Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

-."Untimely Meditationsreturns home with the most marvellous booty; if it sle e ps, 'its sleeponly gives it new strength'. * It even steals the body and makes itmore robust; it does not consume life however long it lives; it rulesover man like a winged passion and at the moment his foot hasgrown weary in the sand or is hurt against a stone it lifts him into theair. It can do nothing other than communicate, everyone is tocollaborate in its work, it is not niggardly with its gifts. If it isrepulsed, it gives more abundantly; if the recipient misuses it, it addsto its gifts the most precious jewel it possesses - and the oldest andmost recent experience teaches that the recipients have never beenquite worthy of the gift. Primordially determined nature throughwhich music speaks to the world of appearance is thus the mostenigmatic thing under the sun, an abyss in which force and goodnessdwell together, a bridge between the self and the non-self. Who can,clearly name the purpose for which it exists at all, even though it maybe apparent that purposiveness exists in the way it came into being?But the happiest presentiment may permit us to ask: should thegreater exist for the sake of the less, the,greatest giftedness for thegood of the smallest, the highest virtue and holiness for the sake offrailty? Did true music not resound because mankind deserved it leastbut needed it most? If we let ourselves ponder the boundless miracle ofthis possibility and then, out of this reflection, look back on life, weshall see all flooded in light, however dark and misty it may haveseemed before.7Nothing else is possible: he before whom there stands such a natureas Wagner's is from time to time compelled to reflect upon himself,upon his own pettiness and frailty, and to ask himself: what wouldthis nature have with you? to what end do you really exist? - Probablyhe will be unable to find an answer, and will then stand perplexed athis own being. Let him then be satisfied to have experienced eventhis; let him hear in the fact that he feels alienated from his own being theanswer to his question. For it is with precisely this feeling that he participatesin Wagner's mightiest accomplishment, the central point ofhis power, the demonic transmissibility and self-relinquishment of his, ,nature, with which others are able to communicate just as readily asit communicates with other natures, and whose greatness consists in*From Hans Sachs's monologue in Act III of Meistersinger.222