270

The spiritual arrogance and disgust of every man who has suffered deeply - how profoundly men can suffer almost determines their order of rank - his chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly soaked and coloured, that thanks to his suffering he knows more than the cleverest and wisest can know, that he has known and at some point been "at home" in many terrible far-off worlds, about which "you know nothing!" . . . this spiritual and silent arrogance of the sufferer, this pride of the one chosen to know, of the "initiate," of the one who has almost been sacrificed, finds all kinds of disguises necessary to protect himself from contact with prying and compassionate hands and, in general, from everything which is not his equal in pain. Profound suffering ennobles; it separates. One of the most sophisticated forms of disguise is Epicureanism and a certain future courageousness in taste adopted as a show, which takes suffering lightly and resists everything sad and deep. There are "cheerful men" who use cheerfulness because it makes them misunderstood - they want to be misunderstood. There are "scientific men" who use science because that provides a cheerful appearance and because being scientific enables one to infer that the man is superficial - they want to tempt people to a false conclusion. There are free, impudent spirits who would like to hide and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts; and now and then even foolishness is a mask for an unholy, all-too-certain knowledge. Hence, it follows that it's part of a more sophisticated humanity to have reverence "for the mask" and not to pursue psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part IX - Aphorism # 270

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