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diff --git a/38145-8.txt b/38145-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4511e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/38145-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4317 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Human, All Too Human, by Friedrich Nietzsche + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Human, All Too Human + A Book for Free Spirits + +Author: Friedrich Nietzsche + +Translator: Alexander Harvey + +Release Date: November 26, 2011 [EBook #38145] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN *** + + + + +Produced by Gary Rees, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN + + A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS + + BY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE + + + TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER HARVEY + + CHICAGO + CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY + 1908 + + + Copyright 1908 + By Charles H. Kerr & Company + + + + + CONTENTS + + + AUTHOR'S PREFACE + + OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS + + HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS + + THE RELIGIOUS LIFE + + + + +PREFACE. + + +1 + +It is often enough, and always with great surprise, intimated to me that +there is something both ordinary and unusual in all my writings, from +the "Birth of Tragedy" to the recently published "Prelude to a +Philosophy of the Future": they all contain, I have been told, snares +and nets for short sighted birds, and something that is almost a +constant, subtle, incitement to an overturning of habitual opinions and +of approved customs. What!? Everything is merely--human--all too human? +With this exclamation my writings are gone through, not without a +certain dread and mistrust of ethic itself and not without a disposition +to ask the exponent of evil things if those things be not simply +misrepresented. My writings have been termed a school of distrust, still +more of disdain: also, and more happily, of courage, audacity even. And +in fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world +with a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timely +advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy and +challenger of God; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequences +of such deep distrust, anything of the chills and the agonies of +isolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemns +him endowed with it, will also understand how often I must have sought +relief and self-forgetfulness from any source--through any object of +veneration or enmity, of scientific seriousness or wanton lightness; +also why I, when I could not find what I was in need of, had to fashion +it for myself, counterfeiting it or imagining it (and what poet or +writer has ever done anything else, and what other purpose can all the +art in the world possibly have?) That which I always stood most in need +of in order to effect my cure and self-recovery was faith, faith enough +not to be thus isolated, not to look at life from so singular a point of +view--a magic apprehension (in eye and mind) of relationship and +equality, a calm confidence in friendship, a blindness, free from +suspicion and questioning, to two sidedness; a pleasure in externals, +superficialities, the near, the accessible, in all things possessed of +color, skin and seeming. Perhaps I could be fairly reproached with much +"art" in this regard, many fine counterfeitings; for example, that, +wisely or wilfully, I had shut my eyes to Schopenhauer's blind will +towards ethic, at a time when I was already clear sighted enough on the +subject of ethic; likewise that I had deceived myself concerning Richard +Wagner's incurable romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an +end; likewise concerning the Greeks, likewise concerning the Germans and +their future--and there may be, perhaps, a long list of such likewises. +Granted, however, that all this were true, and with justice urged +against me, what does it signify, what can it signify in regard to how +much of the self-sustaining capacity, how much of reason and higher +protection are embraced in such self-deception?--and how much more +falsity is still necessary to me that I may therewith always reassure +myself regarding the luxury of my truth. Enough, I still live; and life +is not considered now apart from ethic; it _will_ [have] deception; it +thrives (lebt) on deception ... but am I not beginning to do all over +again what I have always done, I, the old immoralist, and bird +snarer--talk unmorally, ultramorally, "beyond good and evil"? + + +2 + +Thus, then, have I evolved for myself the "free spirits" to whom this +discouraging-encouraging work, under the general title "Human, All Too +Human," is dedicated. Such "free spirits" do not really exist and never +did exist. But I stood in need of them, as I have pointed out, in order +that some good might be mixed with my evils (illness, loneliness, +strangeness, _acedia_, incapacity): to serve as gay spirits and +comrades, with whom one may talk and laugh when one is disposed to talk +and laugh, and whom one may send to the devil when they grow wearisome. +They are some compensation for the lack of friends. That such free +spirits can possibly exist, that our Europe will yet number among her +sons of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow, such a brilliant and +enthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case, +fantasms and imaginary shades, I, myself, can by no means doubt. I see +them already coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I am doing a +little something to expedite their coming when I describe in advance the +influences under which I see them evolving and the ways along which they +travel? + + +3 + +It may be conjectured that a soul in which the type of "free spirit" can +attain maturity and completeness had its decisive and deciding event in +the form of a great emancipation or unbinding, and that prior to that +event it seemed only the more firmly and forever chained to its place +and pillar. What binds strongest? What cords seem almost unbreakable? In +the case of mortals of a choice and lofty nature they will be those of +duty: that reverence, which in youth is most typical, that timidity and +tenderness in the presence of the traditionally honored and the worthy, +that gratitude to the soil from which we sprung, for the hand that +guided us, for the relic before which we were taught to pray--their +sublimest moments will themselves bind these souls most strongly. The +great liberation comes suddenly to such prisoners, like an earthquake: +the young soul is all at once shaken, torn apart, cast forth--it +comprehends not itself what is taking place. An involuntary onward +impulse rules them with the mastery of command; a will, a wish are +developed to go forward, anywhere, at any price; a strong, dangerous +curiosity regarding an undiscovered world flames and flashes in all +their being. "Better to die than live _here_"--so sounds the tempting +voice: and this "here," this "at home" constitutes all they have +hitherto loved. A sudden dread and distrust of that which they loved, a +flash of contempt for that which is called their "duty," a mutinous, +wilful, volcanic-like longing for a far away journey, strange scenes and +people, annihilation, petrifaction, a hatred surmounting love, perhaps a +sacrilegious impulse and look backwards, to where they so long prayed +and loved, perhaps a flush of shame for what they did and at the same +time an exultation at having done it, an inner, intoxicating, +delightful tremor in which is betrayed the sense of victory--a victory? +over what? over whom? a riddle-like victory, fruitful in questioning and +well worth questioning, but the _first_ victory, for all--such things of +pain and ill belong to the history of the great liberation. And it is at +the same time a malady that can destroy a man, this first outbreak of +strength and will for self-destination, self-valuation, this will for +free will: and how much illness is forced to the surface in the frantic +strivings and singularities with which the freedman, the liberated seeks +henceforth to attest his mastery over things! He roves fiercely around, +with an unsatisfied longing and whatever objects he may encounter must +suffer from the perilous expectancy of his pride; he tears to pieces +whatever attracts him. With a sardonic laugh he overturns whatever he +finds veiled or protected by any reverential awe: he would see what +these things look like when they are overturned. It is wilfulness and +delight in the wilfulness of it, if he now, perhaps, gives his approval +to that which has heretofore been in ill repute--if, in curiosity and +experiment, he penetrates stealthily to the most forbidden things. In +the background during all his plunging and roaming--for he is as +restless and aimless in his course as if lost in a wilderness--is the +interrogation mark of a curiosity growing ever more dangerous. "Can we +not upset every standard? and is good perhaps evil? and God only an +invention and a subtlety of the devil? Is everything, in the last +resort, false? And if we are dupes are we not on that very account +dupers also? _must_ we not be dupers also?" Such reflections lead and +mislead him, ever further on, ever further away. Solitude, that dread +goddess and mater saeva cupidinum, encircles and besets him, ever more +threatening, more violent, more heart breaking--but who to-day knows +what solitude is? + + +4 + +From this morbid solitude, from the deserts of such trial years, the way +is yet far to that great, overflowing certainty and healthiness which +cannot dispense even with sickness as a means and a grappling hook of +knowledge; to that matured freedom of the spirit which is, in an equal +degree, self mastery and discipline of the heart, and gives access to +the path of much and various reflection--to that inner comprehensiveness +and self satisfaction of over-richness which precludes all danger that +the spirit has gone astray even in its own path and is sitting +intoxicated in some corner or other; to that overplus of plastic, +healing, imitative and restorative power which is the very sign of +vigorous health, that overplus which confers upon the free spirit the +perilous prerogative of spending a life in experiment and of running +adventurous risks: the past-master-privilege of the free spirit. In the +interval there may be long years of convalescence, years filled with +many hued painfully-bewitching transformations, dominated and led to the +goal by a tenacious will for health that is often emboldened to assume +the guise and the disguise of health. There is a middle ground to this, +which a man of such destiny can not subsequently recall without emotion; +he basks in a special fine sun of his own, with a feeling of birdlike +freedom, birdlike visual power, birdlike irrepressibleness, a something +extraneous (Drittes) in which curiosity and delicate disdain have +united. A "free spirit"--this refreshing term is grateful in any mood, +it almost sets one aglow. One lives--no longer in the bonds of love and +hate, without a yes or no, here or there indifferently, best pleased to +evade, to avoid, to beat about, neither advancing nor retreating. One is +habituated to the bad, like a person who all at once sees a fearful +hurly-burly _beneath_ him--and one was the counterpart of him who +bothers himself with things that do not concern him. As a matter of fact +the free spirit is bothered with mere things--and how many +things--which no longer _concern_ him. + + +5 + +A step further in recovery: and the free spirit draws near to life +again, slowly indeed, almost refractorily, almost distrustfully. There +is again warmth and mellowness: feeling and fellow feeling acquire +depth, lambent airs stir all about him. He almost feels: it seems as if +now for the first time his eyes are open to things _near_. He is in +amaze and sits hushed: for where had he been? These near and immediate +things: how changed they seem to him! He looks gratefully back--grateful +for his wandering, his self exile and severity, his lookings afar and +his bird flights in the cold heights. How fortunate that he has not, +like a sensitive, dull home body, remained always "in the house" and "at +home!" He had been beside himself, beyond a doubt. Now for the first +time he really sees himself--and what surprises in the process. What +hitherto unfelt tremors! Yet what joy in the exhaustion, the old +sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How it delights him, +suffering, to sit still, to exercise patience, to lie in the sun! Who so +well as he appreciates the fact that there comes balmy weather even in +winter, who delights more in the sunshine athwart the wall? They are +the most appreciative creatures in the world, and also the most humble, +these convalescents and lizards, crawling back towards life: there are +some among them who can let no day slip past them without addressing +some song of praise to its retreating light. And speaking seriously, it +is a fundamental cure for all pessimism (the cankerous vice, as is well +known, of all idealists and humbugs), to become ill in the manner of +these free spirits, to remain ill quite a while and then bit by bit grow +healthy--I mean healthier. It is wisdom, worldly wisdom, to administer +even health to oneself for a long time in small doses. + + +6 + +About this time it becomes at last possible, amid the flash lights of a +still unestablished, still precarious health, for the free, the ever +freer spirit to begin to read the riddle of that great liberation, a +riddle which has hitherto lingered, obscure, well worth questioning, +almost impalpable, in his memory. If once he hardly dared to ask "why so +apart? so alone? renouncing all I loved? renouncing respect itself? why +this coldness, this suspicion, this hate for one's very virtues?"--now +he dares, and asks it loudly, already hearing the answer, "you had to +become master over yourself, master of your own good qualities. Formerly +they were your masters: but they should be merely your tools along with +other tools. You had to acquire power over your aye and no and learn to +hold and withhold them in accordance with your higher aims. You had to +grasp the perspective of every representation (Werthschätzung)--the +dislocation, distortion and the apparent end or teleology of the +horizon, besides whatever else appertains to the perspective: also the +element of demerit in its relation to opposing merit, and the whole +intellectual cost of every affirmative, every negative. You had to find +out the _inevitable_ error[1] in every Yes and in every No, error as +inseparable from life, life itself as conditioned by the perspective and +its inaccuracy.[1] Above all, you had to see with your own eyes where +the error[1] is always greatest: there, namely, where life is littlest, +narrowest, meanest, least developed and yet cannot help looking upon +itself as the goal and standard of things, and smugly and ignobly and +incessantly tearing to tatters all that is highest and greatest and +richest, and putting the shreds into the form of questions from the +standpoint of its own well being. You had to see with your own eyes the +problem of classification, (Rangordnung, regulation concerning rank and +station) and how strength and sweep and reach of perspective wax upward +together: You had"--enough, the free spirit knows henceforward which +"you had" it has obeyed and also what it now can do and what it now, for +the first time, _dare_. + +[1] Ungerechtigkeit, literally wrongfulness, injustice, unrighteousness. + + +7 + +Accordingly, the free spirit works out for itself an answer to that +riddle of its liberation and concludes by generalizing upon its +experience in the following fashion: "What I went through everyone must +go through" in whom any problem is germinated and strives to body itself +forth. The inner power and inevitability of this problem will assert +themselves in due course, as in the case of any unsuspected +pregnancy--long before the spirit has seen this problem in its true +aspect and learned to call it by its right name. Our destiny exercises +its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: +it is our future that lays down the law to our to-day. Granted, that it +is the problem of classification[2] of which we free spirits may say, +this is _our_ problem, yet it is only now, in the midday of our life, +that we fully appreciate what preparations, shifts, trials, ordeals, +stages, were essential to that problem before it could emerge to our +view, and why we had to go through the various and contradictory +longings and satisfactions of body and soul, as circumnavigators and +adventurers of that inner world called "man"; as surveyors of that +"higher" and of that "progression"[3] that is also called +"man"--crowding in everywhere, almost without fear, disdaining nothing, +missing nothing, testing everything, sifting everything and eliminating +the chance impurities--until at last we could say, we free spirits: +"Here--a _new_ problem! Here, a long ladder on the rungs of which we +ourselves have rested and risen, which we have actually been at times. +Here is a something higher, a something deeper, a something below us, a +vastly extensive order, (Ordnung) a comparative classification +(Rangordnung), that we perceive: here--_our_ problem!" + +[2] Rangordnung: the meaning is "the problem of grasping the relative +importance of things." + +[3] Uebereinander: one over another. + + +8 + +To what stage in the development just outlined the present book belongs +(or is assigned) is something that will be hidden from no augur or +psychologist for an instant. But where are there psychologists to-day? +In France, certainly; in Russia, perhaps; certainly not in Germany. +Grounds are not wanting, to be sure, upon which the Germans of to-day +may adduce this fact to their credit: unhappily for one who in this +matter is fashioned and mentored in an un-German school! This _German_ +book, which has found its readers in a wide circle of lands and +peoples--it has been some ten years on its rounds--and which must make +its way by means of any musical art and tune that will captivate the +foreign ear as well as the native--this book has been read most +indifferently in Germany itself and little heeded there: to what is that +due? "It requires too much," I have been told, "it addresses itself to +men free from the press of petty obligations, it demands fine and +trained perceptions, it requires a surplus, a surplus of time, of the +lightness of heaven and of the heart, of otium in the most unrestricted +sense: mere good things that we Germans of to-day have not got and +therefore cannot give." After so graceful a retort, my philosophy bids +me be silent and ask no more questions: at times, as the proverb says, +one remains a philosopher only because one says--nothing! + +Nice, Spring, 1886. + + + + +OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS. + + +1 + +=Chemistry of the Notions and the Feelings.=--Philosophical problems, in +almost all their aspects, present themselves in the same interrogative +formula now that they did two thousand years ago: how can a thing +develop out of its antithesis? for example, the reasonable from the +non-reasonable, the animate from the inanimate, the logical from the +illogical, altruism from egoism, disinterestedness from greed, truth +from error? The metaphysical philosophy formerly steered itself clear of +this difficulty to such extent as to repudiate the evolution of one +thing from another and to assign a miraculous origin to what it deemed +highest and best, due to the very nature and being of the +"thing-in-itself." The historical philosophy, on the other hand, which +can no longer be viewed apart from physical science, the youngest of all +philosophical methods, discovered experimentally (and its results will +probably always be the same) that there is no antithesis whatever, +except in the usual exaggerations of popular or metaphysical +comprehension, and that an error of the reason is at the bottom of such +contradiction. According to its explanation, there is, strictly +speaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of +view. Both are simply sublimations in which the basic element seems +almost evaporated and betrays its presence only to the keenest +observation. All that we need and that could possibly be given us in the +present state of development of the sciences, is a chemistry of the +moral, religious, aesthetic conceptions and feeling, as well as of those +emotions which we experience in the affairs, great and small, of society +and civilization, and which we are sensible of even in solitude. But +what if this chemistry established the fact that, even in _its_ domain, +the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and most +despised ingredients? Would many feel disposed to continue such +investigations? Mankind loves to put by the questions of its origin and +beginning: must one not be almost inhuman in order to follow the +opposite course? + + +2 + +=The Traditional Error of Philosophers.=--All philosophers make the +common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of +trying, through an analysis of him, to reach a conclusion. "Man" +involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a +passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet +everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the +last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man +during a very limited period of time. Lack of the historical sense is +the traditional defect in all philosophers. Many innocently take man in +his most childish state as fashioned through the influence of certain +religious and even of certain political developments, as the permanent +form under which man must be viewed. They will not learn that man has +evolved,[4] that the intellectual faculty itself is an evolution, +whereas some philosophers make the whole cosmos out of this intellectual +faculty. But everything essential in human evolution took place aeons +ago, long before the four thousand years or so of which we know +anything: during these man may not have changed very much. However, the +philosopher ascribes "instinct" to contemporary man and assumes that +this is one of the unalterable facts regarding man himself, and hence +affords a clue to the understanding of the universe in general. The +whole teleology is so planned that man during the last four thousand +years shall be spoken of as a being existing from all eternity, and +with reference to whom everything in the cosmos from its very inception +is naturally ordered. Yet everything evolved: there are no eternal facts +as there are no absolute truths. Accordingly, historical philosophising +is henceforth indispensable, and with it honesty of judgment. + +[4] geworden. + + +3 + +=Appreciation of Simple Truths.=--It is the characteristic of an +advanced civilization to set a higher value upon little, simple truths, +ascertained by scientific method, than upon the pleasing and magnificent +errors originating in metaphysical and æsthetical epochs and peoples. To +begin with, the former are spoken of with contempt as if there could be +no question of comparison respecting them, so rigid, homely, prosaic and +even discouraging is the aspect of the first, while so beautiful, +decorative, intoxicating and perhaps beatific appear the last named. +Nevertheless, the hardwon, the certain, the lasting and, therefore, the +fertile in new knowledge, is the higher; to hold fast to it is manly and +evinces courage, directness, endurance. And not only individual men but +all mankind will by degrees be uplifted to this manliness when they are +finally habituated to the proper appreciation of tenable, enduring +knowledge and have lost all faith in inspiration and in the miraculous +revelation of truth. The reverers of forms, indeed, with their standards +of beauty and taste, may have good reason to laugh when the appreciation +of little truths and the scientific spirit begin to prevail, but that +will be only because their eyes are not yet opened to the charm of the +utmost simplicity of form or because men though reared in the rightly +appreciative spirit, will still not be fully permeated by it, so that +they continue unwittingly imitating ancient forms (and that ill enough, +as anybody does who no longer feels any interest in a thing). Formerly +the mind was not brought into play through the medium of exact thought. +Its serious business lay in the working out of forms and symbols. That +has now changed. Any seriousness in symbolism is at present the +indication of a deficient education. As our very acts become more +intellectual, our tendencies more rational, and our judgment, for +example, as to what seems reasonable, is very different from what it was +a hundred years ago: so the forms of our lives grow ever more +intellectual and, to the old fashioned eye, perhaps, uglier, but only +because it cannot see that the richness of inner, rational beauty always +spreads and deepens, and that the inner, rational aspect of all things +should now be of more consequence to us than the most beautiful +externality and the most exquisite limning. + + +4 + +=Astrology and the Like.=--It is presumable that the objects of the +religious, moral, aesthetic and logical notions pertain simply to the +superficialities of things, although man flatters himself with the +thought that here at least he is getting to the heart of the cosmos. He +deceives himself because these things have power to make him so happy +and so wretched, and so he evinces, in this respect, the same conceit +that characterises astrology. Astrology presupposes that the heavenly +bodies are regulated in their movements in harmony with the destiny of +mortals: the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself most +nearly must also be the heart and soul of things. + + +5 + +=Misconception of Dreams.=--In the dream, mankind, in epochs of crude +primitive civilization, thought they were introduced to a second, +substantial world: here we have the source of all metaphysic. Without +the dream, men would never have been incited to an analysis of the +world. Even the distinction between soul and body is wholly due to the +primitive conception of the dream, as also the hypothesis of the +embodied soul, whence the development of all superstition, and also, +probably, the belief in god. "The dead still live: for they appear to +the living in dreams." So reasoned mankind at one time, and through many +thousands of years. + + +6 + +=The Scientific Spirit Prevails only Partially, not Wholly.=--The +specialized, minutest departments of science are dealt with purely +objectively. But the general universal sciences, considered as a great, +basic unity, posit the question--truly a very living question--: to what +purpose? what is the use? Because of this reference to utility they are, +as a whole, less impersonal than when looked at in their specialized +aspects. Now in the case of philosophy, as forming the apex of the +scientific pyramid, this question of the utility of knowledge is +necessarily brought very conspicuously forward, so that every philosophy +has, unconsciously, the air of ascribing the highest utility to itself. +It is for this reason that all philosophies contain such a great amount +of high flying metaphysic, and such a shrinking from the seeming +insignificance of the deliverances of physical science: for the +significance of knowledge in relation to life must be made to appear as +great as possible. This constitutes the antagonism between the +specialties of science and philosophy. The latter aims, as art aims, at +imparting to life and conduct the utmost depth and significance: in the +former mere knowledge is sought and nothing else--whatever else be +incidentally obtained. Heretofore there has never been a philosophical +system in which philosophy itself was not made the apologist of +knowledge [in the abstract]. On this point, at least, each is optimistic +and insists that to knowledge the highest utility must be ascribed. They +are all under the tyranny of logic, which is, from its very nature, +optimism. + + +7 + +=The Discordant Element in Science.