Page 237 - beyond-good-and-evil

feel a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of
‘direct knowledge’ which theorists allow themselves:—this
matter of fact is almost the most certain thing I know about
myself. There must be a sort of repugnance in me to BE-
LIEVE anything definite about myself.—Is there perhaps
some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for
my own teeth.—Perhaps it betrays the species to which I be-
long?—but not to myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me.’

282. —‘But what has happened to you?’—‘I do not know,’ he
said, hesitatingly; ‘perhaps the Harpies have flown over my
table.’—It sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, so-
ber, retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates,
upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks everybody—and
finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself—whith-
er? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with
his memories?—To him who has the desires of a lofty and
dainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his
food prepared, the danger will always be great—nowadays,
however, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown into the midst of
a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does not like to eat
out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger and
thirst—or, should he nevertheless finally ‘fall to,’ of sudden
nausea.—We have probably all sat at tables to which we did
not belong; and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are
most difficult to nourish, know the dangerous DYSPEPSIA
which originates from a sudden insight and disillusionment
about our food and our messmates—the AFTER-DINNER
NAUSEA.

Beyond Good and Evil