Part 11

When I say that, all things considered, the Greeks were more moral than modern men: what do I mean by that? From what we can perceive of the activities of their soul, it is clear that they had no shame, they had no bad conscience. They were more sincere, open-hearted, and passionate, as artists are; they exhibited a kind of child-like _naïveté._ It thus came about that even in all their evil actions they had a dash of purity about them, something approaching the holy. A remarkable number of individualities: might there not have been a higher morality in that? When we recollect that character develops slowly, what can it be that, in the long run, breeds individuality? Perhaps vanity, emulation? Possibly. Little inclination for conventional things.

107

The Greeks as the geniuses among the nations.

Their childlike nature, credulousness.

Passionate. Quite unconsciously they lived in such a way as to procreate genius. Enemies of shyness and dulness. Pain. Injudicious actions. The nature of their intuitive insight into misery, despite their bright and genial temperament. Profoundness in their apprehension and glorifying of everyday things (fire, agriculture). Mendacious, unhistorical. The significance of the polis in culture instinctively recognised; favourable as a centre and periphery for great men (the facility of surveying a community, and also the possibility of addressing it as a whole). Individuality raised to the highest power through the polis. Envy, jealousy, as among gifted people.

108

The Greeks were lacking in sobriety and caution. Over-sensibility; abnormally active condition of the brain and the nerves; impetuosity and fervour of the will.

109

"Invariably to see the general in the particular is the distinguishing characteristic of genius," says Schopenhauer. Think of Pindar, &c.--"ΣωΦροσύνη," according to Schopenhauer, has its roots in the clearness with which the Greeks saw into themselves and into the world at large, and thence became conscious of themselves.

The "wide separation of will and intellect" indicates the genius, and is seen in the Greeks.

"The melancholy associated with genius is due to the fact that the will to live, the more clearly it is illuminated by the contemplating intellect, appreciates all the more clearly the misery of its condition," says Schopenhauer. _Cf._ the Greeks.

110

The moderation of the Greeks in their sensual luxury, eating, and drinking, and their pleasure therein; the Olympic plays and their worship: that shows what they were.

In the case of the genius, "the intellect will point out the faults which are seldom absent in an instrument that is put to a use for which it was not intended."

"The will is often left in the lurch at an awkward moment: hence genius, where real life is concerned is more or less unpractical--its behaviour often reminds us of madness."

111

We contrast the Romans, with their matter-of-fact earnestness, with the genial Greeks! Schopenhauer: "The stern, practical, earnest mode of life which the Romans called _gravitas_ presupposes that the intellect does not forsake the service of the will in order to roam far off among things that have no connection with the will."

112

It would have been much better if the Greeks had been conquered by the Persians instead of by the Romans.

113

The characteristics of the gifted man who is lacking in genius are to be found in the average Hellene--all the dangerous characteristics of such a disposition and character.

114

Genius makes tributaries of all partly-talented people: hence the Persians themselves sent their ambassadors to the Greek oracles.

115

The happiest lot that can fall to the genius is to exchange doing and acting for leisure; and this was something the Greeks knew how to value. The blessings of labour! _Nugari_ was the Roman name for all the exertions and aspirations of the Greeks. No happy course of life is open to the genius; he stands in contradiction to his age and must perforce struggle with it. Thus the Greeks: they instinctively made the utmost exertions to secure a safe refuge for themselves (in the _polis_). Finally, everything went to pieces in politics. They were compelled to take up a stand against their enemies: this became ever more and more difficult, and at last impossible.

116

Greek culture is based on the lordship of a small class over four to nine times their number of slaves. Judged by mere numbers, Greece was a country inhabited by barbarians. How can the ancients be thought to be humane? There was a great contrast between the genius and the breadwinner, the half-beast of burden. The Greeks believed in a racial distinction. Schopenhauer wonders why Nature did not take it into her head to invent two entirely separate species of men.

The Greeks bear the same relation to the barbarians "as free-moving or winged animals do to the barnacles which cling tightly to the rocks and must await what fate chooses to send them"--Schopenhauer's simile.

117

The Greeks as the only people of genius in the history of the world. Such they are even when considered as learners; for they understand this best of all, and can do more than merely trim and adorn themselves with what they have borrowed, as did the Romans. The constitution of the _polls_ is a Phœnician invention: even this has been imitated by the Hellenes. For a long time they dabbled in everything, like joyful dilettanti. Aphrodite is likewise Phœnician. Neither do they disavow what has come to them through immigration and does not originally belong to their own country.

118

The happy and comfortable constitution of the politico-social position must not be sought among the Greeks: that is a goal which dazzles the eyes of our dreamers of the future! It was, on the contrary, dreadful; for this is a matter that must be judged according to the following standard: the more spirit, the more suffering (as the Greeks themselves prove). Whence it follows: the more stupidity, the more comfort. The philistine of culture is the most comfortable creature the sun has ever shone upon: and he is doubtless also in possession of the corresponding stupidity.

119

The Greek _polis_ and the αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν grew up out of mutual enmity. Hellenic and philanthropic are contrary adjectives, although the ancients flattered themselves sufficiently.

Homer is, in the world of the Hellenic discord, the pan-Hellenic Greek. The "ἀγών" of the Greeks is also manifested in the Symposium in the shape of witty conversation.

120

Wanton, mutual annihilation inevitable: so long as a single _polis_ wished to exist--its envy for everything superior to itself, its cupidity, the disorder of its customs, the enslavement of the women, lack of conscience in the keeping of oaths, in murder, and in cases of violent death.

Tremendous power of self-control: for example in a man like Socrates, who was capable of everything evil.

121

Its noble sense of order and systematic arrangement had rendered the Athenian state immortal.--The ten strategists in Athens! Foolish! Too big a sacrifice on the altar of jealousy.

122

The recreations of the Spartans consisted of feasting, hunting, and making war: their every-day life was too hard. On the whole, however, their state is merely a caricature of the polis; a corruption of Hellas. The breeding of the complete Spartan--but what was there great about him that his breeding should have required such a brutal state!

123

The political defeat of Greece is the greatest failure of culture; for it has given rise to the atrocious theory that culture cannot be pursued unless one is at the same time armed to the teeth. The rise of Christianity was the second greatest failure: brute force on the one hand, and a dull intellect on the other, won a complete victory over the aristocratic genius among the nations. To be a Philhellenist now means to be a foe of brute force and stupid intellects. Sparta was the ruin of Athens in so far as she compelled Athens to turn her entire attention to politics and to act as a federal combination.

124

There are domains of thought where the _ratio_ will only give rise to disorder; and the philologist, who possesses nothing more, is lost through it and is unable to see the truth: _e.g.,_ in the consideration of Greek mythology. A merely fantastic person, of course, has no claim either: one must possess Greek imagination and also a certain amount of Greek piety. Even the poet does not require to be too consistent, and consistency is the last thing Greeks would understand.

125

Almost all the Greek divinities are accumulations of divinities: we find one layer over another, soon to be hidden and smoothed down by yet a third, and so on. It scarcely seems to me to be possible to pick these various divinities to pieces in a scientific manner; for no good method of doing so can be recommended: even the poor conclusion by analogy is in this instance a very good conclusion.

126

At what a distance must one be from the Greeks to ascribe to them such a stupidly narrow autochthony as does Ottfried Müller![11] How Christian it is to assume, with Welcker,[12] that the Greeks were originally monotheistic! How philologists torment themselves by investigating the question whether Homer actually wrote, without being able to grasp the far higher tenet that Greek art long exhibited an inward enmity against writing, and did not wish to be read at all.

[Footnote 11: Karl Ottfried Müller (1797-1840), classical archæologist, who devoted special attention to Greece.--TR.]

[Footnote 12: Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (1784-1868), noted for his ultra-profound comments on Greek poetry.--TR.]

127

In the religious cultus an earlier degree of culture comes to light: a remnant of former times. The ages that celebrate it are not those which invent it; the contrary is often the case. There are many contrasts to be found here. The Greek cultus takes us back to a pre-Homeric disposition and culture. It is almost the oldest that we know of the Greeks--older than their mythology, which their poets have considerably remoulded, so far as we know it--Can this cult really be called Greek? I doubt it: they are finishers, not inventors. _They preserve_ by means of this beautiful completion and adornment.

128

It is exceedingly doubtful whether we should draw any conclusion in regard to nationality and relationship with other nations from languages. A victorious language is nothing but a frequent (and not always regular) indication of a successful campaign. Where could there have been autochthonous peoples! It shows a very hazy conception of things to talk about Greeks who never lived in Greece. That which is really Greek is much less the result of natural aptitude than of adapted institutions, and also of an acquired language.

129

To live on mountains, to travel a great deal, and to move quickly from one place to another: in these ways we can now begin to compare ourselves with the Greek gods. We know the past, too, and we almost know the future. What would a Greek say, if only he could see us!

130

The gods make men still more evil; this is the nature of man. If we do not like a man, we wish that he may become worse than he is, and then we are glad. This forms part of the obscure philosophy of hate--a philosophy which has never yet been written, because it is everywhere the _pudendum_ that every one feels.

