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Again I say: how many new Gods are not still possible! Certainly Zarathustra himself is merely an old atheist: he believes neither in old nor in new gods. Zarathustra says, "he would"—but Zarathustra will not.... Take care to understand him well.
The type God conceived according to the type of creative spirits, of "great men."
1039.
And how many new ideals are not, at bottom, still possible? Here is a little ideal that I seize upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy. To spend one's life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality, half-artist, half-bird, half-metaphysician; without a yea or a nay for reality, save that from time to time one acknowledges it, after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of one's toes; always tickled by some happy ray of sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by sorrow —for sorrow preserves the happy man; fixing a little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing: this, as is clear, is the ideal of a heavy spirit, a ton in weight of the spirit of gravity.
1040.
From the military-school of the soul. (Dedicated to the brave, the good-humoured, and the abstinent.)
I should not like to undervalue the amiable virtues; but greatness of soul is not compatible with[Pg 411] them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all merely pleasing qualities.
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In times of painful tension and vulnerability, choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.
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Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter; a man only has what he needs.
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It has now already lasted ten years: no sound any longer reaches me—a land without rain. A man must have a vast amount of humanity at his disposal in order not to pine away in such drought.[8]
[8] For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted with the circumstances of Nietzsche's life, it would be as well to point out that this is a purely personal plaint, comprehensible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was for years a lonely anchorite.—Tr.
1041.
My new road to an affirmative attitude.—Philosophy, as I have understood it and lived it up to the present, is the voluntary quest of the repulsive and atrocious aspects of existence. From the long experience derived from such wandering over ice and desert, I learnt to regard quite differently everything that had been philosophised hitherto: the concealed history of philosophy, the psychology of its great names came into the light for me. "How much truth can a spirit endure; for how much truth is it daring enough?"—this for me was the real[Pg 412] measure of value. Error is a piece of cowardice ... every victory on the part of knowledge, is the result of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of cleanliness towards one's self.... The kind of experimental philosophy which I am living, even anticipates the possibility of the most fundamental Nihilism, on principle: but by this I do not mean that it remains standing at a negation, at a no, or at a will to negation. It would rather attain to the very reverse—to a Dionysian affirmation of the world, as it is, without subtraction, exception, or choice—it would have eternal circular motion: the same things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical concatenation. The highest state to which a philosopher can attain: to maintain a Dionysian attitude to Life—my formula for this is amor fati.
To this end we must not only consider those aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as: necessary, but as desirable, and not only desirable to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto (as complements or first prerequisites, so to speak), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more terrible, and more veritable aspects of life, in which the latter's will expresses itself most clearly.
To this end, we must also value that aspect of existence which alone has been affirmed until now; we must understand whence this valuation arises, and to how slight an extent it has to do with a Dionysian valuation of Life: I selected and understood that which in this respect says "yea" (on the one hand, the instinct of the sufferer; on the other, the gregarious instinct; and thirdly, the instinct of the greater number against the exceptions).
Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind of man must necessarily imagine—the elevation and enhancement of man in another direction: higher creatures, beyond good and evil, beyond those values which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number—I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy formation of ideals in history (the concepts "pagan," "classical," "noble," have been discovered afresh and brought forward).
1042.
We should demonstrate to what extent the religion of the Greeks was higher than Judo-Christianity. The latter triumphed because the Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).
1043.
It is not surprising that a couple of centuries have been necessary in order to link up again—a couple of centuries are very little indeed.
1044.
There must be some people who sanctify functions, not only eating and drinking, and not only in memory of them, or in harmony with them; but this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in a novel fashion.
1045.
The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and charm of sensual things in a way which other men[Pg 414] —those with "fleshy hearts"—cannot possibly imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine: they are sensualists with the best possible faith, because they grant the senses a more fundamental value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing machine, or whatever it is called, which in the language of the people is termed "spirit" The strength and power of the senses—this is the most essential thing in a sound man who is one of Nature's lucky strokes: the splendid beast must first be there—otherwise what is the value of all "humanisation"?
1046.
(1) We want to hold fast to our senses, and to the belief in them—and accept their logical conclusions! The hostility to the senses in the philosophy that has been written up to the present, has been man's greatest feat of nonsense.
(2) The world now extant, on which all earthly and living things have so built themselves, that it now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding slowly), we would fain continue building—not criticise it away as false!
(3) Our valuations help in the process of building; they emphasise and accentuate. What does it mean when whole religions say: "Everything is bad and false and evil"? This condemnation of the whole process can only be the judgment of the failures!
(4) True, the failures might be the greatest sufferers and therefore the most subtle! The contented might be worth little!
(5) We must understand the fundamental artistic phenomenon which is called "Life,"—the formative spirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable circumstances: and in the slowest manner possible——The proof of all its combinations must first be given afresh: it maintains itself.
