prepare you for the analysis and evaluation component of the final projec

THE GAY SCIENCE

•••••

with a prelude in rhymes

and an appendix of songs

Friedrich Nietzsche Translated, with Commentary~ by

WALTER KAUFMANN

VINTAGE BOOKS A Division of Random HoJJse

NEWYORX

VlNT AGE BOOKS EDlTION, MIITciJ 1974 Copyright © 1974 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc.,

New York. and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canda Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1974.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.

The gay science. “This translation is based on the second edition of

Die friihliche Wissenschajt, published in 1887.” 1. Philosophy. 2. Man. 3. Religion-Philosophy. 4. Power (Philosophy) 5. Ethics. I. Kaufmann,

Walter Arnold, tr. II. Title. [B331J.F72E5 1974b] 193 73-10479

ISBN 0-394-71985-9

Manufactured in the United States of America E987654321

Preface for the Second Edition

This book may need more than one preface, and in the end there would still remain room for doubt whether anyone who had never lived through similar experiences could be brought closer to the experience of this book by means of prefaces. It seems to be written in the language of the wind that thaws ice and snow: high spirits, unrestJ contradiction, and April weather are present in it, and one is instantly reminded no less of the proximity of winter than of the triumph over the winter that is coming, must come, and perhaps has already come.

Gratitude pours forth continually, as if the unexpected had just happened-the gratitude of a conva1escent-for convales- cence was unexpected. uoay Scien&en: that signifies the satur- nalia of a spirit who has patiently resisted a terrible, long pressure-patiently, severely, coldly, without submitting, but also without hope-and who is now all at once attacked by hope, the hope for health, and the intoxication of convalescence. Is it any wonder that in the process much that is unreasonable and foolish comes to light, much playful tenderness that is lavished even on problems that have a prickly hide and are not made to be caressed and enticed? This whole book is nothing but a bit of merry-making after long privation and powerless- ness, the rejoicing of strength that is returning. of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of seas that are open again, of goals that are permitted again. believed again. And what did not lie behind me then! This stretch of desert. exhaustion, disbelief! icing up in the midst of youth, this interlude of old age at the wrong time, this tyranny of pain even exceJled by the tyranny of pride that refused the conclusions of pain-and conclusions are consolations-this

PREFACE FOR THE SECOND EDITION 33

radical retreat into solitude as a self-defense against a contempt for men that had become pathologically clairvoyant-this deter- mined self·Hmitation to what was bitter, harsh, and hurtful to know, prescribed by the nausea that had gradually developed out of an incautious and pampering spiritual diet. called romanticism -oh, who could reexperience all of this? But if anyone could. he would surely pardon more than a little foolishness. exuberance, and “gay science”-for example. the handful of songs that have now been added to this book-songs in which a poet makes fun of all poets in a way that may be hard to forgive. Alas. it is not only the poets and their beautiful ‘ 5lyrical sentiments” on whom the resurrected author has to vent his sarcasm: who knows what victim he is looking for. what monster of material for parody will soon attract him? “Incipit tragoedia” we read at the end of this awesomely aweless book. Beware! Something downright wicked and malicious is announced here: incipit parodia, no doubt.1

2

But let us leave Herr Nietzsche: what is it to us that Herr Nietzsche has become well again?

For a psychologist there are few questions that are as attrac– tive as that concerning the relation of health and philosophy, and if he should himself become ill, he will bring all of hi& scientific curiosity into his illness. For assuming that one ii a person. one necessarily also has the philosophy that belongs to that person; but there is a big difference. In some it is their deprivations that philosophize; in others, their richei and strengths.2 The former need their philosophy, whether it be a:i a prop, a sedative, medicine, redemption, elevation, or self- alienation. For the latter it is merely a beautiful luxury-in the

1 “The tragedy begins .. : This is the title of section 342 which concluded the first edition-and the text of that section is the beginning of Nietzsche•s next book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. What Nietuche iii say- ing. then, is that Zarathustra is something of a parody-which it surely is-although most readers during the first half of the twentieth century failed to see this. 2 Cf. the last three paragraphs of section 370.

l4 THE GAY SCIENCE

best cases. the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude that eventually still has to inscribe itself in cosmic letters on the heaven of concepts. But in the former case, which is more com- mon, when it is distress that philosophizes. as is the case with all sick thinkers-and perhaps sick thinkers are more numer- ous in the history of philosophy-what wiJI become of the thought itself when it is subjected to the pressure of sickness? This is the question that concerns the psychologist, and here an experiment is possible. Just as a traveler may resolve, before he calmly abandons himself to sleep, to wake up at a certain time. we philosophers, if we should become sick. surrender for a while to sickness, body and soul-and, as it were, shut our eyes to ourselves. And as the traveler knows that something is not asleep, that something counts the hours and will wake him up, we. too. know that the decisive moment will find us awake. and that something will leap forward then and catch the spirit in the act: I mean, in its weakness or repentance or resignation or hardening or gloom, and whatever other names there are for the pathological states of the spirit that on healthy days are opposed by the pride of the spirit (for the old saying is still valid: uthe proud spirit, peacock. and horse are the three proudest beasts on earth”) .

