Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

4.

Standard for the Value of Truth.—The difficulty of climbing mountains is no gauge of their height. Yet in the case of science it is different!—we are told by certain persons who wish to be considered “the initiated,”—the difficulty in finding [pg 185] truth is to determine the value of truth! This insane morality originates in the idea that “truths” are really nothing more than gymnastic appliances, with which we have to exercise ourselves until we are thoroughly tired. It is a morality for the athletes and gymnasts of the intellect.

5.

Use of Words and Reality.—There exists a simulated contempt for all the things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. For instance, we say “we only eat to live”—an abominable lie, like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for “the most important things” is hardly ever quite genuine. The priests and metaphysicians have indeed accustomed us to a hypocritically exaggerated use of words regarding these matters, but they have not altered the feeling that these most important things are not so important as those despised “everyday matters.” A fatal consequence of this twofold hypocrisy is that we never make these everyday matters (such as eating, housing, clothes, and intercourse) the object of a constant unprejudiced and universal reflection and revision, but, as such a process appears degrading, we divert from them our serious intellectual and artistic side. Hence in such matters habit and frivolity win an easy victory over the thoughtless, especially over inexperienced youth. On the other hand, our continual transgressions of the simplest laws of body and mind reduce us all, young [pg 186] and old, to a disgraceful state of dependence and servitude—I mean to that fundamentally superfluous dependence upon physicians, teachers and clergymen, whose dead-weight still lies heavy upon the whole of society.

6.

Earthly Infirmities and their Main Cause.—If we look about us, we are always coming across men who have eaten eggs all their lives without observing that the oblong-shaped taste the best; who do not know that a thunder-storm is beneficial to the stomach; that perfumes are most fragrant in cold, clear air; that our sense of taste varies in different parts of our mouths; that every meal at which we talk well or listen well does harm to the digestion. If we are not satisfied with these examples of defective powers of observation, we shall concede all the more readily that the everyday matters are very imperfectly seen and rarely observed by the majority. Is this a matter of indifference?—Let us remember, after all, that from this defect are derived nearly all the bodily and spiritual infirmities of the individual. Ignorance of what is good and bad for us, in the arrangement of our mode of life, the division of our day, the selection of our friends and the time we devote to them, in business and leisure, commanding and obeying, our feeling for nature and for art, our eating, sleeping, and meditation; ignorance and lack of keen perceptions in the smallest and most ordinary details—this it is that makes the world “a vale of tears” for so many. Let us not say that here [pg 187] as everywhere the fault lies with human unreason. Of reason there is enough and to spare, but it is wrongly directed and artificially diverted from these little intimate things. Priests and teachers, and the sublime ambition of all idealists, coarser and subtler, din it even into the child's ears that the means of serving mankind at large depend upon altogether different things—upon the salvation of the soul, the service of the State, the advancement of science, or even upon social position and property; whereas the needs of the individual, his requirements great and small during the twenty-four hours of the day, are quite paltry or indifferent.—Even Socrates attacked with all his might this arrogant neglect of the human for the benefit of humanity, and loved to indicate by a quotation from Homer the true sphere and conception of all anxiety and reflection: “All that really matters,” he said, “is the good and evil hap I find at home.”

7.

Two Means of Consolation.—Epicurus, the soul-comforter of later antiquity, said, with that marvellous insight which to this very day is so rarely to be found, that for the calming of the spirit the solution of the final and ultimate theoretical problems is by no means necessary. Hence, instead of raising a barren and remote discussion of the final question, whether the Gods existed, it sufficed him to say to those who were tormented by “fear of the Gods”: “If there are Gods, they do not concern themselves with us.” The latter position is far stronger and [pg 188] more favourable, for, by conceding a few points to the other, one makes him readier to listen and to take to heart. But as soon as he sets about proving the opposite (that the Gods do concern themselves with us), into what thorny jungles of error must the poor man fall, quite of his own accord, and without any cunning on the part of his interlocutor! The latter must only have enough subtlety and humanity to conceal his sympathy with this tragedy. Finally, the other comes to feel disgust—the strongest argument against any proposition—disgust with his own hypothesis. He becomes cold, and goes away in the same frame of mind as the pure atheist who says, “What do the Gods matter to me? The devil take them!”—In other cases, especially when a half-physical, half-moral assumption had cast a gloom over his spirit, Epicurus did not refute the assumption. He agreed that it might be true, but that there was a second assumption to explain the same phenomenon, and that it could perhaps be maintained in other ways. The plurality of hypotheses (for example, that concerning the origin of conscientious scruples) suffices even in our time to remove from the soul the shadows that arise so easily from pondering over a hypothesis which is isolated, merely visible, and hence overvalued a hundredfold.—Thus whoever wishes to console the unfortunate, the criminal, the hypochondriac, the dying, may call to mind the two soothing suggestions of Epicurus, which can be applied to a great number of problems. In their simplest form they would run: firstly, granted the thing is so, it does not concern us; secondly, the thing may be so, but it may also be otherwise.

8.

In the Night.—So soon as night begins to fall our sensations concerning everyday matters are altered. There is the wind, prowling as if on forbidden paths, whispering as if in search of something, fretting because he cannot find it. There is the lamplight, with its dim red glow, its weary look, unwillingly fighting against night, a sullen slave to wakeful man. There are the breathings of the sleeper, with their terrible rhythm, to which an ever-recurring care seems to blow the trumpet-melody—we do not hear it, but when the sleeper's bosom heaves we feel our heart-strings tighten; and when the breath sinks and almost dies away into a deathly stillness, we say to ourselves, “Rest awhile, poor troubled spirit!” All living creatures bear so great a burden that we wish them an eternal rest; night invites to death.—If human beings were deprived of the sun and resisted night by means of moonlight and oil-lamps, what a philosophy would cast its veil over them! We already see only too plainly how a shadow is thrown over the spiritual and intellectual nature of man by that moiety of darkness and sunlessness that envelops life.