Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

110Untimely Meditationsdeformity, how from behind a grotesque mask it utters the mostmischievous nonsense about itself? For what does this last roguishsummons to the workers in the vineyard really demand of them?What work are they to press vigorously forward? Or, to put the questiondifferently: what does the historically cultivated man, the modernfanatic of the process swimming and drowning in the stream ofbecoming, have left to do if he is one day to harvest that disgust wehave spoken of, the most exquisite grape of the vineyard? - He has todo nothing but go on living as he has lived hitherto, go on lovingwhat he has loved hitherto, go on hating what he has hated hitherto,and go on reading the newspapers he has read hitherto; for himthere is only one sin - to live differently from the way in which he hashitherto lived. How he has hitherto lived, however, is recorded forus in giant monumental characters on that celebrated page whichhas sent the whole contemporary cultured rabble into ecstasiesbecause they see in them their own justification blazing forth inapocalyptic light. For what the unconscious parodist demands ofeach individual is 'the total surrender othe personality to the worldprocessfor the sake of its goal, world-redemption'; or even moreclearly: 'affirmation of the will to live is proclaimed as for the presentthe only right course; for only in a total surrender to life and itssorrows, and not in a cowardly renunciation and withdrawal, is anythingto be achieved for the world-process', 'the striving fo r denial ofthe individual will is as foolish and useless as, indeed even morefoolish than, suicide'. 'The thinking reader will understand withoutfurther elucidation what shape a practical philosophy erected onthese principles would assume, and that such a philosophy canembody, not a sundering from life, but only the fullest reconciliationwith it.'The thoughtful reader will understand - as if anyone could misunderstandHartmann! And how unspeakably amusing it is that heshould be misunderstoodl Are the contemporary Germans a veryrefined people? A worthy Englishman finds them lacking in 'delicacyof perception', and ventures indeed to say: 'in the German mindthere does seem to be something splay, something blunt-edged,unhandy and infelicitous' - would the great German parodist contradictthis? It is true that, according to him, we are approaching'that ideal condition in which the human race creates its historywith full conscious awareness': but we are patently still far fromthat perhaps even more ideal condition in which mankind canread Hartmann's book with full conscious awareness. If theyever do so, no man will ever again utter the words 'world-process'