274
Man Promises, Woman Fulfils. – By woman Nature shows how far she has hitherto achieved her task of fashioning humanity, by man she shows what she has had to overcome and what she still proposes to do for humanity. – The most perfect woman of every age is the holiday-task of the Creator on every seventh day of culture, the recreation of the artist from his work.
275
Transplanting. – If we have spent our intellect in order to gain mastery over the intemperance of the passions, the sad result often follows that we transfer the intemperance to the intellect, and from that time forth are extravagant in thought and desire of knowledge.
276
Laughter as Treachery. – How and when a woman laughs is a sign of her culture, but in the ring of laughter her nature reveals itself, and in highly cultured women perhaps even the last insoluble residue of their nature. Hence the psychologist will say with Horace, though from different reasons: “Ridete puellae.”
277
From the Youthful Soul. – Youths varyingly show devotion and impudence towards the same person, because at bottom they only despise or admire themselves in that other person, and between the two feelings but stagger to and fro in themselves, so long as they have not found in experience the measure of their will and ability.
278
For the Amelioration of the World. – If we forbade the discontented, the sullen, and the atrabilious to propagate, we might transform the world into a garden of happiness. – This aphorism belongs to a practical philosophy for the female sex.
279
Not to Distrust your Emotions. – The feminine phrase “Do not distrust your emotions” does not mean much more than “Eat what tastes good to you.” This may also, especially for moderate natures, be a good everyday rule. But other natures must live according to another maxim: “You must eat not only with your mouth but also with your brain, in order that the greediness of your mouth may not prove your undoing.”
280
A Cruel Fancy of Love. – Every great love involves the cruel thought of killing the object of love, so that it may be removed once for all from the mischievous play of change. For love is more afraid of change than of destruction.
281
Doors. – In everything that is learnt or experienced, the child, just like the man, sees doors; but for the former they are places to go to, for the latter to go through.
282
Sympathetic Women. – The sympathy of women, which is talkative, takes the sick-bed to market.
283
Early Merit. – He who acquires merit early in life tends to forget all reverence for age and old people, and accordingly, greatly to his disadvantage, excludes himself from the society of the mature, those who confer maturity. Thus in spite of his early merit he remains green, importunate, and boyish longer than others.
284
Souls All of a Piece. – Women and artists think that where we do not contradict them we cannot. Reverence on ten counts and silent disapproval on ten others appears to them an impossible combination, because their souls are all of a piece.
285
Young Talents. – With respect to young talents we must strictly follow Goethe's maxim, that we should often avoid harming error in order to avoid harming truth. Their condition is like the diseases of pregnancy, and involves strange appetites. These appetites should be satisfied and humoured as far as possible, for the sake of the fruit they may be expected to produce. It is true that, as nurse of these remarkable invalids, one must learn the difficult art of voluntary self-abasement.
286
Disgust with Truth. – Women are so constituted that all truth (in relation to men, love, children, society, aim of life) disgusts them – and that they try to be revenged on every one who opens their eyes.
287
The Source of Great Love. – Whence arises the sudden passion of a man for a woman, a passion so deep, so vital? Least of all from sensuality only: but when a man finds weakness, need of help, and high spirits united in the same creature, he suffers a sort of overflowing of soul, and is touched and offended at the same moment. At this point arises the source of great love.
288
Cleanliness. – In the child, the sense for cleanliness should be fanned into a passion, and then later on he will raise himself, in ever new phases, to almost every virtue, and will finally appear, in compensation for all talent, as a shining cloud of purity, temperance, gentleness, and character, happy in himself and spreading happiness around.
289
Of Vain Old Men. – Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. When, in spite of this, old men sometimes speak and write in the manner of the profound, they do so from vanity, imagining that they thereby assume the charm of juvenility, enthusiasm, growth, apprehensiveness, hopefulness.
290
Enjoyment of Novelty. – Men use a new lesson or experience later on as a ploughshare or perhaps also as a weapon, women at once make it into an ornament.
291
How both Sexes behave when in the Right. – If it is conceded to a woman that she is right, she cannot deny herself the triumph of setting her heel on the neck of the vanquished; she must taste her victory to the full. On the other hand, man towards man in such a case is ashamed of being right. But then man is accustomed to victory; with woman it is an exception.
292
Abnegation in the Will to Beauty. – In order to become beautiful, a woman must not desire to be considered pretty. That is to say, in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases where she could please she must scorn and put aside all thoughts of pleasing. Only then can she ever reap the delight of him whose soul's portal is wide enough to admit the great.
