Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely MeditationsIf you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so o ly out of the fullestexertion of the vigour of the present: only when you put forth your noblestqualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowingand preserving in the past. Like to like! Otherwise you will draw thepast down to you. Do not believe historiography that does not springfrom the head of the rarest minds; and you will know the quality of amind when it is obliged to express something universal or to repeatsomething universally known: the genuine historian must possessthe power to remint the universally known into something neverheard of before, and to express the universal so simply and profoundlythat the simplicity is lost in the profundity and the profundity in thesimplicity. No one can be a great historian, an artist and a shallowpateat the same time: on the other hand, one should not underratethe workmen who sift and carry merely because they can certainlynever become great historians; but even less should one confusethem with them, but regard them rather as the necessary apprenticesand handymen in the service of the master: much as the Frenchused, with greater naivety than is posiible to a German, to speak ofthe historiens de M. Thiers . These workmen are gradually to becomegreat scholars, but cannot for that reason ever be masters. A greatscholar and a great shallowpateone hat.these two go rather better underTo sum up: history is written by the experienced and superiorman. He who has not experienced greater and more exalted thingsthan others will not know how to interpret the great and exaltedthings of the past. When the past speaks it always speaks as an oracle:only if you are an architect of the future and know the present willyou understand it. The extraordinary degree and extent of theinfluence exercised by Delphi is nowadays explained principally bythe fact that the Delphic priests had an exact knowledge of the past;now it would be right to say that only he who constructs the fu turehas a righ t to judge the past. If you look ahead and set yourself a greatgoal, you at the same time restrain that rank analytical impulsewhich makes the present into a desert and all tranquillity, all peacefulgrowth and maturing almost impossible. Draw about yourself thefence of a great and comprehensive hope, of a hope-filled striving.Form within yourself an image to which the fu ture shall correspond,and forget the superstition that you are epigones. You will haveenough to ponder and to invent when you reflect on the life of thefuture; but do not ask of history that it should show you the How?and the Wherewith? to this life. If, on the other hand, you acquire a94