231

Learning changes us. It achieves what all feeding does which doesn't merely "preserve," - as a physiologist knows. But deep in us, really "down there," is naturally something uneducable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined selected questions. In every cardinal problem a steadfast "That's what I am" speaks out. About men and a women, for example, a thinker cannot learn to think differently; he can only complete his learning - only finally discover how things "stand with him" on this question. Sometimes we find certain solutions to problems which create a strong faith in us in particular. Perhaps from then on we call them our "convictions." Later we see in them mere footsteps to self-knowledge, signposts to the problem which we are - or, better, to the great stupidity which we are, to our spiritual fate, to the unteachable part way "down there." After this rich civility I have just displayed with respect to myself, perhaps there's a better chance that I'll be allowed to speak out a few truths about "woman as such," so long as from now on people realize from the start just how very much these are simply only my truths.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part VII - Aphorism # 231

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