WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.360 --> 00:00:12.640 Chapter seven, Our Virtues two hundred and fourteen Our virtues. It is probable 2 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:18.600 that we too have still our virtues, although naturally they are not those sincere 3 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:23.640 and massive virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem. And 4 00:00:23.839 --> 00:00:29.199 also at a little distance from us, we Europeans of the day after tomorrow, 5 00:00:29.519 --> 00:00:35.200 we firstlings of the twentieth century, with all our dangerous curiosity, our 6 00:00:35.320 --> 00:00:42.439 multifariousness, and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly sweetened cruelty, incense 7 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:48.079 and spirit, we shall, presumably, if we must have virtues, have 8 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:53.560 those only which have come to agreement with our most secret and heartfelt inclinations, 9 00:00:53.600 --> 00:00:59.560 with our most ardent requirements, Well, then let us look for them in 10 00:00:59.640 --> 00:01:06.040 our abyrinths. Where as we know, so many things lose themselves, so 11 00:01:06.040 --> 00:01:11.480 many things get quite lost. And is there anything finer than to search for 12 00:01:11.599 --> 00:01:17.519 one's own virtues? Is it not almost to believe in one's own virtues? 13 00:01:18.799 --> 00:01:23.799 But this believing in one's own virtues, is it not practically the same as 14 00:01:23.840 --> 00:01:30.280 what was formerly called one's good conscience? That long respectable pigtail of an idea 15 00:01:30.519 --> 00:01:37.000 which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads. And often enough also behind 16 00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:42.480 their understandings. It seems therefore, that, however little we may imagine ourselves 17 00:01:42.519 --> 00:01:49.439 to be old fashioned and grandfatherly, respectable in other respects, in one thing, 18 00:01:49.879 --> 00:01:55.359 we are nevertheless the worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers. We last Europeans with 19 00:01:55.439 --> 00:02:01.400 good consciences. We also still wear the pigtail. Ah, if you only 20 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:10.159 knew how soon, so very soon, it will be different two hundred and 21 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:17.479 fifteen. As in the stellar firmament, there are sometimes two suns which determine 22 00:02:17.479 --> 00:02:23.080 the path of one planet, and in certain cases sons of different colors shine 23 00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:28.719 around a single planet, now with red light, now with green, and 24 00:02:28.759 --> 00:02:36.039 then simultaneously illuminate and flooded with motley colors. So we modern men, owing 25 00:02:36.039 --> 00:02:43.199 to the complicated mechanism of our firmament, are determined by different moralities. Our 26 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:49.360 actions shine alternately in different colors, and are seldom unequivocal. And there are 27 00:02:49.400 --> 00:02:57.280 often cases also in which our actions are motley colored two hundred and sixteen. 28 00:02:59.159 --> 00:03:05.280 To love one's enemies, I think that has been well learnt. It takes 29 00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:09.759 place thousands of times at present, on a large and small scale. Indeed, 30 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:15.199 at times the higher and sublimer thing takes place. We learn to despise 31 00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:22.080 when we love, and precisely when we love best. All of it, 32 00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:30.439 however unconsciously, without noise, without ostentation, with the shame and secrecy of 33 00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:37.199 goodness, which forbids the utterance of the pompous word and the formula of virtue. 34 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:44.439 Morality as attitude is opposed to our taste. Nowadays. This is also 35 00:03:44.599 --> 00:03:49.280 an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as an 36 00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:54.719 attitude finally became opposed to their taste, including the enmity and voltairean bitterness against 37 00:03:54.759 --> 00:04:02.240 religion and all that formerly belonged to a freethinker antomime. It is the music 38 00:04:02.280 --> 00:04:09.560 in our conscience, the dance in our spirit to which puritan litanies, moral 39 00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:17.800 sermons, and goody goodness won't chime two hundred and seventeen. Let us be 40 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:25.399 careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with moral tact 41 00:04:25.759 --> 00:04:30.839 and subtlety in moral discernment. They never forgive us if they have once made 42 00:04:30.839 --> 00:04:39.199 a mistake before us, or even with regard to us. They inevitably become 43 00:04:39.240 --> 00:04:47.839 our instinctive calumniators and detractors, even when they still remain our friends. Blessed 44 00:04:47.879 --> 00:04:57.439 are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders two hundred 45 00:04:57.439 --> 00:05:04.079 and eighteen. The psychologists of France, and where else are there still psychologists 46 00:05:04.199 --> 00:05:12.800 nowadays, have never yet exhausted their bitter and manifold enjoyment of the petite bourgeois, 47 00:05:13.879 --> 00:05:21.120 just as though in short they betray something thereby. Flaubert, for instance, 48 00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:28.279 the honest citizen of Rouen neither saw, heard, nor tasted anything else. 49 00:05:28.319 --> 00:05:34.079 In the end, it was his mode of self torment and refined cruelty. 50 00:05:34.279 --> 00:05:39.920 As this is growing wearisome, I would now recommend for a change something 51 00:05:39.959 --> 00:05:46.399 else for a pleasure, namely the unconscious astuteness with which good, fat, 52 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:53.399 honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to perform. 53 00:05:54.319 --> 00:06:00.439 The subtle, barbed jesuitical astuteness, which is a thousand times subtler than the 54 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:06.120 taste and understanding of the middle class, and its best moments, subtler even 55 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:13.319 than the understanding of its victims. A repeated proof that instinct is the most 56 00:06:13.360 --> 00:06:19.639 intelligent of all kinds of intelligence, which have hitherto been discovered. In short, 57 00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:27.720 you psychologists study the philosophy of the rule in its struggle with the exception. 58 00:06:29.079 --> 00:06:36.120 There you have a spectacle fit for gods and godlike malignity, or in 59 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:46.920 plainer words, practice vivisection on good people on the homo bonnet voluntatis on yourselves 60 00:06:49.519 --> 00:06:59.000 two hundred and nineteen. The practice of judging and condemning morally is the favorite 61 00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:04.199 revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so. It is also 62 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:11.319 a kind of indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature. And finally, 63 00:07:11.720 --> 00:07:21.439 it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and becoming subtle melists spiritualise. They are 64 00:07:21.519 --> 00:07:26.920 glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according to which those who 65 00:07:26.920 --> 00:07:32.439 are over endowed with intellectual goods and privileges are equal to them. They contend 66 00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:39.439 for the equality of all before God, and almost need the belief in God 67 00:07:39.480 --> 00:07:46.040 for this purpose. It is among them that the most powerful antagonists of atheism 68 00:07:46.079 --> 00:07:54.399 are found. If anyone were to say to them, a lofty spirituality is 69 00:07:54.439 --> 00:08:00.079 beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man, and 70 00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:05.439 it would make them furious. I shall take care not to say so. 71 00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:13.240 I would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as 72 00:08:13.279 --> 00:08:20.160 the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it is a synthesis of all qualities 73 00:08:20.199 --> 00:08:26.759 attributed to the merely moral man, after they have been acquired singly through long 74 00:08:26.879 --> 00:08:33.120 training and practice, perhaps during a whole series of generations. That lofty spirituality 75 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:39.840 is precisely the spiritualizing of justice and the beneficent severity, which knows that it 76 00:08:39.960 --> 00:08:46.960 is authorized to maintain gradations of rank in the world, even among things, 77 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:56.960 and not only among men two hundred and twenty. Now that the praise of 78 00:08:56.960 --> 00:09:03.519 the disinterested person so popular, one must, probably not without some danger, 79 00:09:05.240 --> 00:09:09.279 get an idea of what people actually take an interest in, and what are 80 00:09:09.320 --> 00:09:16.919 the things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men, including the cultured, 81 00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:26.279 even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if appearances do not deceive the 82 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:31.200 fact, thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what interests and charms higher 83 00:09:31.279 --> 00:09:39.639 natures and more refined and fastidious tastes seems absolutely uninteresting to the average man. 84 00:09:39.919 --> 00:09:46.759 If, notwithstanding he perceived devotion to these interests, he calls it desinteresse, 85 00:09:48.480 --> 00:09:56.679 and wonders how it is possible to act disinterestedly. There have been philosophers who 86 00:09:56.720 --> 00:10:03.679 could give this popular astonishment a seductive and stickle other worldly expression, perhaps because 87 00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:09.919 they did not know the higher nature by experience, instead of stating the naked 88 00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:18.440 and candidly reasonable truth that disinterested action is very interesting, and interested action provided 89 00:10:18.519 --> 00:10:28.799 that and love. What even an action for love's sake, shall be unegoistic? 90 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:39.000 But she fools and the praise of the self sacrificer. But whoever has 91 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:45.639 really offered sacrifice knows that he wanted and obtained something for it, perhaps something 92 00:10:45.799 --> 00:10:50.919 from himself, for something from himself that he relinquished here in order to have 93 00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:56.960 more there, perhaps in general, to be more, or even feel himself 94 00:10:58.200 --> 00:11:03.600 more. But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more 95 00:11:03.679 --> 00:11:09.320 fastidious spirit does not like to stay. For here truth has to stifle her 96 00:11:09.399 --> 00:11:15.360 yawn so much when she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth 97 00:11:15.799 --> 00:11:22.840 is a woman. One must not use force with her. Two hundred and 98 00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:31.799 twenty one. It sometimes happens, said a moralistic, pedant and trifle retailer, 99 00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:39.200 that I honor and respect an unselfish man, not however, because he 100 00:11:39.279 --> 00:11:43.320 is unselfish, but because I think he has a right to be useful to 101 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:48.480 another man at his own expense. In short, the question is always who 102 00:11:48.639 --> 00:11:56.240 he is and who the other is. For instance, in a person created 103 00:11:56.279 --> 00:12:01.360 and destined for command, self denial and mint retirement, instead of being virtues, 104 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:09.000 would be the waste of virtues. So it seems to me every system 105 00:12:09.039 --> 00:12:16.519 of unegoistic morality which takes itself unconditionally and appeals to everyone not only sins against 106 00:12:16.600 --> 00:12:22.360 good taste, but is also an incentive to sins of omission, an additional 107 00:12:22.519 --> 00:12:28.960 seduction under the mask of philanthropy, and precisely as seduction and injury to the 108 00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:37.200 higher, rarer and more privileged types of men. Moral systems must be compelled 109 00:12:37.240 --> 00:12:41.519 first of all to bow before the gradations of rank. Their presumption must be 110 00:12:41.600 --> 00:12:50.039 driven home to their conscience until they thoroughly understand at last that it is immoral 111 00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:58.879 to say that what is right for one is proper for another. So said 112 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:05.480 my moralistic pedant, And buonum did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when 113 00:13:05.480 --> 00:13:11.320 he thus exhorted systems of morals to practice morality, But one should not be 114 00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:16.559 too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on one's own 115 00:13:16.679 --> 00:13:24.720 side. A grain of wrong pertains even to good taste two hundred and twenty 116 00:13:24.720 --> 00:13:35.440 two. Wherever sympathy fellow suffering is preached nowadays, and if I gather rightly, 117 00:13:35.519 --> 00:13:39.799 no other religion is any longer preached. Let the psychologist have his ears 118 00:13:39.879 --> 00:13:45.600 open through all the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these 119 00:13:45.639 --> 00:13:50.679 preachers, as to all preachers, he will hear a hoarse, groaning, 120 00:13:50.360 --> 00:13:58.960 genuine note of self contempt. It belongs to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe, 121 00:13:58.559 --> 00:14:03.480 which has been on the increase for a century, the first symptoms of 122 00:14:03.480 --> 00:14:09.639 which are already specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to Madame d'Epinay. 123 00:14:09.679 --> 00:14:16.480 If it is not really the cause thereof the man of modern ideas, the 124 00:14:16.559 --> 00:14:24.559 conceited ape is excessively dissatisfied with himself. This is perfectly certain. He suffers, 125 00:14:24.919 --> 00:14:33.440 and his vanity wants him only to suffer with his fellows two hundred and 126 00:14:33.480 --> 00:14:41.639 twenty three. The hybrid European a tolerably ugly Plebeian taken all in all, 127 00:14:41.480 --> 00:14:50.000 absolutely requires a costume. He needs history as a storeroom of costumes. To 128 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:54.080 be sure. He notices that none of the costumes fit him properly, he 129 00:14:54.240 --> 00:14:58.440 changes and changes. Let us look at the nineteenth century with respect to these 130 00:14:58.519 --> 00:15:05.559 hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades of style, and also with respect to 131 00:15:05.600 --> 00:15:11.600 its moments of desperation. On account of nothing suiting us, it is in 132 00:15:11.759 --> 00:15:20.519 vain to get ourselves up as Romantic or classical, or Christian, or Florentine 133 00:15:20.039 --> 00:15:28.960 or Barocco or national. In moribus et artibus. It does not clothe us. 134 00:15:30.559 --> 00:15:37.480 But the spirit, especially the historical spirit, profits even by this desperation. 135 00:15:37.399 --> 00:15:41.320 Once and again a new sample of the past or of the foreign is 136 00:15:41.360 --> 00:15:48.120 tested, put on, taken off, packed up, and above all studied. 137 00:15:48.799 --> 00:15:54.200 We are the first studious age in puncto of costumes, I mean as 138 00:15:54.240 --> 00:16:00.480 concerns, morals, articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religion. We 139 00:16:00.559 --> 00:16:04.960 are prepared as no other age has ever been, for a carnival in the 140 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:11.399 grand style, for the most spiritual festival, laughter and arrogance, for the 141 00:16:11.480 --> 00:16:21.279 transcendental height of supreme folly, an aristophanic ridicule of the world. Perhaps we 142 00:16:21.320 --> 00:16:25.799 are still discovering the domain of our invention, just here, the domain where 143 00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:30.200 even we can still be original, probably as parodists of the world's history, 144 00:16:30.679 --> 00:16:37.879 and as God's merry Andrews. Perhaps, though nothing else of the present have 145 00:16:37.960 --> 00:16:47.279 a future, our laughter itself may have a future two hundred and twenty four. 146 00:16:48.519 --> 00:16:55.279 The historical sense, or the capacity for divining quickly the order of rank 147 00:16:55.600 --> 00:17:00.399 of the valuations according to which a people, a community, or a vidual 148 00:17:00.480 --> 00:17:06.000 has lived, the divining instinct for the relationships of these valuations, for the 149 00:17:06.079 --> 00:17:11.039 relation of the authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces. 150 00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:17.440 This historical sense, which we Europeans claim as our own specialty, has come 151 00:17:17.480 --> 00:17:22.039 to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi barbarity into which Europe 152 00:17:22.079 --> 00:17:27.960 has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and races. It is only 153 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:36.240 the nineteenth century that has recognized this faculty as its sixth sense. Owing to 154 00:17:36.279 --> 00:17:40.759 this mingling, the past of every form and mode of life, and of 155 00:17:40.839 --> 00:17:47.599 cultures which were formerly closely contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth into 156 00:17:47.720 --> 00:17:53.880 us modern souls. Our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves 157 00:17:53.960 --> 00:17:59.759 are a kind of chaos in the end, as we have said, the 158 00:17:59.799 --> 00:18:07.240 spirit perceives its advantage therein by means of our semi barbarity in body and in 159 00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:12.200 desire. We have secret access everywhere, such as a noble age never had. 160 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:18.160 We have access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations, and to 161 00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:23.240 every form of semi barbarity that has at any time existed on earth, and 162 00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:30.279 in so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto has just been 163 00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:36.680 semi barbarity. The historical sense implies almost the sense and instinct for everything, 164 00:18:37.240 --> 00:18:42.480 the taste and tongue for everything, whereby it immediately proves itself to be an 165 00:18:42.519 --> 00:18:51.599 ignoble sense. For instance, we enjoy Homer once more. It is perhaps 166 00:18:51.640 --> 00:18:56.720 our happiest acquisition that we know how to appreciate Homer, whom men of distinguished 167 00:18:56.759 --> 00:19:03.319 culture as the French seventeenth century, like Saint Avmand, who reproached him for 168 00:19:03.400 --> 00:19:08.480 his esprit vast, and even Voltaire, the last echo of the century, 169 00:19:10.039 --> 00:19:15.519 cannot and could not so easily appropriate, whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy. 170 00:19:18.359 --> 00:19:23.400 The very decided yea and nay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, 171 00:19:25.039 --> 00:19:30.839 their hesitating reluctance with regard to everything strange, their horror of the bad 172 00:19:30.920 --> 00:19:37.279 taste, even of lively curiosity, and in general the averseness of every distinguished 173 00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:42.799 and self sufficing culture to avow a new desire, a dissatisfaction with its own 174 00:19:42.920 --> 00:19:49.160 condition, or an admiration of what is strange. All this determines and disposes 175 00:19:49.200 --> 00:19:53.440 them unfavorably, even towards the best things of the world, which are not 176 00:19:53.480 --> 00:20:00.799 their property or could not become their prey. And no faculty is more unintelligible 177 00:20:00.839 --> 00:20:10.799 to such men than just this historical sense, with its truckling plebeian curiosity. 178 00:20:11.640 --> 00:20:18.799 The case is not different with Shakespeare, that marvelous Spanish Moorish Saxon synthesis of 179 00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:23.039 taste, over whom an ancient Athenian of the circle of Esculus would have half 180 00:20:23.160 --> 00:20:33.160 killed himself with laughter or irritation. But we accept precisely this wild motliness, 181 00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:37.440 this medley of the most delicate, the most coarse, and the most artificial, 182 00:20:37.960 --> 00:20:44.319 with a secret confidence and cordiality. We enjoy it as a refinement of 183 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:48.720 art, reserved expressly for us and allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by 184 00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:55.680 the repulsive fumes and the proximity of the English populace in which Shakespeare's art and 185 00:20:55.799 --> 00:21:00.759 taste lives, as perhaps on the chiaja of Naples, where with all our 186 00:21:00.759 --> 00:21:07.000 senses awake, we go our way enchanted and voluntarily in spite of the drain 187 00:21:07.079 --> 00:21:14.599 odor of the lower quarters of the town. That as men of the historical 188 00:21:14.680 --> 00:21:19.599 sense we have our virtues is not to be disputed. We are unpretentious, 189 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:27.480 unselfish, modest, brave, habituated to self control and self renunciation, very 190 00:21:27.559 --> 00:21:34.359 grateful, very patient, very complaisant. But with all this we are perhaps 191 00:21:34.440 --> 00:21:41.440 not very tasteful. Let us finally confess it that what is most difficult for 192 00:21:41.559 --> 00:21:47.440 us, men of the historical sense, to grasp, feel, taste, 193 00:21:47.480 --> 00:21:53.640 and love, what finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost hostile, is precisely the 194 00:21:53.799 --> 00:22:00.000 perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and art, the essentially noble in works 195 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:07.640 and men, their moment of smooth sea and halcyon self sufficiency, the goldenness 196 00:22:07.720 --> 00:22:15.799 and coldness which all things show that have perfected themselves. Perhaps our great virtue 197 00:22:15.839 --> 00:22:22.759 of the historical sense is in necessary contrast to good taste, at least to 198 00:22:22.799 --> 00:22:29.279 the very bad taste. And we can only evoke in ourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly 199 00:22:29.799 --> 00:22:34.799 and with compulsion, the small, short and happy godsends and glorifications of human 200 00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:41.440 life as they shine here and there, those moments and marvelous experiences when a 201 00:22:41.480 --> 00:22:48.359 great power has voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite, when 202 00:22:48.359 --> 00:22:56.519 a superabundance of refined delight has been enjoyed by a sudden checking and petrifying by 203 00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:04.880 standing firmly and planting oneself fixedly on trembling ground. Proportionateness is strange to us. 204 00:23:07.039 --> 00:23:11.559 Let us confess it to ourselves. Our itching is really the itching for 205 00:23:11.640 --> 00:23:17.640 the infinite, the immeasurable. Like the rider on his forward panting horse, 206 00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:22.480 we let the reins fall before the infinite. We modern men, we semi 207 00:23:22.519 --> 00:23:27.839 barbarians, and are only in our highest bliss when we are in the most 208 00:23:29.039 --> 00:23:41.319 danger two hundred and twenty five. Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, 209 00:23:41.519 --> 00:23:45.240 or eudaemonism, all those modes of thinking which measure the worth of things 210 00:23:45.240 --> 00:23:52.880 according to pleasure and pain, that is, according to accompanying circumstances and secondary 211 00:23:52.960 --> 00:24:02.480 considerations are plausible modes of thought and naivetes, which everyone conscious of creative powers 212 00:24:02.599 --> 00:24:07.680 and an artist's conscience will look down upon with scorn, though not without sympathy 213 00:24:10.359 --> 00:24:15.000 sympathy for you, to be sure, that is not sympathy, as you 214 00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:21.240 understand it. It is not sympathy for social distress, for society with its 215 00:24:21.279 --> 00:24:26.000 sick and misfortuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective who lie on the ground 216 00:24:26.039 --> 00:24:33.599 around us. Still less is its sympathy for the grumbling, vexed revolutionary slave 217 00:24:33.720 --> 00:24:41.799 classes who strive after power they call it freedom. Our sympathy is a loftier 218 00:24:42.119 --> 00:24:48.799 and further sighted sympathy. We see how man dwarfs himself, how you dwarf 219 00:24:48.920 --> 00:24:56.519 him. And there are moments when we view your sympathy with an indescribable anguish, 220 00:24:56.599 --> 00:25:00.799 when we resist it, when we regard your serious as more dangerous than 221 00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:07.759 any kind of levity you want, if possible, And there is not a 222 00:25:07.799 --> 00:25:15.680 more foolish, if possible, to do away with suffering, and we it 223 00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:19.200 really seems that we would rather have it increased and made worse than it has 224 00:25:19.240 --> 00:25:26.839 ever been. Well being, as you understand it is certainly not a goal, 225 00:25:26.759 --> 00:25:32.400 it seems to us an end, a condition which at once renders man 226 00:25:32.519 --> 00:25:40.319 ludicrous and contemptible, and makes its destruction desirable. The discipline of suffering, 227 00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:45.680 of great suffering. Know ye not that it is only this discipline that has 228 00:25:45.759 --> 00:25:52.240 produced all the elevations of humanity. Hitherto the tension of soul in misfortune, 229 00:25:52.480 --> 00:25:59.079 which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, 230 00:26:00.039 --> 00:26:07.680 inventiveness and bravery, in undergoing, enduring, interpreting and exploiting misfortune. 