293
Unintelligible, Unendurable. – A youth cannot understand that an old man has also had his delights, his dawns of feeling, his changings and soarings of thought. It offends him to think that such things have existed before. But it makes him very bitter to hear that, to become fruitful, he must lose those buds and dispense with their fragrance.
294
The Party with the Air of Martyrdom. – Every party that can assume an air of martyrdom wins good-natured souls over to its side and thereby itself acquires an air of good nature – greatly to its advantage.
295
Assertions surer than Arguments. – An assertion has, with the majority of men at any rate, more effect than an argument, for arguments provoke mistrust. Hence demagogues seek to strengthen the arguments of their party by assertions.
296
The Best Concealers. – All regularly successful men are profoundly cunning in making their faults and weaknesses look like manifestations of strength. This proves that they must know their defects uncommonly well.
297
From Time to Time. – He sat in the city gateway and said to one who passed through that this was the city gate. The latter replied that this was true, but that one must not be too much in the right if one expected to be thanked for it. “Oh,” answered the other, “I don't want thanks, but from time to time it is very pleasant not merely to be in the right but to remain in the right.”
298
Virtue was not Invented by the Germans. – Goethe's nobleness and freedom from envy, Beethoven's fine hermitical resignation, Mozart's cheerfulness and grace of heart, Handel's unbending manliness and freedom under the law, Bach's confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need to renounce glamour and success – are these qualities peculiarly German? – If they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and to what they can attain.
299
Pia Fraus or Something Else. – I hope I am mistaken, but I think that in Germany of to-day a twofold sort of hypocrisy is set up as the duty of the moment for every one. From imperial-political misgivings Germanism is demanded, and from social apprehensions Christianity – but both only in words and gestures, and particularly in ability to keep silent. It is the veneer that nowadays costs so much and is paid for so highly; and for the benefit of the spectators the face of the nation assumes German and Christian wrinkles.
300
How far even in the Good the Half may be More than the Whole. – In all things that are constructed to last and demand the service of many hands, much that is less good must be made a rule, although the organiser knows what is better and harder very well. He will calculate that there will never be a lack of persons who can correspond to the rule, and he knows that the middling good is the rule. – The youth seldom sees this point, and as an innovator thinks how marvellously he is in the right and how strange is the blindness of others.
301
The Partisan. – The true partisan learns nothing more, he only experiences and judges. It is significant that Solon, who was never a partisan but pursued his aims above and apart from parties or even against them, was the father of that simple phrase wherein lies the secret of the health and vitality of Athens: “I grow old, but I am always learning.”
302
What is German according to Goethe. – They are really intolerable people of whom one cannot even accept the good, who have freedom of disposition but do not remark that they are lacking in freedom of taste and spirit. Yet just this, according to Goethe's well-weighed judgment, is German. – His voice and his example indicate that the German should be more than a German if he wishes to be useful or even endurable to other nations – and which direction his striving should take, in order that he may rise above and beyond himself.
303
When it is Necessary to Remain Stationary. – When the masses begin to rage, and reason is under a cloud, it is a good thing, if the health of one's soul is not quite assured, to go under a doorway and look out to see what the weather is like.
304
The Revolution-Spirit and the Possession-Spirit. – The only remedy against Socialism that still lies in your power is to avoid provoking Socialism – in other words, to live in moderation and contentment, to prevent as far as possible all lavish display, and to aid the State as far as possible in its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries. You do not like this remedy? Then, you rich bourgeois who call yourselves “Liberals,” confess that it is your own inclination that you find so terrible and menacing in Socialists, but allow to prevail in yourselves as unavoidable, as if with you it were something different. As you are constituted, if you had not your fortune and the cares of maintaining it, this bent of yours would make Socialists of you. Possession alone differentiates you from them. If you wish to conquer the assailants of your prosperity, you must first conquer yourselves. – And if that prosperity only meant well-being, it would not be so external and provocative of envy; it would be more generous, more benevolent, more compensatory, more helpful. But the spurious, histrionic element in your pleasures, which lie more in the feeling of contrast (because others have them not, and feel envious) than in feelings of realised and heightened power – your houses, dresses, carriages, shops, the demands of your palates and your tables, your noisy operatic and musical enthusiasm; lastly your women, formed and fashioned but of base metal, gilded but without the ring of gold, chosen by you for show and considering themselves meant for show – these are the things that spread the poison of that national disease, which seizes the masses ever more and more as a Socialistic heart-itch, but has its origin and breeding-place in you. Who shall now arrest this epidemic?
