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

Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds in its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest processes of all “knowledge and cognizance”: there, as here, the premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to “belief,” and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed⁠—our senses learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more force, more “morality.” It is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar and conversant⁠—it was thus, for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word arcubalista into armbrust (crossbow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and generally, even in the “simplest” processes of sensation, the emotions dominate⁠—such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.⁠—As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page⁠—he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at random, and “guesses” the probably appropriate sense to them⁠—just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate any event, except as “inventors” thereof. All this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have been⁠—accustomed to lying. Or, to express it more politely and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly⁠—one is much more of an artist than one is aware of.⁠—In an animated conversation, I often see the face of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the strength of my visual faculty⁠—the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes must therefore be imagined by me. Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all.

Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. What we experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything “actually” experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some extent by the nature of our dreams. Supposing that someone has often flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an “upwards” without effort or constraint, a “downwards” without descending or lowering⁠—without trouble!⁠—how could the man with such dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find “happiness” differently coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could he fail⁠—to long differently for happiness? “Flight,” such as is described by poets, must, when compared with his own “flying,” be far too earthly, muscular, violent, far too “troublesome” for him.

The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the difference of their lists of desirable things⁠—in their regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized desirable things:⁠—it manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually having and possessing a desirable thing. As regards a woman, for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for possession, sees the “questionableness,” the mere apparentness of such ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for his sake what she has or would like to have⁠—only then does he look upon her as “possessed.” A third, however, has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more refined thirst for possession, says to himself: “One may not deceive where one desires to possess”⁠—he is irritated and impatient at the idea that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: “I must, therefore, make myself known, and first of all learn to know myself!” Among helpful and charitable people,