The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
815.
_Concerning a reasonable mode of life._--.Relative, chastity, a fundamental and shrewd caution in regard to _erotica,_ even in thought, may be a reasonable mode of life even in richly equipped and perfect natures. But this principle applies more particularly to artists; it belongs to the best wisdom of their lives. Wholly trustworthy voices have already been raised in favour of this view, _e.g._ Stendhal, Th. Gautier, and Flaubert. The artist is perhaps in his way necessarily a sensual man, generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or suggestion of a stimulus. Nevertheless, as a rule he is in the power of his work, of his will to mastership, really a sober and often even a chaste man. His dominating instinct will have him so: it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly. It is one and the same form of strength which is spent in artistic conception and in the sexual act: there is only one form of strength. The artist who yields in this respect, and who spends himself, is betrayed: by so doing he reveals his lack of instinct, his lack of will in general. It may be a sign of decadence,--in any case it reduces the value of his art to an incalculable degree.
Compared with the artist, the scientific man, regarded as a phenomenon, is indeed a sign of a certain storing-up and levelling-down of life (but also of an increase of strength, severity, hardness, and will-power). To what extent can falsity and indifference towards truth and utility be a sign of youth, of childishness, in the artist? ... Their habitual manner, their unreasonableness, their ignorance of themselves, their indifference to "eternal values," their seriousness in play, their lack of dignity; clowns and gods in one; the saint and the rabble.... Imitation as an imperious instinct.--Do not artists of ascending life and artists of degeneration belong to all phases? ... Yes!
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