The Joyful Wisdom 15

The Joyful Wisdom 15

Mothers._—Animals think differently from men with respect to females;

with them the female is regarded as the productive being. There is no

paternal love among them, but there is such a thing as love of the

children of a beloved, and habituation to them. In the young, the

females find gratification for their lust of dominion; the young are a

property, an occupation, something quite comprehensible to them, with

which they can chatter: all this conjointly is maternal love,—it is to

be compared to the love of the artist for his work. Pregnancy has made

the females gentler, more expectant, more timid, more submissively

inclined; and similarly intellectual pregnancy engenders the character

of the contemplative, who are allied to women in character:—they are the

masculine mothers.—Among animals the masculine sex is regarded as the

beautiful sex.

 

 

73.

 

_Saintly Cruelty._—A man holding a newly born child in his hands came to

a saint. "What should I do with the child," he asked, "it is wretched,

deformed, and has not even enough of life to die." "Kill it," cried the

saint with a dreadful voice, "kill it, and then hold it in thy arms for

three days and three nights to brand it on thy memory:—thus wilt thou

never again beget a child when it is not the time for thee to

beget."—When the man had heard this he went away disappointed; and many

found fault with the saint because he had advised cruelty, for he had

advised to kill the child. "But is it not more cruel to let it live?"

asked the saint.

 

 

74.

 

_The Unsuccessful._—Those poor women always fail of success who become

agitated and uncertain, and talk too much in presence of him whom they

love; for men are most successfully seduced by a certain subtle and

phlegmatic tenderness.

 

 

75.

 

_The Third Sex._—"A small man is a paradox, but still a man,—but the

small woman seems to me to be of another sex in comparison with

well-grown ones"—said an old dancing-master. A small woman is never

beautiful—said old Aristotle.

 

 

76.

 

_The greatest Danger._—Had there not at all times been a larger number

of men who regarded the cultivation of their mind—their "rationality"—as

their pride, their obligation, their virtue, and were injured or shamed

by all play of fancy and extravagance of thinking—as lovers of "sound

common sense":—mankind would long ago have perished! Incipient

_insanity_ has hovered, and hovers continually over mankind as its

greatest danger: that is precisely the breaking out of inclination in

feeling, seeing, and hearing; the enjoyment of the unruliness of the

mind; the delight in human unreason. It is not truth and certainty that

is the antithesis of the world of the insane, but the universality and

all-obligatoriness of a belief, in short, non-voluntariness in forming

opinions. And the greatest labour of human beings hitherto has been to

agree with one another regarding a great many things, and to impose upon

themselves a _law of agreement_—indifferent whether these things are

true or false. This is the discipline of the mind which has preserved

mankind;—but the counter-impulses are still so powerful that one can

really speak of the future of mankind with little confidence. The ideas

of things still continually shift and move, and will perhaps alter more

than ever in the future; it is continually the most select spirits

themselves who strive against universal obligatoriness—the investigators

of _truth_ above all! The accepted belief, as the belief of all the

world, continually engenders a disgust and a new longing in the more

ingenious minds; and already the slow _tempo_ which it demands for all

intellectual processes (the imitation of the tortoise, which is here

recognised as the rule) makes the artists and poets runaways:—it is in

these impatient spirits that a downright delight in delirium breaks out,

because delirium has such a joyful _tempo_! Virtuous intellects,

therefore, are needed—ah! I want to use the least ambiguous

word,—_virtuous stupidity_ is needed, imperturbable conductors of the

_slow_ spirits are needed, in order that the faithful of the great

collective belief may remain with one another and dance their dance

further: it is a necessity of the first importance that here enjoins and

demands. _We others are the exceptions and the danger_,—we eternally

need protection!—Well, there can actually be something said in favour of

the exceptions _provided that they never want to become the rule_.

 

 

77.

 

_The Animal with good Conscience._—It is not unknown to me that there is

vulgarity in everything that pleases Southern Europe—whether it be

Italian opera (for example, Rossini's and Bellini's), or the Spanish

adventure-romance (most readily accessible to us in the French garb of

Gil Blas)—but it does not offend me, any more than the vulgarity which

one encounters in a walk through Pompeii, or even in the reading of

every ancient book: what is the reason of this? Is it because shame is

lacking here, and because the vulgar always comes forward just as sure

and certain of itself as anything noble, lovely, and passionate in the

same kind of music or romance? "The animal has its rights like man, so

let it run about freely; and you, my dear fellow-man, are still this

animal, in spite of all!"—that seems to me the moral of the case, and

the peculiarity of southern humanity. Bad taste has its rights like good

taste, and even a prerogative over the latter when it is the great

requisite, the sure satisfaction, and as it were a universal language,

an immediately intelligible mask and attitude; the excellent, select

taste on the other hand has always something of a seeking, tentative

character, not fully certain that it understands,—it is never, and has

never been popular! The _masque_ is and remains popular! So let all this

masquerade run along in the melodies and cadences, in the leaps and

merriment of the rhythm of these operas! Quite the ancient life! What

does one understand of it, if one does not understand the delight in the

masque, the good conscience of all masquerade! Here is the bath and the

refreshment of the ancient spirit:—and perhaps this bath was still more

necessary for the rare and sublime natures of the ancient world than for

the vulgar.—On the other hand, a vulgar turn in northern works, for

example in German music, offends me unutterably. There is _shame_ in it,

the artist has lowered himself in his own sight, and could not even

avoid blushing: we are ashamed with him, and are so hurt because we

surmise that he believed he had to lower himself on our account.

 

 

78.

 

_What we should be Grateful for._—It is only the artists, and especially

the theatrical artists who have furnished men with eyes and ears to hear

and see with some pleasure what everyone is in himself, what he

experiences and aims at: it is only _they_ who have taught us how to

estimate the hero that is concealed in each of these common-place men,

and the art of looking at ourselves from a distance as heroes, and as it

were simplified and transfigured,—the art of "putting ourselves on the

stage" before ourselves. It is thus only that we get beyond some of the

paltry details in ourselves! Without that art we should be nothing but

fore-ground, and would live absolutely under the spell of the

perspective which makes the closest and the commonest seem immensely

large and like reality in itself.—Perhaps there is merit of a similar

kind in the religion which commanded us to look at the sinfulness of

every individual man with a magnifying-glass, and to make a great,

immortal criminal out of the sinner; in that it put eternal perspectives

around man, it taught him to see himself from a distance, and as

something past, something entire.

 

 

79.

 

_The Charm of Imperfection._—I see here a poet, who, like so many men,

exercises a higher charm by his imperfections than by all that is

rounded off and takes perfect shape under his hands,—indeed, he derives

his advantage and reputation far more from his actual limitations than

from his abundant powers. His work never expresses altogether what he

would really like to express, what he _would like to have seen_: he

appears to have had the foretaste of a vision and never the vision

itself:—but an extraordinary longing for this vision has remained in his

soul; and from this he derives his equally extraordinary eloquence of

longing and craving. With this he raises those who listen to him above

his work and above all "works," and gives them wings to rise higher than

hearers have ever risen before, thus making them poets and seers

themselves; they then show an admiration for the originator of their

happiness, as if he had led them immediately to the vision of his