Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifegaining strength through reflecting on past greatness, are inspiredwith the fe eling that the life of man is a glorious thing, and even thatthe fairest fruit of this bitter plant is the knowledge that in earliertimes someone passed through this existence infused with pride andstrength, someone else sunk in profound thoughtfulness, a thirdexhibiting mercy and helpfulness - all of them, however, leavingbehind them a single teaching: that he lives best who has no respectfo r existence. If the common man takes this little span of time withsuch gloomy earnestness and clings to it so desperately, those few wehave just spoken of have known, on their way to immortality and tomonumental history, how to regard it with Olympian laughter or atleast with sublime mockery; often they descended to their grave withan ironic smile - for what was there left of them to bury! Only thedross, refuse, vanity, animality that had always weighed them downand that was now consigned to oblivion after having f or long beenthe object of their contempt. But one thing will live, the monogramof their most essential being, a work, an act, a piece of rare enlightenment,a creation: it will live because posterity cannot do without it. Inthis transfigured form, fame is something more than the tastiestmorsel of our egoism, as Schopenhauer called it: it is the belief in thesolidarity and continuity of the greatness of all ages and a protestagainst the passing away of generations and the transitoriness ofthings.Of what use, then, is the monumentalistic conception of the past,.engagement with the classic and rare of earlier times, to the man ofthe present? He learns from it that the greatness that once existedwas in any event once possible and may thus be possible again; he goeshis way with more cheerful step, for the doubt which assailed him inweaker moments, whether he was not perhaps desiring the impossible,has now been banished. Supposing someone believed that it wouldrequire no more than a hundred men educated and actively workingin a new spirit to do away with the bogus form of culture which hasjust now become the fas hion in Germany, how greatly it wouldstrengthen him to realize that the culture of the Renaissance wasraised on the shoulders of just such a band of a hundred men.And yet - to learn something new straightaway from this examplehow inexact, fluid and provisional that comparison would be!How much of the past would have to be overlooked if it was to producethat mighty effect, how violently what is individual in it wouldhave to be forced into a universal mould and all its sharp corners andhard outlines broken up in the interest of conformity! At bottom,69