Part 72

(2) He must be inquisitive in an extraordinary number of ways: the danger of versatility;

(3) He must be just and honest in the highest sense, but profound both in love and hate (and in injustice);

(4) He must not only be a spectator but a lawgiver: a judge and defendant (in so far as he is an abbreviation of the world);

(5) He must be extremely multiform and yet firm and hard. He must be supple.

977.

The really regal calling of the philosopher (according to the expression of Alcuin the Anglo-Saxon): "Prava corrigere, et recta corroborare, et sancta sublimare."

978.

The new philosopher can only arise in conjunction with a ruling class, as the highest spiritualisation of the latter. Great politics, the rule of the earth, as a proximate contingency, the total lack of principles necessary thereto.

979.

Fundamental concept: the new values must first be created--this remains our duty! The philosopher must be our lawgiver. New species. (How the greatest species hitherto [for instance, the Greeks] were reared: this kind of accident must now be consciously striven for.)

980.

Supposing one thinks of the philosopher as an educator who, looking down from his lonely elevation, is powerful enough to draw long chains of generations up to him: then he must be granted the most terrible privileges of a great educator. An educator never says what he himself thinks; but only that which he thinks it is good for those whom he is educating to hear upon any subject. This dissimulation on his part must not be found out; it is part of his masterliness that people should believe in his honesty, he must be capable of all the means of discipline and education: there are some natures which he will only be able to raise by means of lashing them with his scorn; others who are lazy, irresolute, cowardly, and vain, he will be able to affect only with exaggerated praise. Such a teacher stands beyond good and evil, but nobody must know that he does.

981.

We must not make men "better," we must not talk to them about morality in any form as if "morality in itself," or an ideal kind of man in general, could be taken for granted; but we must create circumstances in which stronger men are necessary, such as for their part will require a morality (or, better still: a bodily and spiritual discipline) which makes men strong, and upon which they will consequently insist! As they will need one so badly, they will have it.

We must not let ourselves be seduced by blue eyes and heaving breasts: greatness of soul has absolutely nothing romantic about it. And unfortunately nothing whatever amiable either.

982.

From warriors we must learn: (1) to associate death with those interests for which we are fighting--that makes us venerable; (2) we must learn to sacrifice numbers, and to take our cause sufficiently seriously not to spare men; (3) we must practise inexorable discipline, and allow ourselves violence and cunning in war.

983.

The education which rears those ruling virtues that allow a man to become master of his benevolence and his pity: the great disciplinary virtues ("Forgive thine enemies" is mere child's play beside them), and the passions of the creator, must be elevated to the heights--we must cease from carving marble! The exceptional and powerful position of those creatures (compared with that of all princes hitherto): the Roman Cæsar with Christ's soul.

984.

We must not separate greatness of soul from intellectual greatness. For the former involves independence; but without intellectual greatness independence should not be allowed; all it does is to create disasters even in its lust of well-doing and of practising "justice." Inferior spirits must obey, consequently they cannot be possessed of greatness.

985.

The more lofty philosophical man who is surrounded by loneliness, not because he wishes to be alone, but because he is what he is, and cannot find his equal: what a number of dangers and torments are reserved for him, precisely at the present time, when we have lost our belief in the order of rank, and consequently no longer know how to understand or honour this isolation! Formerly the sage almost sanctified himself in the consciences of the mob by going aside in this way; to-day the anchorite sees himself as though enveloped in a cloud of gloomy doubt and suspicions. And not alone by the envious and the wretched: in every well-meant act that he experiences he is bound to discover misunderstanding, neglect, and superficiality. He knows the crafty tricks of foolish pity which makes these people feel so good and holy when they attempt to save him from his own destiny, by giving him more comfortable situations and more decent and reliable society. Yes, he will even get to admire the unconscious lust of destruction with which all mediocre spirits stand up and oppose him, believing all the while that they have a holy right to do so! For men of such incomprehensible loneliness it is necessary to put a good stretch of country between them and the officiousness of their fellows: this is part of their prudence. For such a man to maintain himself uppermost to-day amid the dangerous maelstroms of the age which threaten to draw him under, even cunning and disguise will be necessary. Every attempt he makes to order his life in the present and with the present, every time he draws near to these men and their modern desires, he will have to expiate as if it were an actual sin: and withal he may look with wonder at the concealed wisdom of his nature, which after every one of these attempts immediately leads him back to himself by means of illnesses and painful accidents.

986.

"Maledetto colui che contrista, un spirto immortal!" MANZONI (Conte di Carmagnola, Act II.)

987.

The most difficult and the highest form which man can attain is the most seldom successful: thus the history of philosophy reveals a superabundance of bungled and unhappy cases of manhood, and its march is an extremely slow one; whole centuries intervene and suppress what has been achieved: and in this way the connecting-link is always made to fail. It is an appalling history, this history of the highest men, of the sages.--What is most often damaged is precisely the recollection of great men, for the semi-successful and botched cases of mankind misunderstand them and overcome them by their "successes." Whenever an "effect" is noticeable, the masses gather in a crowd round it; to hear the inferior and the poor in spirit having their say is a terrible ear-splitting torment for him who knows and trembles at the thought, that the fate of man depends upon the success of its highest types. From the days of my childhood I have reflected upon the sage's conditions of existence, and I will not conceal my happy conviction that in Europe he has once more become possible--perhaps only for a short time.

988.