Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche (most life changing books txt) 📕

of method which one may not repudiate nowadays⁠—it follows “from its definition,” as mathematicians say. The question is ultimately whether we really recognize the will as operating, whether we believe in the causality of the will; if we do so⁠—and fundamentally our belief in this is just our belief in causality itself⁠—we must make the attempt to posit hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality. “Will” can naturally only operate on “will”⁠—and not on “matter” (not on “nerves,” for instance): in short, the hypothesis must be hazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever “effects” are recognized⁠—and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of will. Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will⁠—namely, the Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition⁠—it is one problem⁠—could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define all active force unequivocally as Will to Power. The world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to its “intelligible character”⁠—it would simply be “Will to Power,” and nothing else. 37

“What? Does not that mean in popular language: God is disproved, but not the devil?”⁠—On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil also compels you to speak popularly!

38

As happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern times with the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quite superfluous when judged close at hand, into which, however, the noble and visionary spectators of all Europe have interpreted from a distance their own indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately, until the text has disappeared under the interpretation), so a noble posterity might once more misunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps only thereby make its aspect endurable.⁠—Or rather, has not this already happened? Have not we ourselves been⁠—that “noble posterity”? And, in so far as we now comprehend this, is it not⁠—thereby already past?

39

Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous⁠—excepting, perhaps, the amiable “Idealists,” who are enthusiastic about the good, true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilities swim about promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. It is willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counterarguments. A thing could be true, although it were in the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamental constitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by a full knowledge of it⁠—so that the strength of a mind might be measured by the amount of “truth” it could endure⁠—or to speak more plainly, by the extent to which it required truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified. But there is no doubt that for the discovery of certain portions of truth the wicked and unfortunate are more favourably situated and have a greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the wicked who are happy⁠—a species about whom moralists are silent. Perhaps severity and craft are more favourable conditions for the development of strong, independent spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, yielding good-nature, and habit of taking things easily, which are prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. Presupposing always, to begin with, that the term “philosopher” be not confined to the philosopher who writes books, or even introduces his philosophy into books!⁠—Stendhal furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the free-spirited philosopher, which for the sake of German taste I will not omit to underline⁠—for it is opposed to German taste. “Pour être bon philosophe,” says this last great psychologist, “il faut être sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractère requis pour faire des découvertes en philosophie, c’est-à-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est.”

40

Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the contrary only be the right disguise for the shame of a God to go about in? A question worth asking!⁠—it would be strange if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing. There are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask⁠—there is so much goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, and with regard to the existence of which his nearest and most intimate friends may be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from their eyes, and equally so his regained security. Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, desires and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes