206 Nietzscheclearer realization that we are unknown to ourselves and do not reach
down deep enough inside of ourselves. Since we lack this knowledge,
how could we possibly assess our sources of life and what we can
demand from life? The argument for a pragmatic approach to life feigns
insight as to what life needs and enjoys, but this is not so. "We have tried
very hard to learn that external things are not as they appear to us—well,
then! The same applies to the inner wodd! (3,109; Z>§116).
Genoa, where Nietzsche completed his work on Daybreak in the win-
ter of 1880-81, was the birthplace of Columbus. He compared his own
inquiries into the terra incognita of the human interior to Columbus's
voyages of discovery. Columbus had his ships and his art of navigation,
and Nietzsche had his nimble language, but it was not nimble enough
for this vast interior continent. The boundaries of language function as
the boundaries of reality. We have words only for the "superlative
degrees" and the "extreme circumstances" of physical and mental
processes. Since, however, we no longer clearly register when words fail
us, the "realm of existence" stops where the "realm of words" ends.
Anger, hatred, love, pity, desire, knowledge, joy, and pain are the
"superlative degrees" of internal conditions that can be formulated in
words and hence possess visibility and acceptability in the cultural
sphere. "The milder middle and even lower degrees, which are continu-
ally in play, elude us, and yet they are the very states that weave the web
of our character and destiny" (3,107; D § 115).
Nietzsche was not thinking along the lines of Freud's later architec-
ture of the unconscious, which placed the unconscious at the basement
leveL The sphere of what is unnamed and unformulated (and perhaps
even inconceivable) that Nietzsche had in mind is more musical in
nature, like tones that resonate without being heard individually but
impart an unmistakable nuance to the audible sound. He knew that his
reference to the infinite number of unconscious stimuli, of which only
an infinitely small number enters our consciousness, was just the first
step of an immense project Although he did not call it a phenomeno-