The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
93.
_But why, then, do you Write?_—A: I do not belong to those who _think_ with the wet pen in hand; and still less to those who yield themselves entirely to their passions before the open ink-bottle, sitting on their chair and staring at the paper. I am always vexed and abashed by writing; writing is a necessity for me,—even to speak of it in a simile is disagreeable. B: But why, then, do you write? A: Well, my dear Sir, to tell you in confidence, I have hitherto found no other means of _getting rid of_ my thoughts. B: And why do you wish to get rid of them? A: Why I wish? Do I really wish! I must.—B: Enough! Enough! _Growth after Death._—Those few daring words about moral matters which Fontenelle threw into his immortal _Dialogues of the Dead_, were regarded by his age as paradoxes and amusements of a not unscrupulous wit; even the highest judges of taste and intellect saw nothing more in them,—indeed, Fontenelle himself perhaps saw nothing more. Then something incredible takes place: these thoughts become truths! Science proves them! The game becomes serious! And we read those dialogues with a feeling different from that with which Voltaire and Helvetius read them, and we involuntarily raise their originator into another and _much higher_ class of intellects than they did.—Rightly? Wrongly?
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.