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

horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its appropriating power, its “digestive power,” to speak figuratively (and in fact “the spirit” resembles a stomach more than anything else). Here also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is not so-and-so, but is only allowed to pass as such), a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness and mystery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified, the diminished, the misshapen, the beautified⁠—an enjoyment of the arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power. Finally, in this connection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits and dissemble before them⁠—the constant pressing and straining of a creating, shaping, changeable power: the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoys also its feeling of security therein⁠—it is precisely by its Protean arts that it is best protected and concealed!⁠—counter to this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for a disguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside⁠—for every outside is a cloak⁠—there operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and insists on taking things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe words. He will say: “There is something cruel in the tendency of my spirit”: let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not so! In fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our “extravagant honesty” were talked about, whispered about, and glorified⁠—we free, very free spirits⁠—and some day perhaps such will actually be our⁠—posthumous glory! Meanwhile⁠—for there is plenty of time until then⁠—we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work has just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful⁠—there is something in them that makes one’s heart swell with pride. But we anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of an anchorite’s conscience, that this worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment, frippery, and gold-dust of unconscious human vanity, and that even under such flattering colour and repainting, the terrible original text homo natura must again be recognized. In effect, to translate man back again into nature; to master the many vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and daubed over the eternal original text, homo natura; to bring it about that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now, hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the other forms of nature, with fearless Oedipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long: “Thou art more! thou art higher! thou hast a different origin!”⁠—this may be a strange and foolish task, but that it is a task, who can deny! Why did we choose it, this foolish task? Or, to put the question differently: “Why knowledge at all?” Everyone will ask us about this. And thus pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have not found and cannot find any better answer.⁠ ⁠… 231

Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not merely “conserve”⁠—as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom of our souls, quite “down below,” there is certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable “I am this”; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully⁠—he can only follow to the end what is “fixed” about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they are henceforth called “convictions.” Later on⁠—one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge, guideposts to the problem which we ourselves are⁠—or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody, our spiritual fate, the unteachable in us, quite “down below.”⁠—In view of this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself, permission will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about “woman as she is,” provided that it is known at the outset how literally they are merely⁠—my truths.

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Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she begins to enlighten men about “woman as she is”⁠—this is one of the worst developments of the general uglifying of Europe. For what must these clumsy attempts of feminine scientificality and self-exposure bring to light! Woman has so much cause for shame; in woman there is so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, unbridledness, and indiscretion concealed⁠—study only woman’s behaviour towards children!⁠—which has really been best restrained and dominated hitherto by the fear of man. Alas, if ever the “eternally tedious in woman”⁠—she has plenty of it!⁠—is allowed to venture forth! if she begins radically and on principle to unlearn her wisdom and art⁠—of charming, of playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alleviating and taking easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for agreeable desires! Female voices are already raised, which, by Saint Aristophanes! make one afraid:⁠—with medical explicitness it is stated in a threatening manner what woman first and last requires from man. Is it not in the very worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men’s affair, men’s gift⁠—we remained therewith “among ourselves”; and in the end, in view of