=--Philosophy severed itself from +science when it put the question: what is that knowledge of the world +and of life through which mankind may be made happiest? This happened +when the Socratic school arose: with the standpoint of _happiness_ the +arteries of investigating science were compressed too tightly to permit +of any circulation of the blood--and are so compressed to-day. + + +8 + +=Pneumatic Explanation of Nature.=[5]--Metaphysic reads the message of +nature as if it were written purely pneumatically, as the church and its +learned ones formerly did where the bible was concerned. It requires a +great deal of expertness to apply to nature the same strict science of +interpretation that the philologists have devised for all literature, +and to apply it for the purpose of a simple, direct interpretation of +the message, and at the same time, not bring out a double meaning. But, +as in the case of books and literature, errors of exposition are far +from being completely eliminated, and vestiges of allegorical and +mystical interpretations are still to be met with in the most cultivated +circles, so where nature is concerned the case is--actually much worse. + +[5] Pneumatic is here used in the sense of spiritual. Pneuma being the +Greek word in the New Testament for the Holy Spirit.--Ed. + + +9 + +=Metaphysical World.=--It is true, there may be a metaphysical world; +the absolute possibility of it can scarcely be disputed. We see all +things through the medium of the human head and we cannot well cut off +this head: although there remains the question what part of the world +would be left after it had been cut off. But that is a purely abstract +scientific problem and one not much calculated to give men uneasiness: +yet everything that has heretofore made metaphysical assumptions +valuable, fearful or delightful to men, all that gave rise to them is +passion, error and self deception: the worst systems of knowledge, not +the best, pin their tenets of belief thereto. When such methods are once +brought to view as the basis of all existing religions and metaphysics, +they are already discredited. There always remains, however, the +possibility already conceded: but nothing at all can be made out of +that, to say not a word about letting happiness, salvation and life hang +upon the threads spun from such a possibility. Accordingly, nothing +could be predicated of the metaphysical world beyond the fact that it is +an elsewhere,[6] another sphere, inaccessible and incomprehensible to +us: it would become a thing of negative properties. Even were the +existence of such a world absolutely established, it would nevertheless +remain incontrovertible that of all kinds of knowledge, knowledge of +such a world would be of least consequence--of even less consequence +than knowledge of the chemical analysis of water would be to a storm +tossed mariner. + +[6] Anderssein. + + +10 + +=The Harmlessness of Metaphysic in the Future.=--As soon as religion, +art and ethics are so understood that a full comprehension of them can +be gained without taking refuge in the postulates of metaphysical +claptrap at any point in the line of reasoning, there will be a complete +cessation of interest in the purely theoretical problem of the "thing in +itself" and the "phenomenon." For here, too, the same truth applies: in +religion, art and ethics we are not concerned with the "essence of the +cosmos".[7] We are in the sphere of pure conception. No presentiment [or +intuition] can carry us any further. With perfect tranquility the +question of how our conception of the world could differ so sharply from +the actual world as it is manifest to us, will be relegated to the +physiological sciences and to the history of the evolution of ideas and +organisms. + +[7] "Wesen der Welt an sich." + + +11 + +=Language as a Presumptive Science.=--The importance of language in the +development of civilization consists in the fact that by means of it +man placed one world, his own, alongside another, a place of leverage +that he thought so firm as to admit of his turning the rest of the +cosmos on a pivot that he might master it. In so far as man for ages +looked upon mere ideas and names of things as upon aeternae veritates, +he evinced the very pride with which he raised himself above the brute. +He really supposed that in language he possessed a knowledge of the +cosmos. The language builder was not so modest as to believe that he was +only giving names to things. On the contrary he thought he embodied the +highest wisdom concerning things in [mere] words; and, in truth, +language is the first movement in all strivings for wisdom. Here, too, +it is _faith in ascertained truth_[8] from which the mightiest fountains +of strength have flowed. Very tardily--only now--it dawns upon men that +they have propagated a monstrous error in their belief in language. +Fortunately, it is too late now to arrest and turn back the evolutionary +process of the reason, which had its inception in this belief. Logic +itself rests upon assumptions to which nothing in the world of reality +corresponds. For example, the correspondence of certain things to one +another and the identity of those things at different periods of time +are assumptions pure and simple, but the science of logic originated in +the positive belief that they were not assumptions at all but +established facts. It is the same with the science of mathematics which +certainly would never have come into existence if mankind had known from +the beginning that in all nature there is no perfectly straight line, no +true circle, no standard of measurement. + +[8] Glaube an die gefundene Wahrheit, as distinguished from faith in +what is taken on trust as truth. + + +12 + +=Dream and Civilization.=--The function of the brain which is most +encroached upon in slumber is the memory; not that it is wholly +suspended, but it is reduced to a state of imperfection as, in primitive +ages of mankind, was probably the case with everyone, whether waking or +sleeping. Uncontrolled and entangled as it is, it perpetually confuses +things as a result of the most trifling similarities, yet in the same +mental confusion and lack of control the nations invented their +mythologies, while nowadays travelers habitually observe how prone the +savage is to forgetfulness, how his mind, after the least exertion of +memory, begins to wander and lose itself until finally he utters +falsehood and nonsense from sheer exhaustion. Yet, in dreams, we all +resemble this savage. Inadequacy of distinction and error of comparison +are the basis of the preposterous things we do and say in dreams, so +that when we clearly recall a dream we are startled that so much idiocy +lurks within us. The absolute distinctness of all dream-images, due to +implicit faith in their substantial reality, recalls the conditions in +which earlier mankind were placed, for whom hallucinations had +extraordinary vividness, entire communities and even entire nations +laboring simultaneously under them. Therefore: in sleep and in dream we +make the pilgrimage of early mankind over again. + + +13 + +=Logic of the Dream.=--During sleep the nervous system, through various +inner provocatives, is in constant agitation. Almost all the organs act +independently and vigorously. The blood circulates rapidly. The posture +of the sleeper compresses some portions of the body. The coverlets +influence the sensations in different ways. The stomach carries on the +digestive process and acts upon other organs thereby. The intestines are +in motion. The position of the head induces unaccustomed action. The +feet, shoeless, no longer pressing the ground, are the occasion of other +sensations of novelty, as is, indeed, the changed garb of the entire +body. All these things, following the bustle and change of the day, +result, through their novelty, in a movement throughout the entire +system that extends even to the brain functions. Thus there are a +hundred circumstances to induce perplexity in the mind, a questioning as +to the cause of this excitation. Now, the dream is a _seeking and +presenting of reasons_ for these excitations of feeling, of the supposed +reasons, that is to say. Thus, for example, whoever has his feet bound +with two threads will probably dream that a pair of serpents are coiled +about his feet. This is at first a hypothesis, then a belief with an +accompanying imaginative picture and the argument: "these snakes must be +the _causa_ of those sensations which I, the sleeper, now have." So +reasons the mind of the sleeper. The conditions precedent, as thus +conjectured, become, owing to the excitation of the fancy, present +realities. Everyone knows from experience how a dreamer will transform +one piercing sound, for example, that of a bell, into another of quite a +different nature, say, the report of cannon. In his dream he becomes +aware first of the effects, which he explains by a subsequent hypothesis +and becomes persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the sound. But +how comes it that the mind of the dreamer goes so far astray when the +same mind, awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so conservative +in its dealings with hypotheses? why does the first plausible +hypothesis of the cause of a sensation gain credit in the dreaming +state? (For in a dream we look upon that dream as reality, that is, we +accept our hypotheses as fully established). I have no doubt that as men +argue in their dreams to-day, mankind argued, even in their waking +moments, for thousands of years: the first _causa_, that occurred to the +mind with reference to anything that stood in need of explanation, was +accepted as the true explanation and served as such. (Savages show the +same tendency in operation, as the reports of travelers agree). In the +dream this atavistic relic of humanity manifests its existence within +us, for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational faculty +developed itself and still develops itself in every individual. Dreams +carry us back to the earlier stages of human culture and afford us a +means of understanding it more clearly. Dream thought comes so easily to +us now because we are so thoroughly trained to it through the +interminable stages of evolution during which this fanciful and facile +form of theorising has prevailed. To a certain extent the dream is a +restorative for the brain, which, during the day, is called upon to meet +the many demands for trained thought made upon it by the conditions of a +higher civilization.--We may, if we please, become sensible, even in our +waking moments, of a condition that is as a door and vestibule to +dreaming. If we close our eyes the brain immediately conjures up a +medley of impressions of light and color, apparently a sort of imitation +and echo of the impressions forced in upon the brain during its waking +moments. And now the mind, in co-operation with the imagination, +transforms this formless play of light and color into definite figures, +moving groups, landscapes. What really takes place is a sort of +reasoning from effect back to cause. As the brain inquires: whence these +impressions of light and color? it posits as the inducing causes of such +lights and colors, those shapes and figures. They serve the brain as the +occasions of those lights and colors because the brain, when the eyes +are open and the senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the cause of +every impression of light and color made upon it. Here again the +imagination is continually interposing its images inasmuch as it +participates in the production of the impressions made through the +senses day by day: and the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing--that +is, the presumed cause is determined from the effect and _after_ the +effect: all this, too, with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this +matter, as in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a confusion of +the mind is produced and an after effect is made to appear a +simultaneous action, an inverted succession of events, even.--From +these considerations we can see how _late_ strict, logical thought, the +true notion of cause and effect must have been in developing, since our +intellectual and rational faculties to this very day revert to these +primitive processes of deduction, while practically half our lifetime is +spent in the super-inducing conditions.--Even the poet, the artist, +ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states causes which are not +the true ones. To that extent he is a reminder of early mankind and can +aid us in its comprehension. + + +14 + +=Association.=[9]--All strong feelings are associated with a variety of +allied sentiments and emotions. They stir up the memory at the same +time. When we are under their influence we are reminded of similar +states and we feel a renewal of them within us. Thus are formed habitual +successions of feelings and notions, which, at last, when they follow +one another with lightning rapidity are no longer felt as complexities +but as unities. In this sense we hear of moral feelings, of religious +feelings, as if they were absolute unities. In reality they are streams +with a hundred sources and tributaries. Here again, the unity of the +word speaks nothing for the unity of the thing. + +[9] Miterklingen: to sound simultaneously with. + + +15 + +=No Within and Without in the World.=[10]--As Democritus transferred the +notions above and below to limitless space, where they are destitute of +meaning, so the philosophers do generally with the idea "within and +without," as regards the form and substance (Wesen und Erscheinung) of +the world. What they claim is that through the medium of profound +feelings one can penetrate deep into the soul of things (Innre), draw +close to the heart of nature. But these feelings are deep only in so far +as with them are simultaneously aroused, although almost imperceptibly, +certain complicated groups of thoughts (Gedankengruppen) which we call +deep: a feeling is deep because we deem the thoughts accompanying it +deep. But deep thought can nevertheless be very widely sundered from +truth, as for instance every metaphysical thought. Take from deep +feeling the element of thought blended with it and all that remains is +_strength_ of feeling which is no voucher for the validity of +knowledge, as intense faith is evidence only of its own intensity and +not of the truth of that in which the faith is felt. + +[10] Kein Innen und Aussen in der Welt: the above translation may seem +too literal but some dispute has arisen concerning the precise idea the +author means to convey. + + +16 + +=Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself.=--The philosophers are in the habit of +placing themselves in front of life and experience--that which they call +the world of phenomena--as if they were standing before a picture that +is unrolled before them in its final completeness. This panorama, they +think, must be studied in every detail in order to reach some conclusion +regarding the object represented by the picture. From effect, +accordingly is deduced cause and from cause is deduced the +unconditioned. This process is generally looked upon as affording the +all sufficient explanation of the world of phenomena. On the other hand +one must, (while putting the conception of the metaphysical distinctly +forward as that of the unconditioned, and consequently of the +unconditioning) absolutely deny any connection between the unconditioned +(of the metaphysical world) and the world known to us: so that +throughout phenomena there is no manifestation of the thing-in-itself, +and getting from one to the other is out of the question. Thus is left +quite ignored the circumstance that the picture--that which we now call +life and experience--is a gradual evolution, is, indeed, still in +process of evolution and for that reason should not be regarded as an +enduring whole from which any conclusion as to its author (the +all-sufficient reason) could be arrived at, or even pronounced out of +the question. It is because we have for thousands of years looked into +the world with moral, aesthetic, religious predispositions, with blind +prejudice, passion or fear, and surfeited ourselves with indulgence in +the follies of illogical thought, that the world has gradually become so +wondrously motley, frightful, significant, soulful: it has taken on +tints, but we have been the colorists: the human intellect, upon the +foundation of human needs, of human passions, has reared all these +"phenomena" and injected its own erroneous fundamental conceptions into +things. Late, very late, the human intellect checks itself: and now the +world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem to it so severed and so +antithetical that it denies the possibility of one's hinging upon the +other--or else summons us to surrender our intellect, our personal will, +to the secret and the awe-inspiring in order that thereby we may attain +certainty of certainty hereafter. Again, there are those who have +combined all the characteristic features of our world of +phenomena--that is, the conception of the world which has been formed +and inherited through a series of intellectual vagaries--and instead of +holding the intellect responsible for it all, have pronounced the very +nature of things accountable for the present very sinister aspect of the +world, and preached annihilation of existence. Through all these views +and opinions the toilsome, steady process of science (which now for the +first time begins to celebrate its greatest triumph in the genesis of +thought) will definitely work itself out, the result, being, perhaps, to +the following effect: That which we now call the world is the result of +a crowd of errors and fancies which gradually developed in the general +evolution of organic nature, have grown together and been transmitted to +us as the accumulated treasure of all the past--as the _treasure_, for +whatever is worth anything in our humanity rests upon it. From this +world of conception it is in the power of science to release us only to +a slight extent--and this is all that could be wished--inasmuch as it +cannot eradicate the influence of hereditary habits of feeling, but it +can light up by degrees the stages of the development of that world of +conception, and lift us, at least for a time, above the whole spectacle. +Perhaps we may then perceive that the thing-in-itself is a meet subject +for Homeric laughter: that it seemed so much, everything, indeed, and +is really a void--void, that is to say, of meaning. + + +17 + +=Metaphysical Explanation.=--Man, when he is young, prizes metaphysical +explanations, because they make him see matters of the highest import in +things he found disagreeable or contemptible: and if he is not satisfied +with himself, this feeling of dissatisfaction is soothed when he sees +the most hidden world-problem or world-pain in that which he finds so +displeasing in himself. To feel himself more unresponsible and at the +same time to find things (Dinge) more interesting--that is to him the +double benefit he owes to metaphysics. Later, indeed, he acquires +distrust of the whole metaphysical method of explaining things: he then +perceives, perhaps, that those effects could have been attained just as +well and more scientifically by another method: that physical and +historical explanations would, at least, have given that feeling of +freedom from personal responsibility just as well, while interest in +life and its problems would be stimulated, perhaps, even more. + + +18 + +=The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics.=--If a history of the +development of thought is ever written, the following proposition, +advanced by a distinguished logician, will be illuminated with a new +light: "The universal, primordial law of the apprehending subject +consists in the inner necessity of cognizing every object by itself, as +in its essence a thing unto itself, therefore as self-existing and +unchanging, in short, as a substance." Even this law, which is here +called "primordial," is an evolution: it has yet to be shown how +gradually this evolution takes place in lower organizations: how the +dim, mole eyes of such organizations see, at first, nothing but a blank +sameness: how later, when the various excitations of desire and aversion +manifest themselves, various substances are gradually distinguished, but +each with an attribute, that is, a special relationship to such an +organization. The first step towards the logical is judgment, the +essence of which, according to the best logicians, is belief. At the +foundation of all beliefs lie sensations of pleasure or pain in relation +to the apprehending subject. A third feeling, as the result of two +prior, single, separate feelings, is judgment in its crudest form. We +organic beings are primordially interested by nothing whatever in any +thing (Ding) except its relation to ourselves with reference to pleasure +and pain. Between the moments in which we are conscious of this +relation, (the states of feeling) lie the moments of rest, of +not-feeling: then the world and every thing (Ding) have no interest for +us: we observe no change in them (as at present a person absorbed in +something does not notice anyone passing by). To plants all things are, +as a rule, at rest, eternal, every object like itself. From the period +of lower organisms has been handed down to man the belief that there are +like things (gleiche Dinge): only the trained experience attained +through the most advanced science contradicts this postulate. The +primordial belief of all organisms is, perhaps, that all the rest of the +world is one thing and motionless.--Furthest away from this first step +towards the logical is the notion of causation: even to-day we think +that all our feelings and doings are, at bottom, acts of the free will; +when the sentient individual contemplates himself he deems every +feeling, every change, a something isolated, disconnected, that is to +say, unqualified by any thing; it comes suddenly to the surface, +independent of anything that went before or came after. We are hungry, +but originally we do not know that the organism must be nourished: on +the contrary that feeling seems to manifest itself without reason or +purpose; it stands out by itself and seems quite independent. Therefore: +the belief in the freedom of the will is a primordial error of +everything organic as old as the very earliest inward prompting of the +logical faculty; belief in unconditioned substances and in like things +(gleiche Dinge) is also a primordial and equally ancient error of +everything organic. Inasmuch as all metaphysic has concerned itself +particularly with substance and with freedom of the will, it should be +designated as the science that deals with the fundamental errors of +mankind as if they were fundamental truths. + + +19 + +=Number.=--The invention of the laws of number has as its basis the +primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist +(although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or +that, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). The +assumption of plurality always presupposes that _something_ exists which +manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion +prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no +existence. Our feelings, notions, of space and time are false for they +lead, when duly tested, to logical contradictions. In all scientific +demonstrations we always unavoidably base our calculation upon some +false standards [of duration or measurement] but as these standards are +at least _constant_, as, for example, our notions of time and space, the +results arrived at by science possess absolute accuracy and certainty in +their relationship to one another: one can keep on building upon +them--until is reached that final limit at which the erroneous +fundamental conceptions, (the invariable breakdown) come into conflict +with the results established--as, for example, in the case of the atomic +theory. Here we always find ourselves obliged to give credence to a +"thing" or material "substratum" that is set in motion, although, at the +same time, the whole scientific programme has had as its aim the +resolving of everything material into motions [themselves]: here again +we distinguish with our feeling [that which does the] moving and [that +which is] moved,[11] and we never get out of this circle, because the +belief in things[12] has been from time immemorial rooted in our +nature.--When Kant says "the intellect does not derive its laws from +nature, but dictates them to her" he states the full truth as regards +the _idea of nature_ which we form (nature = world, as notion, that is, +as error) but which is merely the synthesis of a host of errors of the +intellect. To a world not [the outcome of] our conception, the laws of +number are wholly inapplicable: such laws are valid only in the world of +mankind. + +[11] Wir scheiden auch hier noch mit unserer Empfindung Bewegendes und +Bewegtes. + +[12] Glaube an Dinge. + + +20 + +=Some Backward Steps.=--One very forward step in education is taken when +man emerges from his superstitious and religious ideas and fears and, +for instance, no longer believes in the dear little angels or in +original sin, and has stopped talking about the salvation of the soul: +when he has taken this step to freedom he has, nevertheless, through the +utmost exertion of his mental power, to overcome metaphysics. Then a +backward movement is necessary: he must appreciate the historical +justification, and to an equal extent the psychological considerations, +in such a movement. He must understand that the greatest advances made +by mankind have resulted from such a course and that without this very +backward movement the highest achievements of man hitherto would have +been impossible.--With regard to philosophical metaphysics I see ever +more and more who have arrived at the negative goal (that all positive +metaphysic is a delusion) but as yet very few who go a few steps +backward: one should look out over the last rungs of the ladder, but not +try to stand on them, that is to say. The most advanced as yet go only +far enough to free themselves from metaphysic and look back at it with +an air of superiority: whereas here, no less than in the hippodrome, it +is necessary to turn around in order to reach the end of the course. + + +21 + +=Presumable [Nature of the] Victory of Doubt.=--Let us assume for a +moment the validity of the skeptical standpoint: granted that there is +no metaphysical world, and that all the metaphysical explanations of the +only world we know are useless to us, how would we then contemplate men +and things? [Menschen und Dinge]. This can be thought out and it is +worth while doing so, even if the question whether anything metaphysical +has ever been demonstrated by or through Kant and Schopenhauer, be put +altogether aside. For it is, to all appearances, highly probable that +men, on this point, will be, in the mass, skeptical. The question thus +becomes: what sort of a notion will human society, under the influence +of such a state of mind, form of itself? Perhaps the _scientific +demonstration_ of any metaphysical world is now so difficult that +mankind will never be free from a distrust of it. And when there is +formed a feeling of distrust of metaphysics, the results are, in the +mass, the same as if metaphysics were refuted altogether and _could_ no +longer be believed. In both cases the historical question, with regard +to an unmetaphysical disposition in mankind, remains the same. + + +22 + +=Disbelief in the "monumentum aere perennius".