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Third EssayWhat Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?8
You see that these philosophers are not unprejudiced witnesses to and judges of the value of ascetic ideals! They think about themselves - what concern to them is "the saint"! In this matter they think about what is most immediately indispensable to them: freedom from compulsion, disturbance, fuss, business, duties, worries - a bright light in the head, the dance, the leap and flight of ideas; a good air - thin, clear, free, dry - like the air at high altitudes, with which everything in animal being grows more spiritual and acquires wings; calm in all basement areas; all dogs nicely tied up in chains; no hostile barking or shaggy rancour; no gnawing worm of wounded ambition; with modest and humble inner organs busy as windmills but at a distance; heart strange, distant, looking to the future, posthumous - all in all, so far as the ascetic ideal is concerned, they think of the cheerful asceticism of some deified and independent animal, which wanders above life rather than resting in it.
We know what the three great catchphrases of the ascetic idea are: poverty, humility, and chastity. If we now look closely at the lives of all great, prolific, inventive spirits we`ll always rediscover all three there to a certain degree. Not at all (this is self-evident) as if it were something to do with their "virtues" - what does this kind of man have to do with creating virtues? - but as the most appropriate and most natural conditions of their best existence, their most beautiful fecundity. It is indeed entirely possible that their dominating spirituality at first had to set aside an unbridled pride or the reins of a wanton sensuality or that they perhaps had difficulty enough maintaining their will for the "desert" against an inclination for luxury, for something very exquisite, as well as a lavish liberality of heart and hand. But their spirituality did it, precisely because it was the dominating instinct, which achieves its own demands in relation to all the other instincts and continues to do so. If it did not, then it would no longer dominate. Hence, this has nothing to do with "virtue."
Besides, the desert of which I just spoke, into which the strong, independent spirits withdraw and isolate themselves - oh, how different it seems from the desert educated people dream about. For in some circumstances these educated people are themselves this desert. And certainly no actor of the spirit could simply endure it - for them it is not nearly romantic enough or Syrian, not nearly enough of a theatrical desert! It`s true there`s no lack of camels there - but that`s the only similarity between them. Perhaps a voluntary obscurity, a detour away from one`s self, a timidity about noise, admiration, newspapers, influence; a small official position, a daily routine, something which hides more than it bring to light, contact now and then with harmless, cheerful wildlife and poultry whose sight is relaxing, a mountain for company, not a dead one but ones with eyes (that means with lakes); in some circumstances even a room in a full, nondescript inn, where one is sure to be confused for someone else and can talk to anyone with impunity—that`s what a desert is here. Oh, it`s lonely enough, believe me! When Heraclitus withdrew into the courtyard and colonnades of the immense temple of Artemis, that was a worthier "desert", I admit. Why do we lack such temples? (Perhaps we don`t lack them. I`ve just remembered my most beautiful room for study, the Piazza San Marco, in the spring, naturally, as well as in the morning, between ten and twelve o`clock).
But what Heraclitus was getting away from is still the same thing we go out of our way to escape: the noise and the democratic chatter of the Ephesians, their politics, their news about the "empire" (you understand I mean the Persians), their daily market junk - for we philosophers need peace and quiet from one thing above all - from anything to do with "today." We honour what is still, cold, noble, distant, past, in general everything at the sight of which the soul does not have to defend itself or tie itself up, something a person can speak to without having to speak loudly. Let us hear only the sound which a spirit makes when it speaks. Every spirit has its own sound and loves its own sound.
The man over there, for example, must be a real agitator (I mean a hollow head, a hollow pot [Hohlkopf, Hohltopf])—no matter what goes into him, it all comes back out of him dull and thick, weighed down with the echo from a huge emptiness. That man over there rarely speaks in anything other than a hoarse voice. Has he perhaps imagined himself hoarse? That might be possible - ask the physiologists - but whoever thinks in words thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker (it reveals that fundamentally he doesn`t think of things or think factually, but only in relation to things, that he really is thinking of himself and his listeners). A third man speaks with an insistent familiarity - he steps in too close to our bodies, he breathes over us - instinctively we shut our mouths, even though he is speaking to us through a book. The sound of his style tells us why we do that - that he has no time, that he has little faith in himself, that he`ll not be speaking any more today or ever. But a spirit which is sure of itself, speaks quietly. He`s looking for seclusion. He lets people wait for him.
We can recognize a philosopher by the following: he walks away from three glittering and garish things - fame, princes, and women. That doesn`t mean that they might not come to him. He shrinks from light which is too bright. Hence he shies away from his time and its "day." In that he`s like a shadow: the lower the sun sinks, the bigger he becomes. So far as his humility is concerned, he endures a certain dependence and obscurity, as he endures the darkness. More than that, he fears being disturbed by lightning and recoils from the unprotected and totally isolated and abandoned tree on which any bad weather can discharge its mood or any mood discharge its bad weather. His "maternal" instinct, the secret love for what is growing in him, directs him to places where his need to think of himself is removed, in the same sense that the maternal instinct in women has up to now generally kept her in a dependent situation.
Ultimately they demand little enough, these philosophers. Their motto is "Whoever owns things is owned" - not, as I must say again and again, from virtue, from an admirable desire for modest living and simplicity, but because their highest master demands that of them, demands astutely and unrelentingly. He cares for only one thing and for that gathers up and holds everything—time, power, love, and interest. This sort of man doesn`t like to be disturbed by hostile things or by friendships, and he easily forgets or scoffs. To him martyrdom seems something in bad taste - "to suffer for the truth" he leaves to the ambitious and the stage heroes of the spirit and anyone else who has time enough for it (they themselves - the philosophers—have to do something for the truth). They use big words sparingly. It`s said that they resist using even the word "truth" - it sounds boastful . . . Finally, as far as "chastity" concerns philosophers, this sort of spirit apparently keeps its fertility in something other than children; perhaps he keeps the continuity of his name elsewhere, its small immortality (among philosophers in ancient India people spoke with more presumption, "What`s the point of offspring to the man whose soul is the world?"). There`s no sense of chastity there out of some ascetic scruple or other or hatred of the senses - just as it has little to do with chastity when an athlete or jockey abstains from women. It`s more a matter of their dominating instinct, at least during its great pregnant periods.
Every artist knows how damaging the effects of sexual intercourse are to states of great spiritual tension and preparation. The most powerful and most instinctual artists don`t acquire this knowledge primarily by experience, by bad experience - it`s that "maternal instinct" of theirs which makes the decision ruthlessly to benefit the developing work among all the other stores and supplies of energy, of animal vitality. The greater power then uses up the lesser.
Now let`s apply this interpretation to the above mentioned case of Schopenhauer: the sight of the beautiful evidently worked in his case as the stimulus for the release of the main power in his nature (the power of reflection and the deep look), so that this then exploded and suddenly became master of his consciousness. In the process, we should in no way rule out the possibility that that characteristic sweetness and abundance typical of the aesthetic condition could originate precisely from the ingredient "sensuality" (just as from the same source is derived that "idealism" characteristic of sexually mature young girls) - so that thus, with the entry of the aesthetic condition, sensuality is not shoved out, as Schopenhauer believed, but is transformed and does not enter the consciousness any more as sexual stimulation. (I will come back to this point of view at another time, in connection with the even more delicate problems of the physiology of aesthetics, a problem untouched up to this point, so unanalyzed).
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