After such self-questioning, self-temptation, one acquires a subtler eye for all philosophizing to date; one can infer better than before the involuntary detours, side Janes, resting places, and sunny places of thought to which suffering thinkers are led and misled on account of their suffering; for now one knows whether the sick body and its needs unconsciously urge. push. and lure the spirit-toward the sun, stillness, mildness. patience, medicine, balm in some sense. Every philosophy that ranks peace above war. every ethic with a negative definition of hap- piness, every metaphysics and physics that knows some finale, some final state of some sort, every predominantly aesthetic or religious craving for some Apart, Beyond. Outside. Above. per- mits the question whether it was not sickness that inspired the philosopher. The unconscious disguise of physiological needs under the cloaks of the objective, ideal. purely spiritual goes to frightening lengths-and often I have asked myself whether. taking a large view, philosophy has not been merely an inter-

PREFACE FOR THE SECOND EDTTION 35

pretation of the body and a misunderstanding of the body. Behind the highest value judgments that have hitherto guided

the history of thought, there are concealed misunderstandings of the physical constitution-of individuals or classes or even whole races. All those bold insanities of metaphysics. especially answers to the question about the value of existence, may always be considered first of alt as the symptoms of certain bodies. And if such world affirmations or world negations tout court lack any grain of significance when measured scientifically, they are the more valuab1e for the historian and psychologist as hints or symptoms of the body, of its success or failure. its plenitude, power, and autocracy in history, or of its frustra- tions, weariness, impoverishment, its premonitions of the end,

· its will to the end. I am still waiting for a philosophical physician in the excep-

tional sense of that word-one who has to pursue the problem of the total health of a people, time, race or of humanity-to muster the courage to push my suspicion to its limits and to risk the proposition: what was at stake in all philosophizing hitherto was not at all “truth” but something else-let us say, health, future, growth, power, life.

3

You see that I do not want to take leave ungratefully from that time of severe sickness whose profits I have not yet ex- hausted even today. I am very conscious of the advantages that my fickle health gives me over all robust squares.3 A philosopher who has traversed many kinds of health, and keeps traversing them, has passed through an equal number of philosophies; he simply cannot keep from transposing his states every time into the most spiritual fonn and distance: this art of transfiguration is philosophy. We philosophers are not free to divide body from soul as the people do; we are even less free to divide soul from spirit. We are not thinking frogs, nor objectifying and register· ing mechanisms with their innards removed: constantly, we have to give birth to our thoughts out of our pain and, like

s Vierschrotigen des Geistes.

36 THE GAY SCIENCE

mothers, endow them with all we have of blood, heart, fire. pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, ‘fate, and catastrophe. Life -that means for us constantly transforming all that we are into light and flame4-also everything that wounds us; we simply can do no other. And as for sickness: are we not almost tempted to ask whether we could get along without it?5 Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit, being the teacher of the great suspicion that turns every U into an X, a real, genuine X, that is the letter before the penultimate one.«’

Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time-on which we are burned, as it were, with green wood-compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths and to put aside all trust, everything good-natured, everything that would interpose a veil, that is miJd, that is medium-things in which formerly we may have found our humanity. I doubt that such pain makes us “better”; but I know that it makes us more profound.

Whether we learn to pit our pride, our scorn, our will power against it, equaling the American Indian who, however tortured, repays his torturer with the malice of his tongue; or whether we withdraw from pain into that Oriental Nothing-called Nirvana-into mute, rigid, deaf resignation, self-forgetting. self- extinction: out of such long and dangerous exercises of self- mastery one emerges as a different person. with a few more question marks-above all with the will henceforth to question further, more deeply, severely, harshly, evilly and quietly than one had questioned heretofore. The trust in life is gone: life itself has become a problem. Yet one should not jump to the

“‘Cf. poem #62 in the Prelude. s Nietzsche later reprinted the last two sections of this Preface, with some revisions. as the “Epilogue” of Nietzsche contra Wasner (VPN, 680-83) . Up to this point the text was changed extensively while most of what follows was retained with only minor changes. o There is a Gennan expression for deceiving someone that means literally: passjng off a u as an x. Originally it referred to the Roman numerals. V and X, and meant passing off a five for a ten. The suspi- cion of which Nietzsche speaks does not inflate conventional values; it insists that they are not really known but rather unknown quantities- the x of the mathematicians.

PREFACE FOR THE SECOND EDITION 37

conclusion that this necessarily makes one gloomy. Even love of life is still possible, only one loves differently. It is the love for a woman that causes doubts in us.

The attraction of everything problematic, the delight in an x, however, is so great in such more spiritual, more spiritualized men that this delight flares up again and again like a br.ight blaze over all the distress of what is problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty, and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know a new happiness.

4

In the end, lest what is most important remain unsaid: from such abysses, from such severe sickness, also from the sickness of severe suspicion, one returns newborn, having shed one’s skin. more ticklish and malicious, with a more delicate taste for joy, with a tenderer tongue for all good things, with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more child- like and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.

