Nietzsche's 1873 notebook entry: "perish in pursuing the great and the impossible"

A one-sentence entry from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks (the Nachlass) of 1873, as translated in John Kaag's Hiking with Nietzsche. The curator supplied the wording; no page of the book was held. The entry is dated 1873 by its place in the notebooks, which gives no day or month, so there is no published: date here.

Set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in pursuing the great and the impossible.

Kaag's rendering adds the Latin tag animae magnae prodigus, "lavish with a great soul".

What it says

• Purpose is chosen, and aimed past success. The goal is "the great and the impossible", so failing at it is built into the plan. The value sits in the pursuit, and the perishing is the price the entry accepts openly.
• Nobility as spending. The Latin tag frames a great soul as one that gives itself away rather than hoards. That is the vocabulary of Nietzsche's "noble" side of master morality (self-affirmation) set against a prudent, self-preserving ethic.
• Early. 1873 is the year of the Untimely Meditations, long before the late doctrines of will to power and eternal recurrence. The entry shows the affirmation of life through high aims already in place, and it should not be read as a summary of those later doctrines.

Caveats

• T3, one translator, one remove. A quote relayed from a popular book of philosophical travel writing. The German original was not checked. Treat the wording as Kaag's, not as settled Nietzsche.
• The curator's note on the book's imprint (2014, Henry Holt) was not verified here; it should be checked before the page cites an edition.
• Internet versions are padded. The quote circulates on social media with added lines ("Where would the courage in greatness be...") that are not Nietzsche. Only the sentence above is used.

Where it connects

Added to friedrich-nietzsche as a point on purpose and nobility. It sits beside the response to nihilism: if inherited values have collapsed, one answer is to set a goal large enough to spend a life on. Camus takes the opposite line on the same gap, in his absurdism.