Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthin an uncertain tone ghostly words he thinks he hears coming fromfar away but cannot quite grasp; the artist of the modern stamp, onthe other hand, is full of contempt for the dreamy groping of hisnobler colleague and leads the whole brawling crowd of passionsand abominations after him on a string so as to let them loose onmodern men when required: for the latter would rather be hunted,injured and torn to pieces than have to live quietly alone with themselves.Alone with themselves! - the idea of this makes modern soulsquake, it is their kind of terror and fear of ghosts.When in populous cities I watch the thousands pass by andbehold their gloomy or harried expressions, I tell myself repeatedlythat they must be feeling unwell. But for all these people art existsmerely so that they shall feel even more unwell, even gloomier andmore senseless, or even more harried and greedy. For they areunremittingly ridden and drilled by fa lse feeling, which in this wayprevents them from admitting to themselves how wretched they are;if they want to speak, convention whispers something into their earwhich makes them forget what it was they really wanted to say; if theywant to come to an understanding with one another, their ownunderstanding is paralysed as though by a spell, so that what theycall happiness is really their misfortune and they wilfully collaboratetogether to advance their own adversity. Thus they are whollytransformed and reduced to the helpless slaves of false feeling.6Here are two examples to demonstrate how perverse the sensibilitiesof our age have become and how the age has no perception of thisperversity. In former times one looked down with honest nobility onpeople who dealt in money as a business, even though one had needof them; one admitted to oneself that every society had to have intestines.Now, as the most covetous of its regions, they are the rulingpower in the soul of modern humanity. In former times there wasnothing one was warned against more than against taking the day,the moment, too seriously; one was urged nil admirari and to be concernedwith matters of eternity; now only one kind of seriousnessstill remains in the modern soul, that directed towards the newsbrought by the newspapers or the telegraph. To employ the momentand, so as to profit from it, to assess its value as quickly as possible! -one might believe that modern man has retained only one of the virtues,that of presence of mind. Unhappily, it is in truth more like the219