more in accord with that of his childhood years - and this inner fact is expressed in the external one mentioned above.

131

Voice of the years. The tone adolescents use to speak, praise, blame, or invent displeases older people because it is too loud and yet at the same time muffled and unclear, like a tone in a vault, which gains resonance because of the emptiness. For most of what adolescents think has not flowed out of the fullness of their own nature, but rather harmonizes and echoes what is thought, spoken, praised, or blamed around them. But because the feelings (of inclination and disinclination) reverberate in them much more strongly than the reasons for these feelings, there arises, when they give voice to their feeling again, that muffled, ringing tone that indicates the absence or paucity of reasons. The tone of the more mature years is rigorous, sharply punctuated, moderately loud, but like everything clearly articulated, it carries very far. Finally, old age often brings a certain gentleness and indulgence to the sound and seems to sugar it: of course, in some cases it makes it sour, too.

132

Backward and anticipating people. The unpleasant personality who is full of mistrust, who reacts with envy to his competitors' and neighbors' successes, who flares up violently at divergent opinions, is showing that he belongs to an earlier stage of culture, and is thus a relic. For the way in which he interacts with people was proper and appropriate for the conditions of an age when rule by force prevailed: he is a backward person. A second personality, who shares profusely in others' joy, who wins friends everywhere, who is touched by everything that grows and evolves, who enjoys other people's honors and successes, and makes no claim to the privilege of alone knowing the truth, but instead is full of modest skepticism - he is an anticipator who is reaching ahead towards a higher human culture. The unpleasant personality grows out of times when the unhewn foundation of human intercourse had still to be laid; the other lives on its highest floors, as far away as possible from the wild animal that rages and howls locked up in the cellars, beneath the foundations of culture.

133

Comfort for hypochondriacs. When a great thinker is temporarily subjected to hypochondriacal self-torments, he may say to comfort himself: 'This parasite is feeding and growing from your great strength; if that strength were less, you would have less to suffer.' The statesman may speak likewise when his jealousy and vengeful feelings, in short, the mood of a bellum omnium contra omnes, for which he as a nation's representative must necessarily have a great gift, occasionally intrude into his personal relations and make his life difficult.

134

Alienated from the present. There are great advantages in for once removing ourselves distinctly from our time and letting ourselves be driven from its shore back into the ocean of former world views. Looking at the coast from that perspective, we survey for the first time its entire shape, and when we near it again, we have the advantage of understanding it better on the whole than do those who have never left it.

135

Sowing and reaping on personal inadequacies. People like Rousseau know how to use their weaknesses, deficiencies, or vices as if they were the fertilizer of their talent. When Rousseau laments the depravity and degeneration of society as the unpleasant consequence of culture, this is based on his personal experience, whose bitterness makes his general condemnation so sharp, and poisons the arrows he shoots. He is relieving himself first as an individual, and thinks that he is seeking a cure that will directly benefit society, but that will also indirectly, and by means of society, benefit him too.

136

A philosophical frame of mind. Generally we strive to acquire one emotional stance, one viewpoint for all life situations and events: we usually call that being of a philosophical frame of mind. But rather than making oneself uniform, we may find greater value for the enrichment of knowledge by listening to the soft voice of different life situations; each brings its own views with it. Thus we acknowledge and share the life and nature of many by not treating ourselves like rigid, invariable, single individuals.

137

In the fire of contempt. It is a new step towards independence, once a man dares to express opinions that bring disgrace on him if he entertains them; then even his friends and acquaintances begin to grow anxious. The man of talent must pass through this fire, too; afterwards he is much more his own person.

138

Sacrifice. If there is a choice, a great sacrifice will be preferred to a small one, because we compensate ourselves for a great sacrifice with self-admiration, and this is not possible with a small one.

139

Love as a device. Whoever wants really to get to know something new (be it a person, an event, or a book) does well to take up this new thing with all possible love, to avert his eye quickly from, even to forget, everything about it that he finds inimical, objectionable, or false. So, for example, we give the author of a book the greatest possible head start, and, as if at a race, virtually yearn with a pounding heart for him to reach his goal. By doing this, we penetrate into the heart of the new thing, into its motive center: and this is what it means to get to know it. Once we have got that far, reason then sets its limits; that overestimation, that occasional unhinging of the critical pendulum, was just a device to entice the soul of a matter out into the open.

140

To think too well or too ill of the world. Whether we think too well or too ill of things, we will always gain the advantage of reaping a greater pleasure: if our preconceived opinion is too good we are generally investing things (experiences) with more sweetness than they actually possess. If a preconceived opinion is overly negative, it leads to a pleasant disappointment: what was pleasurable in those things in and of themselves is increased through the pleasure of our surprise.

Incidentally, a morose temperament will experience the opposite in both cases.

141

Profound people. Those people whose strength lies in the profundity of their impressions (they are generally called 'profound people') are relatively controlled and decisive when anything sudden happens: for in the first moment the impression was still shallow; only later does it become profound. But long-foreseen, anticipated things or people excite such natures most, and make them almost incapable of maintaining presence of mind when their wait is over.

142

Traffic with one's higher self. Everyone has his good day, when he finds his higher self; and true humanity demands that we judge someone only when he is in this condition, and not in his workdays of bondage and servitude. We should, for example, assess and honor a painter according to the highest vision he was able to see and portray. But people themselves deal very differently with this, their higher self, and often act out the role of their own self, to the extent that they later keep imitating what they were in those moments. Some regard their ideal with shy humility and would like to deny it: they fear their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks demandingly. In addition, it has a ghostly freedom of coming or staying away as it wishes; for that reason it is often called a gift of the gods, while actually everything else is a gift of the gods (of chance): this, however, is the man himself.

143

Solitary people. Some people are so used to solitude with themselves that they never compare themselves to others, but spin forth their monologue of a life in a calm, joyous mood, holding good conversations with themselves, even laughing. But if they are made to compare themselves with others, they tend to a brooding underestimation of their selves: so that they have to be forced to learn again from others to have a good, fair opinion of themselves. And even from this learned opinion they will always want to detract or reduce something.

Thus one must grant certain men their solitude, and not be silly enough, as often happens, to pity them for it.

