laceration and bodiless abandonment to the Christian death, -- this discord was not so much to be explained, as Christianity had sought to do, from the nature of the individual-man himself, as from the confusion wrought on this nature by an unintelligent view of the essence of Society.” [497W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 168-169]
[498W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 169]
[P. 169] {FEUER} “Before the gaze of the investigator, in his search for the human being, these historic facts upheaped themselves to so huge a mass [Hoard?] of recorded incidents and actions, that the medieval Romance’s plethora-of-Stuff seemed naked penury compared therewith. And yet this mass [Hoard?], whose closer regardal showed it stretching into ever more intricate ramifyings, was to be pierced to its core by the searcher after the reality of man’s affairs, in order to unearth from amidst its crushing waste the one thing that might reward such toil, the genuine undisfigured Man in all his nature’s verity.” [498W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 169]
[499W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 179]
[P. 179] {FEUER} “The Greek Fate is the inner Nature-necessity, from which the Greek – because he did not understand it – sought refuge in the arbitrary political State. Our Fate is the arbitrary political State, which to us shows itself as an outer necessity for the maintenance of Society; and from which we seek refuge in the Nature-necessity, because we have learnt to understand the latter, and have recognised it as the conditionment of our being and all its shapings.” [499W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 179]
[500W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 179-180]
[P. 179] {FEUER} “The life-bent of the Individual utters itself forever newly and directly, but the essence of Society is use and wont and its ‘view’ a mediated one. Wherefore the ‘view’ of Society, so long as it does not fully comprehend the essence of the Individual and its own genesis therefrom, is a hindering and shackling one; and it becomes ever more tyrannical, in exact degree as the quickening and innovating essence of the Individual brings its instinctive thrust to battle against habit. (…) Since the Individual, through his deed committed against ethical Wont, had ruined himself in the eyes of [P. 180] Society (vor der Gesellschaft); but yet, with [later] conscience of his deed, in so far re-entered the pale of Society as he condemned himself by his own conscience (aus ihrem Bewusstein selbst): so the act of unconscious sinning appeared explicable through nothing but a curse which rested on him without his personal guiltiness. This curse – represented in the Mythos as the divine chastisement for a primordial crime, and as cleaving to one special stock until its downfall – is in truth nothing other than an embodiment of the might of Instinct (Unwillkuer) working in the unconscious, Nature-bidden actions of the Individual; whereas Society appears as the conscious, the capricious (Willkuerliche), the true thing to be explained and exculpated. Explained and exculpated will it only be, however, when its manner of viewing is likewise recognised as an instinctive one, and its conscience as grounded on an erroneous view of the essence of the Individual.” [500W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 179-180]