231 00:26:07.119 --> 00:26:14.799 And whatever depth mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been 232 00:26:14.839 --> 00:26:19.000 bestowed upon the soul, has it not been bestowed through suffering, through the 233 00:26:19.039 --> 00:26:29.559 discipline of great suffering In man? Creature and creator are united. In man, 234 00:26:29.599 --> 00:26:33.839 there is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, 235 00:26:34.400 --> 00:26:41.200 folly, chaos, but there is also the Creator, the sculptor, the 236 00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:48.680 hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day. 237 00:26:48.839 --> 00:26:53.960 Do ye understand this contrast, and that your sympathy for the creature in 238 00:26:55.079 --> 00:27:00.599 man applies to that which has to be fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched, 239 00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:08.440 roasted, annealed, refined, to that which must necessarily suffer and is 240 00:27:08.559 --> 00:27:15.359 meant to suffer and our sympathy, do ye not understand what our reverse sympathy 241 00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:22.279 applies to when it resists your sympathy as the worst of all pampering and enervation. 242 00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:30.119 So it is sympathy against sympathy. But to repeat it once more, 243 00:27:30.640 --> 00:27:37.359 there are higher problems than the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy, And 244 00:27:37.519 --> 00:27:45.559 all systems of philosophy which deal only with these are naivetes two hundred and twenty 245 00:27:45.559 --> 00:27:53.480 six. We immoralists. This world with which we are concerned, in which 246 00:27:53.559 --> 00:28:00.240 we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, inaudible world, world 247 00:28:00.279 --> 00:28:07.640 of delicate command and delicate obedience, a world of almost in every respect captious, 248 00:28:07.799 --> 00:28:12.400 insidious, sharp, and tender. Yes, it is well protected from 249 00:28:12.480 --> 00:28:21.519 clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity. We are woven into a strong net and garment 250 00:28:21.599 --> 00:28:27.960 of duties, and cannot disengage ourselves precisely. Here we are men of duty, 251 00:28:30.079 --> 00:28:37.240 even we occasionally, it is true we dance in our chains and betwixt 252 00:28:37.240 --> 00:28:41.880 our swords. It is none the less true that more often we gnash our 253 00:28:41.880 --> 00:28:45.960 teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot, 254 00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:52.680 but do what we will. Fools and appearances say of us, these 255 00:28:52.759 --> 00:29:03.359 are men without duty. We have always fools and appearances against us. Two 256 00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:11.440 hundred and twenty seven. Honesty. Granting that it is the virtue of which 257 00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:15.920 we cannot rid ourselves, we free spirits well, we will labor at it 258 00:29:15.960 --> 00:29:22.640 with all our perversity and love, and not tire of perfecting ourselves in our 259 00:29:22.799 --> 00:29:30.079 virtue, which alone remains may its glance some day overspread like a gilded blue 260 00:29:30.319 --> 00:29:37.359 mocking twilight, this aging civilization, with its dull, gloomy seriousness. And 261 00:29:37.559 --> 00:29:45.160 if nevertheless, our honesty should one day grow weary and sigh and stretch its 262 00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:49.279 limbs, and find us too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter, 263 00:29:51.000 --> 00:29:57.440 easier and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let us remain hard, we 264 00:29:57.759 --> 00:30:03.920 latest stoics, and let us send to its help whatever devilry we have in 265 00:30:03.039 --> 00:30:10.880 us, our disgust at the clumsy and undefined, our nitimur in vetitum, 266 00:30:11.119 --> 00:30:18.160 our love of adventure, our sharpened and fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, 267 00:30:18.599 --> 00:30:26.880 disguised intellectual will to power and universal conquest, which rambles and roves evidiously around 268 00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:32.880 all the realms, of the future. Let us go with all our devils 269 00:30:32.920 --> 00:30:38.200 to the help of our God. It is probable that people will misunderstand and 270 00:30:38.279 --> 00:30:44.519 mistake us on that account. What does it matter? They will say, 271 00:30:45.319 --> 00:30:49.680 their honesty, that is their devilry, and nothing else. What does it 272 00:30:49.799 --> 00:30:56.119 matter? And even if they were right, have not all gods hitherto been 273 00:30:56.160 --> 00:31:04.039 such sanctified rebaptized devils? And after all, what do we know of ourselves? 274 00:31:06.079 --> 00:31:11.240 And what the spirit that leads us wants to be called? It is 275 00:31:11.279 --> 00:31:18.559 a question of names, and how many spirits we harbor? Our honesty, 276 00:31:18.799 --> 00:31:23.160 we free spirits. Let us be careful lest it become our vanity, our 277 00:31:23.319 --> 00:31:32.559 ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity, every virtue inclines to stupidity, 278 00:31:33.359 --> 00:31:37.680 every stupidity to virtue, stupid to the point of sanctity. They say 279 00:31:37.680 --> 00:31:45.839 in Russia, let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become 280 00:31:45.960 --> 00:31:52.519 saints and bores. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to 281 00:31:52.559 --> 00:32:02.599 bore ourselves? One would have to believe in eternal life in order to two 282 00:32:02.680 --> 00:32:09.240 hundred and twenty eight. I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral 283 00:32:09.279 --> 00:32:16.960 philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the soporific appliances, and that 284 00:32:17.160 --> 00:32:22.079 virtue, in my opinion, has been more injured by the tediousness of its 285 00:32:22.119 --> 00:32:30.079 advocates than by anything else. At the same time, however, I would 286 00:32:30.079 --> 00:32:36.839 not wish to overlook their general usefulness. It is desirable that as few people 287 00:32:36.920 --> 00:32:42.759 as possible should reflect upon morals, and consequently, it is very desirable that 288 00:32:42.880 --> 00:32:47.960 morals should not some day become interesting. But let us not be afraid. 289 00:32:49.720 --> 00:32:53.319 Things still remain today as they have always been. I see no one in 290 00:32:53.400 --> 00:33:00.799 Europe who has or discloses an idea of the fact that philosophizing concerning morals might 291 00:33:00.880 --> 00:33:08.119 be conducted in a dangerous, captious, and ensnaring manner, that calamity might 292 00:33:08.200 --> 00:33:20.119 be involved therein observe, for example, the indefatigable, inevitable English utilitarians, 293 00:33:20.160 --> 00:33:28.160 how ponderously and respectably they stalk on stalk along. A Homeric metaphor expresses it 294 00:33:28.200 --> 00:33:32.400 better in the footsteps of Bentham, just as he had already stalked in the 295 00:33:32.400 --> 00:33:38.319 footsteps of the respectable Helvetius. No, he was not a dangerous man. 296 00:33:38.559 --> 00:33:46.759 Helvetius sus Senator Pococurante to use an expression of Galiani. No new thought, 297 00:33:47.240 --> 00:33:52.240 nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression of an old thought, 298 00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:57.839 not even a proper history of what has been previously thought on the subject, 299 00:33:58.279 --> 00:34:02.160 an impossible literature, taking it all in all, unless one knows how 300 00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:08.679 to leavin it with some mischief. In effect, the old English vice called 301 00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:16.480 can't, which is moral tartufism, has insinuated itself also into these moralists, 302 00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:21.239 whom one must certainly read with an eye to their motives, if one must 303 00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:29.440 read them concealed this time under the new form of the scientific spirit. Moreover, 304 00:34:29.559 --> 00:34:32.800 there is not absent from them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience 305 00:34:34.280 --> 00:34:39.280 from which a race of former Puritans must naturally suffer in all their scientific tinkering 306 00:34:39.320 --> 00:34:45.880 with morals. Is not a moralist, the opposite of a Puritan, that 307 00:34:46.119 --> 00:34:52.039 is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as questionable, as worthy 308 00:34:52.039 --> 00:34:58.719 of interrogation, in short, as a problem, is moralizing, not immoral. 