144

Without melody. There are people for whom a constant inner repose and a harmonious ordering of all their capabilities is so characteristic that any goal-directed activity goes against their grain. They are like a piece of music consisting entirely of sustained harmonious chords, with no evidence of even the beginning of a structured, moving melody. At any movement from the outside, their boat at once gains a new equilibrium on the sea of harmonic euphony. Modern people are usually extremely impatient on meeting such natures, who do not become anything - though it may not be said that they are not anything. In certain moods, however, their presence evokes that rare question: why have melody at all? Why are we not satisfied when life mirrors itself peacefully in a deep lake?

The Middle Ages was richer in such natures than we are. How seldom do we now meet a person who can keep living so peacefully and cheerfully with himself even amidst the turmoil, saying to himself like Goethe: 'The best is the deep quiet in which I live and grow against the world, and harvest what they cannot take from me by fire or sword.'

145

Life and experience. If one notices how some individuals know how to treat their experiences (their insignificant everyday experiences) so that these become a plot of ground that bears fruit three times a year; while others (and how many of them!) are driven through the waves of the most exciting turns of fate, of the most varied currents of their time or nation, and yet always stay lightly on the surface, like cork: then one is finally tempted to divide mankind into a minority (minimality) of those people who know how to make much out of little and a majority of those who know how to make a little out of much; indeed, one meets those perverse wizards who, instead of creating the world out of nothing, create nothing out of the world.

146

Seriousness in play. At sunset in Genoa, I heard from a tower a long chiming of bells: it kept on and on, and over the noise of the back streets, as if insatiable for itself, it rang out into the evening sky and the sea air, so terrible and so childish at the same time, so melancholy. Then I thought of Plato's words and felt them suddenly in my heart: all in all, nothing human is worth taking very seriously; nevertheless ...

147

On convictions and justice. To carry out later, in coolness and sobriety, what a man promises or decides in passion: this demand is among the heaviest burdens oppressing mankind. To have to acknowledge for all duration the consequences of anger, of raging vengeance, of enthusiastic devotion - this can incite a bitterness against these feelings all the greater because everywhere, and especially by artists, precisely these feelings are the object of idol worship. Artists cultivate the esteem for the passions, and have always done so; to be sure, they also glorify the frightful satisfactions of passion, in which one indulges, the outbursts of revenge that have death, mutilation, or voluntary banishment as a consequence, and the resignation of the broken heart. In any event, they keep alive curiosity about the passions; it is as if they wished to say: without passions you have experienced nothing at all.

Because we have vowed to be faithful, even, perhaps, to a purely imaginary being, a God, for instance; because we have given our heart to a prince, a party, a woman, a priestly order, an artist, or a thinker, in the state of blind madness that enveloped us in rapture and let those beings appear worthy of every honor, every sacrifice: are we then inextricably bound? Were we not deceiving ourselves then? Was it not a conditional promise, under the assumption (unstated, to be sure) that those beings to whom we dedicated ourselves really are the beings they appeared to be in our imaginations? Are we obliged to be faithful to our errors, even if we perceive that by this faithfulness we do damage to our higher self?

No - there is no law, no obligation of that kind; we must become traitors, act unfaithfully, forsake our ideals again and again. We do not pass from one period of life to another without causing these pains of betrayal, and without suffering from them in turn. Should we have to guard ourselves against the upsurging of our feeling in order to avoid these pains? Would not the world then become too bleak, too ghostly for us? We want rather to ask ourselves whether these pains at a change of conviction are necessary, or whether they do not depend on an erroneous opinion and estimation. Why do we admire the man who remains faithful to his conviction and despise the one who changes it? I fear the answer must be that everyone assumes such a change is caused only by motives of baser advantage or personal fear. That is, we believe fundamentally that no one changes his opinions as long as they are advantageous to him, or at least as long as they do him no harm. But if that is the case, it bears bad testimony to the intellectual meaning of all convictions. Let us test how convictions come into being and observe whether they are not vastly overrated: in that way it will be revealed that the change of convictions too is in any case measured by false standards and that until now we have tended to suffer too much from such changes.

148

Conviction is the belief that in some point of knowledge one possesses absolute truth. Such a belief presumes, then, that absolute truths exist; likewise, that the perfect methods for arriving at them have been found; finally, that every man who has convictions makes use of these perfect methods. All three assertions prove at once that the man of convictions is not the man of scientific thinking; he stands before us still in the age of theoretical innocence, a child, however grown-up he might be otherwise. But throughout thousands of years, people have lived in such childlike assumptions, and from out of them mankind's mightiest sources of power have flowed. The countless people who sacrificed themselves for their convictions thought they were doing it for absolute truth. All of them were wrong: probably no man has ever sacrificed himself for truth; at least, the dogmatic expression of his belief will have been unscientific or half-scientific. But actually one wanted to be right because one thought he had to be right. To let his belief be torn from him meant perhaps to put his eternal happiness in question. With a matter of this extreme importance, the 'will' was all too audibly the intellect's prompter. Every believer of every persuasion assumed he could not be refuted; if the counterarguments proved very strong, he could still always malign reason in general and perhaps even raise as a banner of extreme fanaticism the 'credo quia absurdum est.' It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions. If only all those people who thought so highly of their conviction, who sacrificed all sorts of things to it and spared neither their honor, body nor life in its service, had devoted only half of their strength to investigating by what right they clung to this or that conviction, how they had arrived at it, then how peaceable the history of mankind would appear! How much more would be known! All the cruel scenes during the persecution of every kind of heretic would have been spared us for two reasons: first, because the inquisitors would above all have inquired within themselves, and got beyond the arrogant idea that they were defending the absolute truth; and second, because the heretics themselves would not have granted such poorly established tenets as those of all the sectarians and 'orthodox' any further attention, once they had investigated them.

149

Stemming from the time when people were accustomed to believe that they possessed absolute truth is a deep discomfort with all skeptical and relativistic positions on any questions of knowledge; usually we prefer to surrender unconditionally to a conviction held by people of authority (fathers, friends, teachers, princes), and we have a kind of troubled conscience if we do not do so. This inclination is understandable and its consequences do not entitle us to violent reproaches against the development of human reason. But eventually the scientific spirit in man must bring forth that virtue of cautious restraint, that wise moderation that is better known in the realm of practical life than in the realm of theoretical life, and that Goethe, for example, portrayed in his Antonio, as an object of animosity for all Tassos, that is, for those unscientific and also passive natures. The man of conviction has in himself a right not to understand the man of cautious thinking, the theoretical Antonio; the scientific man, on the other hand, has no right to scold him for this; he makes allowances for him and knows besides that, in certain cases, the man will cling to him as Tasso finally does to Antonio.