305
Party Tactics. – When a party observes that a previous member has changed from an unqualified to a qualified adherent, it endures it so ill that it irritates and mortifies him in every possible way with the object of forcing him to a decisive break and making him an opponent. For the party suspects that the intention of finding a relative value in its faith, a value which admits of pro and con, of weighing and discarding, is more dangerous than downright opposition.
306
For the Strengthening of Parties. – Whoever wishes to strengthen a party internally should give it an opportunity of being forcibly treated with obvious injustice. The party thus acquires a capital of good conscience, which hitherto it perhaps lacked.
307
To Provide for One's Past. – As men after all only respect the old-established and slowly developed, he who would survive after his death must not only provide for posterity but still more for the past. Hence tyrants of every sort (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like to do violence to history, so that history may seem a preparation and a ladder up to them.
308
Party Writers. – The beating of drums, which delights young writers who serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party like a rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration.
309
Taking Sides against Ourselves. – Our followers never forgive us for taking sides against ourselves, for we seem in their eyes not only to be spurning their love but to be exposing them to the charge of lack of intelligence.
310
Danger in Wealth. – Only a man of intellect should hold property: otherwise property is dangerous to the community. For the owner, not knowing how to make use of the leisure which his possessions might secure to him, will continue to strive after more property. This strife will be his occupation, his strategy in the war with ennui. So in the end real wealth is produced from the moderate property that would be enough for an intellectual man. Such wealth, then, is the glittering outcrop of intellectual dependence and poverty, but it looks quite different from what its humble origin might lead one to expect, because it can mask itself with culture and art – it can, in fact, purchase the mask. Hence it excites envy in the poor and uncultured – who at bottom always envy culture and see no mask in the mask – and gradually paves the way for a social revolution. For a gilded coarseness and a histrionic blowing of trumpets in the pretended enjoyment of culture inspires that class with the thought, “It is only a matter of money,” whereas it is indeed to some extent a matter of money, but far more of intellect.
311
Joy in Commanding and Obeying. – Commanding is a joy, like obeying; the former when it has not yet become a habit, the latter just when it has become a habit. Old servants under new masters advance each other mutually in giving pleasure.
312
Ambition for a Forlorn Hope. – There is an ambition for a forlorn hope which forces a party to place itself at the post of extreme danger.
313
When Asses are Needed. – We shall not move the crowd to cry “Hosanna!” until we have ridden into the city upon an ass.
314
Party Usage. – Every party attempts to represent the important elements that have sprung up outside it as unimportant, and if it does not succeed, it attacks those elements the more bitterly, the more excellent they are.
315
Becoming Empty. – Of him who abandons himself to the course of events, a smaller and smaller residue is continually left. Great politicians may therefore become quite empty men, although they were once full and rich.
316
Welcome Enemies. – The Socialistic movements are nowadays becoming more and more agreeable rather than terrifying to the dynastic governments, because by these movements they are provided with a right and a weapon for making exceptional rules, and can thus attack their real bogies, democrats and anti-dynasts. – Towards all that such governments professedly detest they feel a secret cordiality and inclination. But they are compelled to draw the veil over their soul.
317
Possession Possesses. – Only up to a certain point does possession make men feel freer and more independent; one step farther, and possession becomes lord, the possessor a slave. The latter must sacrifice his time, his thoughts to the former, and feels himself compelled to an intercourse, nailed to a spot, incorporated with the State – perhaps quite in conflict with his real and essential needs.
318
Of the Mastery of Them that Know. – It is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up a model for the choice of a legislative body. First of all the honest and reliable men of the nation, who at the same time are masters and experts in some one branch, have to become prominent by mutual scenting-out and recognition. From these, by a narrower process of selection, the learned and expert of the first rank in each individual branch must again be chosen, also by mutual recognition and guarantee. If the legislative body be composed of these, it will finally be necessary, in each individual case, that only the voices and judgments of the most specialised experts should decide; the honesty of all the rest should have become so great that it is simply a matter of decency to leave the voting also in the hands of these men. The result would be that the law, in the strictest sense, would emanate from the intelligence of the most intelligent. – As things now are, voting is done by parties, and at every division there must be hundreds of uneasy consciences among the ill-taught, the incapable of judgment, among those who merely repeat, imitate, and go with the tide. Nothing lowers the dignity of a new law so much as this inherent shamefaced feeling of insincerity that necessarily results at every party division. But, as has been said, it is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up such a model: no power on earth is at present strong enough to realise such an ideal – unless the belief in the highest utility of knowledge, and of those that know, at last dawns even upon the most hostile minds and is preferred to the prevalent belief in majorities. In the sense of such a future may our watchword be: “More reverence for them that know, and down with all parties!”
