October 22nd, 2018 10:34 AM
WOTAN GIVES US A HARD HEART
“Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast,” is what an old Scandinavian saga says: the poet who said this caught correctly what springs straight from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is proud of the very fact that he has not been made for compassion: which is why the hero of the saga adds in warning, “If a man does not have a hard heart when young, it will never harden”. The noble and the brave who think like this are the furthest from that morality that sees the badge of morality precisely in compassion or in doing things for others or in selflessness; one’s faith in one’s self, one’s pride in one’s self, a basic animosity and irony towards selflessness belongs just as definitely to noble morality as a mild contempt and wariness towards compassionate feelings and the warm heart”— Nietzsche, from the Genealogy of Morals.