150

If one has not passed through various convictions, but remains caught in the net of his first belief, he is in all events, because of just this unchangeability, a representative of backward cultures; in accordance with this lack of education (which always presupposes educability), he is harsh, injudicious, unteachable, without gentleness, eternally suspect, a person lacking scruples, who reaches for any means to enforce his opinion because he simply cannot understand that there have to be other opinions. In this regard, he is perhaps a source of power, and even salutary in cultures grown too free and lax, but only because he powerfully incites opposition: for in that way the new culture's more delicate structure, which is forced to struggle with him, becomes strong itself.

151

Essentially, we are still the same people as those in the period of the Reformation - and how should it be otherwise? But we no longer allow ourselves certain means to gain victory for our opinion: this distinguishes us from that age and proves that we belong to a higher culture. These days, if a man still attacks and crushes opinions with suspicions and outbursts of rage, in the manner of men during the Reformation, he clearly betrays that he would have burnt his opponents, had he lived in other times, and that he would have taken recourse to all the means of the Inquisition, had he lived as an opponent of the Reformation. In its time, the Inquisition was reasonable, for it meant nothing other than the general martial law which had to be proclaimed over the whole domain of the church, and which, like every state of martial law, justified the use of the extremest means, namely under the assumption (which we no longer share with those people) that one possessed truth in the church and had to preserve it at any cost, with any sacrifice, for the salvation of mankind. But now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.

152

Incidentally, the methodical search for truth itself results from those times when convictions were feuding among themselves. If the individual had not cared about his 'truth,' that is, about his being right in the end, no method of inquiry would exist at all; but, given the eternal struggle of various individuals' claims to absolute truth, man proceeded step by step, in order to find irrefutable principles by which the justice of the claims could be tested and the argument settled. At first decisions were made according to authorities, later the ways and means with which the ostensible truth had been found were mutually criticized; in between, there was a period when the consequences of the opposing tenet were drawn and perhaps experienced as harmful and saddening; this was to result in everyone's judging that the opponent's conviction contained an error. Finally, the thinkers' personal struggle sharpened their methods so much that truths could really be discovered, and the aberrations of earlier methods were exposed to everyone's eye.

153

All in all, scientific methods are at least as important as any other result of inquiry; for the scientific spirit is based on the insight into methods, and were those methods to be lost, all the results of science could not prevent a renewed triumph of superstition and nonsense. Clever people may learn the results of science as much as they like, one still sees from their conversation, especially from their hypotheses in conversation, that they lack the scientific spirit. They do not have that instinctive mistrust of the wrong ways of thinking, a mistrust which, as a consequence of long practice, has put its roots deep into the soul of every scientific man. For them it is enough to find any one hypothesis about a matter; then they get fired up about it and think that puts an end to it. For them, to have an opinion means to get fanatical about it and cherish it in their hearts henceforth as a conviction. If a matter is unexplained, they become excited at the first notion resembling an explanation that enters their brain; this always has the worst consequences, especially in the realm of politics.

Therefore everyone should have come to know at least one science in its essentials; then he knows what method is, and how necessary is the most extreme circumspection. This advice should be given to women particularly, who are now the hopeless victims of all hypotheses, especially those which give the impression of being witty, thrilling, invigorating, or energizing. In fact, if one looks closer, one notices that the majority of all educated people still desire convictions and nothing but convictions from a thinker, and that only a slight minority want certainty. The former want to be forcibly carried away, in order to thus increase their own strength; the latter few have that matter-of-fact interest that ignores personal advantage, even the above-mentioned increase of strength. Wherever the thinker behaves like a genius, calling himself one, and looking down like a higher being who deserves authority, he is counting on the class in the overwhelming majority. To the extent that that kind of genius keeps up the heat of convictions and awakens distrust of the cautious and modest spirit of science, he is an enemy of truth, however much he may believe he is its suitor.

154

To be sure, there is also quite another category of genius, that of justice; and I can in no way see fit to esteem that kind lower than any philosophical, political, or artistic genius. It is its way to avoid with hearty indignation everything which blinds and confuses our judgment about things; thus it is an enemy of convictions, for it wants to give each thing its due, be it living or dead, real or fictive - and to do so it must apprehend it clearly. Therefore it places each thing in the best light and walks all around it with an attentive eye. Finally it will even give its due to its opponent, to blind or shortsighted 'conviction' (as men call it; women call it 'faith') - for the sake of truth.

155

Out of passions grow opinions; mental sloth lets these rigidify into convictions.

However, if one feels he is of a free, restlessly lively mind, he can prevent this rigidity through constant change; and if he is on the whole a veritable thinking snowball, then he will have no opinions at all in his head, but rather only certainties and precisely measured probabilities.

But we who are of a mixed nature, sometimes aglow with fire and sometimes chilled by intellect, we want to kneel down before justice, as the only goddess whom we recognize above us. Usually the fire in us makes us unjust, and in the sense of that goddess, impure; never may we touch her hand in this condition; never will the grave smile of her pleasure lie upon us. We honor her as our life's veiled Isis; ashamed, we offer her our pain as a penance and a sacrifice, when the fire burns us and tries to consume us. It is the intellect that saves us from turning utterly to burnt-out coals; here and there it pulls us away from justice's sacrificial altar, or wraps us in an asbestos cocoon. Redeemed from the fire, we then stride on, driven by the intellect, from opinion to opinion, through the change of sides, as noble traitors to all things that can ever be betrayed - and yet with no feeling of guilt.

156

The wanderer. He who has come only in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel on earth otherwise than as a wanderer - though not as a traveler towards a final goal, for this does not exist. But he does want to observe, and keep his eyes open for everything that actually occurs in the world; therefore he must not attach his heart too firmly to any individual thing; there must be something wandering within him, which takes its joy in change and transitoriness. To be sure, such a man will have bad nights, when he is tired and finds closed the gates to the city that should offer him rest; perhaps in addition, as in the Orient, the desert reaches up to the gate; predatory animals howl now near, now far; a strong wind stirs; robbers lead off his pack-animals. Then for him the frightful night sinks over the desert like a second desert, and his heart becomes tired of wandering. If the morning sun then rises, glowing like a divinity of wrath, and the city opens up, he sees in the faces of its inhabitants perhaps more of desert, dirt, deception, uncertainty, than outside the gates - and the day is almost worse than the night. So it may happen sometimes to the wanderer; but then, as recompense, come the ecstatic mornings of other regions and days. Then nearby in the dawning light he already sees the bands of muses dancing past him in the mist of the mountains. Afterwards, he strolls quietly in the equilibrium of his forenoon soul, under trees from whose tops and leafy corners only good and bright things are thrown down to him, the gifts of all those free spirits who are at home in mountain, wood, and solitude, and who are, like him, in their sometimes merry, sometimes contemplative way, wanderers and philosophers. Born out of the mysteries of the dawn, they ponder how the day can have such a pure, transparent, transfigured and cheerful face between the hours of ten and twelve - they seek the philosophy of the forenoon.

