530.

Digressions of the Thinker.—The course of thought in certain men is strict and inflexibly bold. At times it is even cruel towards such men, although considered individually they may be gentle and pliable. With well-meaning hesitation they will turn the matter ten times over in their heads, but will at length continue their strict course. They are like streams that wind their way past solitary hermitages: there are places in their course where the stream plays hide and seek with itself, and indulges in short idylls with islets, trees, grottos, and cascades—and then it rushes ahead once more, passes by the rocks, and forces its way through the hardest stones.

531.

Different Feelings Towards Art.—From the time when we begin to live as a hermit, consuming [pg 361] and consumed, our only company being deep and prolific thoughts, we expect from art either nothing more, or else something quite different from what we formerly expected—in a word, we change our taste. For in former times we wished to penetrate for a moment by means of art into the element in which we are now living permanently: at that time we dreamt ourselves into the rapture of a possession which we now actually possess. Indeed, flinging away from us for the time being what we now have, and imagining ourselves to be poor, or to be a child, a beggar, or a fool, may now at times fill us with delight.

532.

“Love Equalises.”—Love wishes to spare the other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of strangeness: as a consequence it is permeated with disguise and simulation; it keeps on deceiving continuously, and feigns an equality which in reality does not exist. And all this is done so instinctively that women who love deny this simulation and constant tender trickery, and have even the audacity to assert that love equalises (in other words that it performs a miracle)!

This phenomenon is a simple matter if one of the two permits himself or herself to be loved, and does not deem it necessary to feign, but leaves this to the other. No drama, however, could offer a more intricate and confused instance than when both persons are passionately in love with one another; for in this case both are anxious to [pg 362] surrender and to endeavour to conform to the other, and finally they are both at a loss to know what to imitate and what to feign. The beautiful madness of this spectacle is too good for this world, and too subtle for human eyes.

533.

We Beginners.—How many things does an actor see and divine when he watches another on the stage! He notices at once when a muscle fails in some gesture; he can distinguish those little artificial tricks which are so calmly practised separately before the mirror, and are not in conformity with the whole; he feels when the actor is surprised on the stage by his own invention, and when he spoils it amid this surprise.—How differently, again, does a painter look at some one who happens to be moving before him! He will see a great deal that does not actually exist in order to complete the actual appearance of the person, and to give it its full effect. In his mind he attempts several different illuminations of the same object, and divides the whole by an additional contrast.—Oh, that we now possessed the eyes of such an actor and such a painter for the province of the human soul!

534.

Small Doses.—If we wish a change to be as deep and radical as possible, we must apply the remedy in minute doses, but unremittingly for long periods. What great action can be performed all [pg 363] at once? Let us therefore be careful not to exchange violently and precipitately the moral conditions with which we are familiar for a new valuation of things,—nay, we may even wish to continue living in the old way for a long time to come, until probably at some very remote period we become aware of the fact that the new valuation has made itself the predominating power within us, and that its minute doses to which we must henceforth become accustomed have set up a new nature within us.—We now also begin to understand that the last attempt at a great change of valuations—that which concerned itself with political affairs (the “great revolution”)—was nothing more than a pathetic and sanguinary piece of quackery which, by means of sudden crises, was able to inspire a credulous Europe with the hope of a sudden recovery, and has therefore made all political invalids impatient and dangerous up to this very moment.

535.

Truth Requires Power.—Truth in itself is no power at all, in spite of all that flattering rationalists are in the habit of saying to the contrary. Truth must either attract power to its side, or else side with power, for otherwise it will perish again and again. This has already been sufficiently demonstrated, and more than sufficiently!