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209. Coelo adsimilis hominum fortuna videtur, nanque vices mutat, facieque est saepe serena. [Vadianus Joachim in Helvetii Aegloga] All philosophers suffer from the same deficiency, in that they conceive in the ideals of 'truth,' 'purity,' or 'justice,' or even more questionable- 'beauty,' what is good, and think that they can arrive at their goal of an honest and genuine life by analyzing these. Instinctively they let their ideals hover before them as a laureum baculum gesto, a proof against all dangers, and a precaution against all spiritual corruptions. Yet, in precisely as this holds, it will be easy enough to make out the fact- that these noble 'analyses' of life are mere philosophical justifications of particular ways of living, philosophical confessions of particular ways of experiencing or receiving- life: like great suns do these ideals bestow verdure and solace, and do they relieve one of his dependence upon guilt and shame, or with a noble 'ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?' are all mortifications and disgrace even prevented to lay down unto the summer's flowerbeds.
210. Damnosa Hereditas. Yet, where the intense power of the nose can no longer discern the good impetus as such because it has become too noxious, in other words, too overbearing, and aggrandized; because it has become an ideal- for instance, in the figure of the saint, and in his inhuman or rather all-too-human purity and solitude; in the same way that a handful of cinnamon merely infuriates the sense of smell rather than imparts its usual and magnificent hints and hues in something that has been baked with it, man posits the realm of evil and ill-will. The feeling that we have entered upon the realm of malice excites through this ambiguity, this ultimately fantastical irritation, all those impetuses which had been previously made indiscernible by the good impetus: all of the tensions which arise in the desire for purity or for greatness, in the defiance of all things human- that is required to achieve it. Eventually those indiscernible impetuses are transformed into temptations: but, in the great man himself, they are transformed into virtues.
211. O paltry Aristo! Does this not mean; to imagine that the insuperable, the invective relationship of a truly noble figure with ourself is his essence and most essential being, and to assert that the saint, or in a more general sense, the great human being, is capable of himself only of that which he has transformed in us? And does there not repose behind this veritable moria our own ergo hercule: that, because the good is measured according to this insufferable gulf which arete opens up in us, we ourselves have been condemned to constituting evil! Is that our punishment? That even our greatest suns must bleed out into a bad conscience.
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