2　Among Friends: An Epilogue

1

Fine, with one another silent,

Finer, with one another laughing -

Under heaven's silky cloth

Leaning over books and moss

With friends lightly, loudly laughing

Each one showing white teeth shining.

If I did well, let us be silent,

If I did badly, let us laugh

And do it bad again by half,

More badly done, more badly laugh,

Until the grave, when down we climb.

Friends! Well! What do you say?

Amen! Until we meet again!

2

Don't excuse it! Don't forgive!

You happy, heart-free people, give

This unreasonable book of mine

Ear and heart and sheltering!

Truly, friends, my own unreason

Did not grow to earn a curse!

What I find, what I am seeking -

Was that ever in a book?

Honor one from the fools' legion!

Learn from out of this fool's book

How reason can be brought - 'to reason'!

So then, friends, what do you say?

Amen! Until we meet again.

3　The Free Spirit

1

Osancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives in! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambolling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life! And only on this now firm and granite basis of ignorance has knowledge hitherto been able to rise up, the will to knowledge on the basis of a far more powerful will, the will to non-knowledge, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its antithesis but - as its refinement! For even if, here as elsewhere, language cannot get over its coarseness and continues to speak of antitheses where there are only degrees and many subtleties of gradation; even if likewise the incarnate tartuffery of morals which is now part of our invincible 'flesh and blood' twists the words in the mouths even of us men of knowledge: here and there we grasp that fact and laugh at how it is precisely the best knowledge that wants most to hold us in this simplified, altogether artificial, fabricated, falsified world, how it is willy-nilly in love with error because, as a living being, it is - in love with life!

2

After so cheerful an exordium a serious word would like to be heard: it addresses itself to the most serious. Take care, philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering 'for the sake of truth'! Even of defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience, it makes you obstinate against rebuffs and red rags, it makes you stupid, brutal and bullish if in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, casting out and even grosser consequences of hostility you finally even have to act as defenders of truth on earth - as if 'truth' were so innocuous and inept a person she stood in need of defending! And precisely by you, you knights of most sorrowful countenance, you idlers and cobweb-spinners of the spirit! After all, you know well enough that it cannot matter in the least whether precisely you are in the right, just as no philosopher hitherto has been in the right, and that a more praiseworthy veracity may lie in every little question-mark placed after your favourite words and favourite theories (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all your solemn gesticulations and smart answers before courts and accusers! Better to step aside! Flee away and conceal yourselves! And have your masks and subtlety, so that you may be misunderstood! Or feared a little! And do not forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work. And have about you people who are like a garden - or like music on the waters in the evening, when the day is already becoming a memory; - choose the good solitude, the free, wanton, easy solitude which gives you too a right to remain in some sense good! How poisonous, how cunning, how bad every protracted war makes one when it cannot be waged with open force! How personal a protracted fear makes one, a protracted keeping watch for enemies, for possible enemies! These outcasts of society, long persecuted and sorely hunted - also the enforced recluses, the Spinozas and Giordano Brunos - in the end always become refined vengeance-seekers and brewers of poison, even if they do so under the most spiritual masquerade and perhaps without being themselves aware of it (just dig up the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!) - not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation, which is in the philosopher an unfailing sign that he has lost his philosophical sense of humour. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his 'sacrifice for truth', brings to light what there has been in him of agitator and actor; and if one has hitherto regarded him only with artistic curiosity, in the case of many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him for once in his degeneration(degenerated into 'martyr', into stageand platform ranter). But if one does harbour such a desire, one has to be clear what it is one will get to see-merely a satyr play, merely a farcical after-piece, merely a continuing proof that the long tragedy has come to an end: supposing that every philosophy was in its inception a long tragedy. -

3

Every superior human being will instinctively aspire after a secret citadel where he is set free from the crowd, the many, the majority, where, as its exception, he may forget the rule 'man' - except in the one case in which, as a man of knowledge in the great and exceptional sense, he will be impelled by an even stronger instinct to make straight for this rule. He who, when trafficking with men, does not occasionally glisten with all the shades of distress, green and grey with disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloom and loneliness, is certainly not a man of an elevated taste; but if he does not voluntarily assume this burden and displeasure, if he continually avoids it and, as aforesaid, remains hidden quietly and proudly away in his citadel, then one thing is sure: he is not made, not predestined for knowledge. For if he were, he would one day have to say to himself: 'The devil can take my good taste! the rule is more interesting than the exception - than I, the exception!' - and would go down, would above all 'go in'. The study of the average human being, protracted, serious, and with much dissembling, self-overcoming, intimacy, bad company - all company is bad company except the company of one's equals -: this constitutes a necessary part of the life story of every philosopher, perhaps the most unpleasant and malodorous part and the part most full of disappointments. If he is lucky, however, as a favourite child of knowledge ought to be, he will encounter means of facilitating and cutting short his task - I mean so-called cynics, that is to say people who recognize the animal, the commonness, the 'rule' in themselves and yet still possess a degree of spirituality and appetite which constrains them to speak of themselves and their kind before witnesses - sometimes they even wallow in books as in their own dung. Cynicism is the only form in which common souls come close to honesty; and the higher man must prick up his ears at every cynicism, whether coarse or refined, and congratulate himself whenever a buffoon without shame or a scientific satyr speaks out in his presence. There are even cases in which fascination mingles with the disgust: namely where, by a caprice of nature, such an indiscreet goat and monkey is touched with genius, as in the case of the Abbé Galiani, the profoundest, most sharp-sighted and perhaps also dirtiest man of his century - he was far more profound than Voltaire and consequently also a good deal more silent. It is more often the case that, as already indicated, a scientific head is set on a monkey's body, a refined exceptional understanding on a common soul - no rare occurrence, for instance, among physicians and moral physiologists. And whenever anyone speaks, without bitterness, rather innocuously, of man as a belly with two needs and a head with one; wherever anyone sees, seeks and wants to see only hunger, sexual desire, and vanity, as though these were the actual and sole motives of human actions; in brief, whenever anyone speaks 'badly' of man - but does not speak ill of him - the lover of knowledge should listen carefully and with diligence, and he should in general lend an ear whenever anyone speaks without indignation. For the indignant man, and whoever is continually tearing and rending himself with his teeth (or, instead of himself, the world, or God, or society) may indeed morally speaking stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more commonplace, less interesting, less instructive case. And no one lies so much as the indignant man.

