Nietzsche on Forgetting

The opening paragraph of Nietzsche’s The Use and Abuse of History accords a certain privilege to the concept of forgetting that also marks the distinction between the history of man and the history of beast. For, in forgetting, the demarcation between the “painful” and “sorrowful” history of man is counterposed to the “unhistorical” life of the beast, of whose “happiness” he is nonetheless envious. Nietzsche writes:

"Consider the herds that are feeding yonder: they know not the meaning of yesterday or today; they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from morning to night, from day to day, taken up with their little loves and hates and the mercy of the moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety. Man cannot see them without regret, for even in the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on the beast’s happiness. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is all in vain, for he will not change places with it. He may ask the beast—“Why do you look at me and not speak to me of your happiness?” The beast wants to answer—“Because I always forget what I wished to say”; but he forgets this answer, too, and is silent; and the man is left to wonder."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, trans. by Adrian Collins (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1975), 5.