=[13]--A decided +disadvantage, attending the termination of metaphysical modes of +thought, is that the individual fixes his mind too attentively upon his +own brief lifetime and feels no strong inducement to aid in the +foundation of institutions capable of enduring for centuries: he wishes +himself to gather the fruit from the tree that he plants and +consequently he no longer plants those trees which require centuries of +constant cultivation and are destined to afford shade to generation +after generation in the future. For metaphysical views inspire the +belief that in them is afforded the final sure foundation upon which +henceforth the whole future of mankind may rest and be built up: the +individual promotes his own salvation; when, for example, he builds a +church or a monastery he is of opinion that he is doing something for +the salvation of his immortal soul:--Can science, as well, inspire such +faith in the efficacy of her results? In actual fact, science requires +doubt and distrust as her surest auxiliaries; nevertheless, the sum of +the irresistible (that is all the onslaughts of skepticism, all the +disintegrating effects of surviving truths) can easily become so great +(as, for instance, in the case of hygienic science) as to inspire the +determination to build "eternal" works upon it. At present the contrast +between our excitated ephemeral existence and the tranquil repose of +metaphysical epochs is too great because both are as yet in too close +juxtaposition. The individual man himself now goes through too many +stages of inner and outer evolution for him to venture to make a plan +even for his life time alone. A perfectly modern man, indeed, who wants +to build himself a house feels as if he were walling himself up alive in +a mausoleum. + +[13] Monument more enduring than brass: Horace, Odes III:XXX. + + +23 + +=Age of Comparison.=--The less men are bound by tradition, the greater +is the inner activity of motives, the greater, correspondingly, the +outer restlessness, the promiscuous flow of humanity, the polyphony of +strivings. Who now feels any great impulse to establish himself and his +posterity in a particular place? For whom, moreover, does there exist, +at present, any strong tie? As all the methods of the arts were copied +from one another, so were all the methods and advancements of moral +codes, of manners, of civilizations.--Such an age derives its +significance from the fact that in it the various ideas, codes, manners +and civilizations can be compared and experienced side by side; which +was impossible at an earlier period in view of the localised nature of +the rule of every civilization, corresponding to the limitation of all +artistic effects by time and place. To-day the growth of the aesthetic +feeling is decided, owing to the great number of [artistic] forms which +offer themselves for comparison. The majority--those that are condemned +by the method of comparison--will be allowed to die out. In the same way +there is to-day taking place a selection of the forms and customs of the +higher morality which can result only in the extinction of the vulgar +moralities. This is the age of comparison! That is its glory--but also +its pain. Let us not, however shrink from this pain. Rather would we +comprehend the nature of the task imposed upon us by our age as +adequately as we can: posterity will bless us for doing so--a posterity +that knows itself to be [developed] through and above the narrow, early +race-civilizations as well as the culture-civilization of comparison, +but yet looks gratefully back upon both as venerable monuments of +antiquity. + + +24 + +=Possibility of Progress.=--When a master of the old civilization (den +alten Cultur) vows to hold no more discussion with men who believe in +progress, he is quite right. For the old civilization[14] has its +greatness and its advantages behind it, and historic training forces one +to acknowledge that it can never again acquire vigor: only intolerable +stupidity or equally intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this +fact. But men may consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization +where formerly they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now +devise better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their +nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth as an +economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of men and +select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is killing the +other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective animal and plant +life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress itself--progress is +possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost unreflective to assume that +progress must _necessarily_ take place: but how can it be doubted that +progress is possible? On the other hand, progress in the sense and along +the lines of the old civilization is not even conceivable. If romantic +fantasy employs the word progress in connection with certain aims and +ends identical with those of the circumscribed primitive national +civilizations, the picture presented of progress is always borrowed from +the past. The idea and the image of progress thus formed are quite +without originality. + +[14] Cultur, culture, civilisation etc., but there is no exact English +equivalent. + + +25 + +=Private Ethics and World Ethics.=--Since the extinction of the belief +that a god guides the general destiny of the world and, notwithstanding +all the contortions and windings of the path of mankind, leads it +gloriously forward, men must shape oecumenical, world-embracing ends for +themselves. The older ethics, namely Kant's, required of the individual +such a course of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. This evinces +much simplicity--as if any individual could determine off hand what +course of conduct would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and what +course of conduct is preëminently desirable! This is a theory like that +of freedom of competition, which takes it for granted that the general +harmony [of things] _must_ prevail of itself in accordance with some +inherent law of betterment or amelioration. It may be that a later +contemplation of the needs of mankind will reveal that it is by no means +desirable that all men should regulate their conduct according to the +same principle; it may be best, from the standpoint of certain ends yet +to be attained, that men, during long periods should regulate their +conduct with reference to special, and even, in certain circumstances, +evil, objects. At any rate, if mankind is not to be led astray by such a +universal rule of conduct, it behooves it to attain a _knowledge of the +condition of culture_ that will serve as a scientific standard of +comparison in connection with cosmical ends. Herein is comprised the +tremendous mission of the great spirits of the next century. + + +26 + +=Reaction as Progress.=--Occasionally harsh, powerful, impetuous, yet +nevertheless backward spirits, appear, who try to conjure back some past +era in the history of mankind: they serve as evidence that the new +tendencies which they oppose, are not yet potent enough, that there is +something lacking in them: otherwise they [the tendencies] would better +withstand the effects of this conjuring back process. Thus Luther's +reformation shows that in his century all the impulses to freedom of the +spirit were still uncertain, lacking in vigor, and immature. Science +could not yet rear her head. Indeed the whole Renaissance appears but as +an early spring smothered in snow. But even in the present century +Schopenhauer's metaphysic shows that the scientific spirit is not yet +powerful enough: for the whole mediaeval Christian world-standpoint +(Weltbetrachtung) and conception of man (Mensch-Empfindung)[15] once +again, notwithstanding the slowly wrought destruction of all Christian +dogma, celebrated a resurrection in Schopenhauer's doctrine. There is +much science in his teaching although the science does not dominate, +but, instead of it, the old, trite "metaphysical necessity." It is one +of the greatest and most priceless advantages of Schopenhauer's teaching +that by it our feelings are temporarily forced back to those old human +and cosmical standpoints to which no other path could conduct us so +easily. The gain for history and justice is very great. I believe that +without Schopenhauer's aid it would be no easy matter for anyone now to +do justice to Christianity and its Asiatic relatives--a thing impossible +as regards the christianity that still survives. After according this +great triumph to justice, after we have corrected in so essential a +respect the historical point of view which the age of learning brought +with it, we may begin to bear still farther onward the banner of +enlightenment--a banner bearing the three names: Petrarch, Erasmus, +Voltaire. We have taken a forward step out of reaction. + +[15] Literally man-feeling or human outlook. + + +27 + +=A Substitute for Religion.=--It is supposed to be a recommendation for +philosophy to say of it that it provides the people with a substitute +for religion. And in fact, the training of the intellect does +necessitate the convenient laying out of the track of thought, since the +transition from religion by way of science entails a powerful, perilous +leap,--something that should be advised against. With this +qualification, the recommendation referred to is a just one. At the same +time, it should be further explained that the needs which religion +satisfies and which science must now satisfy, are not immutable. Even +they can be diminished and uprooted. Think, for instance, of the +christian soul-need, the sighs over one's inner corruption, the anxiety +regarding salvation--all notions that arise simply out of errors of the +reason and require no satisfaction at all, but annihilation. A +philosophy can either so affect these needs as to appease them or else +put them aside altogether, for they are acquired, circumscribed needs, +based upon hypotheses which those of science explode. Here, for the +purpose of affording the means of transition, for the sake of lightening +the spirit overburdened with feeling, art can be employed to far better +purpose, as these hypotheses receive far less support from art than from +a metaphysical philosophy. Then from art it is easier to go over to a +really emancipating philosophical science. + + +28 + +=Discredited Words.=--Away with the disgustingly over-used words +optimism and pessimism! For the occasion for using them grows daily +less; only drivelers now find them indispensably necessary. What earthly +reason could anyone have for being an optimist unless he had a god to +defend who _must_ have created the best of all possible worlds, since he +is himself all goodness and perfection?--but what thinking man has now +any need for the hypothesis that there is a god?--There is also no +occasion whatever for a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has +a personal interest in denouncing the advocate of god, the theologian or +the theological philosopher, and maintaining the counter proposition +that evil reigns, that wretchedness is more potent than joy, that the +world is a piece of botch work, that phenomenon (Erscheinung) is but the +manifestation of some evil spirit. But who bothers his head about the +theologians any more--except the theologians themselves? Apart from all +theology and its antagonism, it is manifest that the world is neither +good nor bad, (to say nothing about its being the best or the worst) and +that these ideas of "good" and "bad" have significance only in relation +to men, indeed, are without significance at all, in view of the sense in +which they are usually employed. The contemptuous and the eulogistic +point of view must, in every case, be repudiated. + + +29 + +=Intoxicated by the Perfume of Flowers.=--The ship of humanity, it is +thought, acquires an ever deeper draught the more it is laden. It is +believed that the more profoundly man thinks, the more exquisitely he +feels, the higher the standard he sets for himself, the greater his +distance from the other animals--the more he appears as a genius +(Genie) among animals--the nearer he gets to the true nature of the +world and to comprehension thereof: this, indeed, he really does through +science, but he thinks he does it far more adequately through his +religions and arts. These are, certainly, a blossoming of the world, but +not, therefore, _nearer the roots of the world_ than is the stalk. One +cannot learn best from it the nature of the world, although nearly +everyone thinks so. _Error_ has made men so deep, sensitive and +imaginative in order to bring forth such flowers as religions and arts. +Pure apprehension would be unable to do that. Whoever should disclose to +us the essence of the world would be undeceiving us most cruelly. Not +the world as thing-in-itself but the world as idea[16] (as error) is +rich in portent, deep, wonderful, carrying happiness and unhappiness in +its womb. This result leads to a philosophy of world negation: which, at +any rate, can be as well combined with a practical world affirmation as +with its opposite. + +[16] Vorstellung: this word sometimes corresponds to the English word +"idea", at others to "conception" or "notion." + + +30 + +=Evil Habits in Reaching Conclusions.=--The most usual erroneous +conclusions of men are these: a thing[17] exists, therefore it is right: +Here from capacity to live is deduced fitness, from fitness, is deduced +justification. So also: an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is the +true one, its effect is good, therefore it is itself good and true. Here +is predicated of the effect that it gives happiness, that it is good in +the sense of utility, and there is likewise predicated of the cause that +it is good, but good in the sense of logical validity. Conversely, the +proposition would run: a thing[17] cannot attain success, cannot +maintain itself, therefore it is evil: a belief troubles [the believer], +occasions pain, therefore it is false. The free spirit, who is sensible +of the defect in this method of reaching conclusions and has had to +suffer its consequences, often succumbs to the temptation to come to the +very opposite conclusions (which, in general, are, of course, equally +erroneous): a thing cannot maintain itself: therefore it is good; a +belief is troublesome, therefore it is true. + +[17] Sache, thing but not in the sense of Ding. Sache is of very +indefinite application (res). + + +31 + +=The Illogical is Necessary.=--Among the things which can bring a +thinker to distraction is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary +to mankind and that from the illogical springs much that is good. The +illogical is so imbedded in the passions, in language, in art, in +religion and, above all, in everything that imparts value to life that +it cannot be taken away without irreparably injuring those beautiful +things. Only men of the utmost simplicity can believe that the nature +man knows can be changed into a purely logical nature. Yet were there +steps affording approach to this goal, how utterly everything would be +lost on the way! Even the most rational man needs nature again, from +time to time, that is, his illogical fundamental relation +(Grundstellung) to all things. + + +32 + +=Being Unjust is Essential.=--All judgments of the value of life are +illogically developed and therefore unjust. The vice of the judgment +consists, first, in the way in which the subject matter comes under +observation, that is, very incompletely; secondly in the way in which +the total is summed up; and, thirdly, in the fact that each single item +in the totality of the subject matter is itself the result of defective +perception, and this from absolute necessity. No practical knowledge of +a man, for example, stood he never so near to us, can be complete--so +that we could have a logical right to form a total estimate of him; all +estimates are summary and must be so. Then the standard by which we +measure, (our being) is not an immutable quantity; we have moods and +variations, and yet we should know ourselves as an invariable standard +before we undertake to establish the nature of the relation of any thing +(Sache) to ourselves. Perhaps it will follow from all this that one +should form no judgments whatever; if one could but merely _live_ +without having to form estimates, without aversion and without +partiality!--for everything most abhorred is closely connected with an +estimate, as well as every strongest partiality. An inclination towards +a thing, or from a thing, without an accompanying feeling that the +beneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned, an inclination +without a sort of experiential estimation of the desirability of an end, +does not exist in man. We are primordially illogical and hence unjust +beings _and can recognise this fact_: this is one of the greatest and +most baffling discords of existence. + + +33 + +=Error Respecting Living for the Sake of Living Essential.=--Every +belief in the value and worthiness of life rests upon defective +thinking; it is for this reason alone possible that sympathy with the +general life and suffering of mankind is so imperfectly developed in the +individual. Even exceptional men, who can think beyond their own +personalities, do not have this general life in view, but isolated +portions of it. If one is capable of fixing his observation upon +exceptional cases, I mean upon highly endowed individuals and pure +souled beings, if their development is taken as the true end of +world-evolution and if joy be felt in their existence, then it is +possible to believe in the value of life, because in that case the rest +of humanity is overlooked: hence we have here defective thinking. So, +too, it is even if all mankind be taken into consideration, and one +species only of impulses (the less egoistic) brought under review and +those, in consideration of the other impulses, exalted: then something +could still be hoped of mankind in the mass and to that extent there +could exist belief in the value of life: here, again, as a result of +defective thinking. Whatever attitude, thus, one may assume, one is, as +a result of this attitude, an exception among mankind. Now, the great +majority of mankind endure life without any great protest, and believe, +to this extent, in the value of existence, but that is because each +individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own +personality like these exceptions: everything outside of the personal +has no existence for them or at the utmost is observed as but a faint +shadow. Consequently the value of life for the generality of mankind +consists simply in the fact that the individual attaches more importance +to himself than he does to the world. The great lack of imagination from +which he suffers is responsible for his inability to enter into the +feelings of beings other than himself, and hence his sympathy with their +fate and suffering is of the slightest possible description. On the +other hand, whosoever really _could_ sympathise, necessarily doubts the +value of life; were it possible for him to sum up and to feel in himself +the total consciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a malediction +against existence,--for mankind is, in the mass, without a goal, and +hence man cannot find, in the contemplation of his whole course, +anything to serve him as a mainstay and a comfort, but rather a reason +to despair. If he looks beyond the things that immediately engage him to +the final aimlessness of humanity, his own conduct assumes in his eyes +the character of a frittering away. To feel oneself, however, as +humanity (not alone as an individual) frittered away exactly as we see +the stray leaves frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcending all +feeling. But who is capable of it? Only a poet, certainly: and poets +always know how to console themselves. + + +34 + +=For Tranquility.=--But will not our philosophy become thus a tragedy? +Will not truth prove the enemy of life, of betterment? A question seems +to weigh upon our tongue and yet will not put itself into words: whether +one _can_ knowingly remain in the domain of the untruthful? or, if one +_must_, whether, then, death would not be preferable? For there is no +longer any ought (Sollen), morality; so far as it is involved "ought," +is, through our point of view, as utterly annihilated as religion. Our +knowledge can permit only pleasure and pain, benefit and injury, to +subsist as motives. But how can these motives be distinguished from the +desire for truth? Even they rest upon error (in so far, as already +stated, partiality and dislike and their very inaccurate estimates +palpably modify our pleasure and our pain). The whole of human life is +deeply involved in _untruth_. The individual cannot extricate it from +this pit without thereby fundamentally clashing with his whole past, +without finding his present motives of conduct, (as that of honor) +illegitimate, and without opposing scorn and contempt to the ambitions +which prompt one to have regard for the future and for one's happiness +in the future. Is it true, does there, then, remain but one way of +thinking, which, as a personal consequence brings in its train despair, +and as a theoretical [consequence brings in its train] a philosophy of +decay, disintegration, self annihilation? I believe the deciding +influence, as regards the after-effect of knowledge, will be the +_temperament_ of a man; I can, in addition to this after-effect just +mentioned, suppose another, by means of which a much simpler life, and +one freer from disturbances than the present, could be lived; so that at +first the old motives of vehement passion might still have strength, +owing to hereditary habit, but they would gradually grow weaker under +the influence of purifying knowledge. A man would live, at last, both +among men and unto himself, as in the natural state, without praise, +reproach, competition, feasting one's eyes, as if it were a play, upon +much that formerly inspired dread. One would be rid of the strenuous +element, and would no longer feel the goad of the reflection that man is +not even [as much as] nature, nor more than nature. To be sure, this +requires, as already stated, a good temperament, a fortified, gentle and +naturally cheerful soul, a disposition that has no need to be on its +guard against its own eccentricities and sudden outbreaks and that in +its utterances manifests neither sullenness nor a snarling tone--those +familiar, disagreeable characteristics of old dogs and old men that have +been a long time chained up. Rather must a man, from whom the ordinary +bondages of life have fallen away to so great an extent, so do that he +only lives on in order to grow continually in knowledge, and to learn to +resign, without envy and without disappointment, much, yes nearly +everything, that has value in the eyes of men. He must be content with +such a free, fearless soaring above men, manners, laws and traditional +estimates of things, as the most desirable of all situations. He will +freely share the joy of being in such a situation, and he has, perhaps, +nothing else to share--in which renunciation and self-denial really most +consist. But if more is asked of him, he will, with a benevolent shake +of the head, refer to his brother, the free man of fact, and will, +perhaps, not dissemble a little contempt: for, as regards his "freedom," +thereby hangs a tale.[18] + +[18] den mit dessen "Freiheit" hat es eine eigene Bewandtniss. + + + + +HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS. + + +35 + +=Advantages of Psychological Observation.=--That reflection regarding +the human, all-too-human--or as the learned jargon is: psychological +observation--is among the means whereby the burden of life can be made +lighter, that practice in this art affords presence of mind in difficult +situations and entertainment amid a wearisome environment, aye, that +maxims may be culled in the thorniest and least pleasing paths of life +and invigoration thereby obtained: this much was believed, was known--in +former centuries. Why was this forgotten in our own century, during +which, at least in Germany, yes in Europe, poverty as regards +psychological observation would have been manifest in many ways had +there been anyone to whom this poverty could have manifested itself. Not +only in the novel, in the romance, in philosophical standpoints--these +are the works of exceptional men; still more in the state of opinion +regarding public events and personages; above all in general society, +which says much about men but nothing whatever about man, there is +totally lacking the art of psychological analysis and synthesis. But why +is the richest and most harmless source of entertainment thus allowed to +run to waste? Why is the greatest master of the psychological maxim no +longer read?--for, with no exaggeration whatever be it said: the +educated person in Europe who has read La Rochefoucauld and his +intellectual and artistic affinities is very hard to find; still harder, +the person who knows them and does not disparage them. Apparently, too, +this unusual reader takes far less pleasure in them than the form +adopted by these artists should afford him: for the subtlest mind cannot +adequately appreciate the art of maxim-making unless it has had training +in it, unless it has competed in it. Without such practical +acquaintance, one is apt to look upon this making and forming as a much +easier thing than it really is; one is not keenly enough alive to the +felicity and the charm of success. Hence present day readers of maxims +have but a moderate, tempered pleasure in them, scarcely, indeed, a true +perception of their merit, so that their experiences are about the same +as those of the average beholder of cameos: people who praise because +they cannot appreciate, and are very ready to admire and still readier +to turn away. + + +36 + +=Objection.=--Or is there a counter-proposition to the dictum that +psychological observation is one of the means of consoling, lightening, +charming existence? Have enough of the unpleasant effects of this art +been experienced to justify the person striving for culture in turning +his regard away from it? In all truth, a certain blind faith in the +goodness of human nature, an implanted distaste for any disparagement of +human concerns, a sort of shamefacedness at the nakedness of the soul, +may be far more desirable things in the general happiness of a man, than +this only occasionally advantageous quality of psychological +sharpsightedness; and perhaps belief in the good, in virtuous men and +actions, in a plenitude of disinterested benevolence has been more +productive of good in the world of men in so far as it has made men less +distrustful. If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically imitated and a +reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of +their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is +promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard +to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more +promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La +Rochefoucauld in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims" +has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a +phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in +order to do whatever we please with impunity." La Rochefoucauld and +those other French masters of soul-searching (to the number of whom has +lately been added a German, the author of "Psychological Observations") +are like expert marksmen who again and again hit the black spot--but it +is the black spot in human nature. Their art inspires amazement, but +finally some spectator, inspired, not by the scientific spirit but by a +humanitarian feeling, execrates an art that seems to implant in the soul +a taste for belittling and impeaching mankind. + + +37 + +=Nevertheless.