Macmillan

it
148 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
of supreme follyand Aristophanicridicule of the world.
Perhapswe are stilldiscovering the domain of our invention
justhere,the domain where even we can stillbe original,
probablyas parodistsof the world's historyand as God's
"
Merry-Andrews, perhaps,thoughnothingelse
of the present
have a future,our laughteritself may have a future!
224
The historicalsense (orthe capacityfor diviningquickly
the order of rank of the valuations accordingto which a
people,a commimity,or an individualhas livedțhe "divining
instinct" for the relationships of these valuations, for
the relationof the authorityof the valuations to
the authority
"
of
"
the operatingforces), thishistorical sense, which we
Europeansclaim as our specialty, has come to us in the
train of the enchantingand mad semi-barbarity into which
Europe has been plungedby the democratic minglingof
classesand races is onlythe nineteenth centurythat has
recognisedthis facultyas its sixth sense. Owing to this
minglingțhe past of every form and mode of life,and of
cultures which were formerlycloselycontiguousand superimposed
on one another,flows forth into us "modem souls";
our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves are
a kind of chaos: in the end,as we have said țhe spirit perceives
itsadvantagetherein. By means of our semi-barbarity
in body and in desire,we have secret access everywhere,
such as a noble age never had; we have access above all to
the labyrinthof imperfectcivilisations, and to every form
of semi-barbarity that has at any time existedon earth ; and
in so far as the most considerable part of human civilisation
hitherto has justbeen
semi-barbarity, the "historicalsense"
th
impliesalmost the sense and instinct for everything,