Sounds Familyre (IX)
". . . when defensive expenditures, be they ever so small, become the rule and a habit, they entail an extraordinary and entirely superfluous impoverishment. Our great expenses are composed of the most frequent small ones. Warding off, not letting things come close, involves an expenditure -- let nobody deceive himself about this -- energy wasted on negative ends. Merely through the constant need to ward off, one can become weak enough to be unable to defend oneself any longer. . . .
But having quills is a waste, even a double luxury when one can choose not to have quills but open hands.
Another counsel of prudence and self-defense is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one to suspend, as it were, one's 'freedom' and initiative and to become a mere reagent. As a parable I choose association with books. Scholars who at bottom do little nowadays but thumb books . . . ultimately lose entirely their capacity to think for themselves. When they don't thumb, they don't think. They respond to a stimulus (a thought they have read) whenever they think -- in the end, they do nothing but react. Scholars spend all of their energies on saying Yes and No, on criticism of what others have thought -- they themselves no longer think. . . .
Early in the morning, when day breaks, when all is fresh, in the dawn of one's strength -- to read a book at such a time is simply depraved!"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo ("Why I Am So Clever", §8)
But having quills is a waste, even a double luxury when one can choose not to have quills but open hands.
Another counsel of prudence and self-defense is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one to suspend, as it were, one's 'freedom' and initiative and to become a mere reagent. As a parable I choose association with books. Scholars who at bottom do little nowadays but thumb books . . . ultimately lose entirely their capacity to think for themselves. When they don't thumb, they don't think. They respond to a stimulus (a thought they have read) whenever they think -- in the end, they do nothing but react. Scholars spend all of their energies on saying Yes and No, on criticism of what others have thought -- they themselves no longer think. . . .
Early in the morning, when day breaks, when all is fresh, in the dawn of one's strength -- to read a book at such a time is simply depraved!"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo ("Why I Am So Clever", §8)