Epilog

This was a forgivable, perhaps a necessary deception.

Is it something similar that we need in the world of the spirit — are we so far convinced of having reached the highest that nothing else remains than piously to persuade ourselves that we have not come that far, just to have something with which to fill the time?

Is it such a self-deception that the present generation needs — is it for a virtuosity in this that it ought to be trained, or is it not rather sufficiently perfected in the art of deceiving itself?

Or is it not rather an honest earnestness that it needs — an earnestness that, undaunted and incorruptible, points to the tasks; an honest earnestness that lovingly guards the tasks, that does not frighten people into wanting to rush ahead into the highest, but keeps the tasks young and "beautiful and lovely to behold and beckoning to all, yet withal difficult and inspiring for the noble; for the noble nature is inspired only by what is difficult?

Whatever the one generation learns from the other, the genuinely human no generation learns from a preceding one.

In this respect every generation begins from the start, has no other task than every preceding generation, gets no further either, insofar as the preceding one did not betray the task and deceive itself.

This genuinely human thing is passion, in which the one generation too perfectly understands the other and understands itself.

To love, then, no generation has learned from another; no generation comes to begin at any other point than at the beginning; no later generation has a shorter task than the preceding one; and if here one will not, like the preceding generations, remain standing at loving, but go further, then this is only idle and foolish talk.

But the highest passion in a person is faith, and no generation begins here at any other point than the preceding one; every generation begins from the start; the following generation gets no further than the preceding one, insofar as the latter remained true to its task and did not leave it in the lurch.

That this should be tiresome is naturally something the generation cannot say, for the generation does after all have the task and has nothing to do with the fact that the preceding generation had the same task — unless the individual generation, or the single individuals in the generation, presumptuously would take the place that belongs only to the Spirit that governs the world and that has the patience not to grow weary.

If the generation begins on such things, then it is askew, and what wonder then that the whole of existence seems askew to it; for surely no one has found existence more askew than the tailor who, according to the fairy tale, came up into heaven while still alive and from this vantage point regarded the world.

As soon as the generation concerns itself only with its task, which is the highest, then it cannot grow weary; for the task is always sufficient for a human life.

When the children on a holiday have already, before the clock is twelve, played through all their games, and now impatiently say: is there then no one who can think up a new game — does this prove that these children are more developed and more advanced than the children in the contemporary or a bygone generation who could let the familiar games suffice for the whole day?

Or does it not rather prove that those first children lack what I would call the lovable earnestness that belongs to playing?

Faith is the highest passion in a person.

There are perhaps in every generation many who do not even come to it, but no one comes further.

Whether there are also in our time many who do not discover it, I do not decide; I dare only appeal to myself, who does not conceal that the prospects for him are long, without on that account wishing to deceive himself or the great thing by making it into a triviality, into a childhood illness one must wish gotten over as soon as possible.

But even for the one who does not even come to faith, life has tasks enough, and when he loves these honestly, then life will not be wasted either, even if it never becomes like that of those who perceived and grasped the highest.

But the one who came to faith (be he the eminently gifted or the simple one — this makes nothing to the matter), he does not remain standing at faith; indeed he would be indignant if anyone said it to him, just as the lover would resent it if one said he remained standing at love; for, he would answer, I by no means remain standing, since I have my life in it.

Yet he does not come further either, not to anything else; for when he discovers this, then he has a different explanation.

"One must go further; one must go further."

This urge to go further is old in the world.

The obscure Heraclitus, who deposited thoughts in his writings and his writings in the temple of Diana (for his thoughts had been his armor in life, and so he hung it up in the temple of the god), the obscure Heraclitus has said: one cannot step twice through the same river.

The obscure Heraclitus had a disciple who did not remain standing here; he went further and added: one cannot even do it once.

Poor Heraclitus, to have such a disciple!

The Heraclitean proposition was by this improvement improved into an Eleatic proposition, which denies motion — and yet that disciple only wished to be a disciple of Heraclitus who went further, not back to what Heraclitus had left behind.