4

It is hard to be understood: especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotogati among men who think and live otherwise, namely kurmagati or at best 'as the frog goes', mandeikagati - I am certainly doing everything I can to be hard to understand myself! - and one ought to be heartily grateful even for the will to some subtlety in interpretation. As regards one's 'good friends', however, who are always too indolent and think that because they are one's friends they have a right to indolence: one does well to allow them from the first some room and latitude for misunderstanding - thus one can laugh at their expense; - or get rid of them altogether, these good friends and still laugh!

5

That which translates worst from one language into another is the tempo of its style, which has its origin in the character of the race, or, expressed more physiologically, in the average tempo of its 'metabolism'. There are honestly meant translations which, as involuntary vulgarizations of the original, are almost falsifications simply because it was not possible to translate also its brave and happy tempo, which leaps over and puts behind it all that is perilous in things and words. The German is virtually incapable of presto in his language: thus, it may be fairly concluded, also of many of the most daring and delightful nuances of free, free-spirited thought. Just as the buffo and the satyr is strange to him, in his body and in his conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything staid, sluggish, ponderously solemn, all long-winded and boring species of style have been developed in profuse multiplicity among the Germans - pardon me for the fact that even Goethe's prose is, in its blend of elegance and stiffness, no exception: it is a reflection of the 'good old days', to which it belongs, and an expression of the German taste of a time when there still was a 'German taste': it was rococo in moribus et artibus. Lessing constitutes an exception, thanks to his histrionic nature, which was versed in and understood much: he, who was not for nothing the translator of Bayle and liked to flee to the neighbourhood of Diderot and Voltaire and even more to that of the Roman writers of comedy - in tempo too Lessing loved freespiritedness, escape from Germany. But how could the German language, even in the prose of a Lessing, imitate the tempo of Machiavelli, who in his Principe lets us breathe the subtle dry air of Florence and cannot help presenting the most serious affairs in a boisterous allegrissimo: not perhaps without a malicious artist's sense of the contrast he is risking - thoughts protracted, difficult, hard, dangerous and the tempo of the gallop and the most wanton good humour. Who, finally, would venture a German translation of Petronius, who was, to a greater degree than any great musician has hitherto been, a master of presto in invention, ideas, words - what do all the swamps of the sick wicked world, even of the 'antique world', matter when one has, like him, the feet of a wind, the blast and breath, the liberating scorn of a wind that makes everything healthy by making everything run! And as for Aristophanes, that transfiguring, complementary spirit for whose sake one excuses all Greece for having existed, assuming one has grasped in all its profundity what there is to be excused and transfigured here - I know of nothing that has led me to reflect more on Plato's concealment and sphinx nature than that happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was discovered no 'Bible', nothing Egyptian, Pythagorean, Platonic-but Aristophanes. How could even a Plato have endured life - a Greek life which he had denied - without an Aristophanes!

6

Few are made for independence - it is a privilege of the strong. And he who attempts it, having the completest right to it but without being compelled to, thereby proves that he is probably not only strong but also daring to the point of recklessness. He ventures into a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers which life as such already brings with it, not the smallest of which is that no one can behold how and where he goes astray, is cut off from others, and is torn to pieces limb from limb by some cave-minotaur of conscience. If such a one is destroyed, it takes place so far from the understanding of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize - and he can no longer go back! He can no longer go back even to the pity of men!

7

Our supreme insights must - and should! - sound like follies, in certain cases like crimes, when they come impermissibly to the ears of those who are not predisposed and predestined for them. The exoteric and the esoteric as philosophers formerly distinguished them, among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians and Moslems, in short wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights - differ one from another not so much in that the exoteric stands outside and sees, evaluates, measures, judges from the outside, not from the inside: what is more essential is that this class sees things from below - but the esoteric sees them from above! There are heights of the soul seen from which even tragedy ceases to be tragic; and, taking all the woe of the world together, who could venture to assert that the sight of it would have to seduce and compel us to pity and thus to a doubling of that woe? ... What serves the higher type of man as food or refreshment must to a very different and inferior type be almost poison. The virtues of the common man would perhaps indicate vice and weakness in a philosopher; it may be possible that if a lofty type of man degenerated and perished, he would only thus acquire qualities on whose account it would prove necessary in the lower world into which he had sunk henceforth to venerate him as a saint. There are books which possess an opposite value for soul and health depending on whether the lower soul, the lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful avails itself of them: in the former case they are dangerous, disintegrative books, which produces dissolution, in the latter they are herald calls challenging the most courageous to their courage. Books for everybody are always malodorous books: the smell of petty people clings to them. Where the people eats and drinks, even where it worships, there is usually a stink. One should not go into churches if one wants to breathe pure air.

8

In our youthful years we respect and despise without that art of nuance which constitutes the best thing we gain from life, and, as is only fair, we have to pay dearly for having assailed men and things with Yes and No in such a fashion. Everything is so regulated that the worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly misused and made a fool of until a man learns to introduce a little art into his feelings and even to venture trying the artificial: as genuine artists of life do. The anger and reverence characteristic of youth seem to allow themselves no peace until they have falsified men and things in such a way that they can vent themselves on them - youth as such is something that falsifies and deceives. Later, when the youthful soul, tormented by disappointments, finally turns suspiciously on itself, still hot and savage even in its suspicion and pangs of conscience: how angry it is with itself now, how it impatiently rends itself, how it takes revenge for its long self-delusion, as if it had blinded itself deliberately! During this transition one punishes oneself by distrusting one's feelings; one tortures one's enthusiasm with doubts, indeed one feels that even a good conscience is a danger, as though a good conscience were a screening of oneself and a sign that one's subtler honesty had grown weary; and above all one takes sides, takes sides on principle, against 'youth'. - A decade later: and one grasps that all this too - was still youth!