How repulsive pleasure is now, that crude, musty, brown pleasure as it is understood by those who like pleasure, our ueducated” people, our rich people, and our rulers! How maliciously we listen now to the big county-fair boom-boom with which the “educated” person and city dweller today per- mits art, books, and music to rape him and provide “spiritual pleasuresu-with the aid of spirituous liquors! How the the- atrical scream of passion now hurts our ears, how strange to our taste the whole romantic uproar and tumult of the senses have become, which the educated mob loves, and all its aspira- tions after the elevated, inflated, and exaggerated! No, if we convalescents still need art, it is another kind of art-a mocking, light, fleeting. divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art that, like a pure flame, licks into unclouded skies. Above all, an art for artists, for artists only! We know better afterward what above all is needed for this: cheerfulness, any cheerfulness, my friends–also as artists: let me prove it. There are a few things we now know too well, we knowing ones: oh, how we now learn to forget well, and to be good at not knowing, as artists!

38 THE GAY SCIENCE.

And as for our future, one will hardly find us again on the paths of those Egyptian youths who endanger temples by night, embrace statues, and want by all means to unveil, uncover, and put into a_ bright light whatever is kept concealed for good reasons.’ No, this bad taste, this will to truth, to “truth at any price,” this youthful madness in the love of truth, have lost their charm for us: for that we are too e~perienced, too serious, too merry, too burned, too profound. We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn; we have lived too much to believe this. Today we consider it a matter of decency not to wish to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and “know .. everything.

“Is it true that God is present everywhere?” a little girl asked her mother; “I think that’s indecentu-a hint for philoso- phers! One should have more respect for. the bashfulness with which nature has hidden behind riddles and iridescent uncer- tainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not Jetting us see her reasons? Perhaps her name is-to speak Greek-Baubo?8

Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial-out of profundity. And is not this precisely what we are again coming back to, we daredevils of the spirit who have climbed the highest and most dangerous peak of present thought and looked around from up there-we who have looked down from there? Are we not, precisely in this respect, Greeks? Adorers of fonns, of tones, of words? And therefore-artists?

Ruta. near Genoa, in the fall of 1886

1 An allusion to Friedrich Schiller’s great ballad ”The Veiled Image at Sais.” 8 Baubo: A primitive and obscene female demon: according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary. originally a personification of the female genitals.

76 THE GAY SCIENCE

the means and necessities of the preservation of the species.u Consequently-. Consequently. Consequently. 0, do you

understand me, my brothers? Do you understand this new law of ebb and flood? There is a time for us, too!

2

The intellectual conscience.- I keep having the same experi- ence and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as l~mely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks. at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are under- weight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I· mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even· trou- bling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this “great majority.” But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress-as that which separates the higher human beings1 from the lower.

Among some pious people I found a hatred of reason and was well disposed to them for that; for this at least betrayed their bad intellectual conscience. But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors2 and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even finding him faintly amusing-that is what l feel

1 die hi:iheren Menschen. Cf. section 301. Regarding “the desire ‘for cer- tainty,” cf. section 347, especially note 25. 2 Discordant concord of things: Horace, Epistles, I.12.l9.

BOOK ONE 77

to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human being has this feeling, simply because be is human. This is my type of injustice.3

3

Noble and common.- Common natures consider all noble, magnanimous feelings inexpedient and therefore first of all incredible. They blink when they hear of such things and seem to feel like saying: “Surely, there must be some advantage involved; one cannot see through everything.” They are sus· picious of the noble person, as if he surreptitiously sought his advantage. When they are irresistibly persuaded of the absence -of selfish intentions and gains, they see the noble person as a ~ind of fool; they despise him in his joy and laugh at his shin- ing eyes. “How can one enjoy being at a disadvantage? How could one desire with one’s eyes open to be disadvantaged? Some disease of reason must be-associated with the noble affec- tion.” Thus they think and sneer, as they sneer at the pleasure that a madman derives from his fixed idea. What distinguishes the common type is that it never loses sight of its advantage, and that this thought of purpose and advantage is even stronger than the strongest instincts; not to allow these instincts to lead one astray to perform inexpedient acts-that is their wisdom and pride.

Compared to them, the higher type is more unreasonable, for those who are noble, magnanimous, and self-sacrificial do suc· cumb to their instincts. and when they are at their best. their reason pauses. An animal that protects its young at the risk of its life, or that during the mating period follows the female even into death, does not think of danger and death; its reason also pauses, because the pleasure in its young or in the female and the fear of being deprived of this pleasure dominate it totally: the animal becomes more stupid than usual-just like those who are noble and magnanimous, They have some feel-

a Many interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought are invalidated by this very important and characteristic section. Nietzsche never renounced it. Cf. sections 319, 335,344, and The Antichrist. sections 50-55.

BOOK ONE 85

have to perish of its misjudginents and its fantasies with open eyes, of its Jack of thoroughness and its credulity-in short, of its consciousness; rather, without the former, humanity would long have disappeared.

