Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/247

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EVIL AND CRUELTY
231

health and strength may lie therein.[1] The most beautiful and powerful beast of prey has the strongest affects; its hatred and inordinate desire (Gier) are needed in this strength for its health, and, when satisfied, develope it magnificently.[2] The evil in ourselves, the things we are afraid of, are sources of strength, if we know how to use them. Envy and greed are capable of utilization—what would have become of man without them? Genius is egoistic, nourishing itself on others, ruling them, exploiting them.[3] In the pursuit of scientific truth we have to be now böse, now good toward things—to exercise justice, passion, and coldness in turn. At one time by sympathy, at another by violence we get results; reverence for the mystery of things brings one person forward. Indiscretion and roguery in explaining mysteries another.[4] "Even for knowing I need all my impulses the good and the evil, and should quickly reach the limit if I were not willing to be hostile, mistrustful, cruel, insidious, revengeful, hypocritical (mich verstellend), etc., toward things."[5] There are times when we need to be positively malevolent, when a mild aversion leaves us weak and ineffective. Nietzsche comments on Goethe's Faust, a dissatisfied but after all too easily compromising kind of man, in danger, like Germans in general, of becoming a Philistine when he leaves the world of thought and contemplation and enters that of action; "a little more musclar force and natural wildness in him, and all his virtues would become greater." He adds that Goethe apparently knew where the danger and weakness of his hero lay, and hints at it in words he puts into the mouth of Jarno to Wilhelm Meister: "You are vexed and bitter, that is fine and good; but when you once become right böse, it will be still better."[6] Nietzsche puts it broadly, "There must be enmity in a man if he is to come out in quite lordly fashion, all evil affects must be there";[7] he even says,

  1. Werke, XIII, 147, § 345.
  2. Ibid., XII, 86, § 170.
  3. Ibid., XII, 123, § 243.
  4. Dawn of Day, § 432.
  5. Werke, XII, 86-7; cf. XIV, 98, § 210; Joyful Science, § 333; Zarathustra, III, xii, § 7.
  6. "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 4.
  7. Werke, XI, 240, § 198.