356.
Uses of Sickliness.—He who is often ill not only has a far greater pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires a very keen sense of what is healthy or sickly in actions and achievements, both his own and others'. Thus, for example, it is just the writers of uncertain health—among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great writers must be classed—who are wont to have a far more even and assured tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and convalescence and in their teachers—morning, sunshine, forest, and fountain.
357.
Disloyalty a Condition of Mastery.—It cannot be helped—every master has but one pupil, and he becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined for mastery.
358.
Never in Vain.—In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either you already reach a higher point to-day, or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher to-morrow.
359.
Through Grey Window-Panes.—Is what you see through this window of the world so beautiful that you do not wish to look through any other [pg 167] window—ay, and even try to prevent others from so doing?
360.
A Sign of Radical Changes.—When we dream of persons long forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have suffered radical changes, and that the soil on which we live has been completely undermined. The dead rise again, and our antiquity becomes modernity.
361.
Medicine of the Soul.—To lie still and think little is the cheapest medicine for all diseases of the soul, and, with the aid of good-will, becomes pleasanter every hour that it is used.
362.
Intellectual Order of Precedence.—You rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule.
363.
The Fatalist.—You must believe in fate—science can compel you thereto. All that develops in you out of that belief—cowardice, devotion or loftiness, and uprightness—bears witness to the soil in which the grain was sown, but not to the grain itself, for from that seed anything and everything can grow.
364.
The Reason for Much Fretfulness.—He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will [pg 168] undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world.
365.
Excess as a Remedy.—We can make our own talent once more acceptable to ourselves by honouring and enjoying the opposite talent for some time to excess.—Using excess as a remedy is one of the more refined devices in the art of life.
366.
“Will a Self.”—Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, “Know thyself,” but as if always confronted with the command, “Will a self, so you will become a self.”—Fate seems always to have left them a choice. Inactive, contemplative natures, on the other hand, reflect on how they have chosen their self “once for all” at their entry into life.
367.
To Live as Far as Possible without a Following.—How small is the importance of followers we first grasp when we have ceased to be the followers of our followers.
368.
Obscuring Oneself.—We must understand how to obscure ourselves in order to get rid of the gnat-swarms of pestering admirers.
369.
Ennui.—There is an ennui of the most subtle and cultured brains, to which the best that the world can offer has become stale. Accustomed to eat ever more and more recherché fare and to feel disgust at coarser diet, they are in danger of dying of hunger. For the very best exists but in small quantities, and has sometimes become inaccessible or hard as stone, so that even good teeth can no longer bite it.
370.
The Danger in Admiration.—The admiration of a quality or of an art may be so strong as to deter us from aspiring to possess that quality or art.
371.
What is Required of Art.—One man wants to enjoy himself by means of art, another for a time to get out of or above himself.—To meet both requirements there exists a twofold species of artists.
372.
Secessions.—Whoever secedes from us offends not us, perhaps, but certainly our adherents.
373.
After Death.—It is only long after the death of a man that we find it inconceivable that he should be missed—in the case of really great men, only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when [pg 170] any one dies that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh.
374.
Leaving in Hades.—We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with cruel lust after our blood.
375.
Near to Beggary.—Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to the room in which his hoarded treasures repose. He is then like the poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living.
376.
Chain-Thinkers.—To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought that he hears or reads at once assumes the form of a chain.
377.
Pity.—In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy.
378.
What is Genius?—To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.
379.
Vanity of Combatants.—He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting should be admired.
380.
The Philosophic Life Misinterpreted.—At the moment when one is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing the reverse.
381.
Imitation.—By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit—especially in art.
382.
Final Teaching of History.—“Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past, we shall rather cry out at the end, “Anything but a return to that! The spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pass the same verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under such conditions was intolerable. “And yet every one can endure his own times?” Yes, because the spirit of [pg 172] his age not only lies upon him but is in him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear itself.
383.
Greatness as a Mask.—By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes; by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us. For envy levels and makes equal; it is an unconscious, plaintive variety of modesty.—It may be indeed that here and there, for the sake of the above-named advantage, envy has been assumed as a mask by those who are not envious. Certainly, however, greatness in comportment is often used as the mask of envy by ambitious men who would rather suffer drawbacks and embitter their foes than let it be seen that they place them on an equal footing with themselves.
384.
Unpardonable.—You gave him an opportunity of displaying the greatness of his character, and he did not make use of the opportunity. He will never forgive you for that.
385.
Contrasts.—The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, “The ego is always hateful,” the most childish in the still more famous saying, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”—With the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun.
