Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsbe without this liberation! There exists no more repu l sive and desolatecreature in the world than the man who has evaded his geniusand who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and allabout him. In the end such a man becomes impossible to get holdof, since he is wholly exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bagof clothes, a decked-out ghost that cannot inspire even fear and certainlynot pity. And if it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time,the n it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees its salvation inpublic opinion, that is to say private laziness, is a time that really willbe killed: I mean that it will be struck out of the history of the trueliberation oflife. How reluctant later generations will be to have anythingto do with the relics of an era ruled, not by living men, but bypseudo-men dominated by public opinion; fo r which reason ourage may be to some distant posterity the darkest and least known,because least human, portion of human history. I go along the newstreets of our cities and think how, of all these gruesome houseswhich the generation of public opinion has built fo r itself, not onewill be standing in a hundred years' ti, and how the opinions ofthese house-builders will no doubt by then likewise have collapsed.On the other hand, how right it is for those who do not feel themselvesto be citizens of this time to harbour great hopes; for if theywere citizens of this time they too would be helping to kill their timeand so perish with it - while their desire is rather to awaken their timeto life and so live on themselves in this awakened life.But even if the fu ture gave us no cause for hope the fact of ourexisting at all in this here-and-now must be the strongest incentive tous to live according to our own laws and standards: the inexplicablefact that we live precisely today, when we had all infinite time inwhich to come in to existence, that we possess only a shordived todayin which to demonstrate why and to what end we came into existencenow and at no other time. We are responsible to ourselves for ourown existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman ofthis existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindlessact of chance. One has to take a somewhat bold and dangeroufiline with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we arebound to lose it. Why go on clinging to this clod of earth, this way oflife, why pay heed to what your neighbour says? It is so parochial tobind oneself to views which are no longer binding even a couple ofhundred miles away. Orient and Occident are chalk-lines drawnbefore us to fool our timidity. I will make an attempt to attainfreedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered inthis by the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one