The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche Page B

among the nations. Being a Hellenophile means: being an enemy of raw power and dull intellects. In this way Sparta was the ruin of Hellas, for she forced Athens to become active in a federation and to throw herself entirely into politics.
    (VII, 192)

    There remains a grave doubt whether one may argue from languages to nationalities and relatedness to other nations. A victorious language is nothing but a frequent (not even a regular) sign of successful conquest. Where have there ever been autochthonous peoples? It is a very imprecise concept to speak of Greeks who did not yet live in Greece. What is characteristically Greek is much less the result of any disposition than of adapted institutions and of the language that has been accepted.
    (VII, 193)

    For the highest images in every religion there is an analogue in a state of the soul. The God of Mohammed—the solitude of the desert, the distant roar of a lion, the vision of a terrible fighter. The God of the Christians—everything that men and women associate with the word “love.” The God of the Greeks—a beautiful dream image.
    (VII, 195)

    For once I want to enumerate everything that I no longer believe; also what I believe.
    In the great whirlpool of forces man stands with the conceit that this whirlpool is rational and has a rational aim: an error! The only rational thing we know is what little reason man has: he must exert it a lot, and it is always ruinous for him when he abandons himself, say, to “Providence.”
    The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may experience it as such; there may also be something that, if only it could be produced consciously, would result in a still greater feeling of reason and happiness: for example, the course of the solar system, begetting and educating a human being.
    Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual, and stupid. Whoever could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very swift.
    Thinking of oneself gives little happiness. If, however, one feels much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of oneself but of one’s ideal. This is far, and only the swift reach it and are delighted.
    (VII, 211 f. )

    To educate educators! But the first ones must educate themselves! And for these I write.
    (VII, 215)

    The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity.
    To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.
    (VII, 216)

FROM Human, All-Too-Human
EDITOR’S NOTE
    Nietzsche’s first five books, The Birth of Tragedy and the fcur Untimely Meditations , were essays. All of them dealt, in one way or another, with questions of value: the value of art and life itself, the value of history and the problem whether there are supra-historical values, and the value of self-perfection. This last point was central in the third Meditation , in which Nietzsche proposed that a new picture of man was needed to counter the true but deadly Darwinian doctrine of the essential continuity of man and animal. Being determined, however, to build on an empirical foundation, instead of falling back on dogma or intuition, Nietzsche found himself unable to do what he wanted. Then, roughly at the same time he decided to break with Wagner, he gave up his previous style and method and turned to writing books composed of aphorisms—largely concerned with human psychology or, in Nietzsche’s phrase, with the “human, all-too-human.”
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    [2]
    Original error of the philosopher. All philosophers share this common error: they proceed from contemporary man and think they can reach their goal through an analysis of this man. Automatically they think of “man” as an eternal verity, as something abiding in the whirlpool, as a sure measure of things. Everything that the philosopher says about man,