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

and cheerfulness more than any other man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always before one’s eyes. The manifold torment of the psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then discovers almost repeatedly throughout all history, this universal inner “desperateness” of higher men, this eternal “too late!” in every sense⁠—may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with bitterness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at self-destruction⁠—of his “going to ruin” himself. One may perceive in almost every psychologist a telltale inclination for delightful intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men; the fact is thereby disclosed that he always requires healing, that he needs a sort of flight and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and incisiveness⁠—from what his “business”⁠—has laid upon his conscience. The fear of his memory is peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he has perceived⁠—or he even conceals his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has learnt great sympathy, together with great contempt, the multitude, the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learnt great reverence⁠—reverence for “great men” and marvelous animals, for the sake of whom one blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the dignity of mankind, and one’s own self, to whom one points the young, and in view of whom one educates them. And who knows but in all great instances hitherto just the same happened: that the multitude worshipped a God, and that the “God” was only a poor sacrificial animal! success has always been the greatest liar⁠—and the “work” itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their creations until they are unrecognizable; the “work” of the artist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is reputed to have created it; the “great men,” as they are reverenced, are poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values spurious coinage prevails. Those great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention much greater names, but I have them in my mind), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust; with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the Will-o’-the-Wisps around the swamps, and pretend to be stars⁠—the people then call them idealists⁠—often struggling with protracted disgust, with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold, and obliges them to languish for gloria and devour “faith as it is” out of the hands of intoxicated adulators:⁠—what a torment these great artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once found them out! It is thus conceivable that it is just from woman⁠—who is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers⁠—that they have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted sympathy, which the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand, and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would like to believe that love can do everything⁠—it is the superstition peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is⁠—he finds that it rather destroys than saves!⁠—It is possible that under the holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of knowledge about love: the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that never had enough of any human love, that demanded love, that demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send thither those who would not love him⁠—and that at last, enlightened about human love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire capacity for love⁠—who takes pity on human love, because it is so paltry, so ignorant! He who has such sentiments, he who has such knowledge about love⁠—seeks for death!⁠—But why should one deal with such painful matters? Provided, of course, that one is not obliged to do so. 270

The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply⁠—it almost determines the order of rank how deeply men can suffer⁠—the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and “at home” in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which “you know nothing”!⁠—this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.⁠—One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. They are “gay men” who make use of gaiety, because they are misunderstood on account