THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE New York Collier Macmillan Publishers LondonPREFACE hate everything that merely instructs me without in senting or diteay quickening my activity” These words of (Goethe ike a sincere ceterum cesco, may well stand at the head of my thoughts on the worth and che worthlesness of history. Iwill show why nstracton that does not “quicken, [knowledge that slacken the Tein of activity, why in fat hit- tory, n Goethe's phrie, mart be seriously “hated” ats oily tnd wuperdaourInxury of the undentanding® for we ae stil in want of the necesares of fe, and the superiuous is an enemy to the necessary. We do need history, but quite dir tently from the jaded irs fm the garden of knowledge, how. fever grandly they may look down on our rude and unpietur- ferque requirements In other words, we need fe for life and fdlon, not asa convenient way to avid life and action, orto ‘excuse 2 selfish life and 2 cowardly or base action, We would seve history only ao fara t verve lif; but to vale ts study beyond s eetain pein sutilates and degrades life: and this 2 fact that certain marked symptoms of our time make it at ‘ecesary ast may be painfl to bring to che tet of experience, have tried to describe a feeling that has often troubled me: sevenge myself on te by giving ie publiy. This may lead someone to explain to me that he hus also had the feeling, bot ehat Ido not feet purely and elementlly enough, and cannot expres it with the ripe certainty of experience. A few snay sy so; but most people wil ell me that iis a perverted, “unnatural, horible, and altogether unlawiulfeling to have, and that I show myelf unworthy of the great historical move rent which is espedally strong among the German people for the ln wo generalons. Tam at all casts going to venture on a description of my feelings: which will be decidedly in the interest of propriety, 15 Thal give plenty of epportunity for paying compliments to wich a “movement” Ané I grin an advantage for myselé4 uronic wrrzice that is more valuable to me than proptieythe attainment ‘oft corect point of view, chrough my eric, with regard to four age. “Thee thoughts are “out of season,” Because 1am trying to represent something of which the age ie rightly proud=ite Istria oilote—ss a frult and a defect in our tne, belie {ng a8 I do that we are all slfering from 2 malignant histor ‘al fever and should at least reeogaze the fact. But even it itis 2 virtue, Goethe may be right in asserting that we cannot help Aeveloping ur faults atthe same time av our virtues; and an excess of virme can obviouly bring a mation to ruin a well san exc of vie. In ay case Tay be allowed my sy. But Twill at rlieve my mind by the eonenion thatthe expect ences which produced those disturbing felings were mostly drawn from myelf~and from other sours omly forthe sake of comparison; and that Ihave only reached such uneeasona- ble" experince so far a Tam the mung of older age Tike the Greek, and lesa child ofthis age: I must admit so auch in vrtae of my profesion asa dasa! scholar for I do not ‘now what meaning clas! sholarhip may have for oor time except init Being “urseatonable may be hoped, of future time. ‘THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY 1 Consider the herds that ate feeding yonder: they know not the meaning of yesterday or today; they graze and raminate, move or ret, ram morning tonight, (fom day to day, ken ‘up with their litle lover and hates and the mercy of the ‘moment, feeling nether melmeboly nor satiety. Man cannot fee them without regret, for even in he pide of his humanity hie looks enviously om the bess’ happines. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, Hike the Dest yet iti all in ‘ain for he will not change places widh i. He may atk the beast~"Why do you look at me and not speak to me of your happines?” ‘The beast wants to annwer="Beawse T always forget what I wished tos"; but be forgets this answer, r0, and is llent; and the man i Tet to wonder. "He wonders also about himself—that he cannot lar to Ionget, but hangs on the pat: however fro fast he runs, that Guin rons wt him. It is matir for wonder: the moment that here and gone, that wat nothing before and nothing fee, returns Hike a specter to trouble the quiet of later ‘moment. A leaf is continvaly dropping out of the volume of time and fatering away-and suddenly it Sutters back into the man’s lap. Then he sys, "Tremember - " and envis the Beast that forgets at once and see every moment realy fi, snk into night and mise, extinguished forever. The beat lives unhistoricaly; fr t"goe into” the presen, ike a nut ‘bey without leaving any cations