d aristocratic spirit woman strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk woman as clerk s is inscribed on the portal of the modern society which is in the course of formation while she thus appropriates new rights aspires to be master and inscribes progress of woman on her flags and banners the very opposite realizes itself with terrible obviousness woman retrogrades since the french revolution the influence of woman in europe has declined in proportion as she's increased her rights and claims and the emancipation of woman insofar as it is desired and demanded by women themselves and not only by masculine shallow pates this proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increasing weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts there is stupidity in this movement and almost masculine stupidity of which a well-reared woman who is always a sensible woman might be heartily ashamed to lose the intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons to let herself go before man perhaps even to the book where formerly she kept herself in control and in refined artful humility to neutralize with her virtuous audacity man's faith in a veiled fundamentally different ideal in woman something eternally necessarily feminine to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved cared for protected and indulged like some delicate strangely wild and often pleasant domestic animal the clumsy and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still entails as though slavery were a counter-argument and not rather a condition of every higher culture of every elevation of culture what does all this be token if not a disintegration of womanly instincts a defeminizing certainly there are enough of idiotic friends and corruptors of woman among the learned asses of the masculine sex who advise woman to defeminize herself in this manner and imitate all the stupidities from which mad in europe european madliness suffers who would like to lower woman to general culture indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics here and there they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers as though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and godless man almost everywhere her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music our latest german music and she's daily being made more hysterical and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function than of bearing robust children they wish to cultivate her in general still more and intend as they say to make the weaker sex strong by culture as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that the cultivating of mankind at his weakening that is to say the weakening dissipating and languishing of his force of will have always kept pace with one another and that the most powerful and influential women in the world and lastly the mother of napoleon had just to thank their force of will and not their school masters for their power and ascendancy over men that which inspires respect in woman and often enough fear also is her nature which is more natural than that of man her genuine carnivore like cunning flexibility her tiger claws beneath the glove her naivete and egoism her untrainableness and innate wildness the incomprehensibles extent and deviation of her desires and virtues that which in spite of fear excites one sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat woman is that she seems more afflicted more vulnerable more necessitous of love and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman always with one foot already in tragedy which rends while it delights what and all that is now to be at an end and the disenchantment of woman is in progress the tediousness of woman is slowly evolving oh europe europe we know the hornet animal which is always most attracted to thee from which danger is ever again threatening thee thy old fable might once more become history an immense stupidity might once again over master thee and carry thee away and no god concealed beneath it no only an idea a modern idea end of chapter seven this is a livery vox recording all livery vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit livery vox.org recorded by Gesine beyond good and evil by Friedrich Nietzsche translated by Helen Zimmern chapter 8 peoples and countries 240 i heard once again for the first time Richard Wagner's overture to the master singer it is a piece of magnificent gorgeous heavy latter-day art which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music as still living in order that it may be understood it is an honor to germans that such a pride did not miscalculate what flavors and forces what seasons and climbs do we not find mingled in it it impresses us at one time as ancient at another time as foreign bitter and too modern it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional it is not infrequently roguish still often a rough and coarse it has fire and courage and at the same time the loose done-colored skin of fruits which ripen too late it flows broad and full and suddenly there is a moment of inexplicable hesitation like a gap that opens between cause and effect an oppression that makes us dream almost a nightmare but already it broadens and widens anew the old stream of delight the most manifold delight of old and new happiness including especially the joy of the artist in himself which he refuses to conceal his astonished happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedience here employed the new newly acquired imperfectly tested expedience of art which he apparently betrays to us all in all however no beauty no south nothing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky nothing of grace no dance hardly a will to logic a certain clumsiness even which is also emphasized as though the artist wishes to say to us it is part of my intention a cumbersome drapery something arbitrarily barbaric and ceremonious a flaring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms something german in the best and worst sense of the word something in the german style manifold formless and inexhaustible a certain german potency and superplenitude of soul which is not afraid to hide itself under the rafin mons of decadence which perhaps feels itself more at ease there a real genuine token of the german soul which is at the same time young and aged too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity this kind of music expresses best what i think of the germans they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow they have as yet no today 241 we good europeans we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views i have just given an example of it hours of national excitement of patriotic anguish and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment dallas spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to ours and plays itself out in ours in a considerable time some in half a year others in half a lifetime according to the speed and strength with which they digest and change their material indeed i could think of sluggish hesitating races which even an hour rapidly moving europe would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil attachment and return once more to reason that is to say to good europeanism and while digressing on this possibility i happen to become an ear witness of a conversation between two old patriots they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder he has as much and knows as much philosophy as a peasant or a core student said the one he is still innocent but what does that matter nowadays it is the age of the masses they lie on their belly before everything that is massive and so also in politics the statesman who rears up for them a new tower of babel someone's drossity of empire and power they call great what does it matter that we more prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or affair supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the position of being obliged henceforth to practice high politics for which they were by nature badly endowed and prepared so that they would have to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues out of love to a new and doubtful mediocrity supposing a statesman were to condemn his people generally to practice politics when they have hitherto had something better to do and think about and when in the depths of their souls they have been unable to free themselves from a prudent lozing of the restlessness emptiness and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics practicing nations supposing such a statesman were to stimulate the slumbering passions and evidities of his people were to make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness and offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency were to depreciate their most radical proclivities subvert their consciences make their minds narrow and their tastes national what a statesman who should do all this which his people would have to do penance for throughout their whole future if they had a future such a statesman would be great would he undoubtedly replied the other old patriot vehemently otherwise he could not have done it it was mad perhaps to wish such a thing but perhaps everything great has been just as mad as its commencement misuse of words cried his interlocutor contradictoryly strong strong strong and mad not great the old men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their truths in each other's faces but I in my happiness and a partners considered how soon a stronger one may become master of the strong and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual superficializing of a nation namely in the deepening of another 242 whether we call it civilization or humanizing or progress which now distinguishes the european whether we call it simply without praise or blame by the political formula the democratic movement in europe behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by such formulas an immense physiological process goes on which is ever extending the process of the assimilation of europeans the increasing detachment from the conditions under which climatically and hereditorily united races originate their increasing independence of every definite milieu that for centuries would feign inscribe itself with equal demands on soul and body that is to say the slow emergence of an essentially supernational and nomadic species of man who possesses physiologically speaking a maximum of the art and power of adaptation as his typical distinction this process of the evolving european which can be retarded in its tempo by great relapses but will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in vehemence and depth the still raging storm and stress of national sentiment pertains to it and also the anarchism which is appearing at present this process will probably arrive at results on which it's naive propagators and panagirists the possibles of modern ideas would least care to reckon the same new conditions under which on an average a leveling and mediocrising of man will take place a useful industrious variously serviceable and clever gregarious man are on the highest degree suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and attractive qualities for while the capacity for adaptation which is every day changing conditions and begins a new work with every generation almost with every decade makes the powerfulness of the type impossible while the collective impression of such future europeans will probably be that of numerous talkative weak-willed and very handy workmen who require a master a commander as they require their daily bread while therefore the democratizing of europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense of the term this strong man will necessarily in individual and exceptional cases become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling owing to the immense variety of practice art and disguise i meant to say that the democratizing of europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of tyrants taking the word in all its meanings even in its most spiritual sense 243 i hear with pleasure that our son is moving rapidly towards the constellation hercules and i hope that the men on this earth will do like the sun and we foremost we good europeans 244 there was a time when it was customary to call germans deep by way of distinction but now that the most successful type of new germanism is covetous of quite other honors and perhaps mrs smartness in all that has depth it is almost opportune and patriotic to doubt whether we did not formally deceive ourselves without commendation in short whether german depth is not at bottom something different and worse and something from which thank god we're on the point of successfully reading ourselves let us try then to relearn with regard to german depth the only thing necessary for the purpose is a little vivisection of the german soul the german soul is above