Macmillan

" and
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 125
207
However gratefully one may welcome the objectivespirit
who has not been sick to death of allsubjectivity and
itsconfounded
!"
ipsisitnosity in the end,however,one must
learn caution even with regardto one's gratitude, and put
a stop to the exaggerationwith which the unselfingand
depersonalising of the spirithas recentlybeen celebrated,
as if it were the goalin itself, as if it were salvation and
"
glorification as is especially accustomed to happen in the
pessimistschool, which has also in its turn good reasons for
paying the highesthonours to "disinterested knowledge."
The objectiveman, who no longercurses and scolds like
the pessimist, the ideal man of learningin whom the scientific
instinct blossoms forth fullyafter a thousand completeand
partialfailures, is assuredlyone of the most costlyinstruments
that exist,but his place is in the hand of one who is
more powerful. He is only an instrument;we may say, he
is a mirror " ^he is no ''purpose in himself." The objective
man is in truth a mirror: accustomed to prostration before
everythingthat wants to be known, with such desires only
as knowing or "reflecting" ^he waits until imply" something
comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even
the lightfootsteps and glidingpast of spiritual beingsmay
not be lost on his surface and film. Whatever "personality"
he still possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still
oftener,disturbing; so much has he come to regardhimself
as the passage and reflection of outside forms and events.
He calls up the recollectionof "himself" with an effort, and
not infrequently wrongly; he readilyconfounds himself with
other persons, he makes mistakes with regardto his own
needs,and here onlyis he unrefined and negligent.Perhaps