Page 233 - beyond-good-and-evil

derstood on account of it—they WISH to be misunderstood.
There are ‘scientific minds’ who make use of science, because
it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to
the conclusion that a person is superficial—they WISH to
mislead to a false conclusion. There are free insolent minds
which would fain conceal and deny that they are broken,
proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of Hamlet—the case
of Galiani); and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an
unfortunate OVER- ASSURED knowledge.—From which
it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to
have reverence ‘for the mask,’ and not to make use of psy-
chology and curiosity in the wrong place.

271. That which separates two men most profoundly is a
different sense and grade of purity. What does it matter
about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does
it matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact still re-
mains—they ‘cannot smell each other!’ The highest instinct
for purity places him who is affected with it in the most
extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is
just holiness—the highest spiritualization of the instinct in
question. Any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess
in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which per-
petually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and
out of gloom, out of ‘affliction’ into clearness, brightness,
depth, and refinement:—just as much as such a tendency
DISTINGUISHES—it is a noble tendency—it also SEPA-
RATES.—The pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the
human, all-too-human. And there are grades and heights

Beyond Good and Evil