all manifold varied in its source aggregated and superimposed rather than actually built this is owing to its origin a german who would embolden himself to assert two souls alas dwell in my breast would make a bad guess at the truth or more correctly he would come far short of the truth about the number of souls as a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races perhaps even with the preponderance of the pre-arean element as the people of the center in every sense of the term the germans are more intangible more ample more contradictory more unknown more incalculable more surprising and even more terrifying than other people are to themselves they escape definition and are thereby alone the despair of the french it is characteristic of the germans that the question what is german never dies out among them kotsubu certainly knew his germans well enough we are known they cried duplently to him but zand also thought he knew them jon paul knew what he was doing when he declared himself incensed at fichter's lying but patriotic flatteries and exaggerations but it is probable that gutter thought differently about germans from jon paul even though he acknowledged him to be right with regard to fichter it is a question what gutter really thought about the germans but about many things around him he never spoke explicitly and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence probably he had good reason for it it is certain that it was not the wars of independence that made him look up more joyfully any more than it was the french revolution the event on account of which he reconstructed his fast and indeed the whole problem of man was the appearance of napoleon there are words of gutter in which he condemns with impatient severity as from a foreign land that which germans take pride in he wants to find the famous german turn of mind as indulgence towards its own and others weaknesses was he wrong it is characteristic of germans that bonus seldom entirely wrong about them the german soul has passages and galleries in it there are caves hiding places and dungeons therein its disorder has much of the charm of the mysterious the german is well acquainted with the bypass to chaos and as everything loves its symbol so the german loves the clouds and all that is obscure evolving crepuscular damp and shrouded it seems to him that everything uncertain undeveloped self-displacing and growing is deep the german himself does not exist he is becoming he is developing himself development is therefore the essentially german discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas a ruling idea which together with german beer and german music is laboring to germanize all europe foreigners are astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of the german soul propounds to them riddles which he systematized and richard wagner has in the end set music good natured and good natured and spiteful such a juxtaposition preposterous in the case of every other people is unfortunately only too often justified in germany one has only to live for a while among swavians to know this the clumsiness of the german scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical rope dancing and nimble boldness of which all the gods have learned to be afraid if anyone wishes to see the german soul demonstrated ad oculos let him only look at german taste at german arts and manners what bulrush indifference to taste how the noblest and the commonest stand there and juxtaposition how disorderly and how rich is the hill constitution of this soul the german drags at his soul he drags at everything he experiences he digests his events badly he never gets done with them and german depths is often only a difficult hesitating digestion and just as all chronic in bullets all the skeptics like what is convenient so the german loves frankness and honesty it is so convenient to be frank and honest this confidingness this complacence this showing the cards of german honesty is perhaps the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the german is up to nowadays it is his proper mephistophelian art with this he can still achieve much the german lets himself go and thereby gazes with faithful blue empty german eyes and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing gown i meant to say that let german depths be what it will among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it we shall do well to continue henceforth to honor its appearance and good name at not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people for depths for prussian smartness and berlin wit and sand it is wise for a people to pose and let itself be regarded as profound clumsy good-natured honest and foolish it might even be profound to do so finally we should do honor to our name we are not called the tutsche folk deceptive people for nothing 245 the good old time is past it sang itself out in mutsart how happy are we that his rococo still speaks to us that his good company his tender enthusiasm his childish delight in the chinese and its flourishes his courtesy of heart his longing for the elegant the amorous the tripping the tearful and his belief in the south can still appeal to something left in us ah some time or other it will be over with it but who can doubt that it will be over still sooner with the intelligence and taste for beethoven for he was only the last echo of a break and transition in style and not like mutsart the last echo of a great european taste which had existed for centuries beethoven is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that is constantly breaking down and a future over young soul that is always coming there was spread over his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal extravagant hope the same light in which europe was based when it dreamed with rousseau when it danced around the tree of liberty of the revolution and finally almost fell down in adoration before napoleon but how rapidly does this very sentiment now pale how difficult nowadays is even the apprehension of this sentiment how strangely does the language of rousseau schiller shelly and byron sound to our ear in whom collectively the same fate of europe was able to speak which knew how to sing in beethoven whatever german music came afterwards belongs to romanticism that is to say to a movement which historically considered was still shorter more fleeting and more superficial than the great interlude the transition of europe from rousseau to napoleon and to the rise of democracy Weber but what do we care nowadays of freischütz and oberon or margenus hans heiling and vampire or even vagnes tanhäuser that is extinct or they're not yet forgotten music this whole music of romanticism besides was not noble enough was not musical enough to maintain its position anywhere but in the theater and before the masses from the beginning it was second rate music which was little thought of by genuine musicians it was different with phelix mendelssohn that healthy and master who on account of his lighter purer happier so quickly acquired admiration and was equally quickly forgotten as the beautiful episode of german music but with regard to robert schumann who took things seriously and has been taken seriously from the first he was the last that founded a school do we not now regard it as a satisfaction a relief a deliverance that this very romanticism of schumann's has been surmounted schumann fleeing into the saxon switzerland of his so with a half verte like half zompaul like nature assuredly not like beethoven assuredly not like baron his manfred music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice schumann with his taste which was fundamentally a petty taste that is to say a dangerous propensity doubly dangerous among germans for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings going constantly apart timidly withdrawing and retiring a noble weakling who reveled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow from the beginning a sort of girl and no lee mitangere this schumann was already merely a german event in music that no longer a european event as beethoven had been as in a still greater degree mortzart had been with schumann german music was threatened with its greatest danger that of losing the voice for the soul of europe and sinking into a merely national affair 246 water torture are books written in german to a reader who has a third ear how indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance which germans call a book and even the german who reads books how lazily how reluctantly how badly he reads how many germans know and consider it obligatory to know that there is art in every good sentence art which must be defined if the sentence is to be understood if there is a misunderstanding about its tempo for instance the sentence itself is misunderstood that one must not be doubtful about the rhythm determining syllables that one should feel the breaking of the two rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm that one should then define and patient ear to every staccato and every rubato that one should divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs and how delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of their arrangement who among book-reading germans is complacent enough to recognize such duties and requirements and to listen to so much art and intention in language after all one just has no ear for it and so the most marked contrasts of style are not heard and the most delicate artistry as it were squandered on the deaf these were my thoughts when i noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in the art of prose writing have been confounded one whose words drop down hesitatingly and coldly as from the roof of a damp cave he counts on their dull sound and echo and another who manipulates his language like a flexible sword and from his arm down to his toes feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering over sharp blade which wishes to bite hiss and cut 247 how little the german style has to deal with harmony and with the ear is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians themselves write badly the german does not read aloud he does not read for the ear but only with his eyes he has put his ears away in the draw for the time in antiquity when the man read which was seldom enough he read something to himself and in a loud voice they were surprised when anyone read silently and sought secretly the reason of it in a loud voice that is to say with other swellings inflections and variations of key and changes of tempo in which the ancient public world took delight the laws of the written style were then the same as those of the spoken style and these laws depended partly on the surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx partly on the strength endurance and power of the ancient lungs in the ancient sense a period is above all a physiological whole in as much as it is comprised in one breath such periods as occur and demostinous incisor swelling twice and sinking twice and all in one breath were pleasures to the men of antiquity who knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the virtue therein the rareness and the difficulty in the deliverance of such a period we have really no right in the big period we modern men who are short of breath in every sense these ancients indeed were all of them dilettante in speaking consequently connoisseurs consequently critics they thus brought their raters to the highest pitch in the same manner as in the last century when all italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing the virtuoso ship of song and with it also the art of melody reached its elevation in germany however until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings there was properly speaking only one kind of public and approximately artistical discourse that delivered from the pulpit the preacher was the only one in germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word in what manner a sentence strikes springs rushes flows and comes to a close he alone had a conscience in his ears often enough about conscience for reasons are not lacking why proficiency and oratory should be especially seldom attained by a german or almost always too late the masterpiece of german prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its greatest preacher the bible has hitherto been the best german book compared with luta's bible almost everything else is merely literature something which has not grown in germany and therefore has not taken and does not take root in german hearts as the bible has done 248 there are two kinds of geniuses one which above all engenders and seeks to engender and another which willingly lets itself be fructified and brings forth and similarly among the gifted nations there are those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved and the secret task of forming maturing and perfecting the greeks for instance