On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

1 And this is a general law: every living thing can become healthy, strong and fruitful only within a horizon; if it is incapable of drawing a horizon around itself or, on the other hand, too selfish to restrict its vision to the limits of a horizon drawn by another, it will wither away feebly or overhastily to its early demise. Cheerfulness, clear conscience, the carefree deed, faith in the future, all this depends, in the case of an individual as well as of a people, on there being a line which distinguishes what is clear and in full view from the dark and unilluminable; it depends on one’s being able to forget at the right time as well as to remember at the right time; on discerning with strong instinctual feelings when there is need to experience historically and when unhistorically. Precisely this is the proposition the reader is invited to consider: the unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary for the health of an indivdual, a people and a culture. 5 …only strong personalities can endure history; the weak are completely extinguished by it. The reason is that history confuses feeling and sentiment where these are not strong enough to make themselves the measure of the past… … Once personalities are drained, in the manner described, to the point of eternal non-subjectivity, or, as one says, objectivity: nothing can affect them any longer; should something good and right happen, as deed, as poetry, as music: at once those hollowed out by education will look beyond the work and inquire after the history of the author. If he has already produced several other works, he must at once suffer to have the past and projected future direction of his development explained to him, at once he is help up beside others for comparison, with regard to the choice and treatment of his material he will be dissected, torn apart, wisely put back together and on the whole admonished and reprimanded. 9 What the “world” is there for, what “humanity” is there for is not to concern us for the time being, unless we want to be funny: for there just isn’t anything funnier and more cheerful on the world’s stage than the presumptuousness of those little worms called man; but to ask what you, the individual, are there for, and if no one else can tell you then just try sometime to justify the meaning of your existence a posteriori, as it were, by setting yourself a purpose, a goal, a “for this,” a lofty and noble “for this.” And perish in the attempt – I know of no better life’s purpose than to perish, animae magnae prodigus [Approximately: having expended all one’s mental energy], in attempting the great and impossible. 10 By the word ‘the unhistorical’ I denote the art and the strength of being able to forget and enclose oneself in a limited horizon: ‘superhistorical’ I call the powers which guide the eye away from becoming and towards that which gives existence an eternal and stable character, toward art and religion.