Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

David Straussj the confessor and the writerHeaven. This provides the answer to our first question: how does thenew believer imagine his Heaven? The Straussian philistine lodgesin the works of our great poets and composers like a worm whichlives by destroying, admires by consuming, reveres by digesting.Now we come to our second question: how far does -the couragebestowed on him by the new faith extend? This too would alreadyhave been answered if courage were identical with immodesty: for inthat case Strauss would possess the courage of a Mameluke - for thatbefitting modesty of which he speaks in the passage on Beethovenjust alluded to is only a stylistic device, not a moral position. Strausshas sufficient of that impudence to which every victorious hero feelshimself entitled; every flower that blooms belongs to him, the victor,alone, and he lauds the sun for illuminating his window. Even theancient, venerable universe does not remain untouched by his commendations,as though they alone could consecrate it and it must .henceforth revolve only about the central monad, Strauss. Theuniverse, he informs us; is a machine with iron wheels and cogs andheavy pistons and rams, 'but merciless cogs are not all that movewithin it, there also flows a soothing oil' (p. 365). The universe willnot be precisely grateful to our image-mad Master that he can findno better metaphor with which to commend it, if indeed it takes anypleasure at all in being commended by Strauss. What is this oil calledwhich trickles down on to the pistons and rams? And of what consolationcould it be to the worker within this machine to know thatthis oil is being poured on to him while the machine continues tohold him in its grip? Let us say simply that the metaphor is an unfortunateone and turn our attention to another procedure throughwhich Strauss seeks to convey how he really feels towards theuniverse and in the course of which there hovers upon his lips thequestion Gretchen kept asking: 'He loves me - he loves me not - heloves me?'* If while he is doing this Strauss does not pluck the petalsfrom a flower or count the buttons on a coat, what he does do is noless harmless, though it perhaps requires a little more courage.Strauss wants to see whether or not his feeling for the 'cosmos' hasbecome paralysed and dead, and he jabs himself: for he knows thatone can jab one's arm with a needle quite painlessly so long as thearm is paralysed and dead. In reality, to be sure, he does not jab himself,he chooses an even more violent procedure, which he describesthus: 'We open Schopenhauer, who loses no opportunity of striking>lOIn Goethe's Faust, Part I Scene 12.25