were a nation of this kind and so are the french and others which have to fructify and become the course of new modes of life like the jews the romans and in all modesty be it asked like the germans nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly forced out of themselves amorous and longing for foreign races such as let themselves be fructified and with all imperious like everything conscious of being full of generative force and consequently empowered by the grace of god these two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman but they also misunderstand each other like man and woman 249 every nation has its own tartuferie and calls that its virtue one does not know cannot know the best that is in one 250 what europe owes to the jews many things good and bad and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst the grand style in morality the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands of infinite significations the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness and consequently just the most attractive ensnaring and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life in the afternoon of which the sky of our european culture its evening sky now glows perhaps glows out for this we artists among the spectators and philosophers are grateful to the jews 251 it must be taken into the bargain if various clouds and disturbances in short slight attacks of stupidity pass over the spirit of the people that suffers and wants to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition for instance among present-day germans there is alternately the anti-french folly the anti-semitic folly the anti-polish folly the christian-romantic folly the Wagnerian folly the teutonic folly the prussian folly just look at all those poor historians the zubels and treitschkes and their closely bandaged heads and whatever else these little obscurations of the german spirit and conscience may be called may it be forgiven me that i too went on a short daring sojourn into very infected ground did not remain wholly exempt from the disease but like everyone else began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me the first symptom of political infection about the jews for instance listen to the following i have never yet met a german who was favorably inclined to the jews and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself but only against its dangerous excess and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excessive sentiment on this point we must not deceive ourselves that germany has amply sufficient jews that the german stomach the german blood has difficulty and will long have difficulty in disposing only of this quantity of jew as the italian the frenchman and englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct to which one must listen and according to which one must act let no more jews come in and shut the doors especially towards the east also towards austria thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain so that it could be easily wiped out easily extinguished by a stronger race the jews however are beyond all doubt the strongest toughest and purest race at present living in europe they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions in fact better than under favorable ones by means of virtues of some sort which one would like nowadays to label as vices owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before modern ideas they alter only when they do alter in the same way that the russian empire makes its conquest as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday namely according to the principle as slowly as possible a thinker who has the future of europe at heart will in all his perspectives concerning the future calculate upon the jews as you will calculate upon the russians as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces that which is at present called a nation in europe and is really rather a race factor than anata perhaps sometimes confusingly similar to a race fictor at picture is in every case something evolving young easily displaced and not yet a race much less such a race erica renas as the jews are such nations should most carefully avoid all hotheaded rivalry and hostility it is certain that the jews if they desired or if they were driven to it as the anti-semites seemed to wish could have the ascendancy nay literally the supremacy over europe that they are not working and planning for that end is equally certain meanwhile they rather wish and desire even somewhat importantly to be absorbed and absorbed by europe they long to be finally settled authorized and respected somewhere and wish to put an end to the nomadic life to the wandering jew and one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency and make advances to it it possibly be taken as a mitigation of the jewish instincts for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-semitic borders out of the country one should make advances with all prudence and with selection pretty much as the english nobility do it stands to reason that the most powerful and strongly marked types of new germanism could enter into a relation with the jews with the least hesitation for instance the no-women officer from the prussian border it will be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money and patience and especially some intellect and intellectuality sadly lacking in the place referred to could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation but here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse at my sprightly cutonymania for i have already reached my serious topic the european problem as i understand it the rearing of a new ruling caste for europe 252 they are not a philosophical race the english bacon represents an attack on the philosophical spirit generally hobs hum and lock and a basement and a depreciation of the idea of a philosopher for more than a century it was against hum that cunt up rose and raised himself it was lock of whom shelling rightly said je me priez lock in the struggle against the english mechanical stratification of the world hegel and schopenhauer along with gutter were of one accord the two hostile brother geniuses in philosophy who pushed in different directions towards the opposite poles of german thought and thereby wronged each other as only brothers will do what is lacking in england and has always been lacking that half actor and retribution knew well enough the absurd muddlehead carlile who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself namely what was lacking in carlile real power of intellect real depths of intellectual perception in short philosophy it is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to christianity they need its discipline for moralizing and humanizing the englishman more gloomy sensual headstrong and brutal than the german is for that very reason as the baser of the two also the most pious he has all the more need of christianity to find an ostwald's this english christianity itself has still a characteristic english taint of spleen and alcoholic excess for which only to good reasons it is used as an antidote the finer poison to neutralize the coarser a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with course-mannered people is stepped towards spiritualization the english coarseness and rustic demunus is still most satisfactorily disguised by christian pantomime and by praying and psalm singing or more correctly it is thereby explained and differently expressed and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formally learned moral grunting under the influence of methodism and more recently as the salvation army a penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of humanity to which they can be elevated so much may reasonably be admitted that however which offends even in the humanist englishman is his lack of music to speak figuratively and also literally he has neither risen nor dance in the movements of his soul and body indeed not even the desire for dance for music listen to him speaking look at the most beautiful englishwoman walking in no country on earth are there more beautiful doves and swans finally listen to them singing but i asked too much 253 there are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds because they are best adapted for them there are truths which only possess charms and seductive power for mediocre spirits one is pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion now that the influence of respectable but mediocre englishman i may mention darwin john stewart mill and herbert spencer begins to gain the ascendancy of the middle class region of european taste indeed who could doubt that it is a useful thing for such minds to have the ascendancy for a time it would be an error to consider the highly developed and independently soaring minds as especially qualified for determining and collecting many little common facts and deducing conclusions from them as exceptions they are rather from the first in no very favorable position towards those who are the rules after all they have more to do than merely to perceive in effect they have to be something new they have to signify something new they have to represent new values the gulf between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater and also more mysterious than one thinks the capable man in the grand style the creator will possibly have to be an ignorant person while on the other hand for scientific discoveries like those of darwin a certain narrowness aridity and industrious carefulness in short something english may not be unfavorable for arriving at them finally let it not be forgotten that the english with their profound mediocrity brought about once before a general depression of european intelligence what is called modern ideas or the ideas of the 18th century or french ideas that consequently against which the german mind rose up was profound disgust is of english origin there is no doubt about it the french were only the apes and actors of these ideas their best soldiers and likewise alas their first and profoundest victims for owing to the diabolical anglomania of modern ideas the arm francais has in the end become so thin and emaciated that at present one records its 16th and 17th centuries its profound passionate strengths its inventive excellency almost with disbelief one must however maintain this verdict of historical justice in a determined manner and defend against it present prejudices and appearances the european noblesse of sentiment taste and manners taking the word in every high sense is the work and invention of france the european ignoble-ness the plebeianism of modern ideas is england's work and invention 254 even at present france is still the seat of the most intellectual and refined culture of europe it is still the high school of taste but one must know how to find this france of taste he who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed they may be a small number in whom it lives and is embodied besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon the strongest legs in part fatalists hypochondriacs invalids in part persons overindulged over refined such as have the ambition to conceal themselves they have all something in common they keep their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic bourgeois in fact a besotted and brutalized france at present sprawls in the foreground it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste and at the same time of self-admiration in the funeral of victor igoo there was also something else common to them a pre-election to resist intellectual germanizing and understood greater inability to do so in this france of intellect which is also a france of pessimism schruppenhauer has become more at home and more indigenous than he has ever been in germany not to speak of heimrich heiner who has long ago been reincarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyricists of paris or of hegel who at present in the form of ten the first of living historians exercises an almost tyrannical influence as regards richard wagner however the more french music learns to adapt itself to the actual needs of the arm modern the more will it wagner ride one can safely predict that beforehand it is already taking place sufficiently there are however three things which the french can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority in europe in spite of all voluntary or involuntary germanizing and vulgarizing of taste firstly the capacity for artistic emotion for devotion to form for which the expression lar pour lar along with numerous others has been invented such capacity has not been lacking in france for three centuries and owing to its reverence for the small number it has again and again made a sort of chamber music of literature possible which is sought for in vain elsewhere in europe the second thing whereby the french can lay claim to the superiority over