Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

112Untimely Meditationsnonetheless come with power, as you have prophesied to yourreaders, if your account of your present and future should turn outto be right and no one has despised them with such disgust as youhave - then I am quite willing to vote with the majority, in the fo rmproposed by you, that next Saturday night punctually at twelveo'clock the world shall perish; and our decree shall conclude: fromtomorrow there shall be no more time and the newspapers shallappear no more. But perhaps our decree will have no effect: in thatevent, though, we shall at least have time to perfonn a fine experiment.We shall take a pair of scales and place Hartmann's unconscious onone of them and Hartmann's world-process on the other. There arepeople who believe they will weigh exactly the same: for in each ofthem there would lie an equally bad expression and an equally goodjoke. Once Hartmann's joke has been understood, Hartmann'sexpression 'world-process' will be of no use except as a joke. It has,in fact, for long been high time that the excesses of the historical sense,the immoderate revelling in the process at the expense of being andlife, the senseless displacement of all perq:>ectives, were assaulted byall the militia satirical malice can summon; and it shall always be saidin praise of the philosopher of the unconscious that he was the firstto feel how ludicrous the idea of the 'world-process' is and to makeothers feel it even more strongly by the singular earnestness of hispresentation of it. To what end the 'world' exists, to what end 'mankind'exists, ought not to concern us at all fo r the moment except asobjects of humour: for the presumptuousness of the little humanworm is the funniest thing at present on the world's stage; on theother hand, do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if youcan get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning ofyour existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourselfan aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to thisend'. Perish in pursuit of this and only this - I know of no betteraim of life than that of perishing, animae magnae prodigus, * in pursuitof the great and the impossible. If, on the other hand, thedoctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts,types and species, of the lack of any cardinal distinction betweenman and animal - doctrines which I consider true but deadly -are thrust upon the people for another generation with the ragefor instruction that has by now become normal, no one shouldbe surprised if the people perishes of petty egoism, ossification0:. 'prodigal of a great soul' (Horace, Odes I.xII.38), here employed in the sense'careless of life'.