131

The pan-Hellenic Homer finds his delight in the frivolity of the gods; but it is astounding how he can also give them dignity again. This amazing ability to raise one's self again, however, is Greek.

132

What, then, is the origin of the envy of the gods? people did not believe in a calm, quiet happiness, but only in an exuberant one. This must have caused some displeasure to the Greeks; for their soul was only too easily wounded: it embittered them to see a happy man. That is Greek. If a man of distinguished talent appeared, the flock of envious people must have become astonishingly large. If any one met with a misfortune, they would say of him: "Ah! no wonder! he was too frivolous and too well off." And every one of them would have behaved exuberantly if he had possessed the requisite talent, and would willingly have played the rôle of the god who sent the unhappiness to men.

133

The Greek gods did not demand any complete changes of character, and were, generally speaking, by no means burdensome or importunate: it was thus possible to take them seriously and to believe in them. At the time of Homer, indeed, the nature of the Greek was formed: flippancy of images and imagination was necessary to lighten the weight of its passionate disposition and to set it free.

134

Every religion has for its highest images an analogon in the spiritual condition of those who profess it. The God of Mohammed: the solitariness of the desert, the distant roar of the lion, the vision of a formidable warrior. The God of the Christians: everything that men and women think of when they hear the word "love." The God of the Greeks: a beautiful apparition in a dream.

135

A great deal of intelligence must have gone to the making up of a Greek polytheism: the expenditure of intelligence is much less lavish when people have only _one_ God.

136

Greek morality is not based on religion, but on the _polis._ There were only priests of the individual gods; not representatives of the whole religion: _i.e.,_ no guild of priests. Likewise no Holy Writ.

137

The "lighthearted" gods: this is the highest adornment which has ever been bestowed upon the world--with the feeling, How difficult it is to live!

138

If the Greeks let their "reason" speak, their life seems to them bitter and terrible. They are not deceived. But they play round life with lies: Simonides advises them to treat life as they would a play; earnestness was only too well known to them in the form of pain. The misery of men is a pleasure to the gods when they hear the poets singing of it. Well did the Greeks know that only through art could even misery itself become a source of pleasure; _vide tragœdiam._

139

It is quite untrue to say that the Greeks only took _this_ life into their consideration--they suffered also from thoughts of death and Hell. But no "repentance" or contrition.

140

The incarnate appearance of gods, as in Sappho's invocation to Aphrodite, must not be taken as poetic licence: they are frequently hallucinations. We conceive of a great many things, including the will to die, too superficially as rhetorical.

141

The "martyr" is Hellenic: Prometheus, Hercules. The hero-myth became pan-Hellenic: a poet must have had a hand in that!

142

How _realistic_ the Greeks were even in the domain of pure inventions! They poetised reality, not yearning to lift themselves out of it. The raising of the present into the colossal and eternal, _e.g.,_ by Pindar.

143

What condition do the Greeks premise as the model of their life in Hades? Anæmic, dreamlike, weak: it is the continuous accentuation of old age, when the memory gradually becomes weaker and weaker, and the body still more so. The senility of senility: this would be our state of life in the eyes of the Hellenes.

144

The naïve character of the Greeks observed by the Egyptians.

145

The truly scientific people, the literary people, were the Egyptians and not the Greeks. That which has the appearance of science among the Greeks, originated among the Egyptians and later on returned to them to mingle again with the old current. Alexandrian culture is an amalgamation of Hellenic and Egyptian: and when our world again founds its culture upon the Alexandrian culture, then ...[13]

[Footnote 13: "We shall once again be shipwrecked." The omission is in the original.--TR.]

146

The Egyptians are far more of a literary people than the Greeks. I maintain this against Wolf. The first grain in Eleusis, the first vine in Thebes, the first olive-tree and fig-tree. The Egyptians had lost a great part of their mythology.

147

The unmathematical undulation of the column in Paestum is analogous to the modification of the _tempo:_ animation in place of a mechanical movement.

148

The desire to find something certain and fixed in æsthetic led to the worship of Aristotle: I think, however, that we may gradually come to see from his works that he understood nothing about art; and that it is merely the intellectual conversations of the Athenians, echoing in his pages, which we admire.

149

In Socrates we have as it were lying open before us a specimen of the consciousness out of which, later on, the instincts of the theoretic man originated: that one would rather die than grow old and weak in mind.

150

At the twilight of antiquity there were still wholly unchristian figures, which were more beautiful, harmonious, and pure than those of any Christians: _e.g.,_ Proclus. His mysticism and syncretism were things that precisely Christianity cannot reproach him with. In any case, it would be my desire to live together with such people. In comparison with them Christianity looks like some crude brutalisation, organised for the benefit of the mob and the criminal classes.