europe is the ancient many-sided moralistic culture owing to which one finds on an average even in the petty romancier of the newspapers and chance boulevardier de paris a psychological sensitiveness and curiosity of which for example one has no conception to say nothing of the thing itself in germany the germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite there too which as we have said france has not grudged those who call the germans naive on that account give them commendation for a defect as the opposite of the german inexperience and innocence in voloptata psychologica which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness of german intercourse and as the most successful expression of genuine french curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate thrills or rebel may be noted that remarkably anticipatory and full-running man who was in a polyonic tempo traversed his europe in fact several centuries of the european soul as a surveyor and discoverer thereof it has required two generations to overtake him one way or other to divine long afterwards some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured him this strange epicurean and man of interrogation the last great psychologist of france there is yet a third claim to superiority in the french character there is a successful halfway synthesis of the north and south which makes them comprehend many things and enjoins upon them other things which an englishman can never comprehend their temperament turned alternately to and from the south in which from time to time the polymosal and legurian blood froths over preserves them from the dreadful northern gray in gray from some less conceptual spectrum and from poverty of blood our german infirmity of taste for the excessive prevalence of which at the present moment blood and iron that is to say high politics has with great resolution been prescribed according to a dangerous healing art which bids me wait and wait but not yet hope there is still in france a pre-understanding and ready welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction of any kind to fatherlandism and know how to love the south when in the north and the north when in the south the born midlanders the good europeans for them busy has made music this latest genius who has seen a new beauty and seduction who has discovered a piece of the south in music 255 i hold that many precautions should be taken against german music suppose a person loves the south as i love it as a great school of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills as a boundless solar profusion and defulgence which always spreads a sovereign existence believing in itself well such a person will learn to be somewhat on his guard against german music because in injuring his taste in you it will also injure his health in you such a southerner a southerner not by origin but by belief if you should dream of the future of music must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the north that must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper mightier and perhaps more perverse and mysterious music a super german music which does not fade pale and die away as all german music does at the site of the blue wanton sea and the mediterranean clearness of sky a super european music which holds its own even in presence of the brown sunsets of the desert whose soul is akin to the palm tree and can be at home and can roam with big beautiful lonely beasts of prey i could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more of good and evil only that here and there perhaps some sailor's homesickness some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might sweep lightly over it an art which from the far distance would see the colors of a sinking and almost incomprehensible moral world fleeing towards it and would be hospitable enough and profound enough to receive such belated fugitives 256 owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality craze has induced and still induces among the nations of europe owing also to the shortsighted and hasty handed politicians who with the help of this craze are at present in power and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present the most unmistakable signs that europe wishes to be one are now overlooked or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted with all the more profound and large-minded men of this century the real general tendency of the mysterious labor of their souls was to prepare the way for that new synthesis and tentatively to anticipate the european of the future only in their simulations or in their weaker moments in old age perhaps did they belong to the fatherlands they only rested from themselves when they became patriots i think of such men as napoleon goethe bethoven stendhal heinrich heiner schogenhauer it must not be taken a miss if i also can drichard wagner among them about whom one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand themselves still less of course by the unseemly noise with which he is now resisted and opposed in france the fact remains nevertheless that richard wagner and the later french romanticism of the 40s are most closely and intimately related to one another they are akin fundamentally akin in all the heights and depths of their requirements it is europe the one europe whose soul presses urgently and longingly outwards and upwards in the multifarious and boisterous art wither into a new light towards a new sun but who would attempt to express accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not express distinctly it is certain that the same storm and stress tormented them for they sought in the same manner these last great seekers all of them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears the first artists of universal literary culture for the most part even themselves writers poets intermediaries and blenders of the art and the senses wagner as musician is reckoned among painters as poet among musicians as artist generally among actors all of them fanatics for expression at any cost i especially mentioned dillacroix the nearest related to wagner all of them great discoverers of the realm of the sublime also of the low summon dreadful yet greater discovers in effect in display in the art of the show shop all of them talented far beyond their genius out and out virtuosi with mysterious accesses to all that seduces allures constraints and upsets born enemies of logic and the straight line hankering after the strange the exotic the monstrous the crooked and the self-contradictory as men tantalizes of the will probe and pavenu who knew themselves to be incapable of a noble tempo or a volento in life and action think of bazaar for instance unrestrained workers almost destroying themselves by work anti-nomians and rebels in manners ambitious and insatiable without equilibrium and enjoyment all of them finally shattering and sinking down at the christian cross and was right and reason for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an anti-christian philosophy on the whole a boldly daring splendidly overbearing high flying and aloft up-dragging class of higher men who had first to teach their century and it is the century of the masses the conception higher man let the german friends of rachadragner advised together as to whether there is anything purely german in the vagnirian art whether its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from super german sources and impulses in which connection it may not be underrated how indispensable paris was in the development of his type which the strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most decisive time and how the whole style of his proceedings of his self-apostolate could only perfect itself in sight of the french socialistic original on a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be found to the honor of rachadragner's german nature that he has acted in everything with more strength daring severity and elevation than a 19th century frenchman could have done having to the circumstance that we germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the french perhaps even the most remarkable creation of rachadragner is not only at present but forever inaccessible incomprehensible and inimitable to the whole latter-day latin race the figure of seekfried that very free man who was probably far too free too hard too cheerful too healthy too anti-catholic for the taste of old mellow civilized nations he may even have been a sin against romanticism this anti-latin seekfried well bark knight owned amply for this sin in his old sad days when anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics he began with a religious vehemence peculiar to him to preach at least the way to roam if not walk therein that these last words may not be misunderstood i will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes which will even betray to less delicate ears what i mean what i mean counter to the last Wagner and his pacifal music is this our mode from german heart came this vex eulolating from german body this self lacerating is ours this priestly hand dilation this incense fuming exaltation this ours this faltering falling shambling this quite uncertain ding dong dangling this sly nun ogling ava our bell ringing this holy false in raptured heaven overspringing is this our mode think well you still wait for admission for what you hear is Rome Rome's face by intuition end of chapter eight peoples and countries recorded by gazine and valetta january 2006 this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org librivox.org recording by librivox user president leith pres lethe beyond good and evil by fredrich nitzche translated by helen simon chapter nine what is noble paragraph 257 every elevation of the type man has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings and requiring slavery in some form or other without the pathos of distance such as grows out of the incarnated differences of classes out of the constant outlooking and downlooking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding of keeping down and keeping at a distance that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself the formation of ever higher rarer further more extended more comprehensive states in short just the elevation of the type man the continued self surmounting of man to use a moral formula in a super moral sense to be sure one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society that is to say of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type man the truth is hard let us acknowledge unprecedentedly how every higher civilization hitherto has originated men with a still natural nature barbarians in every terrible sense of the word men of prey still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power through themselves upon weaker more moral more peaceful races perhaps trading or cattle rearing communities or upon old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity at the commencement the noble caste was always the barbarian caste their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical but in their psychical power they were more complete men which at every point also implies the same as more complete beasts corruption as the indication that anarchy threatens to break out among the instincts and that the foundation of the emotions called life is convulsed is something radically different according to the organization in which it manifests itself when for instance an aristocracy like that of france at the beginning of the revolution flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments it was corruption it was really only the closing act of the corruption that had existed for centuries by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a function of royalty in the end even to its decoration and parade dress the essential thing however in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth but as the significance and highest justification thereof that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals who for its sake must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men to slaves and instruments its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is not allowed to exist for its own sake but only as a foundation and scaffolding by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties and in general to a higher existence like those sun-seeking climbing plants in java they are called sipo matador which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms until at last high above it but supported by it they can unfold their tops in the open light and exhibit their happiness to refrain mutually from injury from violence from exploitation and put one's will on a par with that of others this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given namely the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth and their co-relation within one organization as soon however is one