Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche - Section 193 - Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit

Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche - Section 193

The content of our waking life influences our dreams and the opposite is true: what we dream about influences how we live our lives. For instance, a man who could experience the freedom and exhilaration of flying in dreams would carry some of that attitude into his real life.

Nietzsche’s point here is connected to his comments in the previous section, and it concerns the importance of the way in which the irrational aspects of ourpersonalities infl uence our outlook on life.

Luke 12:3 - What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.

Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit {“What happened in the light goes on in the dark.”}: but vice versa too. What we experience in dreams, as long as we experience it often enough, ends up belonging to the total economy of our soul just as much as anything we have “really” experienced.

Such experiences make us richer or poorer, we have one need more or less, and finally, in the bright light of day and even in the clearest moments when minds are wide awake, we are coddled a little by the habits of our dreams. Suppose someone frequently dreams that he is flying, and as soon as he starts dreaming he becomes aware of the art and ability of flight as his privilege as well as his most particular, most enviable happiness – someone like this, who thinks he can negotiate every type of curve and corner with the slightest impulse, who knows the feeling of an assured, divine ease, an “upwards” without tension or force, a “downwards” without condescension or abasement – without heaviness! – how could someone with dream experiences and dream habits like these not see that the word “happiness” is colored and determined differently in his waking day too! how could his demands for happiness not be different?

Compared to this “flying,” the “soaring upwards” that the poets describe will have to be too terrestrial, muscular, violent, even too “heavy” for him.