The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
912.
I cannot see how any one can make up for having missed going to _a good school_ at the proper time. Such a person does not know himself; he walks through life without ever having learned to walk. His soft muscles betray themselves at every step. Occasionally life itself is merciful enough to make a man recover this lost and severe schooling: by means of periods of sickness, perhaps, which exact the utmost will-power and self-control; or by means of a sudden state of poverty, which threatens his wife and child, and which may force a man to such activity as will restore energy to his slackened tendons, and a _tough spirit_ to his will to life. The most desirable thing of all, however, is, under all circumstances to have severe discipline _at the right time, i.e._ at that age when it makes us proud that people should expect great things from us. For this is what distinguishes hard schooling, as good schooling, from every other schooling, namely, that a good deal is demanded, that a good deal is severely exacted; that goodness, nay even excellence itself, is required as if it were normal; that praise is scanty, that leniency is non-existent; that blame is sharp, practical, and without reprieve, and has no regard to talent and antecedents. We are in every way in need of such a school: and this holds good of corporeal as well as of spiritual things; it would be fatal to draw distinctions here! The same discipline makes the soldier and the scholar efficient; and, looked at more closely, there is no true scholar who has not the instincts of a true soldier in his veins. To be able to command and to be able to obey in a proud fashion; to keep one's place in rank and file, and yet to be ready at any moment to lead; to prefer danger to comfort; not to weigh what is permitted and what is forbidden in a tradesman's balance; to be more hostile to pettiness, slyness, and parasitism than to wickedness. What is it that one _learns_ in a hard school?--_to obey_ and _to command._
We should _repudiate_ merit--and do only that which stands above all praise and above all understanding. The new forms of morality:-- Faithful vows concerning that which one wishes to do or to leave undone; complete and definite abstention from many things. Tests as to whether one is _ripe_ for such discipline. It is my desire to _naturalise asceticism:_ I would substitute the old intention of asceticism, "self-denial," by my own intention, _self-strengthening:_ a gymnastic of the will; a period of abstinence and occasional fasting of every kind, even in things intellectual; a casuistry in deeds, in regard to the opinions which we derive from our powers; we should try our hand at adventure and at deliberate dangers. (_Dîners chez Magny:_ all intellectual gourmets with spoilt stomachs.) _Tests_ ought also to be devised for discovering a man's power in keeping his word.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.