Before a function is fully developed and mature it consti- tutes a danger for the organism, and it is good if during the interval it is subjected to some tyranny. Thus consciousness is tyrannized-not least by our pride in it. One thinks that it con- $titutes the kernel of man; what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him. One takes consciousness for a deter- minate magnitude. One denies its growth arid its intermittences. One takes it for the “unity of the organism.”

This ridiculous overestimation and misunderstanding of con- sciousness has the very useful consequence that it prevents an all too fast- development of consciousness. Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven’t changed much in this respect. To this day the task of incorporating knowledge and making it instinctive is only beginning to daWn on the human eye and is not yet clearly discernible; it is a task -that is seen only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.

12

On the aim of science.- What? The aim of science should be to give men as much pleasure and as little displeasure as po~ible? But what if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other-that whoever wanted to learn to “jubilate up to the heavens” would also have to be prepared for ‘”depression unto death,?9 And that is how things may welt be. At least the -Stoics believed that this was bow things were, and they were consistent when they also desired as little pleasure as possible, in order to get as

e An allusion to Clirchen’s song in Goethe’s Egrnont, Act III, Scene 2, set to music by Beethoven.

86 THE GAY SCIENCE

little displeasure as possible out of life. (When they kept saying “The virtuous man is the happiest man/’ this was both the school’s eye-catching sign for the great mass and a casuistic subtlety for the subtle.)

To this day you have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief-and in the last analysis socialists and politicians of all parties have no· right to promise their people more than that–or as much displeasurt as possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet. If you decide for the former and desire to diminish and ]ower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and lower the level of their capacity for ioy. Actually, science can promote either goal. So far it may still be better known for its power of depriving man of his joys and making-him colder. more Hke a statue, more st0ic. But it might yet be found to be the great dispenser at pain. And then its counterforce might be found at the same time: its immense capacity for making new galaxies of joy flare up.

13

On the doctrine of the feeling of power.10- Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one’s power upon others; that is all one desires in such cases. One hurts those whom one wants to feel one’s power, for pain is a much more efficient means to that end than pleasure; pain always raises the ques- tion about its origin while pleasure is inclined to stop with itself without looking back. We benefit and show benevolence to those who are already dependent on us in some way (which means that they are used to thinking of us as causes) ; we want to increase their power because in that way we increase ours, or we want to show them how advantageous it is to be in our power; that way they will become more satisfied with their condition and more hostile to and willing to fight against the enemies of our power.

10 This was written while Nietzsche was developing. his doctrine of “the will to power,” which he proclaimed a year later in Zorothustra.

172 THE GAY SCIENCE

high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger for life. No living beings would have survived if the apposite tendency-to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to err and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgment rather than be just-had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong.’

The course of logical ideas and inferences in our brain today corresponds to a process and a struggle among impulses that are, taken singly, very illogical and unjust. We generally experi- ence only the result of this struggle because this primeval mechanism now runs its course so quickly and is so well con- cealed.

112

Cause and effect.- “Explanation” is what we call it. but it is “description” that distinguishes us from older stages of knowledge and science. Our descriptions are better-we do not explain any more than our predecessors. We have uncovered a manifold one-after-another where the naive man and inquirer of older cultures saw only two separate things. “Cause., and “effect” is what one says; but we have merely perfected the image of becoming without reaching beyond the image or behind it. In every case the series of “causes•• confronts us much more completely, and we infer: first, this and that has to precede in order that this or that may then follow-but this does not involve any comprehension. In every chemical process, for example, quality appears as a “miracle,” as ever; also, every locomotion; nobody has “explained” a push. But how could we possib1y explain anything? We operate only with things that do not exist: lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time spans, divisib1e spaces. How should explanations be at all possible when we first turn everything into an image, our image!

It will do to consider science as an attempt to humanize

‘ This section illuminates Nietzsche’s insistence that, as he put it in an often quoted note in The Will to Power ( #493), “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species could not live …

BOOK THREE 173

things as faithfully as possible; as we describe things and their one-after-another, we learn how to describe ourselves more and more precisely. Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actuaHy seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actuallyt it is sudden only for us. In this moment of sudden- ness there is an infinite number of processes that elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditiona1ity.

113

On the doctrine of poisons.- So many things have to come together for scientific thinking to originate; and all these neces- sary strengths had to be invented, practiced, and cultivated separately. As long as they were still sep,arate, however, they frequently had an altogether different effect than they do now that they are integrated into scientific thinking and hold each other in check. Their effect was that of poisons; for example, that of the impulse to doubt, to negate, to wait, to collect, to dissolve. Many hecatombs of human beings were sacrificed before these impulses learned to comprehend their coexistence and to feel that they were all functions of one organizing force within one human being. And even now the time seems remote when artistic energies and the practical wisdom of life will join with scientific thinking to form a higher organic system in rela- tion to which scholars, physicians, artists, and legislators-as we know them at present-would have to look like paltry relics of ancient times.

