Notes

Schopenhauer as Educator from Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations.

If the future gave us no hope for anything—our own existence now must encourage us most strongly to live according to our own laws and standards: it is an inexplicable fact that we live precisely today, and had an infinite time to develop—nevertheless, we possess only a short-lived today to show why and to what end we evolved. We have only ourselves to answer for our existence; consequently we want to be the real helmsman of this existence and not permit our existence to be a thoughtless accident. One must take it somewhat boldly and dangerously: especially, in any case, since one will always lose it. Why cling to this clod of earth, this way of life, why pay attention to what your neighbor says? It is so provincial to oblige oneself to opinions which, just a couple of hundred miles away, are no longer binding. Orient and Occident are chalklines drawn before us to fool our timidity. I want to make an attempt to reach freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and it will be prevented by the fact that, coincidentally, two nations hate and fight one another, or that two continents are separated by an ocean, or that all around it a religion is taught which, nevertheless, did not exist a few thousand years ago. All that is not you, it says to itself. Nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods which would carry you across this river; but only at the cost of yourself; you would pawn yourself and lose. There is in the world only one way, on which nobody can go, except you: where does it lead? Do not ask, go along with it. Who was it who said: "a man never rises higher than when he does not know where his way can still lead him"?