=--The matter therefore, as regards pro and con, stands +thus: in the present state of philosophy an awakening of the moral +observation is essential. The repulsive aspect of psychological +dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no +longer be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any science +that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings +and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve +advanced social problems:--The older philosophy does not recognize the +newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the +investigation of the origin and history of human estimates +(Werthschätzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived, +since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest +philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human +actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis +(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is +reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities +are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits +collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But if +it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has +heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and +deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of +that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon +stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of +a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose +persistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless +single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been +first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for +scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the +original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral +maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so +that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of +this species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point to +the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the +most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological +observation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the +subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning the +Origin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive +analysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearer +the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man."[19] This +dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical +knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the +axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of +men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well +being who can say?--but in any event a dictum fraught with the most +momentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting +the world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts. + +[19] "Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen +(metaphysischen) Welt nicht näher, als der physische Mensch." + + +38 + +=To What Extent Useful.=--Therefore, whether psychological observation +is more an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remain +undetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, because +science can no longer dispense with it. Science, however, recognizes no +considerations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; but +as the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certain +ends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing with +ideas what nature does with matter,[20] promote the purposes and the +welfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) and +attain fitness [to ends]--but likewise without having intended it. + +[20] als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen, literally: "as the +counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas." + +He to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry, +has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will become +sensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so +"kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely +find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. Moreover: as +too serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivial +relaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous, +weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the more +intellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more by +conflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance we +can find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm as +we are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and self +reflector, when the occasion arises? + + +39 + +=The Fable of Discretionary Freedom.=--The history of the feelings, on +the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called +moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first +single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their +motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial +consequences they have for the community. In time, however, the origin +of these designations is forgotten [but] it is imagined that action in +itself, without reference to its consequences, contains the property +"good" or "bad": with the same error according to which language +designates the stone itself as hard[ness] the tree itself as +green[ness]--for the reason, therefore, that what is a consequence is +comprehended as a cause. Accordingly, the good[ness] or bad[ness] is +incorporated into the motive and [any] deed by itself is regarded as +morally ambiguous. A step further is taken, and the predication good or +bad is no longer made of the particular motives but of the entire nature +of a man, out of which motive grows as grow the plants out of the soil. +Thus man is successively made responsible for his [particular] acts, +then for his [course of] conduct, then for his motives and finally for +his nature. Now, at last, is it discovered that this nature, even, +cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is only and wholly a necessary +consequence and is synthesised out of the elements and influence of past +and present things: therefore, that man is to be made responsible for +nothing, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of] +conduct nor his [particular] acts. By this [process] is gained the +knowledge that the history of moral estimates is the history of error, +of the error of responsibility: as is whatever rests upon the error of +the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer concluded just the other way, +thus: since certain actions bring depression ("consciousness of guilt") +in their train, there must, then, exist responsibility, for there would +be no basis for this depression at hand if all man's affairs did not +follow their course of necessity--as they do, indeed, according to the +opinion of this philosopher, follow their course--but man himself, +subject to the same necessity, would be just the man that he is--which +Schopenhauer denies. From the fact of such depression Schopenhauer +believes himself able to prove a freedom which man in some way must have +had, not indeed in regard to his actions but in regard to his nature: +freedom, therefore, to be thus and so, not to act thus and so. Out of +the _esse_, the sphere of freedom and responsibility, follows, according +to his opinion, the _operari_, the spheres of invariable causation, +necessity and irresponsibility. This depression, indeed, is due +apparently to the _operari_--in so far as it be delusive--but in truth +to whatever _esse_ be the deed of a free will, the basic cause of the +existence of an individual: [in order to] let man become whatever he +wills to become, his [to] will (Wollen) must precede his +existence.--Here, apart from the absurdity of the statement just made, +there is drawn the wrong inference that the fact of the depression +explains its character, the rational admissibility of it: from such a +wrong inference does Schopenhauer first come to his fantastic consequent +of the so called discretionary freedom (intelligibeln Freiheit). (For +the origin of this fabulous entity Plato and Kant are equally +responsible). But depression after the act does not need to be rational: +indeed, it is certainly not so at all, for it rests upon the erroneous +assumption that the act need not necessarily have come to pass. +Therefore: only because man deems himself free, but not because +he is free, does he experience remorse and the stings of +conscience.--Moreover, this depression is something that can be grown +out of; in many men it is not present at all as a consequence of acts +which inspire it in many other men. It is a very varying thing and one +closely connected with the development of custom and civilization, and +perhaps manifest only during a relatively brief period of the world's +history.--No one is responsible for his acts, no one for his nature; to +judge is tantamount to being unjust. This applies as well when the +individual judges himself. The proposition is as clear as sunlight, and +yet here everyone prefers to go back to darkness and untruth: for fear +of the consequences. + + +40 + +=Above Animal.=--The beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary, +that we may not be torn to pieces. Without the errors involved in the +assumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. Thus has he +taken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself. +He feels hatred, consequently, for states approximating the animal: +whence the former contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as a thing, +is to be explained. + + +41 + +=Unalterable Character.=--That character is unalterable is not, in the +strict sense, true; rather is this favorite proposition valid only to +the extent that during the brief life period of a man the potent new +motives can not, usually, press down hard enough to obliterate the lines +imprinted by ages. Could we conceive of a man eighty thousand years old, +we should have in him an absolutely alterable character; so that the +maturities of successive, varying individuals would develop in him. The +shortness of human life leads to many erroneous assertions concerning +the qualities of man. + + +42 + +=Classification of Enjoyments and Ethic.=--The once accepted comparative +classification of enjoyments, according to which an inferior, higher, +highest egoism may crave one or another enjoyment, now decides as to +ethical status or unethical status. A lower enjoyment (for example, +sensual pleasure) preferred to a more highly esteemed one (for example, +health) rates as unethical, as does welfare preferred to freedom. The +comparative classification of enjoyments is not, however, alike or the +same at all periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of the law, he is, +from the point of view of an earlier civilization, moral, from that of +the present, non-moral. "Unethical" indicates, therefore, that a man is +not sufficiently sensible to the higher, finer impulses which the +present civilization has brought with it, or is not sensible to them at +all; it indicates backwardness, but only from the point of view of the +contemporary degree of distinction.--The comparative classification of +enjoyments itself is not determined according to absolute ethics; but +after each new ethical adjustment, it is then decided whether conduct be +ethical or the reverse. + + +43 + +=Inhuman Men as Survivals.=--Men who are now inhuman must serve us as +surviving specimens of earlier civilizations. The mountain height of +humanity here reveals its lower formations, which might otherwise remain +hidden from view. There are surviving specimens of humanity whose brains +through the vicissitudes of heredity, have escaped proper development. +They show us what we all were and thus appal us; but they are as little +responsible on this account as is a piece of granite for being granite. +In our own brains there must be courses and windings corresponding to +such characters, just as in the forms of some human organs there survive +traces of fishhood. But these courses and windings are no longer the bed +in which flows the stream of our feeling. + + +44 + +=Gratitude and Revenge.=--The reason the powerful man is grateful is +this. His benefactor has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain of +the powerful man and established himself on an equal footing: the +powerful man in turn invades the domain of the benefactor and gets +satisfaction through the act of gratitude. It is a mild form of revenge. +By not obtaining the satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have +shown himself powerless and have ranked as such thenceforward. Hence +every society of the good, that is to say, of the powerful originally, +places gratitude among the first of duties.--Swift has added the dictum +that man is grateful in the same degree that he is revengeful. + + +45 + +=Two-fold Historical Origin of Good and Evil.=--The notion of good and +bad has a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of +ruling races and castes. Whoever has power to requite good with good and +evil with evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and +revengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless and +cannot requite is called bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, to +the "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all the +individuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment. +A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass of +subjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. The good are a +caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good and bad is, for a +considerable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave. +On the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite. +The Trojan and the Greek are in Homer both good. Not he, who does no +harm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the community of the +good individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it is +impossible for a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. If, +notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy of +his goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed to +a deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good man +into madness and blindness.--Second, in the spirit of the subjugated, +the powerless. Here every other man is, to the individual, hostile, +inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad +is the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, that +is recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions are +tantamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of goodness, sympathy, +helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an +evil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. With such a +predisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise at +all, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that this +conception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of the +individuals, their race and nation, is imminent.--Our existing morality +has developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes. + + +46 + +=Sympathy Greater than Suffering.=--There are circumstances in which +sympathy is stronger than the suffering itself. We feel more pain, for +instance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensible +action than if we had done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, had +more faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. Hence our +love for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger than +is his own love for himself. If, indeed, his egoism really suffers more, +as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequences +of his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, the +unegoistic--this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a +modified form of expression--in us is more affected by his guilt than +the unegoistic in him. + + +47 + +=Hypochondria.=--There are people who, from sympathy and anxiety for +others become hypochondriacal. The resulting form of compassion is +nothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a Christian hypochondria, +from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who place +always before their eyes the suffering and death of Christ. + + +48 + +=Economy of Blessings.=--The advantageous and the pleasing, as the +healthiest growths and powers in the intercourse of men, are such +precious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of these +balsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible. +Economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest of +Utopians. + + +49 + +=Well-Wishing.=--Among the small, but infinitely plentiful and therefore +very potent things to which science must pay more attention than to the +great, uncommon things, well-wishing[21] must be reckoned; I mean those +manifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter of +the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general, +every human act gets its quality. Every teacher, every functionary adds +this element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is the +perpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in which +everything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family, +life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. The +cheerfulness, friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailing +sources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilization +than those other more noised manifestations of it that are styled +sympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is customary to depreciate +these little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of +the unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses is very great, +nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest of +strengths.--Thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the world +than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and all +these pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life, +is rich, be not forgotten. + +[21] Wohl-wollen, kind feeling. It stands here for benevolence but not +benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing. + + +50 + +=The Desire to Inspire Compassion.=--La Rochefoucauld, in the most +notable part of his self portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the +vital spot of truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on +their guard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be +left to men of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the +emotions (since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give +aid to the suffering and to be of service in misfortune: whereas +compassion, in his (and Plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength. +To be sure, sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not +to feel it; for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the +manifestation of sympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the +world.--Perhaps a more effectual warning against this compassion can be +given if this need of the unfortunate be considered not simply as +stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the +spirit entailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does La +Rochefoucauld seem to view it) but as something quite different and more +momentous. Let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to +be compassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their +condition will be observed; come into contact with the sick and the +oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the +posturing and posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the +causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder +manifests is a consolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as +they are made to perceive that at least they have the power, +notwithstanding all their weakness, to inflict pain. The unfortunate +experiences a species of joy in the sense of superiority which the +manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagination is exalted; he is +always strong enough, then, to cause the world pain. Thus is the thirst +for sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the expense of one's +fellow creatures: it shows man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear +self: not in his mere "dullness" as La Rochefoucauld thinks.--In social +conversation three fourths of all the questions are asked, and three +fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little +pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them +a sense of their power. In these countless but very small doses in which +the quality of badness is administered it proves a potent stimulant of +life: to the same extent that well wishing--(Wohl-wollen) distributed +through the world in like manner, is one of the ever ready +restoratives.--But will many honorable people be found to admit that +there is any pleasure in administering pain? that entertainment--and +rare entertainment--is not seldom found in causing others, at least in +thought, some pain, and in raking them with the small shot of +wickedness? The majority are too ignoble and a few are too good to know +anything of this pudendum: the latter may, consequently, be prompt to +deny that Prosper Mérimée is right when he says: "Know, also, that +nothing is more common than to do wrong for the pleasure of doing it." + + +51 + +=How Appearance Becomes Reality.=--The actor cannot, at last, refrain, +even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect +produced by his deportment and by his surroundings--for example, even at +the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its +manifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite who +always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as +in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either +consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally +and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father +does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's +calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. When +anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear +something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else. +The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with +hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the +effective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man must +at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the +expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained--and finally +friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him--he _is_ +benevolent. + + +52 + +=The Point of Honor in Deception.=--In all great deceivers one +characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the very +act of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in the +voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there +comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so +effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religions +differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this +state of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few moments +of enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally, +however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of +enlightenment to the evil adversary. Self deception must exist that both +classes of deceivers may attain far reaching results. For men believe in +the truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness by +others. + + +53 + +=Presumed Degrees of Truth.=--One of the most usual errors of deduction +is: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaks +the truth. Hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, the +Christian in the assertions of the founder of the church. So, too, it +will not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life and +happiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is +alleged these things were degrees of truth. But what is really meant is +that, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died for +his faith, it would be too _unjust_ if only delusion had inspired him. +Such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. For that +reason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head the +judgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there must +always exist an inherent connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise: +for there is no eternal justice. + + +54 + +=Falsehood.=--Why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinary +affairs of life? Certainly not for the reason that a god has forbidden +lying. But because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entails +invention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore Swift says that +whoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: he +must, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more). +Therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedient +to say without circumlocution: I want this, I have done this, and the +like; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer than +that of ruse.--But if it happens that a child is brought up in sinister +domestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter of +course, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: an +inclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign and +uncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence. + + +55 + +=Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake.=--No power can sustain itself when +it is represented by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may possess ever +so many "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised +in those still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern +and strenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of night +vigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these things +make men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be really +imperative to live thus? This is the dreadful question which their +aspect occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop of +their power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose such +disinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "Thou deceived one, +deceive not!"--Only the difference of standpoint separates them from +him: no difference in goodness or badness. But things we cannot +accomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. Thus we are told +of the cunning and perverted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook the +self mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon himself and also the fact +that the easy life which the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit, +not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may be questioned whether +we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result +of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as +the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion. + + +56 + +=Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil.=--It proves a material gain to +him who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable period +the idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is a +false idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots have +reached down even to ourselves and our present world. In order to +understand _ourselves_ we must understand _it_; but in order to attain a +loftier height we must step above it. We then perceive that there is no +such thing as sin in the metaphysical sense: but also, in the same +sense, no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain of ethical +notions is one of constant variation; that there are higher and deeper +conceptions of good and evil, moral and immoral. Whoever desires no more +of things than knowledge of them attains speedily to peace of mind and +will at most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely through +eagerness for knowledge (or through sin, as the world calls it). He will +not ask that eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and rooted out; but +his single, all powerful ambition to _know_ as thoroughly and as fully +as possible, will soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in his +circumstances. Moreover, he is now rid of a number of disturbing +notions; he is no longer beguiled by such words as hell-pain, +sinfulness, unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting shadow +pictures of false views of life and of the world. + + +57 + +=Ethic as Man's Self-Analysis.=--A good author, whose heart is really in +his work, wishes that someone would arise and wholly refute him if only +thereby his subject be wholly clarified and made plain. The maid in love +wishes that she could attest the fidelity of her own passion through +the faithlessness of her beloved. The soldier wishes to sacrifice his +life on the field of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of his +fatherland his highest end is attained. The mother gives her child what +she deprives herself of--sleep, the best nourishment and, in certain +circumstances, her health, her self.--But are all these acts unegoistic? +Are these moral deeds miracles because they are, in Schopenhauer's +phrase "impossible and yet accomplished"? Is it not evident that in all +four cases man loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing, an +experience) more than he loves another part of himself? that he thus +analyses his being and sacrifices one part of it to another part? Is +this essentially different from the behavior of the obstinate man who +says "I would rather be shot than go a step out of my way for this +fellow"?--Preference for something (wish, impulse, longing) is present +in all four instances: to yield to it, with all its consequences, is not +"unegoistic."--In the domain of the ethical man conducts himself not as +individuum but as dividuum. + + +58 + +=What Can be Promised.=--Actions can be promised, but not feelings, for +these are involuntary. Whoever promises somebody to love him always, or +to hate him always, or to be ever true to him, promises something that +it is out of his power to bestow. But he really can promise such courses +of conduct as are the ordinary accompaniments of love, of hate, of +fidelity, but which may also have their source in motives quite +different: for various ways and motives lead to the same conduct. The +promise to love someone always, means, consequently: as long as I love +you, I will manifest the deportment of love; but if I cease to love you +my deportment, although from some other motive, will be just the same, +so that to the people about us it will seem as if my love remained +unchanged.--Hence it is the continuance of the deportment of love that +is promised in every instance in which eternal love (provided no element +of self deception be involved) is sworn. + + +59 + +=Intellect and Ethic.=--One must have a good memory to be able to keep +the promises one makes. One must have a strong imagination in order to +feel sympathy. So closely is ethics connected with intellectual +capacity. + + +60 + +=Desire for Vengeance and Vengeance Itself.=--To meditate revenge and +attain it is tantamount to an attack of fever, that passes away: but to +meditate revenge without possessing the strength or courage to attain it +is tantamount to suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning of body +and soul. Ethics, which takes only the motive into account, rates both +cases alike: people generally estimate the first case as the worst +(because of the consequences which the deed of vengeance may entail). +Both views are short sighted. + + +61 + +=Ability to Wait.=--Ability to wait is so hard to acquire that great +poets have not disdained to make inability to wait the central motive of +their poems. So Shakespeare in Othello, Sophocles in Ajax, whose suicide +would not have seemed to him so imperative had he only been able to cool +his ardor for a day, as the oracle foreboded: apparently he would then +have repulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of distracted thought and +have said to himself: Who has not already, in my situation, mistaken a +sheep for a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? On the contrary it is +something universally human: Ajax should thus have soothed himself. +Passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men does +not generally consist in their conflict with time and the inferiority +of their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a year +or two: they cannot wait.--In all duels, the friends who advise have but +to ascertain if the principals can wait: if this be not possible, a duel +is rational inasmuch as each of the combatants may say: "either I +continue to live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa." To wait +in such circumstances would be equivalent to the frightful martyrdom of +enduring dishonor in the presence of him responsible for the dishonor: +and this can easily cost more anguish than life is worth. + + +62 + +=Glutting Revenge.=--Coarse men, who feel a sense of injury, are in the +habit of rating the extent of their injury as high as possible and of +stating the occasion of it in greatly exaggerated language, in order to +be able to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thus +aroused. + + +63 + +=Value of Disparagement.=--Not a few, perhaps the majority of men, find +it necessary, in order to retain their self esteem and a certain +uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage and belittle all the +people they know. But as the inferior natures are in the majority and as +a great deal depends upon whether they retain or lose this uprightness, +so-- + + +64 + +=The Man in a Rage.=--We should be on our guard against the man who is +enraged against us, as against one who has attempted our life, for the +fact that we still live consists solely in the inability to kill: were +looks sufficient, it would have been all up with us long since. To +reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a +terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization. So, too, that cold +look which great personages cast upon their servitors is a remnant of +the caste distinction between man and man; a specimen of rude antiquity: +women, the conservers of the old, have maintained this survival, too, +more perfectly than men. + + +65 + +=Whither Honesty May Lead.=--Someone once had the bad habit of +expressing himself upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the +subject of the motives of his conduct, which were as good or as bad as +the motives of all men. He aroused first disfavor, then suspicion, +became gradually of ill repute and was pronounced a person of whom +society should beware, until at last the law took note of such a +perverted being for reasons which usually have no weight with it or to +which it closes its eyes. Lack of taciturnity concerning what is +universally held secret, and an irresponsible predisposition to see what +no one wants to see--oneself--brought him to prison and to early death. + + +66 + +=Punishable, not Punished.=--Our crime against criminals consists in the +fact that we treat them as rascals. + + +67 + +=Sancta simplicitas of Virtue.=--Every virtue has its privilege: for +example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the +funeral pyre of one condemned. + + +68 + +=Morality and Consequence.=--Not alone the beholders of an act generally +estimate the ethical or unethical element in it by the result: no, the +one who performed the act does the same. For the motives and the +intentions are seldom sufficiently apparent, and amid them the memory +itself seems to become clouded by the results of the act, so that a man +often ascribes the wrong motives to his acts or regards the remote +motives as the direct ones. Success often imparts to an action all the +brilliance and honor of good intention, while failure throws the shadow +of conscience over the most estimable deeds. Hence arises the familiar +maxim of the politician: "Give me only success: with it I can win all +the noble souls over to my side--and make myself noble even in my own +eyes."--In like manner will success prove an excellent substitute for a +better argument. To this very day many well educated men think the +triumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior +truth of the former--although in this case it was simply the coarser and +more powerful that triumphed over the more delicate and intellectual. As +regards superiority of truth, it is evident that because of it the +reviving sciences have connected themselves, point for point, with the +philosophy of Epicurus, while Christianity has, point for point, +recoiled from it. + + +69 + +=Love and Justice.=--Why is love so highly prized at the expense of +justice and why are such beautiful things spoken of the former as if it +were a far higher entity than the latter? Is the former not palpably a +far more stupid thing than the latter?--Certainly, and on that very +account so much the more agreeable to everybody: it is blind and has a +rich horn of plenty out of which it distributes its gifts to everyone, +even when they are unmerited, even when no thanks are returned. It is +impartial like the rain, which according to the bible and experience, +wets not alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances, the just as +well, and to their skins at that. + + +70 + +=Execution.=--How comes it that every execution causes us more pain than +a murder? It is the coolness of the executioner, the painful +preparation, the perception that here a man is being used as an +instrument for the intimidation of others. For the guilt is not punished +even if there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers, the parents, +the environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer--I mean the +predisposing circumstances. + + +71 + +=Hope.=--Pandora brought the box containing evils and opened it. It was +the gift of the gods to men, a gift of most enticing appearance +externally and called the "box of happiness." Thereupon all the evils, +(living, moving things) flew out: from that time to the present they fly +about and do ill to men by day and night. One evil only did not fly out +of the box: Pandora shut the lid at the behest of Zeus and it remained +inside. Now man has this box of happiness perpetually in the house and +congratulates himself upon the treasure inside of it; it is at his +service: he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he knows not that +the box which Pandora brought was a box of evils. Hence he looks upon +the one evil still remaining as the greatest source of happiness--it is +hope.--Zeus intended that man, notwithstanding the evils oppressing him, +should continue to live and not rid himself of life, but keep on making +himself miserable. For this purpose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, in +truth, the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man. + + +72 + +=Degree of Moral Susceptibility Unknown.=--The fact that one has or has +not had certain profoundly moving impressions and insights into +things--for example, an unjustly executed, slain or martyred father, a +faithless wife, a shattering, serious accident,--is the factor upon +which the excitation of our passions to white heat principally depends, +as well as the course of our whole lives. No one knows to what lengths +circumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him. He does not know the +full extent of his own susceptibility. Wretched environment makes him +wretched. It is as a rule not the quality of our experience but its +quantity upon which depends the development of our superiority or +inferiority, from the point of view of good and evil. + + +73 + +=The Martyr Against His Will.=--In a certain movement there was a man +who was too cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his comrades. He +was made use of in each emergency, every sacrifice was demanded of him +because he feared the disfavor of his comrades more than he feared +death: he was a petty, abject spirit. They perceived this and upon the +foundation of the qualities just mentioned they elevated him to the +altitude of a hero, and finally even of a martyr. Although the cowardly +creature always inwardly said No, he always said Yes with his lips, even +upon the scaffold, where he died for the tenets of his party: for beside +him stood one of his old associates who so domineered him with look and +word that he actually went to his death with the utmost fortitude and +has ever since been celebrated as a martyr and exalted character. + + +74 + +=General Standard.=--One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed +to vanity, ordinary actions to habit and mean actions to fear. + + +75 + +=Misunderstanding of Virtue.=--Whoever has obtained his experience of +vice in connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of +wild oats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be +connected with self denial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very +much plagued by his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest +and peace of the soul. That is why it is possible for two virtuous +people to misunderstand one another wholly. + + +76 + +=The Ascetic.=--The ascetic makes out of virtue a slavery. + + +77 + +=Honor Transferred from Persons to Things.=--Actions prompted by love or +by the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honored +wherever they are manifest. Hence is magnified the value set upon +whatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to self +sacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. A +valiant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for. + + +78 + +=Ambition a Substitute for Moral Feeling.=--Moral feeling should never +become extinct in natures that are destitute of ambition. The ambitious +can get along without moral feeling just as well as with it.--Hence the +sons of retired, ambitionless families, generally become by a series of +rapid gradations, when they lose moral feeling, the most absolute +lunkheads. + + +79 + +=Vanity Enriches.=--How poor the human mind would be without vanity! As +it is, it resembles a well stacked and ever renewed ware-emporium that +attracts buyers of every class: they can find almost everything, have +almost everything, provided they bring with them the right kind of +money--admiration. + + +80 + +=Senility and Death.=--Apart from the demands made by religion, it may +well be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels the +decline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term to +his existence himself? Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and due +proceeding that ought to command respect as a triumph of reason: and did +in fact command respect during the times of the masters of Greek +philosophy and the bravest Roman patriots, who usually died by their own +hand. Eagerness, on the other hand, to keep alive from day to day with +the anxious counsel of physicians, without capacity to attain any nearer +to one's ideal of life, is far less worthy of respect.--Religions are +very rich in refuges from the mandate of suicide: hence they ingratiate +themselves with those who cling to life. + + +81 + +=Delusions Regarding Victim and Regarding Evil Doer.=--When the rich man +takes a possession away from the poor man (for example, a prince who +deprives a plebeian of his beloved) there arises in the mind of the poor +man a delusion: he thinks the rich man must be wholly perverted to take +from him the little that he has. But the rich man appreciates the value +of a single possession much less because he is accustomed to many +possessions, so that he cannot put himself in the place of the poor man +and does not act by any means as ill as the latter supposes. Both have a +totally false idea of each other. The iniquities of the mighty which +bulk most largely in history are not nearly so monstrous as they seem. +The hereditary consciousness of being a superior being with superior +environment renders one very callous and lulls the conscience to rest. +We all feel, when the difference between ourselves and some other being +is exceedingly great, that no element of injustice can be involved, and +we kill a fly with no qualms of conscience whatever. So, too, it is no +indication of wickedness in Xerxes (whom even the Greeks represent as +exceptionally noble) that he deprived a father of his son and had him +drawn and quartered because the latter had manifested a troublesome, +ominous distrust of an entire expedition: the individual was in this +case brushed aside as a pestiferous insect. He was too low and mean to +justify continued sentiments of compunction in the ruler of the world. +Indeed no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as his victim thinks. +The idea of pain is never the same as the sensation. The rule is +precisely analogous in the case of the unjust judge, and of the +journalist who by means of devious rhetorical methods, leads public +opinion astray. Cause and effect are in all these instances entwined +with totally different series of feeling and thoughts, whereas it is +unconsciously assumed that principal and victim feel and think exactly +alike, and because of this assumption the guilt of the one is based upon +the pain of the other. + + +82 + +=The Soul's Skin.=--As the bones, flesh, entrails and blood vessels are +enclosed by a skin that renders the aspect of men endurable, so the +impulses and passions of the soul are enclosed by vanity: it is the skin +of the soul. + + +83 + +=Sleep of Virtue.=--If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous +when it awakes. + + +84 + +=Subtlety of Shame.=--Men are not ashamed of obscene thoughts, but they +are ashamed when they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed to +them. + + +85 + +=Naughtiness Is Rare.=--Most people are too much absorbed in themselves +to be bad. + + +86 + +=The Mite in the Balance.=--We are praised or blamed, as the one or the +other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of +discernment. + + +87 + +=Luke 18:14 Improved.=--He that humbleth himself wisheth to be exalted. + + +88 + +=Prevention of Suicide.=--There is a justice according to which we may +deprive a man of life, but none that permits us to deprive him of death: +this is merely cruelty. + + +89 + +=Vanity.=--We set store by the good opinion of men, first because it is +of use to us and next because we wish to give them pleasure (children +their parents, pupils their teacher, and well disposed persons all +others generally). Only when the good opinion of men is important to +somebody, apart from personal advantage or the desire to give pleasure, +do we speak of vanity. In this last case, a man wants to give himself +pleasure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures, inasmuch as he +inspires them with a false opinion of himself or else inspires "good +opinion" in such a way that it is a source of pain to others (by +arousing envy). The individual generally seeks, through the opinion of +others, to attest and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but the +potent influence of authority--an influence as old as man himself--leads +many, also, to strengthen their own opinion of themselves by means of +authority, that is, to borrow from others the expedient of relying more +upon the judgment of their fellow men than upon their own.--Interest in +oneself, the wish to please oneself attains, with the vain man, such +proportions that he first misleads others into a false, unduly exalted +estimate of himself and then relies upon the authority of others for his +self estimate; he thus creates the delusion that he pins his faith +to.--It must, however, be admitted that the vain man does not desire to +please others so much as himself and he will often go so far, on this +account, as to overlook his own interests: for he often inspires his +fellow creatures with malicious envy and renders them ill disposed in +order that he may thus increase his own delight in himself. + + +90 + +=Limits of the Love of Mankind.=--Every man who has declared that some +other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man +conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous. + + +91 + +=Weeping Morality.=--How much delight morality occasions! Think of the +ocean of pleasing tears that has flowed from the narration of noble, +great-hearted deeds!--This charm of life would disappear if the belief +in complete irresponsibility gained the upper hand. + + +92 + +=Origin of Justice.=--Justice (reasonableness) has its origin among +approximate equals in power, as Thucydides (in the dreadful conferences +of the Athenian and Melian envoys) has rightly conceived. Thus, where +there exists no demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads but to +mutual, useless damage, the reflection arises that an understanding +would best be arrived at and some compromise entered into. The +reciprocal nature is hence the first nature of justice. Each party makes +the other content inasmuch as each receives what it prizes more highly +than the other. Each surrenders to the other what the other wants and +receives in return its own desire. Justice is therefore reprisal and +exchange upon the basis of an approximate equality of power. Thus +revenge pertains originally to the domain of justice as it is a sort of +reciprocity. Equally so, gratitude.--Justice reverts naturally to the +standpoint of self preservation, therefore to the egoism of this +consideration: "why should I injure myself to no purpose and perhaps +never attain my end?"--So much for the origin of justice. Only because +men, through mental habits, have forgotten the original motive of so +called just and rational acts, and also because for thousands of years +children have been brought to admire and imitate such acts, have they +gradually assumed the appearance of being unegotistical. Upon this +appearance is founded the high estimate of them, which, moreover, like +all estimates, is continually developing, for whatever is highly +esteemed is striven for, imitated, made the object of self sacrifice, +while the merit of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by each +individual, ascribed to the thing esteemed.--How slightly moral would +the world appear without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God had +posted forgetfulness as a sentinel at the portal of the temple of human +merit! + + +93 + +=Concerning the Law of the Weaker.=--Whenever any party, for instance, a +besieged city, yields to a stronger party, under stipulated conditions, +the counter stipulation is that there be a reduction to insignificance, +a burning and destruction of the city and thus a great damage inflicted +upon the stronger party. Thus arises a sort of equalization principle +upon the basis of which a law can be established. The enemy has an +advantage to gain by its maintenance.--To this extent there is also a +law between slaves and masters, limited only by the extent to which the +slave may be useful to his master. The law goes originally only so far +as the one party may appear to the other potent, invincible, stable, and +the like. To such an extent, then, the weaker has rights, but very +limited ones. Hence the famous dictum that each has as much law on his +side as his power extends (or more accurately, as his power is believed +to extend). + + +94 + +=The Three Phases of Morality Hitherto.=--It is the first evidence that +the animal has become human when his conduct ceases to be based upon the +immediately expedient, but upon the permanently useful; when he has, +therefore, grown utilitarian, capable of purpose. Thus is manifested the +first rule of reason. A still higher stage is attained when he regulates +his conduct upon the basis of honor, by means of which he gains mastery +of himself and surrenders his desires to principles; this lifts him far +above the phase in which he was actuated only by considerations of +personal advantage as he understood it. He respects and wishes to be +respected. This means that he comprehends utility as a thing dependent +upon what his opinion of others is and their opinion of him. Finally he +regulates his conduct (the highest phase of morality hitherto attained) +by his own standard of men and things. He himself decides, for himself +and for others, what is honorable and what is useful. He has become a +law giver to opinion, upon the basis of his ever higher developing +conception of the utilitarian and the honorable. Knowledge makes him +capable of placing the highest utility, (that is, the universal, +enduring utility) before merely personal utility,--of placing ennobling +recognition of the enduring and universal before the merely temporary: +he lives and acts as a collective individuality. + + +95 + +=Ethic of the Developed Individual.=--Hitherto the altruistic has been +looked upon as the distinctive characteristic of moral conduct, and it +is manifest that it was the consideration of universal utility that +prompted praise and recognition of altruistic conduct. Must not a +radical departure from this point of view be imminent, now that it is +being ever more clearly perceived that in the most personal +considerations the most general welfare is attained: so that conduct +inspired by the most personal considerations of advantage is just the +sort which has its origin in the present conception of morality (as a +universal utilitarianism)? To contemplate oneself as a complete +personality and bear the welfare of that personality in mind in all that +one does--this is productive of better results than any sympathetic +susceptibility and conduct in behalf of others. Indeed we all suffer +from such disparagement of our own personalities, which are at present +made to deteriorate from neglect. Capacity is, in fact, divorced from +our personality in most cases, and sacrificed to the state, to science, +to the needy, as if it were the bad which deserved to be made a +sacrifice. Now, we are willing to labor for our fellowmen but only to +the extent that we find our own highest advantage in so doing, no more, +no less. The whole matter depends upon what may be understood as one's +advantage: the crude, undeveloped, rough individualities will be the +very ones to estimate it most inadequately. + + +96 + +=Usage and Ethic.