§348 Measure of wisdom.— Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile.

☛ Human All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”, 1880, in Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1996, §348, p. 393.

The original German version can be found online at the Digital Critical Edition of Nietzsche’s Works and Letters or The Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke und Briefe (eKGWB), where it appears under Published Work, in Menschliches Allzumenschliches II, as part of the second section “Der Wanderer und sein Schatten,” hence as entry WS-348: “Woran die Weisheit zu messen ist. — Der Zuwachs an Weisheit lässt sich genau nach der Abnahme an Galle bemessen.”

Another English translation by Paul V. Cohn (from 1911) reads as follow:

A GAUGE FOR WISDOM. The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill-temper.

In the French edition of Friedrich Nietzshe’s Oeuvres philosophiques complètes edited by Giorgio Colli et Mazzino Montinari and translated by Robert Rovini, the quote appears on page 321 of Humain, trop humain Volume 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1988):

“§348. À quoi mesure la sagesse. L’augmentation de la sagesse peut se mesurer avec précision à la dominution du fiel.”

The same French translation also appears in Oeuvres philosophiques complètes, Humain, trop humain, trans. Henri Albert, t.2, partie 2: “Le Voyageur et son ombre”, [1879] 1909, §348).