309 00:35:00.519 --> 00:35:05.920 In the end, they all want English morality to be recognized as authoritative, 310 00:35:06.280 --> 00:35:10.679 inasmuch as mankind, or the general utility, or the happiness of the 311 00:35:10.719 --> 00:35:19.320 greatest number know the happiness of England will be best served thereby. They would 312 00:35:19.320 --> 00:35:23.840 like, by all means to convince themselves that the striving after English happiness, 313 00:35:23.880 --> 00:35:30.199 I mean after comfort and fashion, and in the highest instance a seat in 314 00:35:30.280 --> 00:35:35.800 Parliament, is at the same time the true path of virtue. In fact, 315 00:35:36.119 --> 00:35:38.639 that in so far as there has been virtue in the world hitherto, 316 00:35:39.079 --> 00:35:46.039 it has just consisted in such striving. Not one of those ponderous, conscience 317 00:35:46.039 --> 00:35:52.800 stricken, hurting animals who undertake to advocate the cause of egoism as conducive to 318 00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:58.159 the general welfare, wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts that 319 00:35:58.239 --> 00:36:02.159 the general welfare is known, ideal, no goal, no notion that can 320 00:36:02.199 --> 00:36:07.159 be at all grasped, but is only a nostrum that what is fair to 321 00:36:07.239 --> 00:36:13.079 one may not at all be fair to another. That the requirement of one 322 00:36:13.159 --> 00:36:19.280 morality for all is really a detriment to higher men. In short, that 323 00:36:19.320 --> 00:36:24.800 there is a distinction of rank between man and man, and consequently between morality 324 00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:32.199 and morality. They are an unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men, these 325 00:36:32.360 --> 00:36:39.159 utilitarian Englishmen, and as already remarked, insofar as they are tedious. One 326 00:36:39.239 --> 00:36:45.880 cannot think highly enough of their utility, one not even to encourage them, 327 00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:55.280 as has been partially attempted in the following rhymes Hail ye worthies barrow wheeling longer, 328 00:36:55.639 --> 00:37:04.639 better, eye revealing stiffer in head and knee, unenraptured, never jesting, 329 00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:16.480 mediocre, ever lasting San Jennie A. San's Espani, two hundred and 330 00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:24.079 twenty nine. In these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity, 331 00:37:24.119 --> 00:37:29.800 there still remains so much fear, so much superstition, of the fear 332 00:37:30.360 --> 00:37:35.880 of the cruel wild beast, the mastering of which constitutes the very pride of 333 00:37:35.920 --> 00:37:40.599 these humaner ages. That even obvious truths, as if by the agreement of 334 00:37:40.679 --> 00:37:45.679 centuries, have long remained unuttered, because they have the appearance of helping the 335 00:37:45.840 --> 00:37:53.559 finally slain wild beast back to life again. I perhaps risk something when I 336 00:37:53.599 --> 00:37:59.519 allow such a truth to escape. Let others capture it again and give it 337 00:37:59.599 --> 00:38:07.800 so much milk of pious sentiment footnote an expression from Schiller's William Tell Act for 338 00:38:08.400 --> 00:38:15.400 scene three. Let others capture it again and give it so much milk of 339 00:38:15.480 --> 00:38:22.079 pious sentiment to drink that it will lie down quiet and forgotten in its old 340 00:38:22.159 --> 00:38:29.400 corner. One ought to learn anew about cruelty and open one's eyes. One 341 00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:35.519 ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest, gross errors, 342 00:38:35.559 --> 00:38:39.440 as for instance, have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard 343 00:38:39.519 --> 00:38:49.000 to tragedy, may no longer wander about virtuously and boldly. Almost everything that 344 00:38:49.039 --> 00:38:55.079 we call higher culture is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty. This 345 00:38:55.199 --> 00:39:00.280 is my thesis. The wild beast has not been slain. All it lives, 346 00:39:00.719 --> 00:39:08.360 it flourishes, It has only been transfigured. That which constitutes the painful 347 00:39:08.400 --> 00:39:15.119 delight of tragedy is cruelty. That which operates agreeably in so called tragic sympathy, 348 00:39:15.519 --> 00:39:21.000 and at the basis even of everything sublime up to the highest and most 349 00:39:21.039 --> 00:39:28.119 delicate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. 350 00:39:29.559 --> 00:39:34.280 What the Roman enjoys in the arena the Christian and the ecstasies of the 351 00:39:34.360 --> 00:39:38.480 Cross, the Spaniard at the sight of the fagot and stake, or of 352 00:39:38.480 --> 00:39:44.800 the bull fight. The present day Japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, 353 00:39:45.559 --> 00:39:50.760 the workman of the Parisian suburbs, who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions, 354 00:39:52.239 --> 00:39:59.039 the Wagnerien, who, with unhinged will undergoes the performance of Tristan and 355 00:39:59.159 --> 00:40:05.639 a sould. What all these enjoy and strive with mysterious ardor to drink in 356 00:40:06.639 --> 00:40:13.079 is the filter of the great circe cruelty. Here, to be sure, 357 00:40:13.519 --> 00:40:19.440 we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of former times, which could only 358 00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:23.559 teach with regard to cruelty that originated at the sight of the suffering of others. 359 00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:30.360 There is an abundant, superabundant enjoyment, even in one's own suffering, 360 00:40:30.760 --> 00:40:37.239 in causing one's own suffering, and wherever man has allowed himself to be persuaded 361 00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:42.840 to self denial in the religious sense, or to self mutilation, as among 362 00:40:42.880 --> 00:40:51.679 the Phoenicians and Ascetics, or in general, to desensualization, decarnalization and contrition, 363 00:40:52.920 --> 00:40:58.760 to puritanical repentance, spasms, to vivisection of conscience, and to pascal 364 00:40:58.880 --> 00:41:07.239 like sacri ephesiad del Intoletto. He is secretly allured and impelled forwards by his 365 00:41:07.360 --> 00:41:15.000 cruelty by the dangerous thrill of cruelty towards himself. Finally, let us consider 366 00:41:15.039 --> 00:41:21.119 that even the seeker of knowledge operates as an artist and a glorifier of cruelty, 367 00:41:21.679 --> 00:41:25.119 in that he compels his spirit to perceive against its own inclination, and 368 00:41:25.239 --> 00:41:30.119 often enough against the wishes of his heart. He forces it to say nay 369 00:41:31.039 --> 00:41:37.159 where he would like to affirm love and adore. Indeed, every instance of 370 00:41:37.199 --> 00:41:45.639 taking a thing profoundly and fundamentally is a violation and intentional injuring of the fundamental 371 00:41:45.679 --> 00:41:52.719 will of the spirit, which instinctively aims at appearance and superficiality. Even in 372 00:41:52.800 --> 00:42:00.519 every desire for knowledge, there is a drop of cruelty to one hundred and 373 00:42:00.559 --> 00:42:07.360 thirty. Perhaps what I have said here about a fundamental will of the spirit 374 00:42:07.760 --> 00:42:12.519 may not be understood without further details. I may be allowed a word of 375 00:42:12.599 --> 00:42:21.760 explanation that imperious, something which is popularly called the spirit, wishes to be 376 00:42:21.840 --> 