=--To be moral, virtuous, praiseworthy means to yield +obedience to ancient law and hereditary usage. Whether this obedience be +rendered readily or with difficulty is long immaterial. Enough that it +be rendered. "Good" finally comes to mean him who acts in the +traditional manner, as a result of heredity or natural disposition, that +is to say does what is customary with scarcely an effort, whatever that +may be (for example revenges injuries when revenge, as with the ancient +Greeks, was part of good morals). He is called good because he is good +"to some purpose," and as benevolence, sympathy, considerateness, +moderation and the like come, in the general course of conduct, to be +finally recognized as "good to some purpose" (as utilitarian) the +benevolent man, the helpful man, is duly styled "good". (At first other +and more important kinds of utilitarian qualities stand in the +foreground.) Bad is "not habitual" (unusual), to do things not in +accordance with usage, to oppose the traditional, however rational or +the reverse the traditional may be. To do injury to one's social group +or community (and to one's neighbor as thus understood) is looked upon, +through all the variations of moral laws, in different ages, as the +peculiarly "immoral" act, so that to-day we associate the word "bad" +with deliberate injury to one's neighbor or community. "Egoistic" and +"non-egoistic" do not constitute the fundamental opposites that have +brought mankind to make a distinction between moral and immoral, good +and bad; but adherence to traditional custom, and emancipation from it. +How the traditional had its origin is quite immaterial; in any event it +had no reference to good and bad or any categorical imperative but to +the all important end of maintaining and sustaining the community, the +race, the confederation, the nation. Every superstitious custom that +originated in a misinterpreted event or casualty entailed some +tradition, to adhere to which is moral. To break loose from it is +dangerous, more prejudicial to the community than to the individual +(because divinity visits the consequences of impiety and sacrilege upon +the community rather than upon the individual). Now every tradition +grows ever more venerable--the more remote is its origin, the more +confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from +generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and +inspires awe. Thus it is that the precept of piety is a far loftier +morality than that inculcated by altruistic conduct. + + +97 + +=Delight in the Moral.=--A potent species of joy (and thereby the source +of morality) is custom. The customary is done more easily, better, +therefore preferably. A pleasure is felt in it and experience thus shows +that since this practice has held its own it must be good. A manner or +moral that lives and lets live is thus demonstrated advantageous, +necessary, in contradistinction to all new and not yet adopted +practices. The custom is therefore the blending of the agreeable and the +useful. Moreover it does not require deliberation. As soon as man can +exercise compulsion, he exercises it to enforce and establish his +customs, for they are to him attested lifewisdom. So, too, a community +of individuals constrains each one of their number to adopt the same +moral or custom. The error herein is this: Because a certain custom has +been agreeable to the feelings or at least because it proves a means of +maintenance, this custom must be imperative, for it is regarded as the +only thing that can possibly be consistent with well being. The well +being of life seems to spring from it alone. This conception of the +customary as a condition of existence is carried into the slightest +detail of morality. Inasmuch as insight into true causation is quite +restricted in all inferior peoples, a superstitious anxiety is felt that +everything be done in due routine. Even when a custom is exceedingly +burdensome it is preserved because of its supposed vital utility. It is +not known that the same degree of satisfaction can be experienced +through some other custom and even higher degrees of satisfaction, too. +But it is fully appreciated that all customs do become more agreeable +with the lapse of time, no matter how difficult they may have been found +in the beginning, and that even the severest way of life may be rendered +a matter of habit and therefore a pleasure. + + +98 + +=Pleasure and Social Instinct.=--Through his relations with other men, +man derives a new species of delight in those pleasurable emotions which +his own personality affords him; whereby the domain of pleasurable +emotions is made infinitely more comprehensive. No doubt he has +inherited many of these feelings from the brutes, which palpably feel +delight when they sport with one another, as mothers with their young. +So, too, the sexual relations must be taken into account: they make +every young woman interesting to every young man from the standpoint of +pleasure, and conversely. The feeling of pleasure originating in human +relationships makes men in general better. The delight in common, the +pleasures enjoyed together heighten one another. The individual feels a +sense of security. He becomes better natured. Distrust and malice +dissolve. For the man feels the sense of benefit and observes the same +feeling in others. Mutual manifestations of pleasure inspire mutual +sympathy, the sentiment of homogeneity. The same effect is felt also at +mutual sufferings, in a common danger, in stormy weather. Upon such a +foundation are built the earliest alliances: the object of which is the +mutual protection and safety from threatening misfortunes, and the +welfare of each individual. And thus the social instinct develops from +pleasure. + + +99 + +=The Guiltless Nature of So-Called Bad Acts.=--All "bad" acts are +inspired by the impulse to self preservation or, more accurately, by +the desire for pleasure and for the avoidance of pain in the individual. +Thus are they occasioned, but they are not, therefore, bad. "Pain self +prepared" does not exist, except in the brains of the philosophers, any +more than "pleasure self prepared" (sympathy in the Schopenhauer sense). +In the condition anterior to the state we kill the creature, be it man +or ape, that attempts to pluck the fruit of a tree before we pluck it +ourselves should we happen to be hungry at the time and making for that +tree: as we would do to-day, so far as the brute is concerned, if we +were wandering in savage regions.--The bad acts which most disturb us at +present do so because of the erroneous supposition that the one who is +guilty of them towards us has a free will in the matter and that it was +within his discretion not to have done these evil things. This belief in +discretionary power inspires hate, thirst for revenge, malice, the +entire perversion of the mental processes, whereas we would feel in no +way incensed against the brute, as we hold it irresponsible. To inflict +pain not from the instinct of self preservation but in requital--this is +the consequence of false judgment and is equally a guiltless course of +conduct. The individual can, in that condition which is anterior to the +state, act with fierceness and violence for the intimidation of another +creature, in order to render his own power more secure as a result of +such acts of intimidation. Thus acts the powerful, the superior, the +original state founder, who subjugates the weaker. He has the right to +do so, as the state nowadays assumes the same right, or, to be more +accurate, there is no right that can conflict with this. A foundation +for all morality can first be laid only when a stronger individuality or +a collective individuality, for example society, the state, subjects the +single personalities, hence builds upon their unification and +establishes a bond of union. Morality results from compulsion, it is +indeed itself one long compulsion to which obedience is rendered in +order that pain may be avoided. At first it is but custom, later free +obedience and finally almost instinct. At last it is (like everything +habitual and natural) associated with pleasure--and is then called +virtue. + + +100 + +=Shame.=--Shame exists wherever a "mystery" exists: but this is a +religious notion which in the earlier period of human civilization had +great vogue. Everywhere there were circumscribed spots to which access +was denied on account of some divine law, except in special +circumstances. At first these spots were quite extensive, inasmuch as +stipulated areas could not be trod by the uninitiated, who, when near +them, felt tremors and anxieties. This sentiment was frequently +transferred to other relationships, for example to sexual relations, +which, as the privilege and gateway of mature age, must be withdrawn +from the contemplation of youth for its own advantage: relations which +many divinities were busy in preserving and sanctifying, images of which +divinities were duly placed in marital chambers as guardians. (In +Turkish such an apartment is termed a harem or holy thing, the same word +also designating the vestibule of a mosque). So, too, Kingship is +regarded as a centre from which power and brilliance stream forth, as a +mystery to the subjects, impregnated with secrecy and shame, sentiments +still quite operative among peoples who in other respects are without +any shame at all. So, too, is the whole world of inward states, the +so-called "soul," even now, for all non-philosophical persons, a +"mystery," and during countless ages it was looked upon as a something +of divine origin, in direct communion with deity. It is, therefore, an +adytum and occasions shame. + + +101 + +=Judge Not.=--Care must be taken, in the contemplation of earlier ages, +that there be no falling into unjust scornfulness. The injustice in +slavery, the cruelty in the subjugation of persons and peoples must not +be estimated by our standard. For in that period the instinct of justice +was not so highly developed. Who dare reproach the Genoese Calvin for +burning the physician Servetus at the stake? It was a proceeding growing +out of his convictions. And the Inquisition, too, had its justification. +The only thing is that the prevailing views were false and led to those +proceedings which seem so cruel to us, simply because such views have +become foreign to us. Besides, what is the burning alive of one +individual compared with eternal hell pains for everybody else? And yet +this idea then had hold of all the world without in the least vitiating, +with its frightfulness, the other idea of a god. Even we nowadays are +hard and merciless to political revolutionists, but that is because we +are in the habit of believing the state a necessity, and hence the +cruelty of the proceeding is not so much understood as in the other +cases where the points of view are repudiated. The cruelty to animals +shown by children and Italians is due to the same misunderstanding. The +animal, owing to the exigencies of the church catechism, is placed too +far below the level of mankind.--Much, too, that is frightful and +inhuman in history, and which is almost incredible, is rendered less +atrocious by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who +executes are different persons. The former does not witness the +performance and hence it makes no strong impression on him. The latter +obeys a superior and hence feels no responsibility. Most princes and +military chieftains appear, through lack of true perception, cruel and +hard without really being so.--Egoism is not bad because the idea of the +"neighbor"--the word is of Christian origin and does not correspond to +truth--is very weak in us, and we feel ourselves, in regard to him, as +free from responsibility as if plants and stones were involved. That +another is in suffering must be learned and it can never be wholly +learned. + + +102 + +"=Man Always Does Right.="--We do not blame nature when she sends a +thunder storm and makes us wet: why then do we term the man who inflicts +injury immoral? Because in the latter case we assume a voluntary, +ruling, free will, and in the former necessity. But this distinction is +a delusion. Moreover, even the intentional infliction of injury is not, +in all circumstances termed immoral. Thus, we kill a fly intentionally +without thinking very much about it, simply because its buzzing about is +disagreeable; and we punish a criminal and inflict pain upon him in +order to protect ourselves and society. In the first case it is the +individual who, for the sake of preserving himself or in order to spare +himself pain, does injury with design: in the second case, it is the +state. All ethic deems intentional infliction of injury justified by +necessity; that is when it is a matter of self preservation. But these +two points of view are sufficient to explain all bad acts done by man to +men. It is desired to obtain pleasure or avoid pain. In any sense, it is +a question, always, of self preservation. Socrates and Plato are right: +whatever man does he always does right: that is, does what seems to him +good (advantageous) according to the degree of advancement his intellect +has attained, which is always the measure of his rational capacity. + + +103 + +=The Inoffensive in Badness.=--Badness has not for its object the +infliction of pain upon others but simply our own satisfaction as, for +instance, in the case of thirst for vengeance or of nerve excitation. +Every act of teasing shows what pleasure is caused by the display of +our power over others and what feelings of delight are experienced in +the sense of domination. Is there, then, anything immoral in feeling +pleasure in the pain of others? Is malicious joy devilish, as +Schopenhauer says? In the realm of nature we feel joy in breaking +boughs, shattering rocks, fighting with wild beasts, simply to attest +our strength thereby. Should not the knowledge that another suffers on +our account here, in this case, make the same kind of act, (which, by +the way, arouses no qualms of conscience in us) immoral also? But if we +had not this knowledge there would be no pleasure in one's own +superiority or power, for this pleasure is experienced only in the +suffering of another, as in the case of teasing. All pleasure is, in +itself, neither good nor bad. Whence comes the conviction that one +should not cause pain in others in order to feel pleasure oneself? +Simply from the standpoint of utility, that is, in consideration of the +consequences, of ultimate pain, since the injured party or state will +demand satisfaction and revenge. This consideration alone can have led +to the determination to renounce such pleasure.--Sympathy has the +satisfaction of others in view no more than, as already stated, badness +has the pain of others in view. For there are at least two (perhaps many +more) elementary ingredients in personal gratification which enter +largely into our self satisfaction: one of them being the pleasure of +the emotion, of which species is sympathy with tragedy, and another, +when the impulse is to action, being the pleasure of exercising one's +power. Should a sufferer be very dear to us, we divest ourselves of pain +by the performance of acts of sympathy.--With the exception of some few +philosophers, men have placed sympathy very low in the rank of moral +feelings: and rightly. + + +104 + +=Self Defence.=--If self defence is in general held a valid +justification, then nearly every manifestation of so called immoral +egoism must be justified, too. Pain is inflicted, robbery or killing +done in order to maintain life or to protect oneself and ward off harm. +A man lies when cunning and delusion are valid means of self +preservation. To injure intentionally when our safety and our existence +are involved, or the continuance of our well being, is conceded to be +moral. The state itself injures from this motive when it hangs +criminals. In unintentional injury the immoral, of course, can not be +present, as accident alone is involved. But is there any sort of +intentional injury in which our existence and the maintenance of our +well being be not involved? Is there such a thing as injuring from +absolute badness, for example, in the case of cruelty? If a man does not +know what pain an act occasions, that act is not one of wickedness. Thus +the child is not bad to the animal, not evil. It disturbs and rends it +as if it were one of its playthings. Does a man ever fully know how much +pain an act may cause another? As far as our nervous system extends, we +shield ourselves from pain. If it extended further, that is, to our +fellow men, we would never cause anyone else any pain (except in such +cases as we cause it to ourselves, when we cut ourselves, surgically, to +heal our ills, or strive and trouble ourselves to gain health). We +conclude from analogy that something pains somebody and can in +consequence, through recollection and the power of imagination, feel +pain also. But what a difference there always is between the tooth ache +and the pain (sympathy) that the spectacle of tooth ache occasions! +Therefore when injury is inflicted from so called badness the degree of +pain thereby experienced is always unknown to us: in so far, however, as +pleasure is felt in the act (a sense of one's own power, of one's own +excitation) the act is committed to maintain the well being of the +individual and hence comes under the purview of self defence and lying +for self preservation. Without pleasure, there is no life; the struggle +for pleasure is the struggle for life. Whether the individual shall +carry on this struggle in such a way that he be called good or in such a +way that he be called bad is something that the standard and the +capacity of his own intellect must determine for him. + + +105 + +=Justice that Rewards.=--Whoever has fully understood the doctrine of +absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so called rewarding +and punishing justice in the idea of justice, if the latter be taken to +mean that to each be given his due. For he who is punished does not +deserve the punishment. He is used simply as a means to intimidate +others from certain acts. Equally, he who is rewarded does not merit the +reward. He could not act any differently than he did act. Hence the +reward has only the significance of an encouragement to him and others +as a motive for subsequent acts. The praise is called out only to him +who is running in the race and not to him who has arrived at the goal. +Something that comes to someone as his own is neither a punishment nor a +reward. It is given to him from utiliarian considerations, without his +having any claim to it in justice. Hence one must say "the wise man +praises not because a good act has been done" precisely as was once +said: "the wise man punishes not because a bad act has been done but in +order that a bad act may not be done." If punishment and reward ceased, +there would cease with them the most powerful incentives to certain acts +and away from other acts. The purposes of men demand their continuance +[of punishment and reward] and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame +and praise operate most potently upon vanity, these same purposes of men +imperatively require the continuance of vanity. + + +106 + +=The Water Fall.=--At the sight of a water fall we may opine that in the +countless curves, spirations and dashes of the waves we behold freedom +of the will and of the impulses. But everything is compulsory, +everything can be mathematically calculated. Thus it is, too, with human +acts. We would be able to calculate in advance every single action if we +were all knowing, as well as every advance in knowledge, every delusion, +every bad deed. The acting individual himself is held fast in the +illusion of volition. If, on a sudden, the entire movement of the world +stopped short, and an all knowing and reasoning intelligence were there +to take advantage of this pause, he could foretell the future of every +being to the remotest ages and indicate the path that would be taken in +the world's further course. The deception of the acting individual as +regards himself, the assumption of the freedom of the will, is a part of +this computable mechanism. + + +107 + +=Non-Responsibility and Non-Guilt.=--The absolute irresponsibility of +man for his acts and his nature is the bitterest drop in the cup of him +who has knowledge, if he be accustomed to behold in responsibility and +duty the patent of nobility of his human nature. All his estimates, +preferences, dislikes are thus made worthless and false. His deepest +sentiment, with which he honored the sufferer, the hero, sprang from an +error. He may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is irrational to +blame and praise nature and necessity. Just as he cherishes the +beautiful work of art, but does not praise it (as it is incapable of +doing anything for itself), just as he stands in the presence of plants, +he must stand in the presence of human conduct, his own included. He may +admire strength, beauty, capacity, therein, but he can discern no merit. +The chemical process and the conflict of the elements, the ordeal of +the invalid who strives for convalescence, are no more merits than the +soul-struggles and extremities in which one is torn this way and that by +contending motives until one finally decides in favor of the +strongest--as the phrase has it, although, in fact, it is the strongest +motive that decides for us. All these motives, however, whatever fine +names we may give them, have grown from the same roots in which we +believe the baneful poisons lurk. Between good and bad actions there is +no difference in kind but, at most, in degree. Good acts are sublimated +evil. Bad acts are degraded, imbruted good. The very longing of the +individual for self gratification (together with the fear of being +deprived of it) obtains satisfaction in all circumstances, let the +individual act as he may, that is, as he must: be it in deeds of vanity, +revenge, pleasure, utility, badness, cunning, be it in deeds of self +sacrifice, sympathy or knowledge. The degrees of rational capacity +determine the direction in which this longing impels: every society, +every individual has constantly present a comparative classification of +benefits in accordance with which conduct is determined and others are +judged. But this standard perpetually changes. Many acts are called bad +that are only stupid, because the degree of intelligence that decided +for them was low. Indeed, in a certain sense, all acts now are stupid, +for the highest degree of human intelligence that has yet been attained +will in time most certainly be surpassed and then, in retrospection, all +our present conduct and opinion will appear as narrow and petty as we +now deem the conduct and opinion of savage peoples and ages.--To +perceive all these things may occasion profound pain but there is, +nevertheless, a consolation. Such pains are birth pains. The butterfly +insists upon breaking through the cocoon, he presses through it, tears +it to pieces, only to be blinded and confused by the strange light, by +the realm of liberty. By such men as are capable of this sadness--how +few there are!--will the first attempt be made to see if humanity may +convert itself from a thing of morality to a thing of wisdom. The sun of +a new gospel sheds its first ray upon the loftiest height in the souls +of those few: but the clouds are massed there, too, thicker than ever, +and not far apart are the brightest sunlight and the deepest gloom. +Everything is necessity--so says the new knowledge: and this knowledge +is itself necessity. All is guiltlessness, and knowledge is the way to +insight into this guiltlessness. If pleasure, egoism, vanity be +necessary to attest the moral phenomena and their richest blooms, the +instinct for truth and accuracy of knowledge; if delusion and confusion +of the imagination were the only means whereby mankind could gradually +lift itself up to this degree of self enlightenment and self +emancipation--who would venture to disparage the means? Who would have +the right to feel sad if made aware of the goal to which those paths +lead? Everything in the domain of ethic is evolved, changeable, +tottering; all things flow, it is true--but all things are also in the +stream: to their goal. Though within us the hereditary habit of +erroneous judgment, love, hate, may be ever dominant, yet under the +influence of awaking knowledge it will ever become weaker: a new habit, +that of understanding, not-loving, not-hating, looking from above, grows +up within us gradually and in the same soil, and may, perhaps, in +thousands of years be powerful enough to endow mankind with capacity to +develop the wise, guiltless man (conscious of guiltlessness) as +unfailingly as it now developes the unwise, irrational, guilt-conscious +man--that is to say, the necessary higher step, not the opposite of it. + + + + +THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. + + +108 + +=The Double Contest Against Evil.=--If an evil afflicts us we can either +so deal with it as to remove its cause or else so deal with it that its +effect upon our feeling is changed: hence look upon the evil as a +benefit of which the uses will perhaps first become evident in some +subsequent period. Religion and art (and also the metaphysical +philosophy) strive to effect an alteration of the feeling, partly by an +alteration of our judgment respecting the experience (for example, with +the aid of the dictum "whom God loves, he chastizes") partly by the +awakening of a joy in pain, in emotion especially (whence the art of +tragedy had its origin). The more one is disposed to interpret away and +justify, the less likely he is to look directly at the causes of evil +and eliminate them. An instant alleviation and narcotizing of pain, as +is usual in the case of tooth ache, is sufficient for him even in the +severest suffering. The more the domination of religions and of all +narcotic arts declines, the more searchingly do men look to the +elimination of evil itself, which is a rather bad thing for the tragic +poets--for there is ever less and less material for tragedy, since the +domain of unsparing, immutable destiny grows constantly more +circumscribed--and a still worse thing for the priests, for these last +have lived heretofore upon the narcoticizing of human ill. + + +109 + +=Sorrow is Knowledge.=--How willingly would not one exchange the false +assertions of the homines religiosi that there is a god who commands us +to be good, who is the sentinel and witness of every act, every moment, +every thought, who loves us, who plans our welfare in every +misfortune--how willingly would not one exchange these for truths as +healing, beneficial and grateful as those delusions! But there are no +such truths. Philosophy can at most set up in opposition to them other +metaphysical plausibilities (fundamental untruths as well). The tragedy +of it all is that, although one cannot believe these dogmas of religion +and metaphysics if one adopts in heart and head the potent methods of +truth, one has yet become, through human evolution, so tender, +susceptible, sensitive, as to stand in need of the most effective means +of rest and consolation. From this state of things arises the danger +that, through the perception of truth or, more accurately, seeing +through delusion, one may bleed to death. Byron has put this into +deathless verse: + + "Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most + Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, + The tree of knowledge is not that of life." + +Against such cares there is no better protective than the light fancy of +Horace, (at any rate during the darkest hours and sun eclipses of the +soul) expressed in the words + + "quid aeternis minorem + consiliis animum fatigas? + cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac + pinu jacentes."[22] + +[22] Then wherefore should you, who are mortal, outwear + Your soul with a profitless burden of care + Say, why should we not, flung at ease neath this pine, + Or a plane-tree's broad umbrage, quaff gaily our wine? + (Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.) + +At any rate, light fancy or heavy heartedness of any degree must be +better than a romantic retrogression and desertion of one's flag, an +approach to Christianity in any form: for with it, in the present state +of knowledge, one can have nothing to do without hopelessly defiling +one's intellectual integrity and surrendering it unconditionally. These +woes may be painful enough, but without pain one cannot become a leader +and guide of humanity: and woe to him who would be such and lacks this +pure integrity of the intellect! + + +110 + +=The Truth in Religion.