Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra 05: Poppy-Headed Virtues

By Sadhika on

Part I: The Academic Chairs of Virtue, Thus Spake Zarathustra

“Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly he carrieth his horn.No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.”

If the psychoanalytic perspective is to be given any credence, one must keep in mind the importance given to dreams by Freud and Jung. They saw dreams as the attempts of the unconscious (personal or collective) to remind the individual of things that he had forgotten or refused to address. Dreams visit the sleeper when he is no longer in the conscious realm, which makes him fit for the ambush of the collective unconscious. In this chapter of the book, Nietzsche underscores the importance of peaceful sleep. 

“Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.
Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.
Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.”

In order to have a restful night’s sleep one’s day must be filled with labour that causes sufficient exhaustion. One must occupy oneself in overcoming oneself for the road that leads one ahead of one’s past self is no doubt arduous, but fulfilling. One must make sure to reconcile with oneself for the act of transcending one's identity in a short span of time can cause one to become fragmented to the point of radical uncertainty. One must provide nourishment to the soul through the truths that one mulls during the day, lest the starved soul seeks truths during the night. Lastly, one must find moments of mirth and amusement during the day so that when the night comes. 

“And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.
That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about thee, thou unhappy one!”

The wise man regards these four tasks of the day as the four virtues that need to be attained in order to have a good night’s sleep. Even so, one must also learn to “send the virtues to sleep at the right time” - to practice them in good measure, assign their right place (no more, no less) to each of them and to have control over them, than to be in their possession. Should one fail to do so, the virtues vie with each other for dominion over the individual and the subsequent conflict drives away sleep once more. 

“Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power like to walk on crooked legs?
He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep.”

There are noble individuals who can restructure the world at the level of the state and the community, but one must be wary of presuming that one stands in the ranks of those individuals. Until one learns to gain mastery over his own house and own psyche, it seems best to offer one’s allegiance to the state, even a flawed state, for the probability that one’s own flawed and inadequate self is going to transform the state for the better is extremely low. Instead, one should lower oneself to the level of his house and address the things that have fallen into disrepair. It is not ignoble in the slightest should one choose to bring about the smallest change that will make the present better than how it presently is. But to do so, one must first acquire the ability to distinguish chaos from order, to take note of the chaos that makes itself known in one’s immediate surroundings (in one’s home, family or psyche), and to be driven enough to want to make order out of it. In order to sleep well, one must first be awake.

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