Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

On the uses and disadvantages of history Jor lifeappropriate the things of the past; and the most powerful andtremendous nature would be characterized by the fact that it wouldknow no boundary at all at which the historical sense began tooverwhelm it; it would draw to itself and incorporate into itself all thepast, its own and that most foreign to it, and as it were transform itinto blood. That which such a nature cannot subdue it knows how toforget; it no longer exists, the horizon is rounded and closed, andthere is nothing left to suggest there are people, passions, teachings,goals lying beyond it. And this is a universal law: a living thing can behealthy, strong and fru itful only when bounded by a horizon; if it isincapable of drawing a horizon around itself, and at the same timetoo self-centred to enclose its own view within that of another, it willpine away slowly or hasten to its timely end. Cheerfulness, the goodconscience, the joyful deed, confidence in the fu ture - all of themdepend, in the case of the individual as of a nation, on the existenceof a line dividing the bright and discernible from the unilluminableand dark; on one's being just as able to fo rget at the right time as toremember at the right time; on the possession of a powerful instinctfor sensing when it is necessary to feel historically and when unhistorically.This, precisely, is the proposition the reader is invited tomeditate upon: the unhistorical and the historical are necessary in equalmeasure Jor the health of an individual, of a people and oJ a culture.First of all, there is an observation that everyone must have made:a man's historical sense and knowledge can be very limited, hishorizon as narrow as that of a dweller in the Alps, all his judgmentsmay involve injustice and he may falsely suppose that all hisexperiences are original to him - yet in spite of this injustice anderror he will nonetheless stand there in superlative health andvigour, a joy to all who see him; while close beside him a man farmore just and instructed than he sickens and collapses because thelines of his horizon are always restlessly changing, because he can nolonger extricate himself from the delicate net of his judiciousnessand truth for a simple act of will and desire. On the other hand wehave observed the animal, which is quite unhistorical, and dwellswithin a horizon reduced almost to a point, and yet lives in a certaindegree of happiness, or at least without boredom and dissimulation;we shall thus have to account the capacity to feel to a certain degreeunhistorically as being more vital and more fu ndamental, inasmuchas it constitutes the foundation upon which alone anything sound,healthy and great, anything truly human, can grow. The unhistoricalis like an atmosphere within which alone life can germinate and with63