Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsall life on earth and condemns all who live to live in the fifth act of atragedy, may well call forth the profoundest and noblest powers, butit is inimical to all new planting, bold experimentation, free aspiration;it resists all flight into the unknown because it loves and hopesfo r nothing there: it allows what is becoming to force its way up onlywith reluctance, and then when the time is ripe it sacrifices it or sets itaside as a seducer to existence, as a liar as to the value of existence.What the Florentines did when, under the influence of Savonarola'spreaching, they made that celebrated holocaust of paintings,manuscripts, mirrors and masks, Christianity would like to do toevery culture which stimulates continued striving and bears thatmemento vivere as its motto; and if it proves impossible to do this in ablunt and direct manner, that is to say by force, it nonethelessachieves its aim by allying itself with historical culture, usuallywithout the latter'S knowledge moreover, and speaking henceforththrough its mouth rejects with a shrug everything still coming intobeing and smothers it in the awareness of being a latecomer andepigone, in short of being born grey- haire 8 . Austere and profoundlyserious reflection on the worthlessness of all that has occurred, onthe ripeness of the world for judgment, is dissipated into the sceptical .attitude that it is at any rate as well to know about all that hasoccurred, since it is too late to do anything better. Thus the historicalsense makes its servants passive and retrospective; and almost theonly time the sufferer from the fever of history becomes active iswhen this sense is in abeyance through momentary forgetfulness -. though even then, as soon as the act is finished he at once dissects it,prevents it from producing any fu rther effects by analysing it, andfinally skins it for the purpose of 'historical study'. In this sense weare still living in the Middle Ages and history is still disguised theology:Ijust as the reverence with which the unlearned laity treat the learned \class is inherited from the reverence with which it treated the clergy.What one formerly gave to the church one now gives, though moresparingly, to learning: but that one gives at all is an effect of thechurch's former influence - the modern spirit, as is well known, issomewhat niggardly and unskilled in the noble virtue of generosity.Perhaps this observation will not be very acceptable, perhaps asunacceptable as my derivation of our excess of history from themedieval memento mori and the hopelessness in regard to all comingages of human existence which Christianity bears in its heart. If so,you might try to replace this explanation, which I offer only withsome hesitation, with a better one; fo r the origin of historical culture102