July 4, 2012
Danger in modesty. - To adapt too early to a milieu, to tasks, societies, orders of work and everyday life where chance has put us, at a time when neither our force nor our goal has entered our consciousness as legislator; the security of conscience, the refreshing, sociable life thus all too early gained, this premature, modest making-do that wheedles its way into our feelings as an escape from inner and outer unrest, spoils us and keeps us down in the most dangerous way; learning to feel respect after the manner of 'one's peers', as if we had no measure and right within ourselves to posit values, the endeavor to esteem like the others, against the inner voice of taste, which is also a conscience - these become dreadful, subtle fetters. If there is not finally an explosion, where all the bonds of love and morality are blown apart at once, then a spirit like this withers and becomes petty, becomes effeminate and prosaic. - The opposite is quite bad enough, but at least better than that: suffering from one's environment, its praise as well as its disparagement, wounded by it and beginning to fester without letting on; defending oneself against its love with involuntary suspicion; learning silence, perhaps veiling it with speech; creating nooks and unguessable solitudes for the moments of relief, of tears, of sublime consolation - until at last one is strong enough to say: 'What have I to do with you?' and goes one's own way.
Nietzsche - Notes from the Late Notebooks
Posted by amin at July 4, 2012 1:51 PM