Proclus, who solemnly invokes the rising moon.

151

With the advent of Christianity a religion attained the mastery which corresponded to a pre-Greek condition of mankind: belief in witchcraft in connection with all and everything, bloody sacrifices, superstitious fear of demoniacal punishments, despair in one's self, ecstatic brooding and hallucination; man's self become the arena of good and evil spirits and their struggles.

152

All branches of history have experimented with antiquity: critical consideration alone remains. By this term I do not mean conjectural and literary-historical criticism.

153

Antiquity has been treated by all kinds of historians and their methods. We have now had enough experience, however, to turn the history of antiquity to account without being shipwrecked on antiquity itself.

154

We can now look back over a fairly long period of human existence: what will the humanity be like which is able to look back at us from an equally long distance? which finds us lying intoxicated among the debris of old culture! which finds its only consolation in "being good" and in holding out the "helping hand," and turns away from all other consolations!--Does beauty, too, grow out of the ancient culture? I think that our ugliness arises from our metaphysical remnants: our confused morals, the worthlessness of our marriages, and so on, are the cause. The beautiful man, the healthy, moderate, and enterprising man, moulds the objects around him into beautiful shapes after his own image.

155

Up to the present time all history has been written from the standpoint of success, and, indeed, with the assumption of a certain reason in this success. This remark applies also to Greek history: so far we do not possess any. It is the same all round, however: where are the historians who can survey things and events without being hum-bugged by stupid theories? I know of only one, Burckhardt. Everywhere the widest possible optimism prevails in science. The question: "What would have been the consequence if so and so had not happened?" is almost unanimously thrust aside, and yet it is the cardinal question. Thus everything becomes ironical. Let us only consider our own lives. If we examine history in accordance with a preconceived plan, let this plan be sought in the purposes of a great man, or perhaps in those of a sex, or of a party. Everything else is a chaos.--Even in natural science we find this deification of the necessary.

Germany has become the breeding-place of this historical optimism; Hegel is perhaps to blame for this. Nothing, however, is more responsible for the fatal influence of German culture. Everything that has been kept down by success gradually rears itself up: history as the scorn of the conqueror; a servile sentiment and a kneeling down before the actual fact--"a sense for the State," they now call it, as if _that_ had still to be propagated! He who does not understand how brutal and unintelligent history is will never understand the stimulus to make it intelligent. Just think how rare it is to find a man with as great an intelligent knowledge of his own life as Goethe had: what amount of rationality can we expect to find arising out of these other veiled and blind existences as they work chaotically with and in opposition to each other?

And it is especially naïve when Hellwald, the author of a history of culture, warns us away from all "ideals," simply because history has killed them off one after the other

156

To bring to light without reserve the stupidity and the want of reason in human things: that is the aim of _our_ brethren and colleagues. People will then have to distinguish what is essential in them, what is incorrigible, and what is still susceptible of further improvement. But "Providence" must be kept out of the question, for it is a conception that enables people to take things too easily. I wish to breathe the breath of _this_ purpose into science. Let us advance our knowledge of mankind! The good and rational in man is accidental or apparent, or the contrary of something very irrational. There will come a time when _training_ will be the only thought.

157

Surrender to necessity is exactly what I do not teach--for one must first know this necessity to be necessary. There may perhaps be many necessities; but in general this inclination is simply a bed of idleness.

158

To know history now means: to recognise how all those who believed in a Providence took things too easily. There is no such thing. If human affairs are seen to go forward in a loose and disordered way, do not think that a god has any purpose in view by letting them do so or that he is neglecting them. We can now see in a general way that the history of Christianity on earth has been one of the most dreadful chapters in history, and that a stop _must_ be put to it. True, the influence of antiquity has been observed in Christianity even in our own time; and, as it diminishes, so will our knowledge of antiquity diminish also to an even greater extent. Now is the best time to recognise it: we are no longer prejudiced in favour of Christianity, but we still understand it, and also the antiquity that forms part of it, so far as this antiquity stands in line with Christianity.

159

Philosophic heads must occupy themselves one day with the collective account of antiquity and make up its balance-sheet. If we have this, antiquity will be overcome. All the shortcomings which now vex us have their roots in antiquity, so that we cannot continue to treat this account with the mildness which has been customary up to the present. The atrocious crime of mankind which rendered Christianity possible, as it actually became possible, is the _guilt_ of antiquity. With Christianity antiquity will also be cleared away.--At the present time it is not so very far behind us, and it is certainly not possible to do justice to it. It has been availed of in the most dreadful fashion for purposes of repression, and has acted as a support for religious oppression by disguising itself as "culture." It was common to hear the saying, "Antiquity has been conquered by Christianity."