00:42:28.599 master internally and externally, and to feel itself master. It has the will 377 00:42:28.639 --> 00:42:35.480 of a multiplicity, for a simplicity, a binding, taming, imperious and 378 00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:42.800 essentially ruling will. Its requirements and capacities. Here are the same as those 379 00:42:42.840 --> 00:42:50.000 assigned by physiologists to everything that lives, grows and multiplies. The power of 380 00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:55.239 the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the 381 00:42:55.320 --> 00:43:01.400 new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or repudiate the 382 00:43:01.480 --> 00:43:10.000 absolutely contradictory, just as it arbitrarily re underlines, makes prominent and falsifies for 383 00:43:10.079 --> 00:43:16.199 itself certain traits and lines in the foreign elements in every portion of the outside 384 00:43:16.199 --> 00:43:24.880 world. Its object thereby is the incorporation of new experiences, the assortment of 385 00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:31.800 new things in the old arrangements in short growth, or more properly, the 386 00:43:31.920 --> 00:43:38.840 feeling of growth, the feeling of increased power, is its object. This 387 00:43:38.920 --> 00:43:44.840 same will has at its service an apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a 388 00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:52.039 suddenly adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closing of windows, 389 00:43:52.159 --> 00:43:57.480 an inner denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a 390 00:43:57.639 --> 00:44:02.480 sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, 391 00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:10.239 with the shutting in horizon, an acceptance an approval of ignorance as that which 392 00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:16.039 is all necessary according to the degree of its appropriating power, its digestive power 393 00:44:16.159 --> 00:44:22.199 to speak figuratively, and in fact the spirit resembles a stomach more than anything 394 00:44:22.199 --> 00:44:30.199 else. Here also belonged an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be 395 00:44:30.280 --> 00:44:35.639 deceived, perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is not so and so, 396 00:44:36.199 --> 00:44:40.239 but is only allowed to pass as such. A delight in uncertainty, an 397 00:44:40.239 --> 00:44:46.400 ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment of arbitrary out of the way, narrowness and mystery 398 00:44:47.280 --> 00:44:52.760 of the too near, of the foreground, of the magnified, the diminished, 399 00:44:52.960 --> 00:45:00.519 the misshapen, the beautified, an enjoyment of the arbitrariness of all these 400 00:45:00.559 --> 00:45:08.880 manifestations of power. Finally, in this connection there is the not unscrupulous readiness 401 00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:15.039 of the spirit to deceive other spirits and dissemble before them the constant pressing and 402 00:45:15.239 --> 00:45:22.079 straining of a creating, shaping, changeable power. The spirit enjoys therein its 403 00:45:22.199 --> 00:45:29.440 craftiness and its variety of disguises. It enjoys also its feeling of security. 404 00:45:29.480 --> 00:45:35.760 Therein it is precisely by its protean arts that it is best protected and concealed. 405 00:45:37.199 --> 00:45:44.480 Counter to this propensity for appearance, for simplification for a disguise for a 406 00:45:44.559 --> 00:45:49.679 cloak, in short for an outside, for every outside is a cloak. 407 00:45:50.679 --> 00:45:55.760 There operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes and insists 408 00:45:55.800 --> 00:46:04.880 on taking things profoundly, various, and thoroughly, as a kind of cruelty 409 00:46:04.920 --> 00:46:09.519 of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, 410 00:46:10.159 --> 00:46:15.280 provided as it ought to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his 411 00:46:15.360 --> 00:46:22.079 eye sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe 412 00:46:22.119 --> 00:46:28.400 words, he will say, there is something cruel in the tendency of my 413 00:46:28.559 --> 00:46:32.800 spirit. Let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not 414 00:46:34.039 --> 00:46:40.000 so. In fact, it would sound nicer if, instead of our cruelty, 415 00:46:40.599 --> 00:46:49.079 perhaps our extravagant honesty were talked about, whispered about and glorified. We 416 00:46:49.360 --> 00:46:55.360 free very free spirits, And some day perhaps such will actually be our posthumous 417 00:46:55.360 --> 00:47:02.119 glory. Meanwhile, for there is plenty of time until then, we should 418 00:47:02.159 --> 00:47:07.639 be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage. 419 00:47:08.639 --> 00:47:13.920 Our whole former work has just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly 420 00:47:13.960 --> 00:47:22.400 exuberance. They are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words. Honesty, 421 00:47:22.840 --> 00:47:28.840 love of truth, love of wisdom sacrificed for knowledge, heroism of the truthful. 422 00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:35.639 There is something in them that makes one's heart swell with pride. But 423 00:47:35.719 --> 00:47:40.239 we anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves, in all the secrecy of 424 00:47:40.280 --> 00:47:46.159 an anchorite's conscience, that this worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old 425 00:47:46.280 --> 00:47:53.320 false adornment, frippery and gold dust of unconscious human vanity, and that even 426 00:47:53.400 --> 00:48:01.119 under such flattering color and repainting, the terrible original text Homo natura must again 427 00:48:01.239 --> 00:48:08.440 be recognized, in effect, to translate man back again into nature, to 428 00:48:08.519 --> 00:48:15.639 master the many vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched 429 00:48:15.639 --> 00:48:22.639 and daubed over the eternal original text Homonatura, to bring it about that man 430 00:48:22.679 --> 00:48:28.719 shall henceforth stand before man as he, now hardened by the discipline of science, 431 00:48:29.199 --> 00:48:36.280 stands afore the other forms of nature, with fearless Oedipus eyes and stopped 432 00:48:36.559 --> 00:48:43.559 ulysses ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical bird catchers who have piped 433 00:48:43.559 --> 00:48:49.599 to him far too long. Thou art more, thou art higher, thou 434 00:48:49.639 --> 00:48:55.519 hast a different origin. This may be a strange and foolish task, but 435 00:48:55.639 --> 00:49:00.639 that it is a task. Who can deny why did we choose it? 436 00:49:01.000 --> 00:49:08.079 This foolish task? Or to put the question differently, why knowledge at all? 437 00:49:09.480 --> 00:49:15.440 Every one will ask us about this, and thus pressed, we who 438 00:49:15.519 --> 00:49:21.480 have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have not found and cannot find 439 00:49:21.719 --> 00:49:35.400 any better answer two hundred and thirty one. Learning alters us. It does 440 00:49:35.480 --> 00:49:42.280 what all nourishment does. That does not merely conserve, as the physiologist knows. 441 00:49:42.280 --> 00:49:45.639 But at the bottom of our souls, quite down below, there is 442 00:49:45.679 --> 00:49:53.000 certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision, an 443 00:49:53.119 --> 00:50:00.960 answer to predetermine chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable I 444 00:50:01.039 --> 00:50:07.159 am this. A thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, 445 00:50:07.559 --> 00:50:10.719 but can only learn fully. He can only follow to the end what 446 00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:19.719 is fixed about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain solutions of problems which 447 00:50:19.760 --> 00:50:27.960 make strong beliefs for us. Perhaps they are henceforth called convictions. Later on 448 00:50:27.960 --> 00:50:31.840 one sees in them only footsteps to self knowledge, guideposts to the problem which 449 00:50:31.880 --> 00:50:37.639 we ourselves are, or more correctly, to the great stupidity which we embody 450 00:50:38.039 --> 00:50:45.280 our spiritual fate. The unteachable in us quite down below. In view of 451 00:50:45.280 --> 00:50:51.559 this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself permission, will perhaps be more 452 00:50:51.599 --> 00:50:57.159 readily allowed me to utter some truths about woman as she is, provided that 453 00:50:57.199 --> 00:51:07.480 it is known at the outset how literally they are merely my truths two hundred 454 00:51:07.480 --> 00:51:14.639 and thirty two. Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she begins to 455 00:51:14.800 --> 00:51:21.639 enlighten men about woman as she is. This is one of the worst developments 456 00:51:21.639 --> 00:51:28.599 of the general uglifying of Europe. For what must these clumsy attempts of feminine 457 00:51:28.760 --> 00:51:36.440 scientificality and self exposure bring to light? Woman has so much cause for shame 458 00:51:37.639 --> 00:51:45.079 in woman. There is so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, 459 00:51:45.840 --> 00:51:53.679 unbridledness and indiscretion concealed studying only women's behavior towards children, which has really 460 00:51:53.719 --> 00:52:02.679 been best restrained and dominated hitherto by the fear of man alas if ever, 461 00:52:02.719 --> 00:52:08.480 the eternally tedious in woman, she has plenty of it is allowed to venture 462 00:52:08.559 --> 00:52:15.840 forth if she begins radically and on principle, to unlearn her wisdom and art 463 00:52:15.320 --> 00:52:22.559 of charming, of playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alleviating and taking 464 00:52:22.639 --> 00:52:30.400 easily. If she forgets her delicate aptitude for agreeable desires. Female voices are 465 00:52:30.400 --> 00:52:38.559 already raised, which by Saint Aristophanes make one afraid with medical explicitness. It 466 00:52:38.719 --> 00:52:45.440 is stated in a threatening manner, what woman first and last requires from man? 467 00:52:46.079 --> 00:52:50.960 Is it not in the very worst taste that woman sets herself up to 468 00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:59.280 be? Scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men's affair, men's gift, 469 00:53:00.119 --> 00:53:05.360 remained therewith among ourselves. And in the end, in view of all that 470 00:53:05.480 --> 00:53:09.519 women write about woman, we may well of considerable doubt as to whether woman 471 00:53:09.559 --> 00:53:16.679 really desires enlateenment about herself, and can desire it. If woman does not 472 00:53:16.800 --> 00:53:23.119 thereby seek a new ornament for herself, I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally 473 00:53:23.159 --> 00:53:30.639 feminine, Why then she wishes to make herself feared? Perhaps she thereby wishes 474 00:53:30.679 --> 00:53:36.920 to get the mastery? But she does not want truth? What does woman 475 00:53:36.960 --> 00:53:42.159 care for truth? From the very first? Nothing is more foreign, more 476 00:53:42.199 --> 00:53:46.639 repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth. Her great art is falsehood. 477 00:53:47.519 --> 00:53:53.159 Her chief concern is appearance and beauty. Let us confess it, We 478 00:53:53.320 --> 00:53:59.199 men, we honor and love this very art and this very instinct in woman. 479 00:54:00.199 --> 00:54:04.599 We who have the hard task and for our recreation, gladly seek the 480 00:54:04.639 --> 00:54:10.719 company of beings under whose hands glances and delicate follies. Our seriousness, our 481 00:54:10.800 --> 00:54:17.000 gravity, and profundity appear almost like follies to us. Finally, I asked 482 00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:23.440 the question, did a woman herself ever acknowledge profundity in a woman's mind or 483 00:54:23.599 --> 00:54:29.360 justice in a woman's heart? And is it not true that on the whole 484 00:54:29.519 --> 00:54:34.639 woman has hitherto been most despised by woman herself, and not at all by 485 00:54:34.760 --> 00:54:39.960 us. We men desire that woman should not continue to compromise herself by enlightening 486 00:54:40.079 --> 00:54:45.360 us. Just as it was man's care and the consideration for woman when the 487 00:54:45.440 --> 00:54:52.840 Church decreed Molier Tassait in Ecclesia, it was to the benefit of woman when 488 00:54:52.920 --> 00:55:02.000 Napoleon gave the too eloquent Madame de Stail to understand Molier Tassaya in politicis, 489 00:55:02.039 --> 00:55:06.639 and in my opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls out 490 00:55:06.679 --> 00:55:16.599 to woman to day moliere tassait de millierro two hundred and thirty three. It 491 00:55:16.679 --> 00:55:22.719 betrays corruption of the instincts, apart from the fact that it betrays bad taste 492 00:55:22.360 --> 00:55:29.199 when a woman refers to Madame Roland or Madame de Stelle or Monsieur George sand 493 00:55:29.920 --> 00:55:36.960 as though something was proved thereby in favor of woman as she is among men. 494 00:55:37.559 --> 00:55:42.320 These are the three comical women, as they are nothing more and just 495 00:55:42.400 --> 00:55:52.840 the best involuntary counter arguments against feminine emancipation and autonomy two hundred and thirty four. 496 00:55:53.519 --> 00:56:00.280 Stupidity in the kitchen woman as cook, the terrible thoughtlessness with which the 497 00:56:00.360 --> 00:56:06.440 feeding of the family and the master of the house is managed. Woman does 498 00:56:06.480 --> 00:56:12.400 not understand what food means, and she insists on being cook. If woman 499 00:56:12.480 --> 00:56:16.119 had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of 500 00:56:16.239 --> 00:56:22.119 years, have discovered the most important physiological facts, and should likewise have got 501 00:56:22.159 --> 00:56:29.639 possession of the healing art. Through bad female cooks, through the entire lack 502 00:56:29.719 --> 00:56:35.119 of reason in the kitchen, the development of mankind has been longest retarded and 503 00:56:35.280 --> 00:56:40.920 most interfered with. Even today, matters are very little better a word to 504 00:56:42.000 --> 00:56:52.000 high school girls two hundred and thirty five. There are turns and casts of 505 00:56:52.079 --> 00:56:58.119 fancy. There are sentences, little handfuls of words in which a whole culture, 506 00:56:58.519 --> 00:57:05.440 a whole society, suddenly crystallizes itself. Among these is the incidental remark 507 00:57:05.480 --> 00:57:13.639 of Madame de Lambert to her son Monemis ne vouperete James cous de Foeli cavouferon 508 00:57:13.760 --> 00:57:21.000 gran Pleisier, the motherliest and wisest remark, by the way, that was 509 00:57:21.159 --> 00:57:30.000 ever addressed to a son two hundred and thirty six. I have no doubt 510 00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:36.360 that every noble woman will oppose what Dante and Gerda believed about woman, the 511 00:57:36.400 --> 00:57:43.480 former when he sang a la gualda vassouso a dio inlay, and the latter 512 00:57:43.519 --> 00:57:50.800 when he interpreted it the eternally feminine, draws us Aloft, for this is 513 00:57:50.880 --> 00:58:01.119 just what she believes of the eternally masculine two hundred and thirty seven. Seven 514 00:58:01.159 --> 00:58:10.320 Apithemes for women, how the longest enu flees when a man comes to our 515 00:58:10.400 --> 00:58:20.239 knees. Age, alas and science stay'd furnish even weak virtue, aid somber, 516 00:58:20.400 --> 00:58:28.079 garb and silence meet dress for ev'ry dame discreet, whom I thank when 517 00:58:28.159 --> 00:58:37.400 in my bliss God and my good Tailoress young a flower decked cavern home old 518 00:58:37.719 --> 00:58:45.320 a dragon, thence doth Rome, noble title leg that's fine man as well, 519 00:58:45.920 --> 00:58:52.000 oh were he mine? Speech in brief and sense in mass slippery for 520 00:58:52.280 --> 00:59:04.000 the Jennyass two hundred and thirty seven. A woman has hitherto been treated by 521 00:59:04.039 --> 00:59:08.119 men like birds, which, losing their way, have come down among them 522 00:59:08.159 --> 00:59:15.039 from an elevation, as something delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet 523 00:59:15.440 --> 00:59:22.440 and animating, but as something also which must be cooped up to prevent it 524 00:59:22.519 --> 00:59:30.679 flying away two hundred and thirty eight. To be mistaken in the fundamental problem 525 00:59:30.760 --> 00:59:37.840 of man and woman, To deny here the profoundest antagonism, and the necessity 526 00:59:37.880 --> 00:59:43.880 for an eternally hostile tension. To dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal 527 00:59:43.880 --> 00:59:51.280 training, equal claims and obligations. That is a typical sign of shallow mindedness, 528 00:59:51.320 --> 00:59:55.960 and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at this dangerous spot shallow and 529 00:59:57.079 --> 01:00:04.519 instinct may generally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed. As 530 01:00:04.639 --> 01:00:09.480 discovered, he will probably prove too short for all fundamental questions of life, 531 01:00:09.920 --> 01:00:15.519 future as well as present, and will be unable to descend into any of 532 01:00:15.559 --> 01:00:20.559 the depths. On the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit 533 01:00:20.639 --> 01:00:23.599 as well as of desires, and has also the depth of benevolence, which 534 01:00:23.639 --> 01:00:30.280 is capable of severity and harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only 535 01:00:30.320 --> 01:00:36.760 think of woman as orientals do. He must conceive of her as a possession, 536 01:00:37.480 --> 01:00:44.360 as confinable property, as being predestined for service and accomplishing her mission. 