The Dawn of Day · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
464.
THE DONOR’S MODESTY.—There is such a want of generosity in always posing as the donor and benefactor, and showing one’s face when doing so! But to give and bestow, and at the same time to conceal one’s name and favour! or not to have a name at all, like nature, in whom this fact is more refreshing to us than anything else—here at last we no more meet with the giver and bestower, no more with a “gracious countenance.”—It is true that you have now forfeited even this comfort, for you have placed a God in this nature—and now everything is once again fettered and oppressed! Well? are we never to have the right of remaining alone with ourselves? are we always to be watched, guarded, surrounded by leading strings and gifts? If there is always some one round about us, the best part of courage and kindness will ever remain impossible of attainment in this world. Are we not tempted to fly to hell before this continual obtrusiveness of heaven, this inevitable supernatural neighbour? Never mind, it was only a dream; let us wake up! _A._ What are you looking at? you have been standing here for a very long time. _B._ Always the new and the old over again! the helplessness of a thing urges me on to plunge into it so deeply that I end by penetrating to its deepest depths, and perceive that in reality it is not worth so very much. At the end of all experiences of this kind we meet with a kind of sorrow and stupor. I experience this on a small scale several times a day.
A LOSS OF RENOWN.—What an advantage it is to be able to speak as a stranger to mankind! When they take away our anonymity, and make us famous, the gods deprive us of “half our virtue.” DOUBLY PATIENT.—“By doing this you will hurt many people.”—I know that, and I also know that I shall have to suffer for it doubly: in the first place out of pity for their suffering, and secondly from the revenge they will take on me. But in spite of this I cannot help doing what I do.
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