9

Throughout the longest part of human history - it is called prehistoric times - the value or non-value of an action was derived from its consequences: the action itself came as little into consideration as did its origin, but, in much the same way as today in China a distinction or disgrace reflects back from the child onto its parents, so it was the retroactive force of success or failure which led men to think well or ill of an action. Let us call this period the pre-moral period of mankind: the imperative 'know thyself!' was then still unknown. Over the past ten thousand years, on the other hand, one has in a few large tracts of the earth come step by step to the point at which it is no longer the consequences but the origin of the action which determines its value: a great event, taken as a whole, a considerable refinement of vision and standard, the unconscious after-effect of the sovereignty of aristocratic values and of belief in 'origins', the sign of a period which may be called the moral in the narrower sense: the first attempt at self-knowledge has been made. Instead of the consequences, the origin: what an inversion of perspectives! And certainly one achieved only after protracted struggles and vacillations! To be sure, a fateful new superstition, a peculiar narrowness of interpretation therewith became dominant: men interpreted the origin of an action in the most definite sense as origin in an intention; men became unanimous in the belief that the value of an action resided in the value of the intention behind it. The intention as the whole origin and prehistory of an action: it is under the sway of this prejudice that one has morally praised, blamed, judged and philosophized on earth almost to the present day. - But ought we not today to have arrived at the necessity of once again determining upon an inversion and shift of values, thanks to another self-examination and deepening on the part of man - ought we not to stand on the threshold of a period which should be called, negatively at first, the extra-moral: today, when among us immoralists at least the suspicion has arisen that the decisive value of an action resides in precisely that which is not intentional in it, and that all that in it which is intentional, all of it that can be seen, known, 'conscious', still belongs to its surface and skin - which, like every skin, betrays something but conceals still more? In brief, we believe that the intention is only a sign and symptom that needs interpreting, and a sign, moreover, that signifies too many things and which thus taken by itself signifies practically nothing - that morality in the sense in which it has been understood hitherto, that is to say the morality of intentions, has been a prejudice, a precipitancy, perhaps something provisional and precursory, perhaps something of the order of astronomy and alchemy, but in any event something that must be overcome. The overcoming of morality, in a certain sense even the self-overcoming of morality: let this be the name for that protracted secret labour which has been reserved for the subtlest, most honest and also most malicious consciences as living touchstones of the soul.

10

There is nothing for it: the feelings of devotion, self-sacrifice for one's neighbour, the entire morality of self-renunciation must be taken mercilessly to task and brought to court: likewise the aesthetics of 'disinterested contemplation' through which the emasculation of art today tries, seductively enough, to give itself a good conscience. There is much too much sugar and sorcery in those feelings of 'for others', of 'not for me', for one not to have to become doubly distrustful here and to ask: 'are they not perhaps - seductions?' That they give pleasure - to him who has them and to him who enjoys their fruits, also to the mere spectator - does not yet furnish an argument in their favour, but urges us rather to caution. So let us be cautious!

11

Whatever standpoint of philosophy we may adopt today: from every point of view the erroneousness of the world in which we believe we live is the surest and firmest thing we can get our eyes on - we find endless grounds for it which would like to lure us to suppose a deceptive principle in the 'nature of things'. But he who makes our thinking itself, that is to say 'the mind', responsible for the falsity of the world - an honourable way out taken by every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei - : he who takes this world, together with space, time, form, motion, to be the result of a false conclusion: such a one would have good cause, to say the least, to learn finally to mistrust thinking itself: would it not have played on us the biggest hoax ever? and what guarantee would there be that it would not go on doing what it has always done? In all seriousness: the innocence of thinkers has something touching and inspiring of reverence in it which permits them even today to go up to consciousness and ask it to give them honest answers: whether it is 'real', for example, and why it really keeps the external world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the sort. The belief in 'immediate certainties' is a piece of moral naivety which does honour to us philosophers: but - we ought not to be 'merely moral' men! Apart from the moral aspect, that belief is a piece of stupidity which does us little honour! In civil life an ever-ready mistrustfulness may count as a sign of 'bad character' and thus be an imprudent thing to have: here among us, beyond the civil world and its Yes and No - what is there to stop us from being imprudent and saying: the philosopher, as the creature which has hitherto always been most fooled on earth, has by now a right to 'bad character' - he has today the duty to be distrustful, to squint wickedly up out of every abyss of suspicion. - You must forgive me this humorous expression and grimace: for I have long since learned to think differently, to judge differently on the subject of deceiving and being deceived, and I keep in readiness at least a couple of jabs in the ribs for the blind rage with which philosophers resist being deceived. Why not? It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance; it is even the worst-proved assumption that exists. Let us concede at least this much: there would be no life at all if not on the basis of perspective evaluations and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and awkwardness exhibited by some philosophers, one wanted to abolish the 'apparent world' altogether, well, assuming you could do that - at any rate nothing would remain of your 'truth' either! Indeed, what compels us to assume there exists any essential antithesis between 'true' and 'false'? Is it not enough to suppose grades of apparentness and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones of appearance - different valeurs, to speak in the language of painters? Why could the world which is of any concern to us - not be a fiction? And he who then objects: 'but to the fiction there belongs an author?' - could he not be met with the round retort: why? Does this 'belongs' perhaps not also belong to the fiction? Are we not permitted to be a little ironical now about the subject as we are about the predicate and object? Ought the philosopher not to rise above the belief in grammar? All due respect to governesses: but is it not time that philosophy renounced the beliefs of governesses?

12

Oh Voltaire! Oh humanity! Oh imbecility! There is some point to 'truth', to the search for truth; and if a human being goes about it too humanely - 'il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien' - I wager he finds nothing!

13

Granted that nothing is 'given' as real except our world of desires and passions, that we can rise or sink to no other 'reality' than the reality of our drives - for thinking is only the relationship of these drives to one another - : is it not permitted to make the experiment and ask the question whether this which is given does not suffice for an understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or 'material') world? I do not mean as a deception, an 'appearance', an 'idea' (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhaueran sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves - as a more primitive form of the world of emotions in which everything still lies locked in mighty unity and then branches out and develops in the organic process (also, as is only fair, is made weaker and more sensitive), as a kind of instinctual life in which all organic functions, together with self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, metabolism, are still synthetically bound together - as an antecedent form of life? - In the end, it is not merely permitted to make this experiment: it is commanded by the conscience of method. Not to assume several kinds of causality so long as the experiment of getting along with one has not been taken to its ultimate limits (- to the point of nonsense, if I may say so): that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays - it follows 'from its definition', as a mathematician would say. In the end, the question is whether we really recognize will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of will: if we do so - and fundamentally belief in this is precisely our belief in causality itself - then we have to make the experiment of positing causality of will hypothetically as the only one. 'Will' can of course operate only on 'will' - and not on 'matter' (not on 'nerves', for example -): enough, one must venture the hypothesis that wherever 'effects' are recognized, will is operating upon will - and that all mechanical occurrences, in so far as a force is active in them, are force of will, effects of will. - Granted finally that one succeeded in explaining our entire instinctual life as the development and ramification of one basic form of will - as will to power, as is my theory -; granted that one could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and could also find in it the solution to the problem of procreation and nourishment - they are one problem - one would have acquired the right to define all efficient force unequivocally as: will to power. The world seen from within, the world described and defined according to its 'intelligible character' - it would be 'will to power' and nothing else.

