Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

1'[...Untimely Meditationsrigid but ineluctably comprehensible! Merely to thin k of this makesthe soul infinitely solitary; if its wish were fulfilled, however, if itsglance once fell upon things straight and bright as a beam oflight, ifshame, fear and desire died awaywhat word could then describethe condition it would be in, that new and enigmatic animationwithout agitation with which it would, like the soul ofSchopenhauer,lie extended over the tremendous hieroglyphics of existence, overthe petrified doctrine of becoming, not as the darkness of night butas the glowing light of dawn streaming out over all the world. Andwhat a fate, on the other hand, to sense sufficient of the certainty andhappiness of the philosopher to be able to fe el the whole uncertaintyand unhappiness of the non-philosopher, of him who desireswithout hope! To know oneself a fruit on the tree which can neverbecome ripe because one;s too much in the shadow, and at the sametime to see close at hand the sunshine that one lacks!'There is enough torment here to make a man who is mis-talentedin such a way malicious and envious, if he is capable of malice andenvy at all; probably, however, he will atAast turn his soul in anotherdirection so that it shall not consume itself in vain longing - and nowhe will discover a new circle of duties.Here 1 have arrived at an answer to the question whether it is possibleto pursue the great ideal of the Schopenhauerean man by meansof a practical activity. One thing above all is certain: these new dutiesare not the duties of a solitary; on the contrary, they set one in themidst of a mighty community held together, not by external fo rmsand regulations, but by a fu ndamental idea. It is the fu ndamentalidea of culture, insofar as it sets for each one of us but one task: to promotethe production of the philosophe0 the artist and the saint within us and withoutus and thereby to work at the perfecting of nature. For, as nature needs thephilosopher, so does it need the artist, for the achievement of ametaphysical goal, that of its own self-enlightenment, so that it mayat last behold as a clear and finished picture that which it could seeonly obscurely in the agitation of its evolutionfo r the end, that is tosay, of self-knowledge. It was Goethe who declared, in an arrogantbut profound assertion, that nature's experiments are of value onlywhen the artist finally comes to comprehend its stammerings, goesout to meet it halfway, and gives expression to what all these experimentsare really about. 'I have often said', he once exclaimed, 'and 1shall often repeat, that the causa finalis of the activities of men and theworld is dramatic poetry. For the stuff is of absolutely no other use.'And so nature at last needs the saint, in whom the ego is completely160