The Twilight of the Idols

The Twilight of the Idols THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES 1 In all ages the wisest have always agreed in their V judgment of life: it is no good. At all times and places the same words have been on their lips,--words full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of hostility to life. Even Socrates' dying words were:--"To live--means to be ill a long while: I owe a cock to the god Æsculapius." Even Socrates had had enough of it. What does that prove? What does it point to? Formerly people would have said (--oh, it has been said, and loudly enough too; by our Pessimists loudest of all!): "In any case there must be some truth in this! The consensus sapientium is a proof of truth."--Shall we say the same to-day? May we do so? "In any case there must be some sickness here," we make reply. These great sages of all periods should first be examined more closely! Is it possible that they were, everyone of them, a little shaky on their legs, effete, rocky, decadent? Does wisdom perhaps appear on earth after the manner of a crow attracted by a slight smell of carrion? 2 This irreverent belief that the great sages were decadent types, first occurred to me precisely in regard to that case concerning which both learned and vulgar prejudice was most opposed to my view I recognised Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decline, as instruments in the disintegration of Hellas, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek ("The Birth of Tragedy," 1872). That consensus sapientium, as I perceived ever more and more clearly, did not in the least prove that they were right in the matter on which they agreed. It proved rather that these sages themselves must have been alike in some physiological particular, in ord