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

genius, that is to say, a being who either engenders or produces⁠—both words understood in their fullest sense⁠—the man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of indemnification⁠—in these cases one emphasizes the respectability⁠—and yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture of vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man? Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file, equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require⁠—for instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration (which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability), the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and usefulness, with which the inward distrust which lies at the bottom of the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and again to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go, but does not flow; and precisely before the man of the great current he stands all the colder and more reserved⁠—his eye is then like a smooth and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy. The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of the exceptional man, and endeavours to break⁠—or still better, to relax⁠—every bent bow. To relax, of course, with consideration, and naturally with an indulgent hand⁠—to relax with confiding sympathy that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to introduce itself as the religion of sympathy. 207

However gratefully one may welcome the objective spirit⁠—and who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded ipsisimosity!⁠—in the end, however, one must learn caution even with regard to one’s gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration with which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been celebrated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation and glorification⁠—as is especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the highest honours to “disinterested knowledge” The objective man, who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the ideal man of learning in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a mirror⁠—he is no “purpose in himself” The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such desires only as knowing or “reflecting” implies⁠—he waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film Whatever “personality” he still possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms and events. He calls up the recollection of “himself” with an effort, and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent. Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and society⁠—indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the more general case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote time to himself he is serene, not from lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble The habitual complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his!⁠—and as man generally, he becomes far too easily the caput mortuum of such virtues. Should one wish love or hatred from him⁠—I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them⁠—he will do what he can, and furnish what he can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be much⁠—if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather un tour de force, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality is he still “nature” and “natural.” His mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. “je ne meprise presque rien”⁠—he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the presque! Neither is he a model man; he does not