The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Philosophy
the point of discovering that we know too little. But it would be worse
still if it were otherwise,—if we knew too much; our duty is and
remains, first of all, not to get into confusion about ourselves. We
_are_ different from the learned; although it cannot be denied that
amongst other things we are also learned. We have different needs, a
different growth, a different digestion: we need more, we need also
less. There is no formula as to how much an intellect needs for its
nourishment; if, however, its taste be in the direction of independence,
rapid coming and going, travelling, and perhaps adventure for which only
the swiftest are qualified, it prefers rather to live free on poor fare,
than to be unfree and plethoric. Not fat, but the greatest suppleness
and power is what a good dancer wishes from his nourishment,—and I know
not what the spirit of a philosopher would like better than to be a good
dancer. For the dance is his ideal, and also his art, in the end
likewise his sole piety, his "divine service."...
382.
_Great Healthiness._—We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand,
we firstlings of a yet untried future—we require for a new end also a
new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder
and merrier than any healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longs to
experience the whole range of hitherto recognised values and
desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal
"Mediterranean Sea," who, from the adventures of his most personal
experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror, and discoverer
of the ideal—as likewise how it is with the artist, the saint, the
legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the
godly Nonconformist of the old style:—requires one thing above all for
that purpose, _great healthiness_—such healthiness as one not only
possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one
continually sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!—And now, after
having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal,
who are more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough
shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless, as said above, healthier
than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, always healthy
again,—it would seem, as if in recompense for it all, that we have a
still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has
yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known
hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the
questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well
as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—alas! that
nothing will now any longer satisfy us! How could we still be content
with _the man of the present day_ after such peeps, and with such a
craving in our conscience and consciousness? What a pity; but it is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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