319
Of the “Nation of Thinkers” (or of Bad Thinking). – The vague, vacillating, premonitory, elementary, intuitive elements – to choose obscure names for obscure things – that are attributed to the German nature would be, if they really still existed, a proof that our culture has remained several stages behind and is still surrounded by the spell and atmosphere of the Middle Ages. – It is true that in this backwardness there are certain advantages: by these qualities the Germans (if, as has been said before, they still possess them) would possess the capacity, which other nations have now lost, for doing certain things and particularly for understanding certain things. Much undoubtedly is lost if the lack of sense – which is just the common factor in all those qualities – is lost. Here too, however, there are no losses without the highest compensatory gains, so that no reason is left for lamenting, granting that we do not, like children, and gourmands, wish to enjoy at once the fruits of all seasons of the year.
320
Carrying Coals to Newcastle. – The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army, and a more refined, the school. With the aid of the former they win over to their side the ambition of the higher strata and the strength of the lower, so far as both are characteristic of active and energetic men of moderate or inferior gifts. With the aid of the latter they win over gifted poverty, especially the intellectually pretentious semi-poverty of the middle classes. Above all, they make teachers of all grades into an intellectual court looking unconsciously “towards the heights.” By putting obstacle after obstacle in the way of private schools and the wholly distasteful individual tuition they secure the disposal of a considerable number of educational posts, towards which numerous hungry and submissive eyes are turned to an extent five times as great as can ever be satisfied. These posts, however, must support the holder but meagrely, so that he maintains a feverish thirst for promotion and becomes still more closely attached to the views of the government. For it is always more advantageous to foster moderate discontent than contentment, the mother of courage, the grandmother of free thought and exuberance. By means of this physically and mentally bridled body of teachers, the youth of the country is as far as possible raised to a certain level of culture that is useful to the State and arranged on a suitable sliding-scale. Above all, the immature and ambitious minds of all classes are almost imperceptibly imbued with the idea that only a career which is recognised and hall-marked by the State can lead immediately to social distinction. The effect of this belief in government examinations and titles goes so far that even men who have remained independent and have risen by trade or handicraft still feel a pang of discontent in their hearts until their position too is marked and acknowledged by a gracious bestowal of rank and orders from above – until one becomes a “somebody.” Finally the State connects all these hundreds of offices and posts in its hands with the obligation of being trained and hallmarked in these State schools if one ever wishes to enter this charmed circle. Honour in society, daily bread, the possibility of a family, protection from above, the feeling of community in a common culture – all this forms a network of hopes into which every young man walks: how should he feel the slightest breath of mistrust? In the end, perhaps, the obligation of being a soldier for one year has become with every one, after the lapse of a few generations, an unreflecting habit, an understood thing, with an eye to which we construct the plan of our lives quite early. Then the State can venture on the master-stroke of weaving together school and army, talent, ambition and strength by means of common advantages – that is, by attracting the more highly gifted on favourable terms to the army and inspiring them with the military spirit of joyful obedience; so that finally, perhaps, they become attached permanently to the flag and endow it by their talents with an ever new and more brilliant lustre. Then nothing more is wanted but an opportunity for great wars. These are provided from professional reasons (and so in all innocence) by diplomats, aided by newspapers and Stock Exchanges. For “the nation,” as a nation of soldiers, need never be supplied with a good conscience in war – it has one already.
321
The Press. – If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after they have taken place; – what significance can we attach to the Press in its present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a false direction?
322
After a Great Event. – A nation and a man whose soul has come to light through some great event generally feel the immediate need of some act of childishness or coarseness, as much from shame as for purposes of recreation.
323
To be a Good German means to de-Germanise Oneself. – National differences consist, far more than has hitherto been observed, only in the differences of various grades of culture, and are only to a very small extent permanent (nor even that in a strict sense). For this reason all arguments based on national character are so little binding on one who aims at the alteration of convictions – in other words, at culture. If, for instance, we consider all that has already been German, we shall improve upon the hypothetical question, “What is German?” by the counter-question, “What is now German?” and every good German will answer it practically, by overcoming his German characteristics. For when a nation advances and grows, it bursts the girdle previously given to it by its national outlook. When it remains stationary or declines, its soul is surrounded by a fresh girdle, and the crust, as it becomes harder and harder, builds a prison around, with walls growing ever higher. Hence if a nation has much that is firmly established, this is a sign that it wishes to petrify and would like to become nothing but a monument. This happened, from a definite date, in the case of Egypt. So he who is well-disposed towards the Germans may for his part consider how he may more and more grow out of what is German. The tendency to be un-German has therefore always been a mark of efficient members of our nation.
