We should recognise that every movement is (1) partly the manifestation of fatigue resulting from a previous movement (satiety after it, the malice of weakness towards it, and disease); and (2) partly a newly awakened accumulation of long slumbering forces, and therefore wanton, violent, healthy.
1013.
Health and morbidness: let us be careful! The standard is the bloom of the body, the agility, courage, and cheerfulness of the mind—but also, of course, how much morbidness a man can bear and overcome,—and convert into health. That which would send more delicate natures to the dogs, belongs to the stimulating means of great health.
1014.
It is only a question of power: to have all the morbid traits of the century, but to balance them I by means of overflowing, plastic, and rejuvenating power. The strong man.
1015.
Concerning the strength of the nineteenth century.—We are more mediæval than the eighteenth century; not only more inquisitive or more susceptible to the strange and to the rare. We have revolted against the Revolution, ... We have freed ourselves from the fear of reason, which was the spectre of the eighteenth century: we once more dare to be childish, lyrical, absurd, in a word, we are musicians. And we are just as little frightened of the ridiculous as of the absurd. The devil finds that he is tolerated even by God:[6] better still, he has become interesting as one who has been misunderstood and slandered for ages,—we are the saviours of the devil's honour.
We no longer separate the great from the terrible. We reconcile good things, in all their complexity, with the very worst things; we have overcome the desideratum of the past (which wanted goodness to grow without the increase of evil). The cowardice towards the ideal, peculiar to the Renaissance, has diminished—we even dare to aspire to the latter's morality. Intolerance towards priests and the Church has at the same time come to an end; "It is immoral to believe in God"—but this is precisely what we regard as the best possible justification of this belief.
On all these things we have conferred the civic rights of our minds. We do not tremble before the back side of "good things" (we even look for it, we are brave and inquisitive enough for that), of Greek antiquity, of morality, of reason, of good taste, for instance (we reckon up the losses which we incur with all this treasure: we almost reduce ourselves to poverty with such a treasure). Neither do we conceal the back side of "evil things" from ourselves.
[6] This is reminiscent of Goethe's Faust, See "Prologue in Heaven."—Tr.