wished to take this principle more generally and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society it would immediately disclose what it really is namely a will to the denial of life a principle of dissolution and decay here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness life itself is essentially appropriation injury conquest of the strange and weak suppression severity abtrusion of peculiar forms in corporation and at the very least putting it mildest exploitation but why should one forever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped even the organization within which as was previously supposed the individuals treat each other as equal it takes place in every healthy aristocracy must itself if it be a living and not a dying organization do all that towards other bodies that the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated will to power it will endeavor to grow to gain ground attract to itself and acquire ascendancy not owing to any morality or immorality but because it lives and because life is precisely will to power on no point however is the ordinary consciousness of europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter people now rave everywhere even under the guise of science about coming conditions of society in which the exploiting character is to be absent that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life that should refrain from all organic functions exploitation does not belong to a depraved or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will to life granting that as a theory this is a novelty as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves in a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities that have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth i found certain traits recurring regularly together and connected with one another until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me and a radical distinction was brought to light there is master morality and slave morality i would at once add however that in all higher and mixed civilizations there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities but one finds still often are the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them indeed sometimes they're close juxtaposition even in the same man within one soul the distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled or among the ruled class the slaves and dependence of all sorts in the first case when it is the rulers who determine the conception good it is the exalted proud disposition that is regarded as the distinguishing feature and that that determines the order of rank the noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted proud disposition displays itself he despises them let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis good and bad means practically the same as noble and despicable the antithesis good and evil is of a different origin the cowardly the timid the insignificant and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised moreover also the distrustful with their constrained glances the self-abasing the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused the mendicant flatterers and above all the liars it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful we truthful ones the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves it is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to men and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to actions it is a gross mistake therefore when historians of morals start with questions like why have sympathetic actions been praised the noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values he does not require to be approved of he passes the judgment what is injurious to me is injurious in itself he knows that it is he himself only who confers honor on things he is a creator of values he honors whatever he recognizes in himself such morality equals self-glorification in the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude of power which seeks to overflow the happiness of high tension the consciousness of a wealth that would feign give and bestow the noble man also helps the unfortunate but not or scarcely out of pity but rather from an impulse generated by the super abundance of power the noble man honors in himself the powerful one him also who has power over himself who knows how to speak and how to keep silence who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness and has reverence for all that is severe and hard worten placed a hard heart in my breast says an old Scandinavian saga it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy the hero of the saga therefore adds warningly he who has not a hard heart when young will never have one the noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality that sees precisely in sympathy or enacting for the good of others or in desenterous man the characteristic of the moral faith in oneself pride in oneself a radical enmity and irony towards selflessness belong as definitely to noble morality as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the warm heart it is the powerful who know how to honor it is their art their domain for invention the profound reverence for age and for tradition all rests on this double reverence the belief and prejudice in favor of ancestors and unfavorable to newcomers is typical in the morality of the powerful and if reversely men of modern ideas believe almost instinctively in progress in the future and are more and more lacking in respect for old age the ignoble origin of these ideas has complacently betrayed itself thereby a morality of the ruling class however is more specifically foreign and irritating to present day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's equals that one may act towards beings of a lower rank towards all that is foreign just as seems good to one or as the heart desires and in any case beyond good and evil it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place the ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge both only within the circle of equals artfulness and retaliation often more the idea in friendship a certain necessity to have enemies as outlets for the emotions of envy quarrelfulness arrogance in fact in order to be a good friend all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality which as has been pointed out is not the morality of modern ideas and is therefore at present difficult to realize and also to unearth and disclose it is otherwise with the second type of morality slave morality supposing that the abused the oppressed the suffering the unemancipated the weary and those uncertain of themselves should moralize what will be the common element in their moral estimates probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression perhaps a condemnation of man together with his situation the slave has an unfavorable eye for the virtues of the powerful he has a skepticism and distrust a refinement of distrust of everything good that is there honored he would feign persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine on the other hand those qualities that serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light it is here that sympathy the kind helping hand the warm heart patience diligence humility and friendliness attained to honor for here these the most useful qualities and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence slave morality is essentially the morality of utility here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis good and evil power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil a certain dreadfulness subtlety and strength which do not admit of being despised according to slave morality therefore the evil man arouses fear according to master morality it is precisely the good man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being the contrast attains its maximum when in accordance with the logical consequences of slave morality a shade of depreciation it may be slight and well intentioned at last attaches itself to the good man of this morality because according to the servile mode of thought the good man must in any case be the safe man he is good-natured easily deceived perhaps a little stupid but none everywhere that slave morality gains the ascendancy language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the word good and stupid a last fundamental difference the desire for freedom the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave morals and morality as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating hence we can understand without further detail why love as a passion it is our european specialty must absolutely be a noble origin as is well known its invention is due to the Provençard poet cavaliers those brilliant ingenious men of the guy saber to whom europe owes so much and almost owes itself vanity is one of the things that are perhaps most difficult for a noble man to understand he will be tempted to deny it where another kind of man thinks he sees itself evidently the problem for him is to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves that they themselves do not possess and consequently also do not deserve and who yet believe in this good opinion afterwards this seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable that he would like to consider vanity an exception and is doubtful about it in most cases when it is spoken of he will say for instance i may be mistaken about my value and on the other hand may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others precisely as i write it that however is not vanity but self-conceit or in most cases that which is called humility and also modesty or he will even say for many reasons i can delight in the good opinion of others perhaps because i love and honor them and rejoice in all their joys perhaps also because their good opinion endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion perhaps because the good opinion of others even in cases where i do not share it is useful to me or gives promise of usefulness all this however is not vanity the man of noble character must first bring it home forcibly to his mind especially with the aid of history that from time immemorial in all social strata in any way dependent the ordinary man was only that that he passed for not being at all accustomed to fix values he did not assign even to himself any other value than that that his master assigned to him it is the peculiar right of masters to create values it may be looked upon as an extraordinary activism that the ordinary man even at present is still always waiting for an opinion about himself and then instinctively submitting himself to it yet by no means only to a good opinion but also to a bad and unjust one think for instance of the greater part of the self-appreciations and self-depreciations that believing women learn from their confessors and which in general the believing christian learns from his church in fact conformably to the slow rise of the democratic social order and its cause the blending of the blood of masters and slaves the original noble and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value to themselves and to think well of themselves will now be more and more encouraged and extended but it has at all times an older ampler and more radically ingrained propensity opposed to it and in the phenomenon of vanity this older propensity over masters the younger the vain person rejoices over every good opinion that he hears about himself quite apart from the point of view of its usefulness and equally regardless of its truth or falsehood just as he suffers from every bad opinion for he subjects himself to both he feels himself subjected to both by the oldest instinct of subjection that breaks forth in him it is the slave in the vain man's blood the remains of the slaves craftiness and how much of the slave is still left in woman for instance which seeks to seduce the good opinions of itself it is the slave to who immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions as though he had not called them forth and to repeat it again vanity is an atavism a species originates and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavorable conditions on the other hand it is known by the experience of breeders that species that receive super abundant nourishment and in general a surplus of protection and care immediately tend in the most market way to develop variations and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities also in monstrous vices now look at an aristocratic commonwealth say an ancient greek polis or venice as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rearing human beings there are there men beside one another thrown upon their own resources who want to make their species prevail chiefly because they must prevail or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated the favor the super abundance the protection are there