789.
Our new "freedom." What a feeling of relief there is in the thought that we emancipated spirits do not feel ourselves harnessed to any system of teleological aims. Likewise that the concepts reward and punishment have no roots in the essence of existence! Likewise that good and evil actions are not good or evil in themselves, but only from the point of view of the self-preservative tendencies of certain species of humanity! Likewise that our speculations concerning pleasure and pain are not of cosmic, far less then of metaphysical, importance! (That form of pessimism associated with the name of Hartmann, which pledges itself to put even the pain and pleasure of existence into the balance, with its arbitrary confinement in the prison and within the bounds of pre-Copernican thought, would be something not only retrogressive, but degenerate, unless it be merely a bad joke on the part of a "Berliner."[8])
[8] "Berliner"—The citizens of Berlin are renowned in Germany for their poor jokes.—Tr.
790.
If one is clear as to the "wherefore" of one's life, then the "how" of it can take care of itself.
It is already even a sign of disbelief in the wherefore and in the purpose and sense of life—in fact, it is a sign of a lack of will—when the value of pleasure and pain step into the foreground, and hedonistic and pessimistic teaching becomes prevalent; and self-abnegation, resignation, virtue, "objectivity," may, at the very least, be signs that the most important factor is beginning to make its absence felt.
791.
Hitherto there has been no German culture. It is no refutation of this assertion to say that there have been great anchorites in Germany (Goethe, for instance); for these had their own culture. But it was precisely around them, as though around mighty, defiant, and isolated rocks, that the remaining spirit of Germany, as their antithesis, lay that is to say, as a soft, swampy, slippery soil, upon which every step and every footprint of the rest of Europe made an impression and created forms. German culture was a thing devoid of character and of almost unlimited yielding power.
792.