537 01:00:44.440 --> 01:00:49.559 Therein. He must take his stand in this matter upon the immense rationality of 538 01:00:49.599 --> 01:00:54.199 Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia, as the Greeks did 539 01:00:54.320 --> 01:01:00.480 formerly, those best heirs and scholars of Asia, who, as is well 540 01:01:00.519 --> 01:01:07.239 known, with their increasing culture and amplitude of power from Homer to the time 541 01:01:07.239 --> 01:01:14.079 of Pericles, became gradually stricter towards woman, in short, more oriental. 542 01:01:15.599 --> 01:01:22.480 How necessary, how logical, even how humanely desirable this was. Let us 543 01:01:22.480 --> 01:01:30.039 consider for ourselves two hundred and thirty nine. The weaker sex has in no 544 01:01:30.199 --> 01:01:35.360 previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present. This 545 01:01:35.440 --> 01:01:40.400 belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy in the same way as disrespectfulness 546 01:01:40.400 --> 01:01:45.599 to old age. What wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of 547 01:01:45.599 --> 01:01:52.840 this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims. The tribute 548 01:01:52.840 --> 01:01:59.519 of respect is at last felt to be well nigh galling rivalry for rights. 549 01:01:59.639 --> 01:02:05.880 Indeed, actual strife itself would be preferred. In a word, woman is 550 01:02:05.920 --> 01:02:10.719 losing modesty, and let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. 551 01:02:12.800 --> 01:02:19.480 She is unlearning to fear man. But the woman who unlearns to fear sacrifices 552 01:02:19.559 --> 01:02:27.920 her most womanly instincts that woman should venture forward when the fear inspiring quality in 553 01:02:27.960 --> 01:02:34.360 man, or more definitely, the man in man is no longer either desired 554 01:02:34.800 --> 01:02:40.159 or fully developed. Is reasonable enough and also intelligible enough. What is more 555 01:02:40.199 --> 01:02:47.719 difficult to understand is that precisely thereby woman deteriorates. This is what is happening 556 01:02:47.760 --> 01:02:54.760 nowadays. Let us not deceive ourselves about it. Wherever the industrial spirit has 557 01:02:54.840 --> 01:03:00.920 triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman strives her the economic and legal 558 01:03:00.960 --> 01:03:07.800 independence of a clerk woman, as clerk esse is inscribed on the portal of 559 01:03:07.840 --> 01:03:15.400 the modern society, which is in the course of formation. While she thus 560 01:03:15.440 --> 01:03:21.679 appropriates new rights, aspires to be master, and inscribes progress of woman on 561 01:03:21.760 --> 01:03:28.880 her flags and banners. The very opposite realizes itself with terrible obviousness. Woman 562 01:03:29.199 --> 01:03:36.360 retrogrades. Since the French Revolution, the influence of woman in Europe has declined 563 01:03:36.440 --> 01:03:43.199 in proportion as she has increased her rights and claims, and the emancipation of 564 01:03:43.280 --> 01:03:47.719 woman in so far as it is desired and demanded by women themselves, and 565 01:03:47.840 --> 01:03:54.119 not only by masculine shallow pates. This proves to be a remarkable symptom of 566 01:03:54.159 --> 01:04:01.239 the increasing weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is stupidity in 567 01:04:01.320 --> 01:04:06.800 this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a well reared woman, 568 01:04:08.480 --> 01:04:14.760 who is always a sensible woman, might be heartily ashamed. To lose the 569 01:04:14.840 --> 01:04:19.039 intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory, to 570 01:04:19.079 --> 01:04:26.039 neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons, to let herself go before 571 01:04:26.119 --> 01:04:31.280 man, perhaps even to the book where formerly she kept herself in control, 572 01:04:31.519 --> 01:04:40.039 and in refined artful humility, to neutralize with her virtuous audacity man's faith in 573 01:04:40.159 --> 01:04:49.199 a veiled, fundamentally different ideal in woman, something eternally necessarily feminine, to 574 01:04:49.320 --> 01:04:57.000 emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved, cared 575 01:04:57.079 --> 01:05:03.599 for, protected, and indulged like some delicate, strangely wild and often pleasant 576 01:05:03.599 --> 01:05:12.119 domestic animal, the clumsy and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servitude 577 01:05:12.119 --> 01:05:16.679 and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has 578 01:05:16.880 --> 01:05:24.199 entailed and still entails, as though slavery were a counter argument, and not 579 01:05:24.400 --> 01:05:30.320 rather a condition of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture. What 580 01:05:30.480 --> 01:05:35.639 does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts, a defeminizing 581 01:05:38.079 --> 01:05:43.480 Certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends and corruptors of woman among the learned 582 01:05:43.559 --> 01:05:48.679 asses of the masculine sex, who advise woman to defeminize herself in this manner, 583 01:05:49.360 --> 01:05:56.679 and to imitate all the stupidities from which man in Europe European manliness suffers, 584 01:05:58.239 --> 01:06:02.559 who would like to lower woman to general culture, indeed even to newspaper 585 01:06:02.639 --> 01:06:09.760 reading and meddling with politics here and there. They wish even to make women 586 01:06:09.800 --> 01:06:15.000 into free spirits and literary workers, as though a woman without piety would not 587 01:06:15.079 --> 01:06:23.079 be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and godless man. Almost everywhere, 588 01:06:23.119 --> 01:06:28.000 her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music, 589 01:06:28.880 --> 01:06:33.159 our latest German music, and she's daily being made more hysterical and more 590 01:06:33.199 --> 01:06:40.159 incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of bearing robust children. 591 01:06:42.400 --> 01:06:45.880 They wish to cultivate her in general still more, and intend, as they 592 01:06:45.960 --> 01:06:51.239 say, to make the weaker sex strong by culture, as if history did 593 01:06:51.280 --> 01:06:57.679 not teach in the most emphatic manner, that the cultivating of mankind and his 594 01:06:57.840 --> 01:07:01.760 weakening, that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and languishing of 595 01:07:01.840 --> 01:07:08.119 his force of will, have always kept pace with one another, and that 596 01:07:08.159 --> 01:07:13.360 the most powerful and influential women in the world, and lastly the mother of 597 01:07:13.440 --> 01:07:19.400 Napoleon, had just to thank their force of will and not their schoolmasters, 598 01:07:19.480 --> 01:07:28.840 for their power and ascendancy over men. That which inspires respect in woman, 599 01:07:29.360 --> 01:07:34.119 and often enough fear also is her nature, which is more natural than that 600 01:07:34.239 --> 01:07:42.960 of man. Her genuine carnivora like cunning flexibility, her tiger claws beneath the 601 01:07:43.000 --> 01:07:48.960 glove, her naivete and egoism, her untrainableness, and innate wildness, the 602 01:07:49.039 --> 01:07:58.280 incomprehensibleness, extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. That which, 603 01:07:58.599 --> 01:08:03.480 in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat woman 604 01:08:04.679 --> 01:08:11.039 is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love, 605 01:08:11.480 --> 01:08:17.960 and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. Fear and sympathy. It 606 01:08:18.079 --> 01:08:23.520 is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman, 607 01:08:24.159 --> 01:08:30.680 always with one foot already in tragedy which rends while it delights, what and 608 01:08:30.760 --> 01:08:36.000 all that is now to be at an end, and the disenchantment of woman 609 01:08:36.159 --> 01:08:45.199 is in progress. The tediousness of woman is slowly evolving. Oh, Europe. 610 01:08:45.920 --> 01:08:49.640 Europe, we know the horned animal, which is always most attractive to 611 01:08:49.720 --> 01:08:56.039 thee, from which danger is ever again threatening. Thee. Thy old fable 612 01:08:56.159 --> 01:09:01.640 might once more become history. An immense stipidity might once again overmaster thee and 613 01:09:01.920 --> 01:09:10.159 carry thee away. And no God concealed beneath it, no only an idea, 614 01:09:10.560 --> 01:09:16.279 a modern idea. End of Chapter seven