lacking under which variations are fostered the species needs itself as species as something that precisely by virtue of its hardness its uniformity and simplicity of structure can in general prevail and make itself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbors or with rebellious or rebellion threatening vassals the most varied experience teaches it what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that it still exists in spite of all gods and men and has hitherto been victorious these qualities it calls virtues and these virtues alone it develops to maturity it does so with severity indeed it desires severity every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education of youth in the control of women in the marriage customs in the relations of old and young in the penal laws which have an eye only for the degenerating it counts intolerance itself among the virtues under the name of justice a type with few but very market features a species of severe warlike wisely silent reserved and reticent men and as such with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society is thus established unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations the constant struggle with uniform unfavorable conditions is as already remarked the cause of a type's becoming stable and hard finally however a happy state of things results the enormous tension is relaxed there are perhaps no more enemies among the neighboring peoples and the means of life even of the enjoyment of life are present in super abundance with one stroke the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs it is no longer regarded as necessary as a condition of existence if it would continue it can only do so as a form of luxury as an archaic taste variations whether they be deviations into the higher finer and rarer or deteriorations and monstrosities appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendor the individual dares to be individual and detach himself at this turning point of history they manifest themselves side by side and often mixed and entangled together a magnificent manifold virgin forest like upgrowth and up striving a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth and an extraordinary decay and self-destruction owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoism which strive with one another for sun and light and can no longer assign any limit restraint or forbearance for themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality it is this morality itself that piled up the strength so enormously which bent the bow and so threatening a manner it is now out of date it is getting out of date the dangerous and disquieting point has been reached when the greater more manifold more comprehensive life is lived beyond the old morality the individual stands out and is obliged to have recourse to his own law giving his own arts and artifices for self-preservation self-elevation and self-deliverance nothing but new wise nothing but new house no common formulas any longer misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other decay deterioration and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad a fortentious simultaneousness of spring and autumn full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh still exhausted still unwearyed corruption danger is again present the mother of morality great danger this time shifted into the individual into the neighbor and friend into the street into their own child into their own heart into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions what will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach they discover these sharp onlookers and loafers that the end is quickly approaching that everything around them decays and produces decay that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow except one species of man the incurably mediocre the mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves they will be the men of the future the sole survivors be like them become mediocre is now the only morality that has still a significance which still obtains a hearing but it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity it can never avow what it is and what it desires it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love it will have difficulty in concealing its irony there is an instinct for rank which more than anything else is already the sign of a high rank there is a delight in the nuances of reverence that leads one to infer noble origin and habits the refinement goodness and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test when something passes by that is of the highest rank but is not yet protected by the awe of the authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities something that goes its way like a living touchstone undistinguished undiscovered and tentative perhaps voluntarily veiled and disguised he whose task and practice is to investigate souls will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the the ultimate value of a soul the unalterable innate order of rank to which it belongs he will test it by its instinct for reverence differences and gender and that's French hate there the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like dirty water when any holy vessel any jewel from closed shrines any book bearing the marks of great destiny is brought before it while on the other hand there is an involuntary silence a hesitation of the eye a cessation of all gestures by which it is indicated that a soul feels the nearness of what is worthiest of respect the way in which on the whole the reverence for the bible has either to been maintained in europe is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of manners that europe owes to christianity books of such profoundness and supreme significance require for their protection and external tyranny of authority in order to acquire the period of thousands of years that is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them much has been achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses the shallow pates and the boobies of every kind that they are not allowed to touch everything that there are holy experiences before which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand it is almost their highest advance towards humanity on the contrary in the so-called cultured classes the believers in modern ideas nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame their easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch taste and finger everything and it is possible that even yet there is more relative nobility of taste and more tact for reverence among the people among the lower classes of the people especially among peasants than among the newspaper reading demimon of intellect the cultured class it cannot be a face from a man's soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done whether they were perhaps diligent economizers attached to a desk and a cash box modest and citizen-like in their desires modest also in their virtues or whether they were accustomed to commanding from morning till night fond of rude pleasures and probably of still-rooter duties and responsibilities or whether finally at one time or another they have sacrificed old privileges of birth and possession in order to live holy for their faith for their god as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience which blushes at every compromise it is quite possible for a man not to have the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his constitution whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary this is the problem of race granted that one knows something of the parents it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child any kind of offensive incontinence any kind of sordid envy or of clumsy self-vaunting the three things that together have constituted the genuine plebeian type in all times such must pass over to the child as surely as bad blood and with the help of the best education and culture one will only succeed in deceiving with regard to such a reddy and what else do education and culture try to do nowadays in our very democratic or rather very plebeian age education and culture must be essentially the art of deceiving deceiving with regard to origin with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul an educator who nowadays preaches truthfulness above everything else and called out constantly to his pupils be true be natural show yourselves as you are even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the furka of horus naturum expelleri with what results plebeianism us quay record footnote horuses epistles one ten twenty four at the risk of displeasing innocent ears i submit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul i mean the unalterable belief that two are beings such as we other beings must naturally be in subjection and have to sacrifice themselves the noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without question and also without consciousness of harshness constraint or arbitrariness therein but rather is something that may have its basis in the primary law of things if he sought a designation for it he would say it is justice itself he acknowledges under certain circumstances which made him hesitate at first that there are other equally privileged ones as soon as he has settled this question of rank he moves among those equals and equally privileged ones with the same assurance as regards modesty and delicate respect that he enjoys in intercourse with himself in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism that all the stars understand it is an additional instance of his egoism this artfulness and self-limitation in intercourse with his equals every star is a similar egoist he honors himself in them and in the right that he concedes to them he has no doubt that the exchange of honors and rights as the essence of all intercourse belongs also to the natural condition of things the noble soul gives as he takes prompted by the passionate and sensitive instinct of requital which is at the root of his nature the notion of favor has interparis neither significance nor good repute there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above and of drinking them thirstily like dew drops but for those arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude his egoism hinders him here in general he looks aloft unwillingly he looks either forward horizontally and deliberately or downwards he knows that he is on a height one can only truly esteem him who does not look out for himself gutter to watch losa the chinese have a proverb that mothers even teach their children shall shin make thy heart small this is the essentially fundamental tendency in latter-day civilizations i have no doubt that an ancient greek also would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us europeans of today in this respect alone should we immediately be distasteful to him what after all is nobleness words are vocal symbols for ideas ideas however are more or less definite mental symbols for frequently returning and concurring sensations for groups of sensations it is not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another we must also employ the same words for the same kind of internal experiences we must in the end have experiences in common on this account the people of one nation understand one another better than those belonging to different nations even when they use the same language or rather when people have lived long together under similar conditions of climate soil danger requirement toil there originates there from an entity that understands itself namely a nation in all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely about these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more rapidly the history of languages the history of a process of abbreviation on the basis of this quick comprehension people always unite closer and closer the greater the danger the greater is the need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary not to misunderstand one another in danger that is what cannot at all be dispensed with in intercourse also in all loves and friendships one has the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery has been made that in using the same words one of the two parties has feelings thoughts intuitions wishes or fears different from those of the other the fear of the eternal misunderstanding that is the good genius that so often keeps persons of different sexes from two hasty attachments to which sense and heart prompt them and not some Schopenhauerian genius of the species whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily begin to speak and give the word of command these decide as to the general order of rank of its values and determine ultimately its list of desirable things a man's estimates of value betray something of the structure of his soul and wherein it sees its conditions of life its intrinsic