Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
Nietzsche · en
men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well
being who can say?--but in any event a dictum fraught with the most
momentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting
the world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts.
[19] "Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen
(metaphysischen) Welt nicht naeher, als der physische Mensch."
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=To What Extent Useful.=--Therefore, whether psychological observation
is more an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remain
undetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, because
science can no longer dispense with it. Science, however, recognizes no
considerations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; but
as the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certain
ends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing with
ideas what nature does with matter,[20] promote the purposes and the
welfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) and
attain fitness [to ends]--but likewise without having intended it.
[20] als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen, literally: "as the
counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas."
He to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry,
has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will become
sensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so
"kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely
find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. Moreover: as
too serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivial
relaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous,
weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the more
intellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more by
conflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance we
can find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm as
we are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and self
reflector, when the occasion arises?
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