114

How far .the moral sphere extends.- As soon as we see a new image, we immediately construct it with the aid of all our previous experiences. depending on the degree of our honesty

180 THE GAY SCIENCE

greatest pride of our life and a noble occupation in times of happiness as well as unhappiness; and finally he said: “without it all human endeavors would lack any firm foothold-and even with it things are changeable and insecure enough.” But this tolerably skeptical pope keeps silent, like all other ecclesi- astical eulogists of science, about his ultimate judgment. From his words one might infer, although this is strange enough for such a friend of the arts, that he places science above art; but in the end it is nothing but good manners when he does not speak at this point of what he places high above all of the sciences. too: “revealed truth,. and the· “eternal salvation of the souL” Compared to that, what are ornaments. pride, enter- tainment, and the security of life to him? “Science is something second-class. not anything ultimate, unconditional, not an ob- ject of passion”-this judgment Leo retained in his soul: the truly Christian judgment about science.

In antiquity the dignity and recognition of science were diminished by the fact that even her most zealous disciples placed the striving for virtue first, and one felt that knowledge had received the· highest praise when one celebrated it as the best means to virtue. It is something new in history that knowl- edge wants to be more than a mere means.

124

In the horizon oj the infinite.- We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us- indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now. little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and ·gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity.19 Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you feel

19 Cf. the poem “Toward New Seas .. in the Appendix. Here the conclusion of the immediately preceding section is seen in a

new light. The attempt to vanquish the shadow of God, heralded in sec- tion 108, is felt to be awesome-and in the next section the terror is spelled out more fully.

BOOK THREE 181

homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom-and there is no longer any “land.”

125

The madman.- Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place. and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” -As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. uWhither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him-you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward. forward. in all directions? b there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night coatinually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too. decom- pose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all mur~ derers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy o£ it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever 1s born after us-for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

182 THE GAY SCIENCE

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then: “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Light· ning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require . time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars-and yet they have done it themselves.··

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his reqttiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after aU are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?uto

126

Mystical explanations.- Mystical explanations are consid~red deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial.21

lUI This is one of the most famous sections in this book. See the first note on section 108 above, which calls attention to oth~r P!lssage$ in Nietzsche that use the same, or similar, imagery. Above all. however. it should be noted how this section fits into its immediate eontext, and how the de-deification in section 109 and all of the ·intennediate sec- tions build up to the parable or the madman. It has often been asked what Nietzsche .means by saying that .. God is dead.” One might fairly answer: what he means is what. he says in sections J08 thr;ough 125- and ,in the sections after that. The problem is created in hu;ge m~as).lre by tearing a section out of its <;ontext, on the false assumption that what we are offered is merely a random collection of “aphorisms” that are intended for browsing. 21 Cf. Twilight of the Idols, Chapter I, section 27 (VPN, 470)-whieb is an aphorism. and a poor one at that. But although the w.ording is almost the same, section 126 has its place betwe.en 125 and 127 as a meaningful transition, and it makes a point: Mystical explanations are not e•en superficial explanations–because they are not explanations at all. They on1y seem to explain something.

276

For the new year.- 1 still live, I still think: I sti11 have to live, for I still have to think. Sum,. ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum.1 Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish ~nd his dearest thought; hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year-what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is neces~ sary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: 2 let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation.3 And all in aJt and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes~sayer!

277

Personal providence.- There is a certain high point in life: once we have reached that, we are, for all our freedom, once more in the greatest danger of spiritual unfreedom, and no matter how much we have faced up to the beautiful chaos of existence and denied it al1 providential reason and goodness, we still have to pass our hardest test. For it is only now that the idea of a personal providence confronts us with the most pene- trating force, and the best advocate, the evidence of our eyes,

1 I am. therefore I think: I think, therefore I am. The second half of this statement is quoted from Descartes who made this fonnulation famous. 2 Love of fate. This important concept is introduced here for the first time. The idea is developed further in Book IV; also in Zarathustra and in Ecce Homo. s Cf. Zarathustra III. “On Passing By” (VPN, 287-90). “Cf. Zarathustra III. “Before Sunrise” (VPN, 276-79) and “The Seven Seals (Or: The Yes and Amen Song)” (VPN, 340-43): also Ecce Homo, passim (see the Index in BWN under “Yes-saying”).

224 THE GAY SCIENCE

speaks for it-now that we can see how palpably always every- thing that happens to us turns out for the best. Every day and every hour, life seems to have no other wish than to prove this proposition again and again. Whatever it is, bad weather or good. the loss of a friend, sickness, slander, the failure of some letter to arrive, the spraining of an ankle, a glance into a shop. a counter-argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a fraud-either immediately or very soon after it proves to be something that “must not be missing”; it has a profound sig- nificance and use precisely for us. Is there any more dangerous seduction that might tempt one to renounce one’s faith in the gods of Epicurus who have no care and are unknown, and to believe instead in some petty deity who is full of care and per- sonally knows every little hair on our head3 and finds nothing nauseous in the most miserable small service?

