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The historical sense (or the capability to make quick guesses about the rank ordering of value judgments according to which a people, a society, or a person has lived, the "instinct for divination" concerning the relations between these value judgments, for the connections between the authority of value and the authority of effective forces) - this historical sense which we Europeans claim as our distinctive characteristic, came to us as a consequence of the enchanting and wild semi-barbarianism into which Europe was plunged through the democratic intermixing of the classes and races - the nineteenth century knew about this sense for the first time as its sixth sense. The past of every form and manner of living, of cultures which earlier lay right alongside each other or over each other, flows, thanks to this intermixing, out into us "modern souls"; our instincts now run back all over the place; we ourselves are a kind of chaos. Finally "the spirit," as I have said, sees an advantage for itself in all this. Because of our semi-barbarism in body and desires we have secret entrances in all directions, in a way no noble age ever possessed, above all the entrances to the labyrinth of unfinished cultures and to every semi-barbarism which has ever been present on earth. Inasmuch as the most considerable part of human culture up to now has been semi-barbarism, the "historical sense" almost means the sense and instinct for everything, the taste and tongue for everything. And that establishes right away that it's an ignoble sense. For example, we enjoy Homer again. It's perhaps our happiest asset that we understand how to appreciate Homer, something which men of a noble culture don't know and didn't know how to appropriate so easily and which they hardly allowed themselves to enjoy (for example, the French of the seventeenth century, like Saint Evremond, who criticized him for his esprit vaste [vast and all- encompassing spirit], and even Voltaire, their final chorus).⁴ That very emphatic Yes and No of their palate, their easy disgust, their hesitant holding back with respect to everything strange, their fear of bad taste, even of lively curiosity, and, in general, that reluctance of every noble and self-satisfied culture to acknowledge a new desire, a dissatisfaction with what is its own, an admiration for something foreign; all this disposes and makes them hostile even to the best things of the world which are not their own property or could not become a trophy of theirs - and no sense is more incomprehensible to such people than the historical sense and its obsequious plebeian curiosity. The situation is no different with Shakespeare, this amazing Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste, who would have made an old Athenian, one of Aeschylus' friends, laugh himself almost to death or irritated him. But we take up this wild display of colours, this confusion of the most delicate, coarsest, and most artificial things with a secret confidence and good will. We enjoy him as the very refinement of art saved especially for us and, in the process, do not allow ourselves to be disturbed at all by the unpleasant stink and the proximity of the English rabble, in which Shakespeare's art and taste lives, no more so than on the Chiaja in Naples, where we go on our way with all our senses enchanted and willing, no matter how much the sewers of the rabble's quarter fill the air.⁵ We men of the "historical sense," we have our corresponding virtues. That's beyond dispute. We are undemanding, selfless, modest, brave, full of self-restraint, full of devotion, very grateful, very patient, very obliging: - with all that we are perhaps not very "tasteful." Let's finally admit it to ourselves: what's hardest for us men of "historical sense" to grasp, to feel, to taste again, to love again, what we're basically prejudiced about and almost hostile to is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and art, what is really noble in works or in men, the moment when their sea is smooth and they have halcyon self-sufficiency, the gold and the coolness displayed by all things which have perfected themselves. Perhaps the great virtue of the historical sense stands in a necessary opposition to good taste, at least to the very best taste, and we can reproduce in ourselves only with difficulty and hesitantly, only by forcing ourselves, the small, short, and highest strokes of luck and transfigurations of human life, as they suddenly shine out here and there: those moments and miracles where a great force voluntarily remains standing before the boundless and unlimited - where an excess of sophisticated pleasure was enjoyed in sudden restraint and petrifaction, in standing firm and holding oneself steady on still trembling ground. Restraint is strange to us. Let's admit that to ourselves. Our itch is the particular itch for the unlimited, the unmeasured. Like the rider on a steed snorting its way forward we let the reins fall before the infinite, we modern men, we half-barbarians - and only reach our bliss in a place where we are most - in danger.