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Ascolo Parodites
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The writer of this book is neither a pessimist or a cynic in the least, or perhaps in the least-- but certainly not in the truest sense of those words, in the Schopenhauerian and Diogenian sense: one pays too dearly for being suspicious about the world, nature, and man-- for casting a doubt upon their purpose, their justice. Unto one of that kind, the words higher nature, higher purpose; and with these, usury, and punishment, ring. And unto that ringing, are the only graceful words lost of their grace and their truth, and drowned out in the whole bellowing cacophony: revenge, lex talionis, redemption.
Revenge, that is the most fearsome, the most penetrating of eyes: but then again, the whole foreground of usury, punishment, and 'higher nature' is far to extensive for that wild, that animal acuity, that eye, to carry any use whatsoever. Yet how much humiliation is in this: for the philosopher to doubt the world and ways of man, and for that doubt to sing unto his heart? If one would doubt the way the world was doubted formerly, Platonically, wholly, without exception, with a full heart, with the whole, Pyrrhonic love of doubting - then one would have to renounce mistrust: -- and how much fine joy, how much graciousness, how much patience; the patience to write books to ourselves, and more importantly to rear children, even do we owe precisely to our mistrust, to our mistrust in nature, the world, and Man! For I am no misanthrope either...
How becoming is it, after all, for a 'misanthrope' to put upon the name, that of 'lover of wisdom?' And a cynic? And a pessimist? In the mouth of the pessimist, the name 'lover of wisdom' sounds most truthfully, most honestly, but also the most limply, for to possess conviction in his truth- that would be the end of the pessimist. Are we to be, after all, the lover- what, of man's wisdom? Is the philosopher, after all, nothing more than the most impecunious of us men, the most needy, the one into which that most penetrating of eyesights has fallen out of use, and indeed, one wherein the eye of revenge has been most shamefully distracted in the immense foreground of 'higher nature,' wherein revenge even upon life has taken the form of thought, thought of the life hereafter? And does the Cynic, the earliest and most Grecian of the three- cynic, pessimist, misanthrope, (misanthrope being the most European, pessimist the most German) also not pronounce his hatred for the the wealth of our hands, the wealth of the hands of men, but nonetheless accepts the odd coin that is tossed to him? The earliest men, the homeless in the true sense of the word, survived on acorns. And the Cynics shall survive on the fruits of men which they have been lucky enough to grasp from under that tree, as in the case of beasts, lest the fruit be taken by the others of their kind; man's odd coins, man's scraps! The Cynic, - κύων- he would live abroad nature by imitating the beast! And he does not even know, that Aristotle characterizes imitation as one of the most definitive traits of man. All of this, were precisely because he is so resentful, because he loves his hatred of our wealth, because the eye of our wealth sings unto his heart. There is indeed a glimmer of the eye of revenge in him, but only a glimmer! And that glimmer is yet suffocated by humiliation in our wealth, which is his little Anacreon! And when the last Cynic has died, surely we will never again see those Holy and Thyestian; the bearers of revenge and of the miraculous grace and magnanimity of retribution! The magnanimity of anagnorisis! For certainly, revenge is also the most magnanimous spirit.
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