Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsthe aid of history as apologists of the factual, you would say: he hadexpressed everything that was in him, had he lived longer he wouldhave produced only a repetition of the beauty he had createdalready, and so forth. In that way you become Devil's advocates: you ·make success, the factual, into your idol, while in reality the factual isalways stupid and has at all times resembled a calf rather than a god.As apologists of history you have, moreover, ignorance as a prompter:for it is only because you do not know what such a natura naturans* asRaphael is that you are not incensed to know that it once was but willnever be again. We have recently been informed that, with hiseighty-two years, Goethe outlived himself: yet I would gladlyexchange a couple of Goethe's 'outlived' years fo r whole cartloads offresh modern lifetimes, so as to participate in such conversations asGoethe conducted with Eckermann and thus be preserved from alland any up-to-date instruction from the legionaries of the moment.In relation to such dead men, how few of the living have a right tolive at all! That the many are alive and those few live no longer isnothing but a brute truth, that is to saan incorrigible stupidity, ablunt 'thus it is' in opposition to morality's 'it ought not to be thus'.Yes, in opposition to morality! For speak of any virtue you will, ofjustice, magnanimity, bravery, of the wisdom and sympathy of man- in every case it becomes a virtue through rising against that blindpower of the factual and tyranny of the actual and by submitting tolaws that are not the laws of the fluctuations of history. It alwaysswims against the tide of history, whether by combating its passionsas the most immediate stupid fact of its existence or by dedicatingitself to truthfulness as falsehood spins its glittering web around it. Ifhistory in general were nothing more than 'the world-system of passionand error', mankind would have to read it as Goethe advised hisreaders to read Werther: as if it called to them 'be a man and do notfollow after me!' Fortunately, however, it also preserves the memoryof the great fighters against history, that is to say against the blindpower of the actual, and puts itself in the pillory by exalting preciselythese men as the real historical natures who bothered little with the'thus it is' so as to follow 'thus it shall be' with a more cheerful pride.Not to bear their race to the grave, but to fo und a new generation ofthis race - that is what impels them ceaselessly forward: and even ifthey themselves are late-born - there is a way of living which will*natura naturans: Spinoza's term fo r God under the aspect of creating nature, asopposed to created nature - as the cause of all things.106