Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume SixNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume Six
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Human beings
THE WANDERER.--He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any
extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as
a wanderer on the face of the earth--and not even as a traveller
_towards_ a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly
wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens
in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to
anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that
takes pleasure in change and transitoriness. To be sure such a man will
have bad nights, when he is weary and finds the gates of the town that
should offer him rest closed; perhaps he may also find that, as in
the East, the desert reaches to the gates, that wild beasts howl far
and near, that a strong wind arises, and that robbers take away his
beasts of burden. Then the dreadful night closes over him like a second
desert upon the desert, and his heart grows weary of wandering. Then
when the morning sun rises upon him, glowing like a Deity of anger,
when the town is opened, he sees perhaps in the faces of the dwellers
therein still more desert, uncleanliness, deceit, and insecurity than
outside the gates--and the day is almost worse than the night. Thus
it may occasionally happen to the wanderer; but then there come as,
compensation the delightful mornings of other lands and days, when
already in the grey of the dawn he sees the throng of muses dancing
by, close to him, in the mist of the mountain; when afterwards, in
the symmetry of his ante-meridian soul, he strolls silently under
the trees, out of whose crests and leafy hiding-places all manner of
good and bright things are flung to him, the gifts of all the free
spirits who are at home in mountains, forests, and solitudes, and who,
like himself, alternately merry and thoughtful, are wanderers and
philosophers. Born of the secrets of the early dawn, they ponder the
question how the day, between the hours of ten and twelve, can have
such a pure, transparent, and gloriously cheerful countenance: they
seek the _ante-meridian_ philosophy.
[Footnote 1: This is why Nietzsche pointed out later on that he had an
interest in the preservation of Christianity, and that he was sure his
teaching would not undermine this faith--just as little as anarchists
have undermined kings; but have left them seated all the more firmly on
their thrones.--J.M.K.]
[Footnote 2: Women never understand this.--J.M.K.]
AN EPODE.
AMONG FRIENDS.
(Translated by T. COMMON.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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