Well, I think that in spite of all this we should leave the gods in peace as well as the genii who are ready to serve us, and rest content with the supposition that our own practical and theoretical skill in interpreting and arranging events has now reached its high point. Nor should we conceive too high an opinion of this dexterity of our wisdom when at times we are excessively surprised by the wonderful harmony created by the playing of our instrument-a harmony that sounds too good for us to dare to give the credit to ourselves. Indeed, now and then someone plays with us-good old chance; now and then chance guides our hand. and the wisest providence could not think up a more beautiful music than that which our foolish hand pro. duces then.6

278

The thought of death.- Living in the midst of this jumble of little lanes, needs, and voices gives me a melancholy happi-

5 This allusion to Matthew 10: JO and Luke 12:7 leaves no doubt that Nietzsche is contrasting the gods of Epicurus with the “petty deity .. of the GospeJs. Cf. The Antichrist, section 58 (VPN, 649). 6 Cf. Ecce Homo, the third section of the discussion of Zarathustra (BWN, 756£.}.

BOOK FOUR 225

ness: how much enjoyment, impatience, and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light every moment! And yet silence will soon ~scend on all these noisy, living, life- thirsty people. How his shallQw stands even now behind every- one, as his dark fellow traveler! It is always like the last moment before the departure of an emigrants’ ship: people have more to say to each other than ever, the hour is late, and the ocean and its desolate silence are waiting impatiently behind all of this noise–so covetous and certain of their prey. And all and everyone of them suppose that the heretofore was little or nothing while the near future is everything; and that is the reason for all of this haste, this clamor, this outshouting and overreaching each other. Everyone wants to be the first in this future-and yet death and deathly silence alone are certain and common to all in this future. How strange it is that this sole certainty and common element makes almost no impression on people, and that nothing is further from their minds than the feeling that they fonn a brotherhood of death. It makes me happy that men do not want at all to think the thought of deathF I should like very much to do something that would make the thought of life even a hundred times more appealing to them.

279

Star friendship.- We were friends and have become es- tranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its goal and coursej our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did-and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different

1 The contrast with existentialism should be noted. It is not merely verba] or superficial. The next sentence provjdes the link to Nietzsche’s central orientation, and his relatively few other references to death do not contradict this anti-Christian attitude.

232 THE GAY SCIENCE

fession, conjuring of souls, and forgiveness of sins; what is needful is a new justice! And a new watchword. And new philosophers. The moral earth, too, is round. The moral earth, too, has its antipodes. The antipodes, too, have the right to exist. There is yet another world to be discovered-and more than one. Embark, philosophersP5

290

One thing is needful.- To “‘give style” to one’s character- a great and rare artl It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. Here a large mass of second nature has been added; there a piece of original nature has been removed-both times through long practice and daily work at it. Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed; there it has been reinterpreted and made sublime. Much that is vague and resisted shaping has been saved and exploited for distant views; it is meant to beckon toward the far and immeasurable. In the end, when the work is finished, it becomes evident how the constraint of a single taste governed and formed everything large and small. Whether this taste was good or bad is less important than one might suppose, if only it was a single taste!

It will be the strong and domineering natures that enjoy their finest gaiety in such constraint and perfection under a law of their own; the passion of their tremendous will relents in the face of all stylized nature, of all conquered and serving nature. Even when they have to build palaces and design gardens they demur at giviftg nature freedom.

Conversely, it is the weak characters without power over

111 The call to embark picks up the Columbus theme of sections 124 and 283. But above all this section leads into the next. The theme of fashioning evil into good, the garden imagery (bloom, ripen, weeds), and the discussion of what is not needful and what is-all this is taken up in the next section. What is ultimately needful is much less than was claimed here: 110nly” giving style to one’s character.

BOOK FOUR 233

themselves that hate the constraint of style. They feel that if this bitter and evil constraint were imposed upon them they would be demeaned; they become slaves as soon as they serve; they hate to serve. Such spirits-and they may be of the first rank-are always out to shape and interpret their environment as free nature: wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, and sur- prising. And they are well advised because it is only in this way that they can give pleasure to themselves. For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry and art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continua1ly ready for revenge, and we others will be hts victims. if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy.111

291

Genoa.- For a long while now I have been looking at this city, at its villas and pleasure gardens and the far-flung periph- ery of its inhabited heights and slopes. In the end I must say: I see faces that belong to past generations; this region is studded with the images of bold and autocratic human beings. They have lived and wished to live on: that is what they are telling me with their houses, built and adorned to last for centuries and not for a fleeting hour; they were well-disposed toward life, however ill-disposed they often may have been toward themselves. I keep seeing the builders, their eyes rest- ing on everything near and far that they have built, and also on the city, the sea, and the contours of the mountains, and there is violence and conquest in their eyes. All this they want to fit into their plan and ultimately make their possession by making it part of their plan. This whole region is overgrown

18 This is one of the most important passages Nietzsche ever wrote on moral psychology. It brings out beautifully his close association of power with self-control and style, and of Jack of self-control with weak- ness. Note also the suggestion that resentment is rooted in an inability to accept oneself. Some of the following sections develop Nietzsche’s conception of character further; especially sections 295 and 296.

BOOK POUR 245

he can achieve greatness this way. But he has certainly become insufferable for others, difficult for himself, and impoverished and cut off from the most beautiful fortuities of his soul. Also from all further instruction. For one must be able to lose one- self occasionally if one wants to learn something from things different from oneself.