14

'What? Does that, to speak vulgarly, not mean: God is refuted but the devil is not -?' On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil compels you to speak vulgarly! -

15

As happened lately, in all the clarity of modern times, with the French Revolution, that gruesome and, closely considered, superfluous farce, into which, however, noble and enthusiastic spectators all over Europe interpeted from a distance their own indignations and raptures so long and so passionately that the text disappeared beneath the interpretation: so a noble posterity could once again misunderstand the entire past and only thus perhaps make the sight of it endurable. - Or rather: has this not already happened? have we ourselves not been this 'noble posterity'? And, in so far as we comprehend this, is it not at this moment - done with?

16

No one is likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes happy or makes virtuous: excepting perhaps the dear 'idealists', who rapturize over the good, the true and the beautiful and let all kinds of colourful, clumsy and good-natured desiderata swim about together in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. But even thoughtful spirits like to forget that making unhappy and making evil are just as little counter-arguments. Something might be true although at the same time harmful and dangerous in the highest degree; indeed, it could pertain to the fundamental nature of existence that a complete knowledge of it would destroy one - so that the strength of a spirit could be measured by how much 'truth' it could take, more clearly, to what degree it needed it attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted, and falsified. But there can be no doubt that for the discovery of certain parts of truth the wicked and unhappy are in a more favourable position and are more likely to succeed; not to speak of the wicked who are happy - a species about whom the moralists are silent. Perhaps severity and cunning provide more favourable conditions for the formation of the strong, independent spirit and philosopher than does that gentle, sweet, yielding good-naturedness and art of taking things lightly which is prized in a scholar and rightly prized. Supposing in advance that the concept 'philosopher' is not limited to the philosopher who writes books - or, worse, writes books of his philosophy! - A final trait in the image of the free-spirited philosopher is provided by Stendhal, and in view of what German taste is I do not want to fail to emphasize it - for it goes against German taste. 'Pour être bon philosophe', said this last great psychologist, 'il faut être sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractère requis pour faire des découvertes en philosophic, c'est-à-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est.'

17

Everything profound loves the mask; the profoundest things of all hate even image and parable. Should not nothing less than the opposite be the proper disguise under which the shame of a god goes abroad? A questionable question: it would be strange if some mystic or other had not already ventured to meditate some such thing. There are occurrences of so delicate a description that one does well to bury them and make them unrecognizable with a piece of coarseness; there are acts of love and extravagant magnanimity after which nothing is more advisable than to take a stick and give the eyewitness a thrashing and so confuse his memory. Some know how to confuse and mistreat their own memory, so as to take revenge at least on this sole confidant - shame is inventive. It is not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask - there is so much goodness in cunning. I could believe that a man who had something fragile and valuable to conceal might roll through life thick and round as an old, green, thick-hooped wine barrel: the refinement of his shame would have it so. A man whose shame has depth encounters his destinies and delicate decisions too on paths which very few ever reach and of whose existence his intimates and neighbours may not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, as is the fact that he has regained his sureness of life. Such a hidden man, who instinctively uses speech for silence and concealment and is inexhaustible in evading communication, wants a mask of him to roam the heads and hearts of his friends in his stead, and he makes sure that it does so; and supposing he does not want it, he will one day come to see that a mask is there in spite of that - and that that is a good thing. Every profound spirit needs a mask: more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing, thanks to the constantly false, that is to say shallow interpretation of every word he speaks, every step he takes, every sign of life he gives.

18

One must test oneself to see whether one is destined for independence and command; and one must do so at the proper time. One should not avoid one's tests, although they are perhaps the most dangerous game one could play and are in the end tests which are taken before ourselves and before no other judge. Not to cleave to another person, though he be the one you love most - every person is a prison, also a nook and corner. Not to cleave to a fatherland, though it be the most suffering and in need of help - it is already easier to sever your heart from a victorious fatherland. Not to cleave to a feeling of pity, though it be for higher men into whose rare torment and helplessness chance allowed us to look. Not to cleave to a science, though it lures one with the most precious discoveries seemingly reserved precisely for us. Not to cleave to one's own detachment, to that voluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird which flies higher and higher so as to see more and more beneath it - the danger which threatens the flier. Not to cleave to our own virtues and become as a whole the victim of some part of us, of our 'hospitality' for example, which is the danger of dangers for rich and noble souls who expend themselves prodigally, almost indifferently, and take the virtue of liberality to the point where it becomes a vice. One must know how to conserve oneself: the sternest test of independence.

19

A new species of philosopher is appearing: I venture to baptize these philosophers with a name not without danger in it. As I divine them, as they let themselves be divined - for it pertains to their nature to want to remain a riddle in some respects - these philosophers of the future might rightly, but perhaps also wrongly, be described as attempters. This name itself is in the end only an attempt and, if you will, a temptation.

20

Are they new friends of 'truth', these coming philosophers? In all probability: for all philosophers have hitherto loved their truths. But certainly they will not be dogmatists. It must offend their pride, and also their taste, if their truth is supposed to be a truth for everyman, which has hitherto been the secret desire and hidden sense of all dogmatic endeavours. 'My judgement is my judgement: another cannot easily acquire a right to it' - such a philosopher of the future may perhaps say. One has to get rid of the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with many. 'Good' is no longer good when your neighbour takes it into his mouth. And how could there exist a 'common good'! The expression is a self-contradiction: what can be common has ever but little value. In the end it must be as it is and has always been: great things are for the great, abysses for the profound, shudders and delicacies for the refined, and, in sum, all rare things for the rare.