needs supposing now that necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols it results on the whole that the easy communicability of need which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and common experiences must have been the most potent of all the forces that have hitherto operated upon mankind the more similar the more ordinary people have always had and are still having the advantage the more select more refined more unique and difficultly comprehensible are liable to stand alone they succumb to accidents in their isolation and seldom propagate themselves one must appeal to immense opposing forces in order to thwart this natural all too natural progresso sin simile the evolution of man to the similar the ordinary the average the gregarious to the ignoble the intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply it almost determines the order of rank how deeply men can suffer the chilling certainty with which he is thoroughly imbued and colored that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know that he has been familiar with and at home in many distant dreadful worlds of which you know nothing this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer this pride of the elective knowledge of the initiated of the almost sacrificed finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands and in general from all that is not his equal in suffering profound suffering makes noble it separates one of the most refined forms of disguise is epicurism along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste which takes suffering lightly and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound they are gay men who make use of gaiety because they are misunderstood on account of it they wish to be misunderstood there are scientific minds who make use of science because it gives a gay appearance and because scientificness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial they wish to mislead to a false conclusion there are free insolent minds which would feign conceal and deny that they are broken proud incurable hearts the cynicism of hamlet the case of galliani and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate over assured knowledge from which it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence for the mask and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place that which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity what does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness what does it matter about all their mutual goodwill the fact still remains they cannot smell each other the highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation as a saint for it is just holiness the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath any kind of ardor or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning and out of gloom out of affliction into clearness brightness depth and refinement just as much as such a tendency distinguishes it is a notable tendency it also separates the pity of the saint is pity for the filth of the human all too human and there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity as filth signs of nobility never to think of lowering our duties to the rank of duties for everybody to be unwilling to renounce or to share our responsibilities to count our prerogatives and the exercise of them among our duties a man who strives after great things looks upon everyone whom he encounters on his way either as a means of advance or a delay and hindrance or a temporary resting place or as a temporary resting place his peculiar lofty bounty to his fellow men is only possible when he attains his elevation and dominates impatience and the consciousness of being always condemned to comedy up to that time for even strife as a comedy and conceals the end as every means does spoil all intercourse with him this kind of man is acquainted with solitude and what is most poisonous in it the problem of those who wait happy chances are necessary and many incalculable elements in order that a higher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant may yet take action or break forth as one might say at the right moment on an average it does not happen and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who hardly know to what extent they're waiting and still less that they wait in vain occasionally to the waking call comes too late the chance which gives permission to take action when their best youth and strength for action have been used up in sitting still and how many of one just as he sprang up has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy it is too late he has said to himself and has become self distrustful and henceforth forever useless in the domain of genius may not the Raphael without hands taking the expression in its widest sense perhaps not be the exception but the rule perhaps genius is by no means so rare but rather the five hundred hands which it requires in order to deonize over the right time in order to take chance by the forelock he who does not wish to see the height of a man looks all the more sharply at what is low in him and in the foreground and thereby betrays himself in all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul the dangers of the latter must be greater the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in fact immense considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its existence in a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost not so in man it is too bad always the old story when a man has finished building his house he finds that he has learned unawares something which he ought absolutely to have known before he began to build the eternal fatal too late the melancholia of everything completed wanderer who art thou i see thee follow thy path without scorn without love without unfathomable eyes wet and sad as a plummet which has returned to the light is satiated out of every depth what did it seek down there with a bosom that never sighs with lips that conceal their loading with a head which only slowly grasps who art thou what has thou done resty here this place has hospitality for everyone refresh thyself and whoever thou art what is it that now pleases thee what will serve to refresh thee only name it whatever i have i offer thee to refresh me to refresh me oh thou prying one what sayest thou but give me i pray the what what speak out another mask a second mask men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it out of jealousy ah they know only too well that it will flee from them bad bad what does he not go back yes but you misunderstand him when you complain about it he goes back like everyone who is about to make a big spring will people believe it of me but i insist that they believe it of me i have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself only in very rare cases only compulsorily always without delight in the subject ready to digress from myself and always without faith in the result owing to the unconquerable distrust of the possibility of self-knowledge which has led me so far to feel a contradictio in adjecto even in the idea of direct knowledge which theorists allow themselves this matter of fact is almost the most certain thing i know about myself there must be a sort of repugnance in me to believe anything definite about myself is there perhaps some enigma there in probably but fortunately nothing for my own teeth perhaps it betrays the species to which i belong but not to myself as it is sufficiently agreeable to me but what has happened to you i do not know he said hesitatingly perhaps the harpies have flown over my table it sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle sober retiring man becomes suddenly mad breaks the plates upsets the table shrieks raves and shocks everybody and finally withdraws ashamed and raging at himself wither for what purpose to famish a part to suffocate with his memories to him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared the danger will always be great nowadays however it is extraordinarily so thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age with which he does not like to eat out of the same dish he may readily perish of hunger and thirst or should he nevertheless finally fall to of sudden nausea we have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong and precisely the most spiritual of us who are most difficult to nourish know the dangerous dyspepsia that originates from a sudden insight in disillusionment about our food and our messmates the after-dinner nausea if one wishes to praise at all it is a delicate and at the same time a noble self-control to praise only where one does not agree otherwise in fact one would praise oneself which is contrary to good taste a self-control to be sure which offers excellent opportunity and provocation to constant misunderstanding to be able to allow oneself the spirit of luxury of taste and morality one must not live among intellectual imbeciles but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement or one will have to pay dearly for it he praises me therefore he acknowledges me to be right this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life of us recluses where it brings the asses into our neighborhood and friendship to live in a vast and proud tranquility always beyond to have or not to have one's emotions one's for and against according to choice to lower oneself to them for hours to seat oneself on them as upon horses and often as upon asses for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as well as of their fire to conserve one's 300 foregrounds also one's black spectacles for there are circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes still less into our motives and to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice politeness and remain master of one's four virtues courage insight sympathy and solitude for solitude is a virtue with us as a sublime bent and biased to purity which defines that in the contact of man and man in society it must be unavoidably impure all society makes one somehow somewhere or sometime commonplace the greatest events and thoughts the greatest thoughts however are the greatest events are longest in being comprehended the generations which are contemporary with them do not experience such events they live past them something happens there is in the realm of stars the light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man and before it has arrived man denies that there are stars there how many centuries does mine require to be understood that is also a standard one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith such as is necessary for mind and for star here is the prospect free the mind exalted footnote good as a post part two act five the words of dr marianus but there is a reverse kind of man who is also upon a height and has also a free prospect but looks downwards what is noble what does the word noble still mean for us nowadays how does the noble man betray himself how does he recognize it under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebianism by which everything is rendered opaque and ledden it is not his actions which establish his claim actions are always ambiguous always inscrutable neither is it his works one finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that are profound longing for nobleness impels them but this very need of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble soul itself and it is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof it is not the works but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank and to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself something which is not to be sought is not to be found and perhaps also is not to be lost the noble soul has reverence for itself there are men who are unavoidably intellectual let them turn and twist themselves as they will and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes as though the hand were not a betrayer it always comes out at last that they have something which they hide namely intellect one of the subtlest means of deceiving at least as long as possible and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider than one really is which in everyday life is often as desirable as an umbrella is called enthusiasm including what belongs to it for instance virtue for as galliani said vertu est entusiasme in the writings of a recluse when always hears something of the echo of the wilderness something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude in his strongest words even in his cry itself there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence of concealment he who has sat day and night from year's end to year's end alone with his soul and familiar discord and discourse he who has become a cave bear or a treasure seeker or a treasure guardian and dragon in his cave it may be a labyrinth but can also be a gold mine his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight