The Little Review, January 1915 (Vol. 1, No. 10)Various
General
The Little Review, January 1915 (Vol. 1, No. 10)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
Vulgar souls give what they have, noble souls what they are—this is the
well known saying that mirrors the meaning of Nietzsche. Love’s highest
labor is to create something great out of its ownself, that it may be
able to give unceasingly out of its own fulness and yet never be
exhausted! No mountain is too steep and no valley too deep for love,
because love herself must know heights and depths that she may give to
others what she has seen and known there. Do we fear lest we succumb to
a weakness? Then we must force the weakness underneath our feet because
we need our strength to give strength to others. Would we say to virtue:
Thou art too hard for us; take thy laurel and let us sin? Now, the
hardest is spur to our love, to steel our wills, our courage, so that
courage may gush into the souls of others also. What we have made out of
our own selves, this, this alone, is our wealth, this is the gift by
whose bestowal men can become rich. A thought of our own which we have
acquired; a light of our own, which we have kindled in our innermost
being; a lofty enthusiasm for what is great; an energetic aversion to
all that is common and base,—this is our true wealth, the gift that
enriches us while it is given to others. Poor indeed are the people who
can give only alms; rich indeed are those who give themselves to men,
who proffer their most intimate gifts to men, who say to men’s hidden
hearts and hopes: Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I
give unto thee!
Why are we so deeply involved in hard necessity that our life can not
dispense with alms and therefore with the people who make a virtue out
of this giving of alms! Simply because we have so few such truly rich
men who thirst to become offerings and gifts for man! These men can we
have, can we become ourselves, only when duty and righteousness, and not
benevolence and inclination, shall decide in an ordering and helpful
way, as to the requirement of life. Behind every benefit which is
necessary there is concealed an unrighteousness of life which makes the
benefit necessary. All alms with which the world cannot dispense today
is an accusation against our culture, a confession of how poor we are in
the midst of all our wealth. It will be the first great step towards a
new culture when we first learn to measure the unworth of these benefits
by the eternal worths which alone are worthy of man, which man forms in
himself as new fructifying deeds, as the lightning of thought which
detonates from his soul, as living beauty to which he gives shape in his
own being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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