Beyond Good and Evil

1 Beyond Good and Evil

object. This same will has at its service an apparently op-
posed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference
of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closing of windows,
an inner denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a
sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a
contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-in horizon,
an acceptance and approval of ignorance: as that which is
all necessary according to the degree of its appropriating
power, its ‘digestive power,’ to speak figuratively (and in fact
‘the spirit’ resembles a stomach more than anything else).
Here also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let
itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it
is NOT so and so, but is only allowed to pass as such), a de-
light in uncertainty and ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment
of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness and mystery, of the
too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified, the dimin-
ished, the misshapen, the beautified—an enjoyment of the
arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power. Finally,
in this connection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness
of the spirit to deceive other spirits and dissemble before
them— the constant pressing and straining of a creating,
shaping, changeable power: the spirit enjoys therein its
craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoys also its feel-
ing of security therein—it is precisely by its Protean arts
that it is best protected and concealed!—COUNTER TO
this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for a dis-
guise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside—for every outside
is a cloak—there operates the sublime tendency of the man
of knowledge, which takes, and INSISTS on taking things