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264. It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have
preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent
economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like
in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were
accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures
and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether,
finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of
birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith--for their
"God,"--as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes
at every compromise. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have
the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his
constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is
the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents,
it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind
of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy
self-vaunting--the three things which together have constituted the
genuine plebeian type in all times--such must pass over to the child, as
surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture
one will only succeed in DECEIVING with regard to such heredity.--And
what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very
democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" MUST
be essentially the art of deceiving--deceiving with regard to origin,
with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator
who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out
constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you
are!"--even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time
to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what
results? "Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET. [FOOTNOTE: Horace's "Epistles,"
I. x. 24.]
265. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit that egoism
belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief
that to a being such as "we," other beings must naturally be in
subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the
fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of
harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something
that may have its basis in the primary law of things:--if he sought a
designation for it he would say: "It is justice itself." He acknowledges
under certain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that
there are other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this
question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged
ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect,
which he enjoys in intercourse with himself--in accordance with an
innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand. It is an
ADDITIONAL instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-limitation
in intercourse with his equals--every star is a similar egoist; he
honours HIMSELF in them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he
has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the ESSENCE of
all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things. The
noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive
instinct of requital, which is at the root of his nature. The notion of
"favour" has, INTER PARES, neither significance nor good repute; there
may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from
above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those
arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him
here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly--he looks either FORWARD,
horizontally and deliberately, or downwards--HE KNOWS THAT HE IS ON A
HEIGHT.
266. "One can only truly esteem him who does not LOOK OUT FOR
himself."--Goethe to Rath Schlosser.
267. The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children:
"SIAO-SIN" ("MAKE THY HEART SMALL"). This is the essentially fundamental
tendency in latter-day civilizations. I have no doubt that an ancient
Greek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans
of today--in this respect alone we should immediately be "distasteful"
to him.