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104 a sick man may for a moment forget his sickness in seeking to analyze and comprehend it. He speaks in so many words of psychological observation as one of the means of easing the burden of life. The knowledge even of the most ugly reality is beautiful. He has an appreciation of Socrates and his intellectual joy, such as he had not shown before; he understands Goethe's rejoicing in the world as a man of science; he notes with satisfaction that thinkers as opposed as Plato and Aristotle agreed in finding the highest happiness for men and Gods in knowing, and even adds, "The happiness of the knower increases the beauty of the world and makes all that exists sunnier; knowledge puts its beauty not only around things, but permanently into things." undefined He himself lives on in order ever better to know; his ideal is a free, fearless hovering over men, customs, laws, and traditional valuations; and in such a life, though he has renounced much, perhaps nearly all, that would seem valuable to other men, he is happy. undefined Knowledge is the real end of existence—with the "great intellect" the goal of culture is reached. Life "an instrument and means of knowledge," life "not a duty or a fatality or a deception," but "an experiment of one seeking to know"—this is now his view of it, his justification of it. undefined He goes so far as to say, "Knowledge has become for us a passion, which is alarmed at no sacrifice and at bottom fears nothing but its own extinction.… Granting even the possibility of humanity's perishing from this passion for knowledge—even this does not overcome us!… Are not love and death sisters? Yes, we hate barbarism—we should prefer the destruction of humanity to the recession of knowledge! And finally: if humanity does not perish of a passion, it will perish of a weakness—which should we prefer? This is the supreme question. Should we rather have it end in fire and light, or in the sand?" undefined