suffering animal, who invented laughter.[1] Philosophers may be graded according for their capacity for it—the greatest being those capable of golden laughter; Gods themselves laugh in some superhuman way.[2] The greatest sin on earth was the word of him who said, "Woe unto you that laugh now!"[3] Zarathustra knows rather how to sanctify laughter; he puts it as a crown upon his head.[4] For the secret of laughter is strength, abounding vitality. From this source, too, flow beauty and grace. "The great will not condescend to take anything seriously," said Emerson; and above the hero with his violent struggles and solemn ways, Nietzsche puts the super-hero, who stands with relaxed muscles and unharnessed will, dowered with beauty and grace—above the straining neck of the ox is the angel's eye."[5]
In their very manners the great betray themselves, as a Greek Goddess did in her walk. The labor that stoops and deforms, affecting even the gait, is foreign to them. They are capable of leisure also, this being understood in a nobler sense than that of mere rest from toil. They may even have an air of frivolity on occasion—in word, dress, bearing. They have a pleasure in forms, are convinced that politeness is one of the great virtues, mistrust all letting oneself go, rank "good nature" low, are disgusted with vulgar familiarity.[6] In short they are gentlemen, but in an intellectual and spiritual sense. Nietzsche ventures to call his Beyond Good and Evil a school for the gentleman, the conception being taken "more spiritually and radically than ever before." k He defines it as one of the marks of the gentleman that he has the sentiment of distance, knows how to distinguish and recognize rank, gradation between man and man everywhere; otherwise one comes hopelessly under the category of the canaille. The Germans, he says in a bitter
- ↑ Ibid., § 270; Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 15; Dawn of Day, § 386; Will to Power, § 990.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 294.
- ↑ Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 16. Nietzsche is hardly happy in this illustration; Jesus has nothing against laughter—he had said just before, "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh" (Luke vi, 21). It should be said for Nietzsche, however, that he reads "here" for "now," and regards Jesus as pronouncing woe on the joys of earth in general.
- ↑ Ibid., IV, xiii, § 18.
- ↑ Ibid., II, xiii.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 493; cf. Human, etc., § 479.
