Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely MeditationsI:flesh-and-blood compendia and as it were abstractions made concrete.If they possess a character of their own it is buried so deep itcannot get out into the light of day: if they are human beings they areso only to him 'who explores the depths'. To anyone else they aresomething different, not men, not gods, not animals, but creationsof historical culture, wholly structure, image, form withoutdemonstrable content and, unhappily, ill-designed form and, whatis more, uniform. And so let my proposition be understood andpondered: history can be borne only by strong personalities, weak ones areutterly extinguished by it. The reason is that history confuses the feelingsand sensibility when these are not strong enough to assess the pastby themselves. He who no longer dares to trust himself but involuntarilyasks of history 'How ought I to feel about this?' finds that histimidity gradually turns him into an actor and that he is playing arole, usually indeed many roles and therefore playing them badlyand superficially. Gradually all congruity between the man and hishistorical domain is lost; we behold pert little fellows associatingwith the Romans as though they were thefr equals: and they root andburrow in the remains of the Greek poets as though these too werecorpora for their dissection and were as vilia as their own literary corporamay be. * Suppose one of them is engaged with Democritus, I always 'feel like asking: why not Heraclitus? Or Philo? Or Bacon? OrDescartes?or anyone else. And then: why does it have to be aphilosopher? Why not a poet or an orator? And: why a Greek at all,why not an Englishman or a Turk? Is the past not big enough for youto be able to find nothing except things in comparison with whichyou cut so ludicrous a figure? But, as I have said, this is a race ofeunuchs, and to a eunuch one woman is like another, simply awoman, woman in herself, the eternally unapproachableand it isthus a matter of indifference what they do so long as history itself iskept nice and 'objective', bearing in mind that those who want tokeep it so are for ever incapable of making history themselves. Andsince the eternally womanly will never draw you upward, you draw itdown to you and, being neuters, take history too for a neuter. t Butso that it shall not be thought that I am seriously comparing history*vilia corpora : vile bodiest Alludes to the closing lines of Goethe's Faust II: 'Das Ewig-Weibliche/Zieht unshinan'. Nietzsche often alludes to the phrase, always in an ironic-humorous tone: hefait('d, I think, to discover any meaning in it.86