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Can the Envious Ever Really Be Happy?
September 1863.
Excerpt from:
Nietzsche's Writings as a Student.
Translation Copyright 2012, The Nietzsche Channel.
How do we produce the life
and character of a person whom we have come to know? In
general, just as we produce a picture of a region that we
once saw. We have to revisualize its physiognomic
particularities: the nature and form of its mountains,
its fauna and flora, the blue of its sky; all this in its
totality determines the impression. However, what just
stands out at first sight, the mountain ranges, the form
of its rocky terrain, does not provide in itself the
physiogn[omic] character of a region: in different areas
of the earth, similar groups are attracted and are
repelled, identical types of mountains, the same
configurations of inorganic nature emerge according to
identical laws. Something different happens with
organic nature. The subtlest characteristics for a comparative study of
nature are mainly in the vegetable kingdom.
Something similar happens when we want to survey a human life and appreciate it properly. Fortuitous events, gifts of fortune, the changeful appearances of destiny, which arise from interconnected circumstances, should not guide us at this point, since they likewise stand out at first sight like the mountain tops. Precisely those little experiences and internal processes, which we think have been overlooked, in their totality depict the individual character most clearly, they grow organically out of human nature, while those that are inorganic only seem to be connected to them.
It is thus a defect in one's own internal perception1 to wish oneself into the external relations of others, in the belief that one will grow more happy in this new soil; but this wish is also linked to [....]
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