Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Schopenhauer as educatorof culture, for he wants lyingly to deny the existence of the universalsickness and thus obstructs the physicians. They become incensed,these poor wretches, whenever one speaks of their weakness andresists their pernicious lying spirit. They would dearly like to makeus believe that of all the centuries theirs has borne the prize away,and they shake with artificial merriment. Their way of hypocriticallysimulating happiness sometimes has something touching about it,because their happiness is something so completely incomprehensible.One does not even feel like asking them what Tannhauserasked Biterolf: 'What then, poor man, have you enjoyed?'* For ah !we ourselves know better and know otherwise. A winter's day liesupon us, and we dwell in high mountains, dangerously and inpoverty. Every joy is brief, and every ray of sunlight is pale thatcreeps down to us on our white mountain. Music sounds, an oldman turns a barrel-organ, the dancers revolve - the wanderer isdeeply moved when he sees it: all is so wild, so taciturn, so colourless,so hopeless, and now there sounds within it a note of joy, ofsheer, unreflecting joy! But already the mists of early evening arecreeping in, the note dies away, the wanderer's step grates on theground; for as far as he can still see, he sees nothing but the cruel anddesolate face of nature.If it may be one-sided to emphasize only the weakness of theoutlines and the dullness of the colours in the picture of modern life,the other side of the picture is in no way more gratifying but oniymote disturbing. There are certainly fo rces there, tremendous forces,but savage, primal and wholly merciless. One gazes upon them witha fearful expectation, as though gazing into the cauldron of a witch'skitchen: at any moment sparks and flashes may herald dreadfulapparitions. For a century we have been preparing for absolutelyfu ndamental convulsions; and if there have recently been attemptsto oppose this deepest of modern inclinations, to collapse or toexplode, with the constitutive power of the so-called nation state, thelatter too will for a long time serve only to augment the universalinsecurity and atmosphere of menace. That individuals behave asthough they knew nothing of all these anxieties does not mislead us:their restlessness reveals how well they know of them; they think witha precipitancy and with an exclusive preoccupation with themselvesnever before encountered in man, they build and plant fo r their ownday alone, and the pursuit of happiness is never greater than when it*In Wagner's Ta nnhiiuser, Act II.149