281

"Will people believe me? But I demand that people believe me: I have always thought only badly of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only when under compulsion, always without delight ‘for the subject,' ready to wander off from ‘myself,' always without faith in the conclusion, thanks to the uncontrollable mistrust of the possibility of self-knowledge which has taken me so far that I find even the idea of ‘immediate knowledge,' which the theoreticians allow themselves, a contradictio in adjecto [contradiction in terms]: this entire fact is almost the surest thing I know about myself. Within me there must be some kind of aversion to believing anything definite about myself. Is a riddle perhaps hidden in that? Probably, but fortunately nothing for my own teeth. Perhaps it reveals the species to which I belong? - But not to me: and that's enough to satisfy me."

282

"But what has happened to you?"-"I don't know," he said, hesitating; "perhaps the harpies have flown over my table."³ Occasionally nowadays it happens that a mild, moderate, reserved man suddenly becomes violent, smashes plates, throws over the table, screams, stomps around, slanders the entire world - and finally goes to the side ashamed, furious with himself. - Where? What for? To starve off on his own? To suffocate on his memory? Anyone who has the desires of a lofty discriminating soul and only rarely finds his table set and his nourishment ready will be in great danger at all times: but today the danger is extraordinary. Thrown into a noisy and uncouth age, with which he does not want to eat out of the same dish, he can easily perish from hunger and thirst, or, if he finally nonetheless "catches on," - from sudden disgust.- All of us have probably already sat at tables where we did not belong; and it's precisely the most spiritual ones among us who are the most difficult to feed, who know that dangerous dyspepsia which comes from a sudden insight and disappointment about our food and those sitting next to us at the table - the after-dinner disgust.

283

Assuming that one wants to praise at all, there's a refined and at the same time noble self-control which always gives praise only where one does not agree: - in other cases one would really be praising oneself, something that contradicts good taste - naturally, a self-control which provides a good opportunity and provocation for one to be constantly misunderstood. In order to permit oneself this true luxury of taste and morality, one must not live among spiritual fools, but rather among people whose misunderstandings and false ideas are still amusing for their sophistication - or one will have to pay dearly for it! - "He is praising me: thus, he admits I'm right" - this asinine way of making conclusions ruins half of life for us hermits, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and friendship.

284

To live with an immense and proud composure: always beyond. - To have and not have one's feelings, one's for and against, voluntarily, to condescend to them for hours, to sit on them, as if on a horse, often as if on a donkey: - for one needs to know how to use their stupidity as well as their fire. To preserve one's three hundred foregrounds, as well as one's dark glasses: for there are occasions when no one should be allowed to look into our eyes, even less into our "reasons." And to select for company that mischievous and cheerful vice, courtesy. And to remain master of one's four virtues: courage, insight, sympathy, and loneliness. For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime tendency and impulse for cleanliness, which senses how contact between one person and another - "in society" - must inevitably bring impurity with it. Every community somehow, somewhere, sometime makes people - "common."

285

The greatest events and ideas - but the greatest ideas are the greatest events - are understood last of all: the generations contemporary with them do not experience such events - they go on living past them. What happens then is something like in the realm of the stars. The light of the most distant star comes to men last of all: and before that light arrives, men deny that there are stars there. "How many centuries does a spirit need in order to be understood?" - that is also a standard with which people construct a rank ordering and etiquette, as is necessary, for spirits and stars.-