Part 78

To have travelled over the whole circumference of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners--my ambition, my torment, and my happiness.

Veritably to have overcome pessimism, and, as the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a Goethe--full of love and goodwill.

1032.

The first question is by no means whether we are satisfied with ourselves; but whether we are satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we should say yea to any single moment, we have then affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of existence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us or in other things: and if our soul has vibrated and rung with happiness, like a chord, once only and only once, then all eternity was necessary in order to bring about that one event,--and all eternity, in this single moment of our affirmation, was called good, was saved, justified, and blessed.

1033.

The passions which say yea. I ride, happiness, health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war, reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will, the discipline of lofty spirituality, the will to power, and gratitude to the Earth and to Life: all that is rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes, gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life--the whole power of the virtues that glorify--all declaring things good, saying yea, and doing yea.

1034.

We, many or few, who once more dare to live in a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith, we are probably also the first who understand what a pagan faith is: to be obliged to imagine higher creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond good and evil; to be compelled to value all higher existence as immoral existence. We believe in Olympus, and not in the "man on the cross."

1035.

The more modern man has exercised his idealising power in regard to a God mostly by moralising the latter ever more and more--what does that mean?--nothing good, a diminution in man's strength.

As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible: and indications of this are not wanting. God imagined as emancipation from morality, comprising the whole of the abundant assembly of Life's contrasts, and saving and justifying them in a divine agony. God as the beyond, the superior elevation, to the wretched cul-de-sac morality of "Good and Evil."

1036.

A humanitarian God cannot be demonstrated from the world that is known to us: so much are ye driven and forced to conclude to-day. But what conclusion do ye draw from this? "He cannot be demonstrated to us": the scepticism of knowledge. You all fear the conclusion: "From the world that is known to us quite a different God would be demonstrable, such a one as would certainly not be humanitarian"--and, in a word, you cling fast to your God, and invent a world for Him which is unknown to us.

1037.

Let us banish the highest good from our concept of God: it is unworthy of a God. Let us likewise banish the highest wisdom: it is the vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom: the idea was to make Him as like them as possible. No! God as the highest power--that is sufficient!--Everything follows from that, even--"the world"!

1038

And how many new Gods are not still possible! I, myself, in whom the religious--that is to say, the god-creating instinct occasionally becomes active at the most inappropriate moments: how very differently the divine has revealed itself every time to me! ... So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments, which fall into a man's life as if they came from the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer knows how old he is or how young he still may be! ... I would not doubt that there are several kinds of gods.... Some are not wanting which one could not possibly imagine without a certain halcyonic calm and levity.... Light feet perhaps belong to the concept "God". Is it necessary to explain that a God knows how to hold Himself preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist circles? also (between ourselves) beyond good and evil? His outlook is a free one--as Goethe would say.--And to invoke the authority of Zarathustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in this regard: Zarathustra goes as far as to confess, "I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance ..."

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 them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all merely pleasing qualities.

***

In times of painful tension and vulnerability, choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.

***

Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter; a man only has what he needs.