remainder, Te cannot Asim Uae, it conceals nothings at every moment fama what it ‘cially & and thus can be nothing that i not honest. But fan is always resisting the great and continually increasing ‘weight ofthe pat It peses him down tnd bow his shoulders; be travels with a dt invisible burden Uhat he can plausibly dlsown, and is only too glad to down in convene with his6 ree fellowa-in order t9 excite their emey. And so it hurts him, Ike the thought of a lost paradise, o see a herd ging, or cater sil a child that har nothing yet ofthe past to down nd plays ina happy blindness between the walls ofthe past and the future. And yet is play must be dstrbed, and onty too toon will ee stamoned trom it tle Kingdom of ob lvion. Then it lems to understand the words “once upoa time” the "open sesame” that les in battle, slfering, and vwearines on mankind nod reminds dhem what thet existence ‘ally an impertet tee that never becomes 2 pesent. And when death brings at last the desired forgetfalnes i abolithes life and being together, and set the seal om the knowledge that "eing” Se merely a continual "hae been” a thing that lives by denying and detuoying and contradicting incl It happiness and the chase for new happines keep alive in any sense the will to live, no philosophy hat perhaps more truth chan the ynic: for the beats happinesy, lke that of the perfec enti the Vibe proof ofthe trath of eynein. ‘The smallest pleasre, ft be only continuous and makes one ‘nappy, is incomparably a greater bappines than the more intense pleasure that eames sean eptode, a wild freak, «mad interval between ennui, desire, snd privation, But i the sonallst and greatest happines there is always one thing that ‘makes happiness: the power of forgetting, fa more Learned phrase, the expacty of feling “enbittorialy” throughout lus duration, One who cannot leave himself behind om the thyeshald of the moment and forget dhe past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddes of victory, without fear ‘or giddiness, wil never now what happiness fy and, worse ul, wil never do anything to make others happy ‘The ex ‘meme case would be the man without any power to forget who 's condemned to se “becoming” everywhere Such a man no longer believes in himself or his own existence; he ses every. ‘hing fy past in an eternal suecesion and loves himelf in the ssream Of becoming. Atlas, like the lpial dcp of Fer: lias, he will hardly dare to raise his finger. Forgetlnes 4 property of all ation, just as not only light but darknes 198 USE AND ABUSE OF susTORY 7 ‘bound up with the life of every onganism. One who wished to feel everything historically would be Tike a man forcing hin self to retrain from sleep ora best who had to live by chew. Ing continual cod. Thus evens happy lil is pssible without remembrance, asthe beast shows: but life in any true wene i ‘beolutely imponible without forgetiulnew. Or, to put my ‘conclusion better, there sn degree of sleeplesnes of Fumina- tion, of "hktoreal vena,” that injures and nally destroy che vag thing, be it aman or a people ora system of culture "To fx this degree snd the limits to the memory of dhe past, i tis not to become the gravedigger of the present, we must sce clearly how reat is the “platic power” of a man of 2 ommanity or a elt; I mean the power of specifically grow ng out of one’ self, of making the pst and the suange one body with the near and the present, of healing wounds, plac {ng what is lost, repairing broken molds. "There are men who have this power vo slightly that a single sharp experience, 2 single gain, often a Ltde injustice, will lncerate thir souls like the scratch of a poisoned knife. ‘There are others who are ao lite injured by the worst misfortunes, and even by ‘ele own spel actions, a5 to fel wlerably comfortable, With a fairy quiet conscience, in the midst of them-or at ny rite shay afterwards, The deeper the rots of a man's fnser natute, che beter will he ake the pas into himelf land the greatest and most powertal nature would be known by the abvence of limits for the historical seme wo orergrow and work barm. It would assimilate and dige the past how- ver foreign, and urn it to sap. Such a mature can forget ‘what it cannot subdue thee is no break in the horizon, and ‘othing to remind i tha there ae till men, passions, theories tnd aims om the other side. This isa univer nw ‘hing can only be heathy, song, and producsive wi certain horiaon; if tis incapable of drawing one round isell, ‘oF too selfah to lee it own view im anothers, twill come to acute, che joyful deed—all depend, inthe Individual as well 2s the nation, on there Being a ine that divides the Visible and