Thursday, December 26, 2019

Weighing . . .


. . . and choosing . . .


(from The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche by H.L. Mencken)
". . . Here was the beginning of intelligence in the boy - the beginning of that weighing and choosing faculty which seems to give man at once his sense of mastery and his feeling of helplessness. The old notion that doubt was a crime crept away. There remained in its place the new notion that the only real crime in the world - the only unmanly, unspeakable and unforgivable offense against the race - was unreasoning belief. Thus the orthodoxy of the Nietzsche home turned upon and devoured itself .  .  . "