color of their own and an odor as much of the depth as of the mold something uncommunicative and repulsive which blows chili upon every passerby the recluse does not believe that a philosopher supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books are not books written precisely to hide what is in us indeed he will doubt whether a philosopher can have ultimate and actual opinions at all whether behind every cave in him there is not and must necessarily be a still deeper cave an ampler stranger richer world beyond the surface an abyss behind every bottom beneath every foundation every philosophy is a foreground philosophy this is a recluse's verdict there is something arbitrary in the fact that the philosopher came to a stand here took a retrospect and looked around that he here laid his spade aside and did not dig any deeper there is also something suspicious in it every philosophy also conceals of philosophy every opinion is also a lurking place every word is also a mask every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood the latter perhaps wounds his vanity but the former wounds his heart his sympathy which always says oh why would you also have as hard a time of it as i have man a complex mendacious artful and inscrutable animal uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity rather than by his strength has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his soul as something simple and the whole of morality is a long audacious falsification by virtue of which generally employment at the site of the soul becomes impossible from this point of view there is perhaps much more in the conception of art than is generally believed a philosopher that is a man who constantly experiences sees hears suspects hopes and dreams extraordinary things who was struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside from above and below as a species of events and lightning flashes peculiar to him who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings a pretentious man around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on a philosopher alas a being who often runs away from himself is often afraid of himself but whose curiosity always makes him come to himself again a man who says i like that i take it for my own and mean to guard and protect it from everyone a man who can conduct a case carry out a resolution remain true to an opinion keep hold of a woman punished and overthrow insolence a man who has his indignation and his sword and whom the weak the suffering the oppressive and even the animals willingly submit and naturally belong in short a man who is a master by nature when such a man has sympathy well that sympathy has value but of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer or of those even who preach sympathy there is nowadays throughout almost the whole of europe a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain and a repulsive irrestrainableness and complaining and effeminizing which with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense seeks to deck itself out as something superior there is a regular cult of suffering the unmanliness of that which is called sympathy by such groups of visionaries is always i believe the first thing that strikes the eye one must resolutely and radically taboo this latest form of bad taste and finally i wish people to put the good amulet guy saber gay science in ordinary language on heart and neck as a protection against it the olympian vice despite the philosopher who is a genuine englishman tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking minds laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature which every thinking mind will strive to overcome hobs i would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing up to those who are capable of golden laughter and supposing that gods also philosophize which i'm strongly inclined to believe owing to many reasons i have no doubt that they also know how to laugh thereby in an overman-like and new fashion and at the expense of all serious things gods are fond of ridicule it seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even in holy matters the genius of the heart is that great mysterious one possesses it the tempter god and born ratcatcher of consciences whose voice can descend into the netherworld of every soul who neither speaks a word nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch of lurement to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to appear not as he is but in a guys which acts as an additional constraint on his followers to press ever closer to him to follow him more cordially and thoroughly the genius of the heart which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited which smooths rough souls and makes them taste a new longing to lie placid as a mirror that the deep heavens may be reflected in them the genius of the heart and to grasp more delicately which sense the hidden and forgotten treasure the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice and is a divining rod for every grain of gold long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand the genius of the heart from contact with which everyone goes away richer not favored or surprised not as though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others but richer in himself newer than before broken up blown upon and sounded by a thawing wind more uncertain perhaps more delicate more fragile more bruised but full of hopes which is yet lack names full of a new will and current full of a new ill will and countercurrent but what am i doing my friends of whom am i talking to you have i forgotten myself so far that i have not even told you his name unless it be that you have already defined of your own accord who this questionable god and spirit is that wishes to be praised in such a manner for as it happens to everyone who from childhood onward has always been on his legs and in foreign land i have also encountered on my path many strange and dangerous spirits above all however and again and again the one whom i have just spoken in fact no less a personage than the god Dionysus the great equivocator and tempter to whom as you know i once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first fruits the last as it seems to me who has offered a sacrifice to him for i found no one who could understand what i was then doing in the meantime however i have learned much far too much about the philosophy of this god and as i said from mouth to mouth i the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus and perhaps i might at last begin to give you my friends as far as i am allowed a little taste of this philosophy in a hushed voice as is but seemingly for it has to do with much that is secret new strange wonderful and uncanny the very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher and that therefore gods also philosophize seems to me a novelty that is not uninsnaring and might perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers among you my friends there is less to be said against it except that it comes too late and not at the right time for as it has been disclosed to me you are loath nowadays to believe in god and gods it may happen too that in the frankness of my story i must go further than is agreeable to the strict usages of your ears certainly the god in question went further very much further in such dialogues and was always many paces ahead of me indeed if it were allowed i should have to give him according to human usage fine ceremonious tides of lustre and merit i should have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer his fearless honesty truthfulness and love of wisdom but such a god does not know what to do with all that respectable trumpery and pump keep that he would say for thyself and those like thee and whoever else required i have no reason to cover my nakedness one suspects that this kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame he once said under certain circumstances i love mankind and referred thereby to ariadne who was present in my opinion man is an agreeable brave inventive animal that is not his equal upon earth he makes his way even through all aprons i like man and often think how i can still further advance him and make him stronger more evil and more profound stronger more evil and more profound i asked in horror yes he said again stronger more evil and more profound also more beautiful and thereby the tempter god smiled with his halcyon smile as though he had just paid some charming compliment one here sees it once that it is not only shame that this divinity lacks and in general there are good grounds for supposing that in some things the gods could all of them come to us men for instruction we men are more human alas what are you after all my written and painted thoughts not long ago you were so variegated young and malicious so full of thorns and secret spices that you made me sneeze and laugh and now you have already dovetail novelty and some of you i fear are ready to become truths so immortal do they look so pathetically honest so tedious and was it ever otherwise what then do we write and paint we mandarins with chinese brush we immortalizers of things which lend themselves to writing what are we alone capable of painting alas only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odor alas only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments alas only birds strayed and fatigued by flight which now let themselves be captured with the hand with our hand we immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer things only which are exhausted and mellow and it is only for your afternoon you my written and painted thoughts for which alone i have colors many colors perhaps many variegated softenings and 50 yellows and browns and greens and reds but nobody will divine thereby how you looked in your morning your sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude you my old beloved evil thoughts from the heights by f v nicha translated by la manus midday of life oh season of delight my summer's park unceaseful joy to look to lurk to hark i peer for friends and ready day and night where linger ye my friends the time is right is not the glaciers gray today for you rose garlanded the brooklet seeks you wind cloud with longing thread and thrust themselves yet higher to the blue to spy for you from farthest eagles view my table was spread out for you on high who dwelleth so star near so near the grizzly pit below my realm what realm hath wider boundary my honey who hath sipped its fragrancy friends you are there woe me yet i am not he whom you seek you stare and stop better your wrath could speak i am not i hand gate face changed and what i am to you my friends now am i not am i another strange am i to me yet from me sprung a wrestler by himself too oft self rung hindering too oft my own self's potency wounded and hampered by self victory i sought where so the winds blow keenest there i learned to dwell where no man dwells on lonesome icelorn fell and unlearned man and god and curse and prayer became a ghost haunting the glaciers bear yes my old friends look you turn pale filled or with love and fear go yet not in wrath you could never live here here in the farthest realm of ice and scar a huntsman must one be like shammy sore an evil huntsman was i see how pot my bow was bent strongest was he by whom such bolt was sent woe now that arrow is with peril fraught perilous is none have you unsafe home you sought you go thou didst endure enough o heart strong was thy hope unto new friends thy portals widely hope let old ones be bid memory depart what's thou young then now better young thou art what linked us once together one hopes tie to now to con those lines now fading love once wrote there on is like a parchment which the hand is shy to touch like crackling leaves all seared all dry oh friends no more they are what name for those friends phantom flight knocking at my heart's window pane at night gazing on me that speaks we were and goes oh withered words once fragrant as the rose pinings of youth that might not understand for which i pined which i deemed changed with me kin of my kind but they grew old and thus were doomed and banned none but new kith are native of my land midday of life my second youth's delight my summer's park unrestful joy to long to lurk to hark i peer for friends and ready day and night for my new friends come come the time is right this song is done the sweet sad cry of rue saying out its end a wizard rotted he the timely friend the midday friend no to not ask me who at midday it was when one became as two we keep our feast of feasts sure of our born our aims self-same the guest of guests friends arathustra came the world now laughs the grizzly veil was torn and light and dark were one that wedding mourn end of frederick niches beyond good and evil recorded by livery vox user presleeth pres lethe much comry alabama united states july 2006