Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2
Nietzsche · en
ATTACK FROM TWO SIDES.—We act as enemies towards an intellectual tendency
or movement when we are superior to it and disapprove of its aim, or when
its aim is too high and unrecognisable to our eye—in other words, when it
is superior to us. So the same party may be attacked from two sides, from
above and from below. Not infrequently the assailants, from common hatred,
form an alliance which is more repulsive than all that they hate.
200.
ORIGINAL.—Original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a
new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and
overlooked by every one, as something new. The first discoverer is usually
that quite ordinary and unintellectual visionary—chance.
201.
ERROR OF PHILOSOPHERS.—The philosopher believes that the value of his
philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure. Posterity finds it in the
stone with which he built and with which, from that time forth, men will
build oftener and better—in other words, in the fact that the structure
may be destroyed and yet have value as material.
202.
WIT.—Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
203.
THE MOMENT BEFORE SOLUTION.—In science it occurs every day and every hour
that a man, immediately before the solution, remains stuck, being
convinced that his efforts have been entirely in vain—like one who, in
untying a noose, hesitates at the moment when it is nearest to coming
loose, because at that very moment it looks most like a knot.
204.
AMONG THE VISIONARIES.—The thoughtful man, and he who is sure of his
intelligence, may profitably consort with visionaries for a decade and
abandon himself in their torrid zone to a moderate insanity. He will thus
have travelled a good part of the road towards that cosmopolitanism of the
intellect which can say without presumption, “Nothing intellectual is
alien to me.”
205.
KEEN AIR.—The best and healthiest element in science as amid the mountains
is the keen air that plays about it.—Intellectual molly-coddles (such as
artists) dread and abuse science on account of this atmosphere.
206.
WHY SAVANTS ARE NOBLER THAN ARTISTS.—Science requires nobler natures than
does poetry; natures that are more simple, less ambitious, more
restrained, calmer, that think less of posthumous fame and can bury
themselves in studies which, in the eye of the many, scarcely seem worthy
of such a sacrifice of personality. There is another loss of which they
are conscious. The nature of their occupation, its continual exaction of
the greatest sobriety, weakens their will; the fire is not kept up so
vigorously as on the hearths of poetic minds. As such, they often lose
their strength and prime earlier than artists do—and, as has been said,
they are aware of their danger. Under all circumstances they seem less
gifted because they shine less, and thus they will always be rated below
their value.
207.