Ecce Homo Complete Works, Volume Seventeen · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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After the choice of nutrition, the choice of climate and locality, the third matter concerning which one must not on any account make a blunder, is the choice of the manner in which one _recuperates one's strength._ Here, again, according to the extent to which a spirit is _sui generis,_ the limits of that which he can allow himself--in other words, the limits of that which is beneficial to him--become more and more confined. As far as I in particular am concerned, _reading_ in general belongs to my means of recuperation; consequently it belongs to that which rids me of myself, to that which enables me to wander in strange sciences and strange souls--to that, in fact, about which I am no longer in earnest. Indeed, it is while reading that I recover from _my_ earnestness. During the time that I am deeply absorbed in my work, no books are found within my reach; it would never occur to me to allow any one to speak or even to think in my presence. For that is what reading would mean....
Has any one ever actually noticed, that, during the period of profound tension to which the state of pregnancy condemns not only the mind, but also, at bottom, the whole organism, accident and every kind of external stimulus acts too acutely and strikes too deep? Accident and external stimuli must, as far as possible, be avoided: a sort of walling-of-one's-self-in is one of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy. Shall I allow a strange thought to steal secretly over the wall? For that is what reading would mean.... The periods of work and fruit-fulness are followed by periods of recuperation: come hither, ye delightful, intellectual, intelligent books! Shall I read German books?... I must go back six months to catch myself with a book in my hand. What was it? An excellent study by Victor Brochard upon the Greek sceptics, in which my Laertiana[1] was used to advantage. The sceptics!--the only _honourable_ types among that double-faced and sometimes quintuple-faced throng, the philosophers!.... Otherwise I almost always take refuge in the same books: altogether their number is small; they are books which are precisely my proper fare. It is not perhaps in my nature to read much, and of all sorts: a library makes me ill. Neither is it my nature to love much or many kinds of things.
Suspicion or even hostility towards new books is much more akin to my instinctive feeling than "toleration," _largeur de cœur,_ and other forms of "neighbour-love." ... It is to a small number of old French authors, that I always return again and again; I believe only in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which calls itself "culture" as a misunderstanding. I do not even take the German kind into consideration.... The few instances of higher culture with which I have met in Germany were all French in their origin. The most striking example of this was Madame Cosima Wagner, by far the most decisive voice in matters of taste that I have ever heard. If I do not read, but literally love Pascal? as the most instinctive sacrifice to Christianity, killing himself inch by inch, first bodily, then spiritually, according to the terrible consistency of this most appalling form of inhuman cruelty; if I have something of Montaigne's mischievousness in my soul, and--who knows?--perhaps also in my body; if my artist's taste endeavours to defend the names of Molière, Corneille, and Racine, and not without bitterness, against such a wild genius as Shakespeare--all this does not prevent me from regarding even the latter-day Frenchmen also as charming companions.
I can think of absolutely no century in history, in which a netful of more inquisitive and at the same time more subtle psychologists could be drawn up together than in the Paris of the present day. Let me mention a few at random--for their number is by no means small--Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre; or, to point to one of strong race, a genuine Latin, of whom I am particularly fond, Guy de Maupassant. Between ourselves, I prefer this generation even to its masters, all of whom were corrupted by German philosophy (Taine, for instance, by Hegel, whom he has to thank for his misunderstanding of great men and great periods). Wherever Germany extends her sway, she _ruins_ culture. It was the war which first saved the spirit of France.... Stendhal is one of the happiest accidents of my life--for everything that marks an epoch in it has been brought to me by accident and never by means of a recommendation. He is quite priceless, with his psychologist's eye, quick at forestalling and anticipating; with his grasp of facts, which is reminiscent of the same art in the greatest of all masters of facts (_ex ungue Napoleonem_); and, last but not least, as an honest atheist--a specimen which is both rare and difficult to discover in France--all honour to Prosper Mérimée!... Maybe that I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of the best atheistic joke, which I of all people could have perpetrated: "God's only excuse is that He does not exist" ... I myself have said somewhere--What has been the greatest objection to Life hitherto?--God....
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.