21

After all this do I still need to say that they too will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future - just as surely as they will not be merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater and thoroughly different that does not want to be misunderstood or taken for what it is not. But in saying this I feel I have a duty, almost as much towards them as towards us, their heralds and precursors, us free spirits! - to blow away from all of us an ancient and stupid prejudice and misunderstanding which has all too long obscured the concept 'free spirit' like a fog. In all the countries of Europe and likewise in America there exists at present something that misuses this name, a very narrow, enclosed, chained-up species of spirits who desire practically the opposite of that which informs our aims and instincts - not to mention the fact that in regard to those new philosophers appearing they must certainly be closed windows and bolted doors. They belong, in short and regrettably, among the levellers, these falsely named 'free spirits' - eloquent and tirelessly scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its 'modern ideas', men without solitude one and all, without their own solitude, good clumsy fellows who, while they cannot be denied courage and moral respectability, are unfree and ludicrously superficial, above all in their fundamental inclination to see in the forms of existing society the cause of practically all human failure and misery: which is to stand the truth happily on its head! What with all their might they would like to strive after is the universal green pasture happiness of the herd, with security, safety, comfort and an easier life for all; their two most oft-recited doctrines and ditties are 'equality of rights' and 'sympathy for all that suffers' - and suffering itself they take for something that has to be abolished. We, who are the opposite of this, and have opened our eyes and our conscience to the question where and how the plant 'man' has hitherto grown up most vigorously, we think that this has always happened under the opposite conditions, that the perilousness of his situation had first to become tremendous, his powers of invention and dissimulation (his 'spirit' - ) had, under protracted pressure and constraint, to evolve into subtlety and daring, his will to life had to be intensified into unconditional will to power - we think that severity, force, slavery, peril in the street and in the heart, concealment, stoicism, the art of experiment and devilry of every kind, that everything evil, dreadful, tyrannical, beast of prey and serpent in man serves to enhance the species 'man' just as much as does its opposite - we do not say enough when we say even that much, and at any rate we are, in what we say and do not say on this point, at the other end from all modern ideology and herd desiderata: at its antipodes perhaps? Is it any wonder we 'free spirits' are not precisely the most communicative of spirits? that we do not want to betray in every respect from what a spirit can free itself and to what it is then perhaps driven? And as for the dangerous formula 'beyond good and evil' with which we at any rate guard against being taken for what we are not: we are something different from 'libres-penseurs', 'liberi pensatori', 'Freidenker', or whatever else all these worthy advocates of 'modern ideas' like to call themselves. At home in many countries of the spirit, or at least having been guests there; having again and again eluded the agreeable musty nooks and corners into which predilection and prejudice, youth, origin, the accidents of people and books, or even weariness from wandering seemed to have consigned us; full of malice towards the lures of dependence which reside in honours, or money, or offices, or raptures of the senses; grateful even to distress and changeful illness because it has always liberated us from some rule and its 'prejudice', grateful to the god, devil, sheep and worm in us, curious to the point of vice, investigators to the point of cruelty, with rash fingers for the ungraspable, with teeth and stomach for the most indigestible, ready for every task that demands acuteness and sharp senses, ready for every venture thanks to a superfluity of 'free will', with fore- and back-souls into whose ultimate intentions no one can easily see, with fore- and backgrounds to whose end no foot may go, hidden under mantles of light, conquerors even though we look like heirs and prodigals, collectors and arrangers from morn till night, misers of our riches and our full-crammed cupboards, thrifty in learning and forgetting, inventive in schemata, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night owls of labour even in broad daylight; yes, even scarecrows when we need to be - and today we need to be: in so far, that is, as we are born, sworn, jealous friends of solitude, of our own deepest, most midnight, most midday solitude - such a type of man are we, we free spirits! and perhaps you too are something of the same type, you coming men? you new philosophers?

4　From High Mountains: Epode

Oh life's midday! Oh festival! Oh garden of summer! I wait in restless ecstasy, I stand and watch and wait - where are you, friends? It is you I await, in readiness day and night. Come now! It is time you were here!

Was it not for you the glacier today exchanged its grey for roses? The brook seeks you; and wind and clouds press higher in the blue, longingly they crowd aloft to look for you.

For you have I prepared my table in the highest height - who lives so near the stars as I, or who so near the depths of the abyss? My empire - has an empire ever reached so far? And my honey - who has tasted the sweetness of it?

- And there you are, friends! - But, alas, am I not he you came to visit? You hesitate, you stare - no, be angry, rather! Is it no longer - I? Are hand, step, face transformed? And what I am, to you friends - I am not?

Am I another? A stranger to myself? Sprung from myself? A wrestler who subdued himself too often? Turned his own strength against himself too often, checked and wounded by his own victory?

Did I seek where the wind bites keenest, learn to live where no one lives, in the desert where only the polar bear lives, unlearn to pray and curse, unlearn man and god, become a ghost flitting across the glaciers?

- Old friends! how pale you look, how full of love and terror! No - be gone! Be not angry! Here - you could not be at home: here in this far domain of ice and rocks - here you must be a huntsman, and like the Alpine goat.

A wicked huntsman is what I have become! - See how bent my bow! He who drew that bow, surely he was the mightiest of men - : but the arrow, alas - ah, no arrow is dangerous as that arrow is dangerous - away! be gone! For your own preservation! ...

You turn away? - O heart, you have borne up well, your hopes stayed strong: now keep your door open to new friends! Let the old go! Let memories go! If once you were young, now - you are younger!

What once united us, the bond of one hope - who still can read the signs love once inscribed therein, now faint and faded? It is like a parchment - discoloured, scorched - from which the hand shrinks back.

No longer friends, but - what shall I call them? - they are the ghosts of friends which at my heart and window knock at night, which gaze on me and say: 'were we once friends?' - oh faded word, once fragrant as the rose!

Oh longing of youth, which did not know itself! Those I longed for, those I deemed changed into kin of mine - that they have aged is what has banished them: only he who changes remains akin to me.

Oh life's midday! Oh second youth! Oh garden of summer! I wait in restless ecstasy, I stand and watch and wait - it is friends I await, in readiness day and night, new friends. Come now! It is time you were here!

This song is done - desire's sweet cry died on the lips: a sorcerer did it, the timely friend, the midday friend - no! ask not who he is - at midday it happened, at midday one became two ...

Now, sure of victory together, we celebrate the feast of feasts: friend Zarathrustra has come, the guest of guests! Now the world is laughing, the dread curtain is rent, the wedding day has come for light and darkness...