Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationshas never before been seen by any generation; though it displays it,to be sure, with the perilous daring of its motto: fiat veritas, 'pereatvita. ':'Let us now picture the spiritual occurrence introduced into thesoul of modern man by that which we have just described. Historicalknowledge streams in unceasingly from inexhaustible wells, thestrange and incoherent forces its way forward, memory opens all itsgates and yet is not open wide enough, nature travails in an effort toreceive, arrange and honour these strange guests, but they themselvesare in conflict with one another and it seems necessary to constrainand control them if one is not oneself to perish in theirconflict. Habituation to such a disorderly, stormly and conflictriddenhousehold gradually becomes a second nature, though thissecond nature is beyond question much weaker, much more restless,and thoroughly less sound than the first. In the end, modernman drags around with him a huge quantity of indigestible stones ofknowledge, which then, as in the fairy tale, can sometimes be heardrumbling about inside him. And in this r}fmbling there is betrayedthe most characteristic quality of modern man: the remarkableantithesis between an interior which fails to correspond to anyexterior and an exterior which fails to correspond to any interior - anantithesis unknown to the peoples of earlier times. Knowledge, consumedfo r the greater part without hunger for it and even counter toone's needs, now no longer acts as an agent for transforming the outsideworld but remains concealed within a chaotic inner worldwhich modern man describes with a curious pride as his uniquelycharacteristic inwardness. It is then said that one possesses contentand only form is lacking; but such an antithesis is quite improperwhen applied to living things. This precisely is why our modern cultureis not a living thing: it is incomprehensible without recourse tothat antithesis; it is not a real culture at all but only a kind ofknowledge of culture; it has an idea of and feeling fo r culture but notrue cultural achievement emerges from them. What actuallyinspires it and then appears as a visible act, on the other hand, oftensignifies not much more than an indifferent convention, a pitifulimitation or even a crude caricature. Cultural sensibility then liesquietly within, like a snake that has swallowed rabbits whole andnow lies in the sun and avoids all unnecessary movement. The innerprocess is now the thing itself, is what actually constitutes 'culture'."'fiat veritas, pereat vita: let truth prevail though life perish78