306

Stoics and Epicureans.- The Epicurean selects the situation, the persons, and even the events that suit his extremely irritable, intellectual constitution; he gives up all others, which means almost everything, because they would be too strong and heavy for him to digest. The Stoic, on the other hand, trains himself to swallow stones and worms, slivers of glass and scorpions without nausea; he wants his stomach to become ultimately indifferent to whatever the accidents of existence might pour into it: he reminds one of that Arabian sect of the Assaua whom one encounters in Algiers: like these insensitive people, he, too. enjoys having an audience when he shows off his insensitivity, while the Epicurean would rather dispense with that, having his “garden”!3° For those with whom fate attempts improvisations -those who live in violent ages and depend on sudden and mercurial people–Stoicism may indeed be advisable. But any- one who foresees more or less that fate permits him to spin a long thread does well to make Epicurean arrangements. That is what all those have always done whose work is of the spirit. 51

For this type it would be the loss of losses32 to be deprived of their subtle irritability and be awarded in its place a hard Stoic hedgehog skin ..

307

In favor of criticism.- Now something that you formerly loved as a truth or probability strikes you as an error; you shed

so Epicurus bought a house and garden in Athens, which became the domicile of his school. He taught not in the market place but in his garden. at mle Menschen der geistigen Arbeit: artists, scholars, writers. sz Superlative. like the song of songs.

246 THR GAY SCIENCE

it and fancy that this represents a victory for your reason. But perhaps this error was as necessary for you then, when you were still a different person-you are always a different person -as are all your present “truths.” being a skin, as it were, that concealed and covered a great deal that you were not yet per· mitted to see. What killed that opinion for you was your new life and not your reason: you no longer need it, and now it collapses and unreason crawls out of it into the light like a worm. When we criticize something, this is no arbitrary and impersonal event; it is, at least very often, evidence of vital energies in us that are growing and shedding a skin. We negate and must negate because something in us wants to live and affirm-something that we perhaps do not know or see as yet. · -This is said in favor of criticism.33

308

The history of every day.- What is the history of every day in your case? Look at your habits that constitute it: are they the product of innumerable little cowardices and lazinesses or of your courage and inventive reason? However different these two cases are, people might very well praise you equally and you might actually profit them equally this way and that. But praise and profit and respectability may suffice those who merely wish to have a good conscience-but not you who try the heart and reins and make even conscience an object of science!3′

309

From the seventh solitude.- One day the wanderer slammed a door behind himself, stopped in his tracks, and wept. Then he said: “This penchant and passion for what is true, real, non-

33 It might be interesting to compare this section with Hegel’s Phenom· enology of the Spirit. ‘B der du ein Wissen urn das Gewissen hast: this play on words, which can be salvaged in English only for the eye, occurs a number of times in Nietzsche’s works.

BOOK FOUR 273

341

The greatest weight:u- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, an in the same succession and sequence–even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once expe- rienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ~~You are a god and never have I heard anything more

rates, in his notes as well as his books, pro or con, :and called H. “Nietzsche’s Admiration for Socrates.” This title was retained when a revised version of the article was incorporated in my Nietzsche as Chapter 13.

Since then the subject has been taken up by several writers-there are entire books on the subject. Some writers have been misled by the title of my discussion and assume that it deals only wHh the passages expressing admiration. Actually, it deals, at length, not . only with the ~~negative” references but also places the whole problem in the setting of a full-scale examination of Nietzsche’s thought-including his view~; of reason, passion, and Christianity. In any case, the first sentence of this section (340) is as striking a tribute as Nietzsche, or anyone else. ever paid to anyone.

For a better understanding of Nietzsche’s attitude to Socrates it ia also illuminating to follow his references to Epicurus through the pres- ent book, beginning with section 45 and the long note on it. n Das grosste Schwergewicht. Literally. the noun means heavyweight. and this term is actually used to designate the heaviest class in boxing; but ft is also used quite commonly for “main emphasis” or “stress.” In an earlier version of this aphorism, I rendered the title “The greatest stress!’ My reasons for concluding that 11Weight” is better are spelled out in the section on the Eternal Recurrence in the Introduction.

Nietzsche hirnself considered section 34 t the first proclamation of “the basic idea of Zarathustra” (Ecce Homo, BWN, 752), meaning the eternal recurrence. But see also sections 109, 233, and 285.

274 THE GAY SCIENCE

divine!’ If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, uno you desire this once more and in- numerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to be- come to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? ·

342

Incipit tragoedia.12- When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and Lake Urmi and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not tire of that. But at last his heart changed-and one

1’2 The tragedy begins. Cf. the end of section l of Nietzsche’s Preface. This aphorism, which concludes Book IV and thus stood at the end of the original edition of The Gay Science, is almost identical with sec- tion 1 of nzarathustra•s Prologue:• which opens Nietzsche’s next book. But in The Gay Science Nietzsche printed it as a single paragraph, like all of the numbered sections of The Gay Science, regardless of their length, while in Zarathustra it is broken up into twelve very short para- graphs, in keeping with the style of Zarathustra. Thus tbe text in ZarathusJra has periods and then begins a new sentence after “serpent” and ”receive it.” The only substantive difference is that in ZaraJhustro “Lake Urmi” is changed to “the Jake of his home.” (Other differences between the text above and my translation of ZarathusJra are due to the fact that I have tried to improve on my old version inst.ead of simply eopying it.)

