Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

1A traveller who had seen many lands and peoples and several of theearth's continents was asked what quality in men he had discoveredeverywhere he had gone. He replied: 'They have a tendency to laziness.'To many it will seem that he ought rather to have said: 'Theyare all timid. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions.'In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he willbe in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for asecond time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated anassortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad consciencewhy?From fear of his neighbour, who demands conventionality andcloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual tofear his neighbour, to think and act like a member of a herd, and tohave no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. Withthe great majority it is indolence, inertia, in short that tendency tolaziness of which the traveller spoke. He is right: men are even lazierthan they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences withwhich unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them.Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashionsand. appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone's secret badconscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle; they dare toshow us man as he is, uniquely himself to every last movement of hismuscles, more, that in being thus stricdy consistent in uniqueness heis beautiful, and worth regarding, and in no way tedious. When thegreat thinker despises mankind, he despises its laziness: for it is onaccount of their laziness that men seem like factory products, thingsof no consequence and unworthy to be associated with or instructed.The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only tocease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which callsto him: 'Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, isnot you yourself.'Every youthful soul hears this call day and night and trembleswhen he hears it; for the idea ofits liberation gives it a presentimentof the measure of happiness allotted it from all eternity - a happinessto which it can by no means attain so long as it lies fettered by thechains offear and convention. And how dismal and senseless life can127