To Nietzsche the world and existence justify themselves only as
an aesthetic phenomenon, the work of a god wholly the artist; "and in
this sense the object of the tragic myth is precisely to convince us
that even the horrible and the monstrous are no more than an aesthetic
game played with itself by the Will in the eternal plenitude of its
joy." "The Will" is Schopenhauer's "Will," the vital principle. "If it
were possible," says Nietzsche, in one of his astonishing figures of
speech, "to imagine a dissonance becoming a human being (and what is man
but that?), in order to endure life, this dissonance would need some
admirable illusion to hide from itself its true nature, under a veil of
beauty." This is the aim of art, as it calls up pictures of the visible
world and of the little temporary actions of men on its surface. The
hoofed satyr of Dionysus, as he leaps into the midst of these gracious
appearances, drunk with the young wine of nature, surly with the old
wisdom of Silenus, brings the real, excessive, disturbing truth of
things suddenly into the illusion; and is gone again, with a shrill
laugh, without forcing on us more of his presence than we can bear.
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