Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsso as to sweep away a little snow, to strike a man dead so as to kill a flyon his nose. The artist and the philosopher are evidence against thepurposiveness of nature as regards the means it employs, thoughthey are also first-rate evidence as to the wisdom of its purpose. Theystrike home at only a few, while they ought to strike home ateverybody and even these few are not struck with the force withwhich philosopher and artist launch their shot. It is sad to have toarrive at an assessment of art as cause so different from our assessmentof art as effect: how tremendous it is as cause, how paralysedand hollow as effect! The artist creates his work according to the willof nature for the good of other men: that is indisputable; nonethelesshe knows that none of these other men will ever love and understandhis work as he loves and understands it. Thus this greater degree oflove and understanding is, given the ineptitude of nature, requiredfor the production of a smaller degree; the greater and nobler isemployed as a means of producing the lesser and ignoble. Nature isa bad economist: its expenditure is much larger than the income itprocures; all its wealth notwithstandiljg, it is bound sooner or laterto ruin itself. It would have ordered its affairs more rationally if itshouse-rule were: small expenses and hundredfold profit; if, fo rexample, there were only a few artists, and these of weaker powers,but on the other hand numerous recipients of art of a stronger andmore mighty species than the species of the artist: so that the effect ofthe work of art in relation to its cause would be a hundredfoldmagnification. Or ought one not at least to expect that cause andeffect would be of equal force? but how little nature comes up tothis expectation! It often seems as though an artist and especially aphilosopher only chances to exist in his age, as a hermit or a wandererwho has lost his way and been left behind. Just think of the truegreatness of Schopenhauer - and then of how absurdly small hiseffect has been! No honourable man of our age can fail to feelashamed when he sees how Schopenhauer seems to belong to it onlyby accident and what fo rces and impotencies are to blame for thefact that his influence has been so minimal. First, fo r a long time, andto the everlasting shame of our era of literature, he had against himhis lack of readers; then, when he acquired them, he had against himthe inadequacy of his earliest advocates: even more, it seems to me,he had against him the obtuseness on the part of all modern menwith regard to books, which they are altogether unwilling to takeseriously; a new danger has gradually appeared in addition, derivingfrom the manifold attempts that have been made to adapt178