the most unjust condition in the world

think of a man tossed and torn by a powerful passion for a woman or a great thought: how his world is changed! Glancing backwards he feels blind, listening sideways he hears what is foreign as a dull meaningless sound; what he perceives at all he has never perceived so before, so tangibly near, coloured, full of sound and light as though he were apprehending it with all his senses at once. All evaluations are changed and devalued; there is so much he can no longer value because he can hardly feel it: he asks himself whether he has been fooled the whole time by alien words and alien opinions; he is astonished that his memory so tirelessly runs in circles and is yet too weak and too tired to leap even once out of this circle. It is the most unjust condition in the world, narrow, ungrateful to the past, blind to dangers, deaf to warnings, a little living whirlpool in a dead sea of night and forgetting …

Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life §1