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1014.
It is only a question of power: to have all the morbid traits of the century, but to balance them I by means of overflowing, plastic, and rejuvenating power. The strong man.
1015.
Concerning the strength of the nineteenth century.—We are more medival than the eighteenth century; not only more inquisitive or more susceptible to the strange and to the rare. We have revolted against the Revolution, ... We have freed ourselves from the fear of reason, which was the spectre of the eighteenth century: we once more dare to be childish, lyrical, absurd, in a word, we are musicians. And we are just as little frightened of the ridiculous as of the absurd. The devil finds that he is tolerated even by God:[6] better still, he has become interesting as one who has been misunderstood and slandered for ages,—we are the saviours of the devil's honour.
We no longer separate the great from the terrible. We reconcile good things, in all their complexity,[Pg 395] with the very worst things; we have overcome the desideratum of the past (which wanted goodness to grow without the increase of evil). The cowardice towards the ideal, peculiar to the Renaissance, has diminished—we even dare to aspire to the latter's morality. Intolerance towards priests and the Church has at the same time come to an end; "It is immoral to believe in God"—but this is precisely what we regard as the best possible justification of this belief.
On all these things we have conferred the civic rights of our minds. We do not tremble before the back side of "good things" (we even look for it, we are brave and inquisitive enough for that), of Greek antiquity, of morality, of reason, of good taste, for instance (we reckon up the losses which we incur with all this treasure: we almost reduce ourselves to poverty with such a treasure). Neither do we conceal the back side of "evil things" from ourselves.
[6] This is reminiscent of Goethe's Faust, See "Prologue in Heaven."—Tr.
1016.
That which does us honour.—If anything does us honour, it is this: we have transferred our seriousness to other things; all those things which have been despised and laid aside as base by all ages, we regard as important—on the other hand, we surrender "fine feelings" at a cheap rate.
Could any aberration be more dangerous than the contempt of the body? As if all intellectuality were not thereby condemned to become morbid, and to take refuge in the vapeurs of "idealism"!
Nothing that has been thought out by Christians[Pg 396] and idealists holds water: we are more radical. We have discovered the "smallest world" everywhere as the most decisive.
The paving-stones in the streets, good air in our rooms, food understood according to its worth: we value all the necessaries of life seriously, and despise all "beautiful soulfulness" as a form of "levity and frivolity." That which has been most despised hitherto, is now pressed into the front rank.
1017
In the place of Rousseau's "man of Nature," the nineteenth century has discovered a much more genuine image of "Man,"—it had the courage to do this.... On the whole, the Christian concept of man has in a way been reinstalled. What we have not had the courage to do, was to call precisely this "man par excellence," good, and to see the future of mankind guaranteed in him. In the same way, we did not dare to regard the growth in the terrible side of man's character as an accompanying feature of every advance in culture; in this sense we are still under the influence of the Christian ideal, and side with it against paganism, and likewise against the Renaissance concept of virt. But the key of culture is not to be found in this way: and in praxi we still have the forgeries of history in favour of the "good man" (as if he alone constituted the progress of humanity) and the socialistic ideal (i.e. the residue of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de-Christianised world).
The fight against the eighteenth century: it meets with its greatest conquerors in Goethe and Napoleon. Schopenhauer, too, fights against the eighteenth century; but he returns involuntarily to the seventeenth—he is a modern Pascal, with Pascalian valuations, without Christianity. Schopenhauer was not strong enough to invent a new yea.
Napoleon: we see the necessary relationship between the higher and the terrible man. "Man" reinstalled, and her due of contempt and fear restored to woman. Highest activity and health are the signs of the great man; the straight line and grand style rediscovered in action; the mightiest of all instincts, that of life itself,—the lust of dominion,—heartily welcomed.
1018.
(Revue des deux mondes, 15th February 1887. Taine concerning Napoleon) "Suddenly the master faculty reveals itself: the artist, which was latent in the politician, comes forth from his scabbard; he creates dans l'idal et l'impossible. He is once more recognised as that which he is: the posthumous brother of Dante and of Michelangelo; and verily, in view of the definite contours of his vision, the intensity, the coherence, and inner consistency of his dream, the depth of his meditations, the superhuman greatness of his conception, he is their equal: son gnie a la mme taille et la mme structure; il est un des trois esprits souverains de la renaissance italienne."
Nota bene. Dante, Michelangelo, Napoleon.
1019.
Concerning the pessimism of strength. In the internal economy of the primitive man's soul, the fear of evil preponderates. What is evil! Three kinds of things: accident, uncertainty, the unexpected. How does primitive man combat evil?—He conceives it as a thing of reason, of power, even as a person. By this means he is enabled to make treaties with it, and generally to operate upon it in advance—to forestall it.
—Another expedient is to declare its evil and harmful character to be but apparent: the consequences of accidental occurrences, and of uncertainty and the unexpected, are interpreted as well-meant, as reasonable.
—A third means is to interpret evil, above all, as merited: evil is thus justified as a punishment.
—In short, man submits to in all religious and moral interpretations are but forms of submission to evil.—The belief that a good purpose lies behind all evil, implies the renunciation of any desire to combat it.
Now, the history of every culture shows a diminution of this fear of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected. Culture means precisely, to learn to reckon, to discover causes, to acquire the power of forestalling events, to acquire a belief in necessity. With the growth of culture, man is able to dispense with that primitive form of submission to evil (called religion or morality), and that "justification of evil." Now he wages war against "evil,"—he gets rid of it. Yes, a state of[Pg 399] security, of belief in law and the possibility of calculation, is possible, in which consciousness regards these things with tedium,—in which the joy of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected, actually becomes a spur.