Lake Unni or Unnia is a lake in northwestern Iran, between the massif of Ararat, whose highest peak rises to almost 17,000 feet, and Mt. Savalan, which is also over 15,000 feet. The original readers of The Gay Science might well be put in mind of the historical Zarathustra, the founder of the religion of ancient Iran, who is also known as Zoroaster. The ancient Greeks thought he had lived 6,000 years before Xerxes invaded Greece in the fifth century B.c.; some recent scholars have dated him around 1,000 s.c.; but most scholars now consider him a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah and believe that Zarathustra’s religious reforms. around 600 B.C., helped to trigger the Persian conquest of the Babylonian empire which. incidentally, put an end to the Baby- lonian exile of the Jews. .

Nietzsche•s reasons for choosing “Zarathustra” as his mouthpiece are discussed by him in Ecce Homo (BWN. 783£.); also somewhat differ- ently by Kaufmann, t98f. .

BOOK FIVE …..

WE FEARLESS ONES

Carcasse, tu trembles? Tu tremblerais bien davantage, si tu savais, ou je te mene.

TURENNE*

• “You tremble, carcass? You would tremble a lot more if you knew where I am taking you.”

Henri de Ia Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611-75), was one of the greatest French generals of all time, made Marshal of France in 1643, and buried in the Invalides in Paris by order of Napoleon.

Cf. Paul Robert, Dictionnaire alphabetique et analogique de Ia langue fran~aise (Paris, 1951) under carcasse:

“Quelquefois, pendant une bataille, il (Turenne) ne pouvait s’empecher de trembler; … alors, i1 parlait a son corps comme on parte a un serviteur. 11 lui disait: ‘Tu trembles, carcasse; mais si tu savais ou je vais te mener tout a l’heure, tu tremblerais bien davantage.’ Lavisse, Histoire de France (Cours moyen, tr• et 2″ annees), Ch. XIV, p. 107.” (Sometimes during a battle he could not help trembling. Then he talked to his body as one talks to a servant. He said to it: “You tremble, carcass; but if you knew where I am taking you right now, you would tremble a Jot more.”)

The striking motto explains Nietzsche’s conception of fearlessness.

343

The meaning of our cheerfulness.1- The greatest recent event-that uGod is dead/’2 that the belief jn the Christian god has become unbelievable3-is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose eyes-the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle. some sun seems to have set’ and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt; to them our old world must appear daily more like evening. more mistrustful, stranger, uolder!’ But in the main one may say: The event itself is far too great, too distant. too remote from the multi· tude’s capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet. Much less may one sup- pose that many people know as yet what this event really means -and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it. grown into it; for example, the whole of our European moral- ity. This long plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruc- tion, ruin, and cataclysm5 that is now impending-who could guess enough of it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror. the prophet of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth?.

Even we born guessers of riddles who are. as it were, waiting on the mountains,8 posted between today and tomorrow. stretched in the contradiction between today and tomorrow. we firstlings and premature births of the coming century_. to whom the shadows that must soon envelop Europe really should have appeared by now-why is it that even we look forward to the

1 Heiterkeil: a reference to the title and tenor of The Gay Science. 2 Cf . .sections 108ff. and 125 above, as wen as l08n. 8 This clause is clearly offered as an explanation of “God is dead.” • untergegangen: cf. the last note on section 342. 5 Abbruch, Zerstiirung, UnterfVJng, Umsturz. 6 Posted in high places so that they will see as soon as possible what is approaching from a distance.

280 THE GAY SCIENCE

approaching gloom without any real sense of involvement and above all without any worry and fear for ourselves?7 Are we perhaps still too much under the impression of the initial con- sequences of this event-and these initial consequences. the consequences for ourselves, are quite the opposite of what one might perhaps expect: They are not at all sad and gloomy but rather like a new and scarcely describable kind of light, happi· ness, relief, exhilaration, encouragement, dawn.

Indeed, we philosophers and “free spirits .. feel, when we hear the news that “the old god is dead,” as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our · ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ”open sea!’-8

344

How we, too. are still pious.- In science convictions have no rights of citizenship, as one says with good reason. Only when they decide to descend to the modesty of hypotheses, of a provisional experimental point of view. of a regulative fiction, they may .be granted admission and even a certain value in the realm of knowledge-though always with the restriction that they remain under police supervision. under the police of mis- trust. -But does this not mean, if you consider it more pre~ cisely, that a conviction may obtain admission to science only when it ceases to be a conviction? Would it not be the first step in the discipline of the scientific spirit that one would not permit oneself any more convictions?

Probably this is so; only we still have to ask: To make it possible for this discipline to begin, must there not be some prior conviction-even one that is so commanding arid uncon-

7 A gloss on the title of Book V. 8 Note how section 125 above was introduced. by 124, and cf. also 283, 289.291.