260.
THE AMULET OF DEPENDENT MEN.—He who is unavoidably dependent upon some master ought to possess something by which he can inspire his master with fear, and keep him in check: integrity, for example, or probity, or an evil tongue.
261.
WHY SO SUBLIME!—Oh, I know them well this breed of animals! Certainly it pleases them better to walk on two legs “like a god”—but it pleases me better when they fall back on their four feet. This is incomparably more natural for them!
262.
THE DEMON OF POWER.—Neither necessity nor desire, but the love of power, is the demon of mankind. You may give men everything possible—health, food, shelter, enjoyment—but they are and remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits; and must be satisfied. Let everything else be taken away from men, and let this demon be satisfied, and then they will nearly be happy—as happy as men and demons can be; but why do I repeat this? Luther has already said it, and better than I have done, in the verses:
263.
CONTRADICTION INCARNATE AND ANIMATED.—There is a physiological contradiction in what is called genius: genius possesses on the one hand a great deal of savage disorder and involuntary movement, and on the other hand a great deal of superior activity in this movement. Joined to this a genius possesses a mirror which reflects the two movements beside one another, and within one another, but often opposed to one another. Genius in consequence of this sight is often unhappy, and if it feels its greatest happiness in creating, it is because it forgets that precisely then, with the highest determinate activity, it does something fantastic and irrational (such is all art) and cannot help doing it.
264.
DECEIVING ONE’S SELF.—Envious men with a discriminating intuition endeavour not to become too closely acquainted with their rivals in order that they may feel themselves superior to them.
265.
THERE IS A TIME FOR THE THEATRE.—When the imagination of a people begins to diminish, there arises the desire to have its legends represented on the stage: it then tolerates the coarse substitutes for imagination. In the age of the epic rhapsodist, however, the theatre itself, and the actor dressed up as a hero, form an obstacle in the path of the imagination instead of acting as wings for it—too near, too definite, too heavy, and with too little of dreamland and the flights of birds about them.
266.
WITHOUT CHARM.—He lacks charm and knows it. Ah, how skilful he is in masking this defect! He does it by a strict virtue, gloomy looks, and acquired distrust of all men, and of existence itself; by coarse jests, by contempt for a more refined manner of living, by pathos and pretensions, and by a cynical philosophy—yea, he has even developed into a character through the continual knowledge of his deficiency.
267.
WHY SO PROUD?—A noble character is distinguished from a vulgar one by the fact that the latter has not at ready command a certain number of habits and points of view like the former: fate willed that they should not be his either by inheritance or by education.
268.
THE ORATOR’S SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.—How difficult it was in Athens to speak in such a way as to win over the hearers to one’s cause without repelling them at the same time by the form in which one’s speech was cast, or withdrawing their attention from the cause itself by this form! How difficult it still is to write thus in France!
269.
SICK PEOPLE AND ART.—For all kinds of sadness and misery of soul we should first of all try a change of diet and severe manual labour; but in such cases men are in the habit of having recourse to mental intoxicants, to art for example—which is both to their own detriment and that of art! Can you not see that when you call for art as sick people you make the artists themselves sick?
270.
APPARENT TOLERATION.—Those are good, benevolent, and rational words on and in favour of science, but, alas! I see behind these words your toleration of science. In a corner of your inmost mind you think, in spite of all you say, that it is not necessary for you, that it shows magnanimity on your part to admit and even to advocate it, more especially as science on its part does not exhibit this magnanimity in regard to your opinion! Do you know that you have no right whatever to exercise this toleration? that this condescension of yours is an even coarser disparagement of science than any of that open scorn which a presumptuous priest or artist might allow himself to indulge in towards science? What is lacking in you is a strong sense for everything that is true and actual, you do not feel grieved and worried to find that science is in contradiction to your own sentiments, you are unacquainted with that intense desire for knowledge ruling over you like a law, you do not feel a duty in the need of being present with your own eyes wherever knowledge exists, and to let nothing that is “known” escape you. You do not know that which you are treating with such toleration! and it is only because you do not know it that you can succeed in adopting such a gracious attitude towards it. You, forsooth, would look upon science with hatred and fanaticism if it for once cast its shining and illuminating glance upon you! What does it matter to us, then, if you do exhibit toleration—and towards a phantom! and not even towards us!—and what do we matter!
271.
FESTIVE MOODS.—It is exactly those men who aspire most ardently towards power who feel it indescribably agreeable to be overpowered! to sink suddenly and deeply into a feeling as into a whirlpool! To suffer the reins to be snatched out of their hand, and to watch a movement which takes them they know not where! Whatever or whoever may be the person or thing that renders us this service, it is nevertheless a great service: we are so happy and breathless, and feel around us an exceptional silence, as if we were in the most central bowels of the earth. To be for once entirely powerless! the plaything of the elementary forces of nature! There is a restfulness in this happiness, a casting away of the great burden, a descent without fatigue, as if one had been given up to the blind force of gravity.
This is the dream of the mountain climber, who, although he sees his goal far above him, nevertheless falls asleep on the way from utter exhaustion, and dreams of the happiness of the contrast—this effortless rolling down hill. I describe happiness as I imagine it to be in our present–day society, the badgered, ambitious society of Europe and America. Now and then they wish to fall back into impotence—this enjoyment is offered them by wars, arts, religions, and geniuses. When a man has temporarily abandoned himself to a momentary impression which devours and crushes everything—and this is the modern festive mood—he afterwards becomes freer, colder, more refreshed, and more strict, and again strives tirelessly after the contrary of all this: power.
272.
THE PURIFICATION OF RACES.—It is probable that there are no pure races, but only races which have become purified, and even these are extremely rare.[8] We more often meet with crossed races, among whom, together with the defects in the harmony of the bodily forms (for example when the eyes do not accord with the mouth) we necessarily always find defects of harmony in habits and appreciations. (Livingstone heard some one say, “God created white and black men, but the devil created the half–castes.”)
Crossed races are always at the same time crossed cultures and crossed moralities: they are, as a rule, more evil, cruel, and restless. Purity is the final result of innumerable adjustments, absorptions, and eliminations; and progress towards purity in a race is shown by the fact that the latent strength in the race is more and more restricted to a few special functions, whilst it formerly had to carry out too many and often contradictory things. Such a restriction will always have the appearance of an impoverishment, and must be judged with prudence and moderation. In the long run, however, when the process of purification has come to a successful termination, all those forces which were formerly wasted in the struggle between the disharmonious qualities are at the disposal of the organism as a whole, and this is why purified races have always become stronger and more beautiful.—The Greeks may serve us as a model of a purified race and culture!—and it is to be hoped that some day a pure European race and culture may arise.
7
A hit at the German Empire, which Nietzsche always despised, since it led to the utter extinction of the old German spirit. “Kingdom” (in “Kingdom of God”) and “Empire” are both represented by the one German word Reich.—TR.
8
This sentence is a complete refutation of a book which caused so much stir in Germany about a decade ago, and in England quite recently, Chamberlain’s Nineteenth Century, in which a purely imaginary Teutonic race is held up as the Chosen People of the world. Nietzsche says elsewhere, “Peoples and Countries,” aphorism 21, “Associate with no man who takes part in the mendacious race–swindle.”—TR.