386.
A Defective Ear.—“We still belong to the mob so long as we always shift the blame on to others; we are on the track of wisdom when we always make ourselves alone responsible; but the wise man finds no one to blame, neither himself nor others.”—Who said that? Epictetus, eighteen hundred years ago.—The world has heard but forgotten the saying.—No, the world has not heard and not forgotten it: everything is not forgotten. But we had not the necessary ear, the ear of Epictetus.—So he whispered it into his own ear?—Even so: wisdom is the whispering of the sage to himself in the crowded market-place.
387.
A Defect of Standpoint, not of Vision.—We always stand a few paces too near ourselves and a few paces too far from our neighbour. Hence we judge him too much in the lump, and ourselves too much by individual, occasional, insignificant features and circumstances.
388.
Ignorance about Weapons.—How little we care whether another knows a subject or not!—whereas he perhaps sweats blood at the bare idea that he may be considered ignorant on the point. Yes, there are exquisite fools, who always go about with a quiverful of mighty, excommunicatory utterances, ready to shoot down any one who shows freely that there are matters in which their judgment is not taken into account.
389.
At the Drinking-Table of Experience.—People whose innate moderation leads them to drink but the half of every glass, will not admit that everything in the world has its lees and sediment.
390.
Singing-Birds.—The followers of a great man often put their own eyes out, so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.
391.
Beyond our Ken.—The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our ken.
392.
Rule as Mother or as Child.—There is one condition that gives birth to rules, another to which rules give birth.
393.
Comedy.—We sometimes earn honour or love for actions and achievements which we have long since sloughed as the snake sloughs his skin. We are hereby easily seduced into becoming the comic actors of our own past, and into throwing the old skin once more about our shoulders—and that not merely from vanity, but from good-will towards our admirers.
394.
A Mistake of Biographers.—The small force that is required to launch a boat into the stream [pg 175] must not be confounded with the force of the stream that carries the boat along. Yet this mistake is made in nearly all biographies.
395.
Not Buying too Dear.—The things that we buy too dear we generally turn to bad use, because we have no love for them but only a painful recollection. Thus they involve a twofold drawback.
396.
The Philosophy that Society always Needs.—The pillars of the social structure rest upon the fundamental fact that every one cheerfully contemplates all that he is, does, and attempts, his sickness or health, his poverty or affluence, his honour or insignificance, and says to himself, “After all, I would not change places with any one!”—Whoever wishes to add a stone to the social structure should always try to implant in mankind this cheerful philosophy of contentment and refusal to change places.
397.
The Mark of a Noble Soul.—A noble soul is not that which is capable of the highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living always in a free and bright atmosphere and altitude.
398.
Greatness and its Contemplator.—The noblest effect of greatness is that it gives the contemplator [pg 176] a power of vision that magnifies and embellishes.
399.
Being Satisfied.—We show that we have attained maturity of understanding when we no longer go where rare flowers lurk under the thorniest hedges of knowledge, but are satisfied with gardens, forests, meadows, and ploughlands, remembering that life is too short for the rare and uncommon.
400.
Advantage in Privation.—He who always lives in the warmth and fulness of the heart, and, as it were, in the summer air of the soul, cannot form an idea of that fearful delight which seizes more wintry natures, who for once in a way are kissed by the rays of love and the milder breath of a sunny February day.
401.
Recipe for the Sufferer.—You find the burden of life too heavy? Then you must increase the burden of your life. When the sufferer finally thirsts after and seeks the river of Lethe, then he must become a hero to be certain of finding it.
402.
The Judge.—He who has seen another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge, and as it were his evil conscience.
403.
The Utility of Great Renunciation.—The useful thing about great renunciation is that it invests [pg 177] us with that youthful pride through which we can thenceforth easily demand of ourselves small renunciations.
404.
How Duty Acquires a Glamour.—You can change a brazen duty into gold in the eyes of all by always performing something more than you have promised.
405.
Prayer to Mankind.—“Forgive us our virtues”—so should we pray to mankind.
406.
They that Create and They that Enjoy.—Every one who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.
407.
The Glory of all Great Men.—What is the use of genius if it does not invest him who contemplates and reveres it with such freedom and loftiness of feeling that he no longer has need of genius?—To make themselves superfluous is the glory of all great men.
408.
The Journey to Hades.—I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus, and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, [pg 178] that I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say, conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those eight and see their eyes fastened on mine.—May the living forgive me if I look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and, alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point: what matters “eternal life,” or indeed life at all?