=--In the ages of enlightenment justice was not +done to the importance of religion, of this there can be no doubt. It is +also equally certain that in the ensuing reaction of enlightenment, the +demands of justice were far exceeded inasmuch as religion was treated +with love, even with infatuation and proclaimed as a profound, indeed +the most profound knowledge of the world, which science had but to +divest of its dogmatic garb in order to possess "truth" in its +unmythical form. Religions must therefore--this was the contention of +all foes of enlightenment--sensu allegorico, with regard for the +comprehension of the masses, give expression to that ancient truth which +is wisdom in itself, inasmuch as all science of modern times has led up +to it instead of away from it. So that between the most ancient wisdom +of man and all later wisdom there prevails harmony, even similarity of +viewpoint; and the advancement of knowledge--if one be disposed to +concede such a thing--has to do not with its nature but with its +propagation. This whole conception of religion and science is through +and through erroneous, and none would to-day be hardy enough to +countenance it had not Schopenhauer's rhetoric taken it under +protection, this high sounding rhetoric which now gains auditors after +the lapse of a generation. Much as may be gained from Schopenhauer's +religio-ethical human and cosmical oracle as regards the comprehension +of Christianity and other religions, it is nevertheless certain that he +erred regarding the value of religion to knowledge. He himself was in +this but a servile pupil of the scientific teachers of his time who had +all taken romanticism under their protection and renounced the spirit of +enlightenment. Had he been born in our own time it would have been +impossible for him to have spoken of the sensus allegoricus of religion. +He would instead have done truth the justice to say: never has a +religion, directly or indirectly, either as dogma or as allegory, +contained a truth. For all religions grew out of dread or necessity, and +came into existence through an error of the reason. They have, perhaps, +in times of danger from science, incorporated some philosophical +doctrine or other into their systems in order to make it possible to +continue one's existence within them. But this is but a theological work +of art dating from the time in which a religion began to doubt of +itself. These theological feats of art, which are most common in +Christianity as the religion of a learned age, impregnated with +philosophy, have led to this superstition of the sensus allegoricus, as +has, even more, the habit of the philosophers (namely those +half-natures, the poetical philosophers and the philosophising artists) +of dealing with their own feelings as if they constituted the +fundamental nature of humanity and hence of giving their own religious +feelings a predominant influence over the structure of their systems. As +the philosophers mostly philosophised under the influence of hereditary +religious habits, or at least under the traditional influence of this +"metaphysical necessity," they naturally arrived at conclusions +closely resembling the Judaic or Christian or Indian religious +tenets--resembling, in the way that children are apt to look like their +mothers: only in this case the fathers were not certain as to the +maternity, as easily happens--but in the innocence of their admiration, +they fabled regarding the family likeness of all religion and science. +In reality, there exists between religion and true science neither +relationship nor friendship, not even enmity: they dwell in different +spheres. Every philosophy that lets the religious comet gleam through +the darkness of its last outposts renders everything within it that +purports to be science, suspicious. It is all probably religion, +although it may assume the guise of science.--Moreover, though all the +peoples agree concerning certain religious things, for example, the +existence of a god (which, by the way, as regards this point, is not +the case) this fact would constitute an argument against the thing +agreed upon, for example the very existence of a god. The consensus +gentium and especially hominum can probably amount only to an absurdity. +Against it there is no consensus omnium sapientium whatever, on any +point, with the exception of which Goethe's verse speaks: + + "All greatest sages to all latest ages + Will smile, wink and slily agree + 'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate + Has learned to be knowing and free. + So children of wisdom must look upon fools + As creatures who're never the better for schools." + +Stated without rhyme or metre and adapted to our case: the consensus +sapientium is to the effect that the consensus gentium amounts to an +absurdity. + + +111 + +=Origin of Religious Worship.=--Let us transport ourselves back to the +times in which religious life flourished most vigorously and we will +find a fundamental conviction prevalent which we no longer share and +which has resulted in the closing of the door to religious life once for +all so far as we are concerned: this conviction has to do with nature +and intercourse with her. In those times nothing is yet known of +nature's laws. Neither for earth nor for heaven is there a must. A +season, sunshine, rain can come or stay away as it pleases. There is +wanting, in particular, all idea of natural causation. If a man rows, it +is not the oar that moves the boat, but rowing is a magical ceremony +whereby a demon is constrained to move the boat. All illness, death +itself, is a consequence of magical influences. In sickness and death +nothing natural is conceived. The whole idea of "natural course" is +wanting. The idea dawns first upon the ancient Greeks, that is to say in +a very late period of humanity, in the conception of a Moira [fate] +ruling over the gods. If any person shoots off a bow, there is always an +irrational strength and agency in the act. If the wells suddenly run +dry, the first thought is of subterranean demons and their pranks. It +must have been the dart of a god beneath whose invisible influence a +human being suddenly collapses. In India, the carpenter (according to +Lubbock) is in the habit of making devout offerings to his hammer and +hatchet. A Brahmin treats the plume with which he writes, a soldier the +weapon that he takes into the field, a mason his trowel, a laborer his +plow, in the same way. All nature is, in the opinion of religious +people, a sum total of the doings of conscious and willing beings, an +immense mass of complex volitions. In regard to all that takes place +outside of us no conclusion is permissible that anything will result +thus and so, must result thus and so, that we are comparatively +calculable and certain in our experiences, that man is the rule, nature +the ruleless. This view forms the fundamental conviction that dominates +crude, religion-producing, early civilizations. We contemporary men feel +exactly the opposite: the richer man now feels himself inwardly, the +more polyphone the music and the sounding of his soul, the more +powerfully does the uniformity of nature impress him. We all, with +Goethe, recognize in nature the great means of repose for the soul. We +listen to the pendulum stroke of this great clock with longing for rest, +for absolute calm and quiescence, as if we could drink in the uniformity +of nature and thereby arrive first at an enjoyment of oneself. Formerly +it was the reverse: if we carry ourselves back to the periods of crude +civilization, or if we contemplate contemporary savages, we will find +them most strongly influenced by rule, by tradition. The individual is +almost automatically bound to rule and tradition and moves with the +uniformity of a pendulum. To him nature--the uncomprehended, fearful, +mysterious nature--must seem the domain of freedom, of volition, of +higher power, indeed as an ultra-human degree of destiny, as god. Every +individual in such periods and circumstances feels that his existence, +his happiness, the existence and happiness of the family, the state, +the success or failure of every undertaking, must depend upon these +dispositions of nature. Certain natural events must occur at the proper +time and certain others must not occur. How can influence be exercised +over this fearful unknown, how can this domain of freedom be brought +under subjection? thus he asks himself, thus he worries: Is there no +means to render these powers of nature as subject to rule and tradition +as you are yourself?--The cogitation of the superstitious and +magic-deluded man is upon the theme of imposing a law upon nature: and +to put it briefly, religious worship is the result of such cogitation. +The problem which is present to every man is closely connected with this +one: how can the weaker party dictate laws to the stronger, control its +acts in reference to the weaker? At first the most harmless form of +influence is recollected, that influence which is acquired when the +partiality of anyone has been won. Through beseeching and prayer, +through abject humiliation, through obligations to regular gifts and +propitiations, through flattering homages, it is possible, therefore, to +impose some guidance upon the forces of nature, to the extent that their +partiality be won: love binds and is bound. Then agreements can be +entered into by means of which certain courses of conduct are mutually +concluded, vows are made and authorities prescribed. But far more potent +is that species of power exercised by means of magic and incantation. As +a man is able to injure a powerful enemy by means of the magician and +render him helpless with fear, as the love potion operates at a +distance, so can the mighty forces of nature, in the opinion of weaker +mankind, be controlled by similar means. The principal means of +effecting incantations is to acquire control of something belonging to +the party to be influenced, hair, finger nails, food from his table, +even his picture or his name. With such apparatus it is possible to act +by means of magic, for the basic principle is that to everything +spiritual corresponds something corporeal. With the aid of this +corporeal element the spirit may be bound, injured or destroyed. The +corporeal affords the handle by which the spiritual can be laid hold of. +In the same way that man influences mankind does he influences some +spirit of nature, for this latter has also its corporeal element that +can be grasped. The tree, and on the same basis, the seed from which it +grew: this puzzling sequence seems to demonstrate that in both forms the +same spirit is embodied, now large, now small. A stone that suddenly +rolls, is the body in which the spirit works. Does a huge boulder lie in +a lonely moor? It is impossible to think of mortal power having placed +it there. The stone must have moved itself there. That is to say some +spirit must dominate it. Everything that has a body is subject to magic, +including, therefore, the spirits of nature. If a god is directly +connected with his portrait, a direct influence (by refraining from +devout offerings, by whippings, chainings and the like) can be brought +to bear upon him. The lower classes in China tie cords around the +picture of their god in order to defy his departing favor, when he has +left them in the lurch, and tear the picture to pieces, drag it through +the streets into dung heaps and gutters, crying: "You dog of a spirit, +we housed you in a beautiful temple, we gilded you prettily, we fed you +well, we brought you offerings, and yet how ungrateful you are!" Similar +displays of resentment have been made against pictures of the mother of +god and pictures of saints in Catholic countries during the present +century when such pictures would not do their duty during times of +pestilence and drought. + +Through all these magical relationships to nature countless ceremonies +are occasioned, and finally, when their complexity and confusion grow +too great, pains are taken to systematize them, to arrange them so that +the favorable course of nature's progress, namely the great yearly +circle of the seasons, may be brought about by a corresponding course of +the ceremonial progress. The aim of religious worship is to influence +nature to human advantage, and hence to instil a subjection to law into +her that originally she has not, whereas at present man desires to find +out the subjection to law of nature in order to guide himself thereby. +In brief, the system of religious worship rests upon the idea of magic +between man and man, and the magician is older than the priest. But it +rests equally upon other and higher ideas. It brings into prominence the +sympathetic relation of man to man, the existence of benevolence, +gratitude, prayer, of truces between enemies, of loans upon security, of +arrangements for the protection of property. Man, even in very inferior +degrees of civilization, does not stand in the presence of nature as a +helpless slave, he is not willy-nilly the absolute servant of nature. In +the Greek development of religion, especially in the relationship to the +Olympian gods, it becomes possible to entertain the idea of an existence +side by side of two castes, a higher, more powerful, and a lower, less +powerful: but both are bound together in some way, on account of their +origin and are one species. They need not be ashamed of one another. +This is the element of distinction in Greek religion. + + +112 + +=At the Contemplation of Certain Ancient Sacrificial Proceedings.=--How +many sentiments are lost to us is manifest in the union of the farcical, +even of the obscene, with the religious feeling. The feeling that this +mixture is possible is becoming extinct. We realize the mixture only +historically, in the mysteries of Demeter and Dionysos and in the +Christian Easter festivals and religious mysteries. But we still +perceive the sublime in connection with the ridiculous, and the like, +the emotional with the absurd. Perhaps a later age will be unable to +understand even these combinations. + + +113 + +=Christianity as Antiquity.=--When on a Sunday morning we hear the old +bells ringing, we ask ourselves: Is it possible? All this for a Jew +crucified two thousand years ago who said he was God's son? The proof of +such an assertion is lacking.--Certainly, the Christian religion +constitutes in our time a protruding bit of antiquity from very remote +ages and that its assertions are still generally believed--although men +have become so keen in the scrutiny of claims--constitutes the oldest +relic of this inheritance. A god who begets children by a mortal woman; +a sage who demands that no more work be done, that no more justice be +administered but that the signs of the approaching end of the world be +heeded; a system of justice that accepts an innocent as a vicarious +sacrifice in the place of the guilty; a person who bids his disciples +drink his blood; prayers for miracles; sins against a god expiated upon +a god; fear of a hereafter to which death is the portal; the figure of +the cross as a symbol in an age that no longer knows the purpose and the +ignominy of the cross--how ghostly all these things flit before us out +of the grave of their primitive antiquity! Is one to believe that such +things can still be believed? + + +114 + +=The Un-Greek in Christianity.=--The Greeks did not look upon the +Homeric gods above them as lords nor upon themselves beneath as +servants, after the fashion of the Jews. They saw but the counterpart as +in a mirror of the most perfect specimens of their own caste, hence an +ideal, but no contradiction of their own nature. There was a feeling of +mutual relationship, resulting in a mutual interest, a sort of alliance. +Man thinks well of himself when he gives himself such gods and places +himself in a relationship akin to that of the lower nobility with the +higher; whereas the Italian races have a decidedly vulgar religion, +involving perpetual anxiety because of bad and mischievous powers and +soul disturbers. Wherever the Olympian gods receded into the background, +there even Greek life became gloomier and more perturbed.--Christianity, +on the other hand, oppressed and degraded humanity completely and sank +it into deepest mire: into the feeling of utter abasement it suddenly +flashed the gleam of divine compassion, so that the amazed and +grace-dazzled stupefied one gave a cry of delight and for a moment +believed that the whole of heaven was within him. Upon this unhealthy +excess of feeling, upon the accompanying corruption of heart and head, +Christianity attains all its psychological effects. It wants to +annihilate, debase, stupefy, amaze, bedazzle. There is but one thing +that it does not want: measure, standard (das Maas) and therefore is it +in the worst sense barbarous, asiatic, vulgar, un-Greek. + + +115 + +=Being Religious to Some Purpose.=--There are certain insipid, +traffic-virtuous people to whom religion is pinned like the hem of some +garb of a higher humanity. These people do well to remain religious: it +adorns them. All who are not versed in some professional +weapon--including tongue and pen as weapons--are servile: to all such +the Christian religion is very useful, for then their servility assumes +the aspect of Christian virtue and is amazingly adorned.--People whose +daily lives are empty and colorless are readily religious. This is +comprehensible and pardonable, but they have no right to demand that +others, whose daily lives are not empty and colorless, should be +religious also. + + +116 + +=The Everyday Christian.=--If Christianity, with its allegations of an +avenging God, universal sinfulness, choice of grace, and the danger of +eternal damnation, were true, it would be an indication of weakness of +mind and character not to be a priest or an apostle or a hermit, and +toil for one's own salvation. It would be irrational to lose sight of +one's eternal well being in comparison with temporary advantage: +Assuming these dogmas to be generally believed, the every day Christian +is a pitiable figure, a man who really cannot count as far as three, and +who, for the rest, just because of his intellectual incapacity, does not +deserve to be as hard punished as Christianity promises he shall be. + + +117 + +=Concerning the Cleverness of Christianity.=--It is a master stroke of +Christianity to so emphasize the unworthiness, sinfulness and +degradation of men in general that contempt of one's fellow creatures +becomes impossible. "He may sin as much as he pleases, he is not by +nature different from me. It is I who in every way am unworthy and +contemptible." So says the Christian to himself. But even this feeling +has lost its keenest sting for the Christian does not believe in his +individual degradation. He is bad in his general human capacity and he +soothes himself a little with the assertion that we are all alike. + + +118 + +=Personal Change.=--As soon as a religion rules, it has for its +opponents those who were its first disciples. + + +119 + +=Fate of Christianity.=--Christianity arose to lighten the heart, but +now it must first make the heart heavy in order to be able to lighten it +afterwards. Christianity will consequently go down. + + +120 + +=The Testimony of Pleasure.=--The agreeable opinion is accepted as true. +This is the testimony of pleasure (or as the church says, the evidence +of strength) of which all religions are so proud, although they should +all be ashamed of it. If a belief did not make blessed it would not be +believed. How little it would be worth, then! + + +121 + +=Dangerous Play.=--Whoever gives religious feeling room, must then also +let it grow. He can do nothing else. Then his being gradually changes. +The religious element brings with it affinities and kinships. The whole +circle of his judgment and feeling is clouded and draped in religious +shadows. Feeling cannot stand still. One should be on one's guard. + + +122 + +=The Blind Pupil.=--As long as one knows very well the strength and the +weakness of one's dogma, one's art, one's religion, its strength is +still low. The pupil and apostle who has no eye for the weaknesses of a +dogma, a religion and so on, dazzled by the aspect of the master and by +his own reverence for him, has, on that very account, generally more +power than the master. Without blind pupils the influence of a man and +his work has never become great. To give victory to knowledge, often +amounts to no more than so allying it with stupidity that the brute +force of the latter forces triumph for the former. + + +123 + +=The Breaking off of Churches.=--There is not sufficient religion in the +world merely to put an end to the number of religions. + + +124 + +=Sinlessness of Men.=--If one have understood how "Sin came into the +world," namely through errors of the reason, through which men in their +intercourse with one another and even individual men looked upon +themselves as much blacker and wickeder than was really the case, one's +whole feeling is much lightened and man and the world appear together in +such a halo of harmlessness that a sentiment of well being is instilled +into one's whole nature. Man in the midst of nature is as a child left +to its own devices. This child indeed dreams a heavy, anxious dream. But +when it opens its eyes it finds itself always in paradise. + + +125 + +=Irreligiousness of Artists.=--Homer is so much at home among his gods +and is as a poet so good natured to them that he must have been +profoundly irreligious. That which was brought to him by the popular +faith--a mean, crude and partially repulsive superstition--he dealt with +as freely as the Sculptor with his clay, therefore with the same freedom +that Æschylus and Aristophanes evinced and with which in later times the +great artists of the renaissance, and also Shakespeare and Goethe, drew +their pictures. + + +126 + +=Art and Strength of False Interpretation.=--All the visions, fears, +exhaustions and delights of the saint are well known symptoms of +sickness, which in him, owing to deep rooted religious and psychological +delusions, are explained quite differently, that is not as symptoms of +sickness.--So, too, perhaps, the demon of Socrates was nothing but a +malady of the ear that he explained, in view of his predominant moral +theory, in a manner different from what would be thought rational +to-day. Nor is the case different with the frenzy and the frenzied +speeches of the prophets and of the priests of the oracles. It is always +the degree of wisdom, imagination, capacity and morality in the heart +and mind of the interpreters that got so much out of them. It is among +the greatest feats of the men who are called geniuses and saints that +they made interpreters for themselves who, fortunately for mankind, did +not understand them. + + +127 + +=Reverence for Madness.=--Because it was perceived that an excitement of +some kind often made the head clearer and occasioned fortunate +inspirations, it was concluded that the utmost excitement would occasion +the most fortunate inspirations. Hence the frenzied being was revered as +a sage and an oracle giver. A false conclusion lies at the bottom of all +this. + + +128 + +=Promises of Wisdom.=--Modern science has as its object as little pain +as possible, as long a life as possible--hence a sort of eternal +blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises +of religion. + + +129 + +=Forbidden Generosity.=--There is not enough of love and goodness in the +world to throw any of it away on conceited people. + + +130 + +=Survival of Religious Training in the Disposition.=--The Catholic +Church, and before it all ancient education, controlled the whole domain +of means through which man was put into certain unordinary moods and +withdrawn from the cold calculation of personal advantage and from calm, +rational reflection. A church vibrating with deep tones; gloomy, +regular, restraining exhortations from a priestly band, who +involuntarily communicate their own tension to their congregation and +lead them to listen almost with anxiety as if some miracle were in +course of preparation; the awesome pile of architecture which, as the +house of a god, rears itself vastly into the vague and in all its +shadowy nooks inspires fear of its nerve-exciting power--who would care +to reduce men to the level of these things if the ideas upon which they +rest became extinct? But the results of all these things are +nevertheless not thrown away: the inner world of exalted, emotional, +prophetic, profoundly repentant, hope-blessed moods has become inborn in +man largely through cultivation. What still exists in his soul was +formerly, as he germinated, grew and bloomed, thoroughly disciplined. + + +131 + +=Religious After-Pains.=--Though one believe oneself absolutely weaned +away from religion, the process has yet not been so thorough as to make +impossible a feeling of joy at the presence of religious feelings and +dispositions without intelligible content, as, for example, in music; +and if a philosophy alleges to us the validity of metaphysical hopes, +through the peace of soul therein attainable, and also speaks of "the +whole true gospel in the look of Raphael's Madonna," we greet such +declarations and innuendoes with a welcome smile. The philosopher has +here a matter easy of demonstration. He responds with that which he is +glad to give, namely a heart that is glad to accept. Hence it is +observable how the less reflective free spirits collide only with dogmas +but yield readily to the magic of religious feelings; it is a source of +pain to them to let the latter go simply on account of the +former.--Scientific philosophy must be very much on its guard lest on +account of this necessity--an evolved and hence, also, a transitory +necessity--delusions are smuggled in. Even logicians speak of +"presentiments" of truth in ethics and in art (for example of the +presentiment that the essence of things is unity) a thing which, +nevertheless, ought to be prohibited. Between carefully deduced truths +and such "foreboded" things there lies the abysmal distinction that the +former are products of the intellect and the latter of the necessity. +Hunger is no evidence that there is food at hand to appease it. Hunger +merely craves food. "Presentiment" does not denote that the existence of +a thing is known in any way whatever. It denotes merely that it is +deemed possible to the extent that it is desired or feared. The +"presentiment" is not one step forward in the domain of certainty.--It +is involuntarily believed that the religious tinted sections of a +philosophy are better attested than the others, but the case is at +bottom just the opposite: there is simply the inner wish that it may be +so, that the thing which beautifies may also be true. This wish leads us +to accept bad grounds as good. + + +132 + +=Of the Christian Need of Salvation.