324
Foreignisms. – A foreigner who travelled in Germany found favour or the reverse by certain assertions of his, according to the districts in which he stayed. All intelligent Suabians, he used to say, are coquettish. – The other Suabians still believed that Uhland was a poet and Goethe immoral. – The best about German novels now in vogue was that one need not read them, for one knew already what they contained. – The native of Berlin seemed more good-humoured than the South German, for he was all too fond of mocking, and so could endure mockery himself, which the South German could not. – The intellect of the Germans was kept down by their beer and their newspapers: he recommended them tea and pamphlets, of course as a cure. – He advised us to contemplate the different nations of worn-out Europe and see how well each displayed some particular quality of old age, to the delight of those who sit before the great spectacle: how the French successfully represent the cleverness and amiability of old age, the English the experience and reserve, the Italians the innocence and candour. Can the other masks of old age be wanting? Where is the proud old man, the domineering old man, the covetous old man? – The most dangerous region in Germany was Saxony and Thuringia: nowhere else was there more mental nimbleness, more knowledge of men, side by side with freedom of thought; and all this was so modestly veiled by the ugly dialect and the zealous officiousness of the inhabitants that one hardly noticed that one here had to deal with the intellectual drill-sergeants of Germany, her teachers for good or evil. – The arrogance of the North Germans was kept in check by their tendency to obey, that of the South Germans by their tendency – to make themselves comfortable. – It appeared to him that in their women German men possessed awkward but self-opinionated housewives, who belauded themselves so perseveringly that they had almost persuaded the world, and at any rate their husbands, of their peculiarly German housewifely virtue. – When the conversation turned on Germany's home and foreign policy, he used to say (he called it “betray the secret”) that Germany's greatest statesman did not believe in great statesmen. – The future of Germany he found menaced and menacing, for Germans had forgotten how to enjoy themselves (an art that the Italians understood so well), but, by the great games of chance called wars and dynastic revolutions, had accustomed themselves to emotionalism, and consequently would one day have an émeute. For that is the strongest emotion that a nation can procure for itself. – The German Socialist was all the more dangerous because impelled by no definite necessity: his trouble lay in not knowing what he wanted; so, even if he attained many of his objects, he would still pine away from desire in the midst of delights, just like Faust, but presumably like a very vulgar Faust. “For the Faust-Devil,” he finally exclaimed, “by whom cultured Germans were so much plagued, was exorcised by Bismarck; but now the Devil has entered into the swine,17 and is worse than ever!”
325
Opinions. – Most men are nothing and count for nothing until they have arrayed themselves in universal convictions and public opinions. This is in accordance with the tailors' philosophy, “The apparel makes the man.” Of exceptional men, however, it must be said, “The wearer primarily makes the apparel.” Here opinions cease to be public, and become something else than masks, ornament, and disguise.
326
Two Kinds of Sobriety. – In order not to confound the sobriety arising from mental exhaustion with that arising from moderation, one must remark that the former is peevish, the latter cheerful.
327
Debasement of Joy. – To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears to us good, and above all not a day earlier – that is the only way to keep joy pure. Otherwise, joy all too easily becomes insipid and rotten to the taste, and counts, for whole strata of the people, among the adulterated foodstuffs.
328
The Scapegoat of Virtue. – When a man does his very best, those who mean well towards him, but are not capable of appreciating him, speedily seek a scapegoat to immolate, thinking it is the scapegoat of sin – but it is the scapegoat of virtue.
329
Sovereignty. – To honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it pleases one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small.
330
Influence a Phantom, not a Reality. – The man of mark gradually learns that so far as he has influence he is a phantom in other brains, and perhaps he falls into a state of subtle vexation of soul, in which he asks himself whether he must not maintain this phantom of himself for the benefit of his fellow-men.
331
Giving and Taking. – When one takes away (or anticipates) the smallest thing that another possesses, the latter is blind to the fact that he has been given something greater, nay, even the greatest thing.
332
Good Ploughland. – All rejection and negation betoken a deficiency in fertility. If we were good ploughland, we should allow nothing to be unused or lost, and in every thing, event, or person we should welcome manure, rain, or sunshine.
333
Intercourse as an Enjoyment. – If a man renounces the world and intentionally lives in solitude, he may come to regard intercourse with others, which he enjoys but seldom, as a special delicacy.
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