The Papyrus, June 1908
Vol. 2 No. 6, pp. 12-14
Last night I dreamed I was in Valhalla and that I stood beside the soul of Friedrich Nietzsche. He was alone. His attitude was a judgment. His arms were folded in a frown. His mouth was an emblazonry of will. On his brow were channeled the fixed finalities of fate. His cheeks were taut. His eyes spat their mockeries on the wind.
He beckoned and spoke thus:
The soul is a born bacchante. Denied the flesh, it will revel in dreams, narcotize itself on abstractions, grow drunk on virtue, or debauch itself (and others) in altruistic pleasures. Tartuffe!
Turn to Seneca’s cook-book and learn the recipe of keeping a dry eye tho suffering the pangs of hell.
Honor is a series of imaginary rules that a man believes his enemy should observe.
From the pinnacle of your greatest Yea you may sight the Northwest Passage of Deliverance.
We deify our weaknesses—and style them virtues.
Man’s moral principles are the excuses for his failures.
I teach you a way to actualize your darling lusts.
’Tis well said the meek and lowly shall inherit the earth—worms they are and to worms shall they return.
“Parsifal”—the eunuch’s dream.
Cowardice is the mother of philosophy. The impotent soul plays ‘possum in life’s battle. This, with sublime effrontery, it calls “philosophic indifference.”
The blessed lowly!—who cringe beneath the rod of Power.
Renunciation is Envy grown impotent.
The River of Dreams empties into the Gulf of Death. Action alone is immortal.
When God spurned Lucifer Lucifer became light.
“Nothing matters”—that’s just what matters.
The turtle scents danger and draws its head into its shell. This is sometimes called humility.
Courtesy is a huge fancy cravat that Society wear upon her bosom to conceal her dirty linen.
[13] Conscience is the tribute that inability pays to capacity.
It is natural for the weak to forgive; it is only the strong who dare the penalties of vengeance.
The weak are always moral. To be “good” is to be good for nothing.
Government is an incubator for preserving the starvelings of fate.
Society is but a development of the herding instinct. Huddle, you sheep!
If thy eye lusteth not, pluck it out.
Speech is Silence learning to articulate.
If you are strong, look to the ground you stand on. The weak are tunneling beneath you.
Immortality: the last salacious dream of that impotent old roué, Self.
Christianity is organized vengeance; the conspiracy of the meek and lowly to make the strong pay for their strength.
“We shall have our champagne and oysters and Axminsters in the next world,” hiss the priests.
He who dare not prey upon the world will prey upon himself. But he must prey on something even though it be the garbage of self.
Self-sacrifice is self-devotion at two removes.
Conscience is the injunction that Fear takes out against the instincts.
We are ruled by the senescent and the adolescent.
We are dominated by an anæmic justice; the red corpuscles of vengeance are turned white.
The Englishman: Arthur Dimmesdale—with a copy of Rabelais secreted in his desk.
A pessimist is a youngster who would rather steal a green apple than buy a red one.
Opinion is pride and prejudice scrawling their justification on the walls of the brain.
Penance is the soul bemoaning its incapacities.
To forgive is human, but to revenge is divine.
He who does penance compounds his faults: He adds a vanity to a transgression.
[14] Morality is an imaginary line that divides illusion into two parts.
I can conceive of no greater evil than the death of evil.
The world has produced but three great men: Spinoza, Goethe, Napoleon. They used life. They created values.
The strong should love the weak as the tiger loves its food.
To have an opinion and to stop thinking are the same thing.
There was only one Christian, and He was a Jew.
Epicurus was the first decadent. But he knew his trade. He wore an Oriental turban that from a distance looked like a crown of thorns, and his sackcloth was lined with ermine and trimmed with eiderdown.
Envy is the mother of invention. I would rather envy than have.
Benjamin De Casseres.