=--Careful consideration must render +it possible to propound some explanation of that process in the soul of +a Christian which is termed need of salvation, and to propound an +explanation, too, free from mythology: hence one purely psychological. +Heretofore psychological explanations of religious conditions and +processes have really been in disrepute, inasmuch as a theology calling +itself free gave vent to its unprofitable nature in this domain; for its +principal aim, so far as may be judged from the spirit of its creator, +Schleier-macher, was the preservation of the Christian religion and the +maintenance of the Christian theology. It appeared that in the +psychological analysis of religious "facts" a new anchorage and above +all a new calling were to be gained. Undisturbed by such predecessors, +we venture the following exposition of the phenomena alluded to. Man is +conscious of certain acts which are very firmly implanted in the general +course of conduct: indeed he discovers in himself a predisposition to +such acts that seems to him to be as unalterable as his very being. How +gladly he would essay some other kind of acts which in the general +estimate of conduct are rated the best and highest, how gladly he would +welcome the consciousness of well doing which ought to follow unselfish +motive! Unfortunately, however, it goes no further than this longing: +the discontent consequent upon being unable to satisfy it is added to +all other kinds of discontent which result from his life destiny in +particular or which may be due to so called bad acts; so that a deep +depression ensues accompanied by a desire for some physician to remove +it and all its causes.--This condition would not be found so bitter if +the individual but compared himself freely with other men: for then he +would have no reason to be discontented with himself in particular as he +is merely bearing his share of the general burden of human discontent +and incompleteness. But he compares himself with a being who alone must +be capable of the conduct that is called unegoistic and of an enduring +consciousness of unselfish motive, with God. It is because he gazes into +this clear mirror, that his own self seems so extraordinarily distracted +and so troubled. Thereupon the thought of that being, in so far as it +flits before his fancy as retributive justice, occasions him anxiety. In +every conceivable small and great experience he believes he sees the +anger of the being, his threats, the very implements and manacles of his +judge and prison. What succors him in this danger, which, in the +prospect of an eternal duration of punishment, transcends in hideousness +all the horrors that can be presented to the imagination? + + +133 + +Before we consider this condition in its further effects, we would admit +to ourselves that man is betrayed into this condition not through his +"fault" and "sin" but through a series of delusions of the reason; that +it was the fault of the mirror if his own self appeared to him in the +highest degree dark and hateful, and that that mirror was his own work, +the very imperfect work of human imagination and judgment. In the first +place a being capable of absolutely unegoistic conduct is as fabulous as +the phoenix. Such a being is not even thinkable for the very reason that +the whole notion of "unegoistic conduct," when closely examined, +vanishes into air. Never yet has a man done anything solely for others +and entirely without reference to a personal motive; indeed how could he +possibly do anything that had no reference to himself, that is without +inward compulsion (which must always have its basis in a personal need)? +How could the ego act without ego?--A god, who, on the other hand, is +all love, as he is usually represented, would not be capable of a +solitary unegoistic act: whence one is reminded of a reflection of +Lichtenberg's which is, in truth, taken from a lower sphere: "We cannot +possibly feel for others, as the expression goes; we feel only for +ourselves. The assertion sounds hard, but it is not, if rightly +understood. A man loves neither his father nor his mother nor his wife +nor his child, but simply the feelings which they inspire." Or, as La +Rochefoucauld says: "If you think you love your mistress for the mere +love of her, you are very much mistaken." Why acts of love are more +highly prized than others, namely not on account of their nature, but on +account of their utility, has already been explained in the section on +the origin of moral feelings. But if a man should wish to be all love +like the god aforesaid, and want to do all things for others and nothing +for himself, the procedure would be fundamentally impossible because he +_must_ do a great deal for himself before there would be any possibility +of doing anything for the love of others. It is also essential that +others be sufficiently egoistic to accept always and at all times this +self sacrifice and living for others, so that the men of love and self +sacrifice have an interest in the survival of unloving and selfish +egoists, while the highest morality, in order to maintain itself must +formally enforce the existence of immorality (wherein it would be really +destroying itself.)--Further: the idea of a god perturbs and discourages +as long as it is accepted but as to how it originated can no longer, in +the present state of comparative ethnological science, be a matter of +doubt, and with the insight into the origin of this belief all faith +collapses. What happens to the Christian who compares his nature with +that of God is exactly what happened to Don Quixote, who depreciated his +own prowess because his head was filled with the wondrous deeds of the +heroes of chivalrous romance. The standard of measurement which both +employ belongs to the domain of fable.--But if the idea of God +collapses, so too, does the feeling of "sin" as a violation of divine +rescript, as a stain upon a god-like creation. There still apparently +remains that discouragement which is closely allied with fear of the +punishment of worldly justice or of the contempt of one's fellow men. +The keenest thorn in the sentiment of sin is dulled when it is perceived +that one's acts have contravened human tradition, human rules and human +laws without having thereby endangered the "eternal salvation of the +soul" and its relations with deity. If finally men attain to the +conviction of the absolute necessity of all acts and of their utter +irresponsibility and then absorb it into their flesh and blood, every +relic of conscience pangs will disappear. + + +134 + +If now, as stated, the Christian, through certain delusive feelings, is +betrayed into self contempt, that is by a false and unscientific view of +his acts and feelings, he must, nevertheless, perceive with the utmost +amazement that this state of self contempt, of conscience pangs, of +despair in particular, does not last, that there are hours during which +all these things are wafted away from the soul and he feels himself once +more free and courageous. The truth is that joy in his own being, the +fulness of his own powers in connection with the inevitable decline of +his profound excitation with the lapse of time, bore off the palm of +victory. The man loves himself once more, he feels it--but this very new +love, this new self esteem seems to him incredible. He can see in it +only the wholly unmerited stream of the light of grace shed down upon +him. If he formerly saw in every event merely warnings, threats, +punishments and every kind of indication of divine anger, he now reads +into his experiences the grace of god. The latter circumstance seems to +him full of love, the former as a helpful pointing of the way, and his +entirely joyful frame of mind now seems to him to be an absolute proof +of the goodness of God. As formerly in his states of discouragement he +interpreted his conduct falsely so now he does the same with his +experiences. His state of consolation is now regarded as the effect +produced by some external power. The love with which, at bottom, he +loves himself, seems to be the divine love. That which he calls grace +and the preliminary of salvation is in reality self-grace, +self-salvation. + + +135 + +Therefore a certain false psychology, a certain kind of imaginativeness +in the interpretation of motives and experiences is the essential +preliminary to being a Christian and to experiencing the need of +salvation. Upon gaining an insight into this wandering of the reason and +the imagination, one ceases to be a Christian. + + +136 + +=Of Christian Asceticism and Sanctity.=--Much as some thinkers have +exerted themselves to impart an air of the miraculous to those singular +phenomena known as asceticism and sanctity, to question which or to +account for which upon a rational basis would be wickedness and +sacrilege, the temptation to this wickedness is none the less great. A +powerful impulse of nature has in every age led to protest against such +phenomena. At any rate science, inasmuch as it is the imitation of +nature, permits the casting of doubts upon the inexplicable character +and the supernal degree of such phenomena. It is true that heretofore +science has not succeeded in its attempts at explanation. The phenomena +remain unexplained still, to the great satisfaction of those who revere +moral miracles. For, speaking generally, the unexplained must rank as +the inexplicable, the inexplicable as the non-natural, supernatural, +miraculous--so runs the demand in the souls of all the religious and all +the metaphysicians (even the artists if they happen to be thinkers), +whereas the scientific man sees in this demand the "evil +principle."--The universal, first, apparent truth that is encountered in +the contemplation of sanctity and asceticism is that their nature is +complicated; for nearly always, within the physical world as well as in +the moral, the apparently miraculous may be traced successfully to the +complex, the obscure, the multi-conditioned. Let us venture then to +isolate a few impulses in the soul of the saint and the ascetic, to +consider them separately and then view them as a synthetic development. + + +137 + +There is an obstinacy against oneself, certain sublimated forms of which +are included in asceticism. Certain kinds of men are under such a strong +necessity of exercising their power and dominating impulses that, if +other objects are lacking or if they have not succeeded with other +objects they will actually tyrannize over some portions of their own +nature or over sections and stages of their own personality. Thus do +many thinkers bring themselves to views which are far from likely to +increase or improve their fame. Many deliberately bring down the +contempt of others upon themselves although they could easily have +retained consideration by silence. Others contradict earlier opinions +and do not shrink from the ordeal of being deemed inconsistent. On the +contrary they strive for this and act like eager riders who enjoy +horseback exercise most when the horse is skittish. Thus will men in +dangerous paths ascend to the highest steeps in order to laugh to scorn +their own fear and their own trembling limbs. Thus will the philosopher +embrace the dogmas of asceticism, humility, sanctity, in the light of +which his own image appears in its most hideous aspect. This crushing of +self, this mockery of one's own nature, this spernere se sperni out of +which religions have made so much is in reality but a very high +development of vanity. The whole ethic of the sermon on the mount +belongs in this category: man has a true delight in mastering himself +through exaggerated pretensions or excessive expedients and later +deifying this tyrannically exacting something within him. In every +scheme of ascetic ethics, man prays to one part of himself as if it were +god and hence it is necessary for him to treat the rest of himself as +devil. + + +138 + +=Man is Not at All Hours Equally Moral=; this is established. If one's +morality be judged according to one's capacity for great, self +sacrificing resolutions and abnegations (which when continual, and made +a habit are known as sanctity) one is, in affection, or disposition, the +most moral: while higher excitement supplies wholly new impulses which, +were one calm and cool as ordinarily, one would not deem oneself even +capable of. How comes this? Apparently from the propinquity of all great +and lofty emotional states. If a man is brought to an extraordinary +pitch of feeling he can resolve upon a fearful revenge or upon a fearful +renunciation of his thirst for vengeance indifferently. He craves, under +the influences of powerful emotion, the great, the powerful, the +immense, and if he chances to perceive that the sacrifice of himself +will afford him as much satisfaction as the sacrifice of another, or +will afford him more, he will choose self sacrifice. What concerns him +particularly is simply the unloading of his emotion. Hence he readily, +to relieve his tension, grasps the darts of the enemy and buries them in +his own breast. That in self abnegation and not in revenge the element +of greatness consisted must have been brought home to mankind only after +long habituation. A god who sacrifices himself would be the most +powerful and most effective symbol of this sort of greatness. As the +conquest of the most hardly conquered enemy, the sudden mastering of a +passion--thus does such abnegation _appear_: hence it passes for the +summit of morality. In reality all that is involved is the exchange of +one idea for another whilst the temperament remained at a like altitude, +a like tidal state. Men when coming out of the spell, or resting from +such passionate excitation, no longer understand the morality of such +instants, but the admiration of all who participated in the occasion +sustains them. Pride is their support if the passion and the +comprehension of their act weaken. Therefore, at bottom even such acts +of self-abnegation are not moral inasmuch as they are not done with a +strict regard for others. Rather do others afford the high strung +temperament an opportunity to lighten itself through such abnegation. + + +139 + +=Even the Ascetic Seeks to Make Life Easier=, and generally by means of +absolute subjection to another will or to an all inclusive rule and +ritual, pretty much as the Brahmin leaves absolutely nothing to his own +volition but is guided in every moment of his life by some holy +injunction or other. This subjection is a potent means of acquiring +dominion over oneself. One is occupied, hence time does not bang heavy +and there is no incitement of the personal will and of the individual +passion. The deed once done there is no feeling of responsibility nor +the sting of regret. One has given up one's own will once for all and +this is easier than to give it up occasionally, as it is also easier +wholly to renounce a desire than to yield to it in measured degree. When +we consider the present relation of man to the state we perceive +unconditional obedience is easier than conditional. The holy person also +makes his lot easier through the complete surrender of his life +personality and it is all delusion to admire such a phenomenon as the +loftiest heroism of morality. It is always more difficult to assert +one's personality without shrinking and without hesitation than to give +it up altogether in the manner indicated, and it requires moreover more +intellect and thought. + + +140 + +After having discovered in many of the less comprehensible actions mere +manifestations of pleasure in emotion for its own sake, I fancy I can +detect in the self contempt which characterises holy persons, and also +in their acts of self torture (through hunger and scourgings, +distortions and chaining of the limbs, acts of madness) simply a means +whereby such natures may resist the general exhaustion of their will to +live (their nerves). They employ the most painful expedients to escape +if only for a time from the heaviness and weariness in which they are +steeped by their great mental indolence and their subjection to a will +other than their own. + + +141 + +=The Most Usual Means= by which the ascetic and the sanctified +individual seeks to make life more endurable comprises certain combats +of an inner nature involving alternations of victory and prostration. +For this purpose an enemy is necessary and he is found in the so called +"inner enemy." That is, the holy individual makes use of his tendency to +vanity, domineering and pride, and of his mental longings in order to +contemplate his life as a sort of continuous battle and himself as a +battlefield, in which good and evil spirits wage war with varying +fortune. It is an established fact that the imagination is restrained +through the regularity and adequacy of sexual intercourse while on the +other hand abstention from or great irregularity in sexual intercourse +will cause the imagination to run riot. The imaginations of many of the +Christian saints were obscene to a degree; and because of the theory +that sexual desires were in reality demons that raged within them, the +saints did not feel wholly responsible for them. It is to this +conviction that we are indebted for the highly instructive sincerity of +their evidence against themselves. It was to their interest that this +contest should always be kept up in some fashion because by means of +this contest, as already stated, their empty lives gained distraction. +In order that the contest might seem sufficiently great to inspire +sympathy and admiration in the unsanctified, it was essential that +sexual capacity be ever more and more damned and denounced. Indeed the +danger of eternal damnation was so closely allied to this capacity that +for whole generations Christians showed their children with actual +conscience pangs. What evil may not have been done to humanity through +this! And yet here the truth is just upside down: an exceedingly +unseemly attitude for the truth. Christianity, it is true, had said that +every man is conceived and born in sin, and in the intolerable and +excessive Christianity of Calderon this thought is again perverted and +entangled into the most distorted paradox extant in the well known lines + + The greatest sin of man + Is the sin of being born. + +In all pessimistic religions the act of procreation is looked upon as +evil in itself. This is far from being the general human opinion. It is +not even the opinion of all pessimists. Empedocles, for example, knows +nothing of anything shameful, devilish and sinful in it. He sees rather +in the great field of bliss of unholiness simply a healthful and hopeful +phenomenon, Aphrodite. She is to him an evidence that strife does not +always rage but that some time a gentle demon is to wield the sceptre. +The Christian pessimists of practice, had, as stated, a direct interest +in the prevalence of an opposite belief. They needed in the loneliness +and the spiritual wilderness of their lives an ever living enemy, and a +universally known enemy through whose conquest they might appear to the +unsanctified as utterly incomprehensible and half unnatural beings. When +this enemy at last, as a result of their mode of life and their +shattered health, took flight forever, they were able immediately to +people their inner selves with new demons. The rise and fall of the +balance of cheerfulness and despair maintained their addled brains in a +totally new fluctuation of longing and peace of soul. And in that period +psychology served not only to cast suspicion on everything human but to +wound and scourge it, to crucify it. Man wanted to find himself as base +and evil as possible. Man sought to become anxious about the state of +his soul, he wished to be doubtful of his own capacity. Everything +natural with which man connects the idea of badness and sinfulness (as, +for instance, is still customary in regard to the erotic) injures and +degrades the imagination, occasions a shamed aspect, leads man to war +upon himself and makes him uncertain, distrustful of himself. Even his +dreams acquire a tincture of the unclean conscience. And yet this +suffering because of the natural element in certain things is wholly +superfluous. It is simply the result of opinions regarding the things. +It is easy to understand why men become worse than they are if they are +brought to look upon the unavoidably natural as bad and later to feel it +as of evil origin. It is the master stroke of religions and metaphysics +that wish to make man out bad and sinful by nature, to render nature +suspicious in his eyes and to so make himself evil, for he learns to +feel himself evil when he cannot divest himself of nature. He gradually +comes to look upon himself, after a long life lived naturally, so +oppressed by a weight of sin that supernatural powers become necessary +to relieve him of the burden; and with this notion comes the so called +need of salvation, which is the result not of a real but of an imaginary +sinfulness. Go through the separate moral expositions in the vouchers of +christianity and it will always be found that the demands are excessive +in order that it may be impossible for man to satisfy them. The object +is not that he may become moral but that he may feel as sinful as +possible. If this feeling had not been rendered agreeable to man--why +should he have improvised such an ideal and clung to it so long? As in +the ancient world an incalculable strength of intellect and capacity for +feeling was squandered in order to increase the joy of living through +feastful systems of worship, so in the era of christianity an equally +incalculable quantity of intellectual capacity has been sacrificed in +another endeavor: that man should in every way feel himself sinful and +thereby be moved, inspired, inspirited. To move, to inspire, to inspirit +at any cost--is not this the freedom cry of an exhausted, over-ripe, +over cultivated age? The circle of all the natural sensations had been +gone through a hundred times: the soul had grown weary. Then the saints +and the ascetics found a new order of ecstacies. They set themselves +before the eyes of all not alone as models for imitation to many, but as +fearful and yet delightful spectacles on the boundary line between this +world and the next world, where in that period everyone thought he saw +at one time rays of heavenly light, at another fearful, threatening +tongues of flame. The eye of the saint, directed upon the fearful +significance of the shortness of earthly life, upon the imminence of the +last judgment, upon eternal life hereafter; this glowering eye in an +emaciated body caused men, in the old time world, to tremble to the +depths of their being. To look, to look away and shudder, to feel anew +the fascination of the spectacle, to yield to it, sate oneself upon it +until the soul trembled with ardor and fever--that was the last pleasure +left to classical antiquity when its sensibilities had been blunted by +the arena and the gladiatorial show. + + +142 + +=To Sum Up All That Has Been Said=: that condition of soul at which the +saint or expectant saint is rejoiced is a combination of elements which +we are all familiar with, except that under other influences than those +of mere religious ideation they customarily arouse the censure of men in +the same way that when combined with religion itself and regarded as the +supreme attainment of sanctity, they are object of admiration and even +of prayer--at least in more simple times. Very soon the saint turns upon +himself that severity that is so closely allied to the instinct of +domination at any price and which inspire even in the most solitary +individual the sense of power. Soon his swollen sensitiveness of feeling +breaks forth from the longing to restrain his passions within it and is +transformed into a longing to master them as if they were wild steeds, +the master impulse being ever that of a proud spirit; next he craves a +complete cessation of all perturbing, fascinating feelings, a waking +sleep, an enduring repose in the lap of a dull, animal, plant-like +indolence. Next he seeks the battle and extinguishes it within himself +because weariness and boredom confront him. He binds his +self-deification with self-contempt. He delights in the wild tumult of +his desires and the sharp pain of sin, in the very idea of being lost. +He is able to play his very passions, for instance the desire to +domineer, a trick so that he goes to the other extreme of abject +humiliation and subjection, so that his overwrought soul is without any +restraint through this antithesis. And, finally, when indulgence in +visions, in talks with the dead or with divine beings overcomes him, +this is really but a form of gratification that he craves, perhaps a +form of gratification in which all other gratifications are blended. +Novalis, one of the authorities in matters of sanctity, because of his +experience and instinct, betrays the whole secret with the utmost +simplicity when he says: "It is remarkable that the close connection of +gratification, religion and cruelty has not long ago made men aware of +their inner relationship and common tendency." + + +143 + +=Not What the Saint is but what he was in= the eyes of the +non-sanctified gives him his historical importance. Because there +existed a delusion respecting the saint, his soul states being falsely +viewed and his personality being sundered as much as possible from +humanity as a something incomparable and supernatural, because of these +things he attained the extraordinary with which he swayed the +imaginations of whole nations and whole ages. Even he knew himself not +for even he regarded his dispositions, passions and actions in +accordance with a system of interpretation as artificial and exaggerated +as the pneumatic interpretation of the bible. The distorted and diseased +in his own nature with its blending of spiritual poverty, defective +knowledge, ruined health, overwrought nerves, remained as hidden from +his view as from the view of his beholders. He was neither a +particularly good man nor a particularly bad man but he stood for +something that was far above the human standard in wisdom and goodness. +Faith in him sustained faith in the divine and miraculous, in a +religious significance of all existence, in an impending day of +judgment. In the last rays of the setting sun of the ancient world, +which fell upon the christian peoples, the shadowy form of the saint +attained enormous proportions--to such enormous proportions, indeed, +that down even to our own age, which no longer believes in god, there +are thinkers who believe in the saints. + + +144 + +It stands to reason that this sketch of the saint, made upon the model +of the whole species, can be confronted with many opposing sketches that +would create a more agreeable impression. There are certain exceptions +among the species who distinguish themselves either by especial +gentleness or especial humanity, and perhaps by the strength of their +own personality. Others are in the highest degree fascinating because +certain of their delusions shed a particular glow over their whole +being, as is the case with the founder of christianity who took himself +for the only begotten son of God and hence felt himself sinless; so that +through his imagination--that should not be too harshly judged since the +whole of antiquity swarmed with sons of god--he attained the same goal, +the sense of complete sinlessness, complete irresponsibility, that can +now be attained by every individual through science.--In the same manner +I have viewed the saints of India who occupy an intermediate station +between the christian saints and the Greek philosophers and hence are +not to be regarded as a pure type. Knowledge and science--as far as they +existed--and superiority to the rest of mankind by logical discipline +and training of the intellectual powers were insisted upon by the +Buddhists as essential to sanctity, just as they were denounced by the +christian world as the indications of sinfulness. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Human, All Too Human, by Friedrich Nietzsche + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN *** + +***** This file should be named 38145-8.txt or 38145-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/1/4/38145/ + +Produced by Gary Rees, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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