156

Evil through high spirits.  'If only we don't feel too happy!'  that was the anxiety the Greeks of the best period felt secretly in their hearts. That was why they preached to themselves moderation. And we!

157

Cult of 'natural sounds'.  What does it indicate that our culture is not merely tolerant of expressions of pain, of tears, complaints, reproaches, gestures of rage or of humiliation, but approves of them and counts them among the nobler inescapables?  while the spirit of the philosophy of antiquity looked upon them with contempt and absolutely declined to regard them as necessary. Recall, for instance, how Plato  not one of the most inhuman philosophers, that is to say  speaks of the Philoctetes⁶⁹ of the tragic stage. Is our modern culture perhaps lacking in 'philosophy'? Would those philosophers of antiquity perhaps regard us one and all as belonging to the 'rabble'?

158

Climate of the flatterer.  One must no longer seek the fawning flatterer in the proximity of princes  they have all acquired a taste for soldiering and the flatterer is repugnant to it. But this flower still blooms in the proximity of bankers and artists.

159

Resurrectors of the dead.  Vain people value a piece of the past more highly from the moment they find they can reproduce it in themselves (especially when this is difficult to do); indeed, where possible they desire to resurrect it again from the dead. And since there are always innumerable vain people, the danger that lies in the study of history as soon as it gets the upper hand of an entire age is indeed not small: too much energy is thrown away on all possible resurrections from the dead. Perhaps the whole movement of romanticism can best be understood from this point of view.

160

Vain, greedy and with very little wisdom.  Your desires are greater than your reason, and your vanity is even greater than your desires  for such people as you are a great deal of Christian practice plus a little Schopenhauerian theory would be a very good thing.