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diff --git a/4363.txt b/4363.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2168a10 --- /dev/null +++ b/4363.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6507 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beyond Good and Evil, 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: Beyond Good and Evil + +Author: Friedrich Nietzsche + +Translator: Helen Zimmern + +Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext #4363] +Posting Date: December 7, 2009 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL *** + + + + +Produced by John Mamoun, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL + +By Friedrich Nietzsche + + +Translated by Helen Zimmern + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION: + +The following is a reprint of the Helen Zimmern translation from German +into English of "Beyond Good and Evil," as published in The Complete +Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913). Some adaptations from the +original text were made to format it into an e-text. Italics in the +original book are capitalized in this e-text, except for most foreign +language phrases that were italicized. Original footnotes are put in +brackets "[]" at the points where they are cited in the text. Some +spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" +and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original +text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as +"idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic." + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + PREFACE + BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL + + CHAPTER I: PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS + CHAPTER II: THE FREE SPIRIT + CHAPTER III: THE RELIGIOUS MOOD + CHAPTER IV: APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES + CHAPTER V: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS + CHAPTER VI: WE SCHOLARS + CHAPTER VII: OUR VIRTUES + CHAPTER VIII: PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES + CHAPTER IX: WHAT IS NOBLE? + + FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM TRANSLATED BY L.A. MAGNUS) + + + + +PREFACE + + +SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not ground +for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been +dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible +seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid +their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for +winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and +at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien--IF, +indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it +has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground--nay more, that it is at +its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping +that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive +and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism +and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once +and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such +imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have +hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time +(such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and +ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some +play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an +audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very +human--all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to +be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was +astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more +labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any +actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terrestrial" +pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems +that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with +everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the +earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has +been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in +Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although +it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, +and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist +error--namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. +But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, +can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier--sleep, +we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength +which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to +the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE--the +fundamental condition--of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato +spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a +malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked +Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of +youths, and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against Plato, +or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle against +the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR +CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPLE"), produced in Europe +a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere +previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the +furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as +a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to +unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means +of democratic enlightenment--which, with the aid of liberty of the press +and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit +would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented +gunpowder--all credit to them! but they again made things square--they +invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, +nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free +spirits--we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the +tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who +knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT.... + +Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885. + + + + +CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS + + +1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous +enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have +hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not +laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is +already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is +it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn +impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions +ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really +is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the +question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an +absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired +about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT +RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the +value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented +ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which +the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of +interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as +if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first +to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk +in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk. + +2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth +out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the +generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the +wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams +of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest +value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this +transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of +delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in +the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the +'Thing-in-itself--THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"--This +mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which +metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation +is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of +theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that +is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of +metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred +even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where +doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn +vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM." For it may be doubted, firstly, whether +antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations +and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their +seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional +perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from +below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current +among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, +the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher +and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to +pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It +might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and +respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously +related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed +things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! +But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"! +For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of +philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the +reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous +"Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I +see such new philosophers beginning to appear. + +3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between +their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of +conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and +it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to +learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As +little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process +and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED +to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the +conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his +instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and +its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak +more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite +mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the +uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations, +in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be +only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may +be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing, +in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things." + +4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is +here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The +question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, +species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally +inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic +judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that +without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of +reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, +without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, +man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be +a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A +CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of +value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, +has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. + +5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully +and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they +are--how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in +short, how childish and childlike they are,--but that there is not +enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and +virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in +the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had +been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, +divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, +who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a +prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally +their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with +arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not +wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their +prejudices, which they dub "truths,"--and VERY far from having the +conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having +the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be +understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence +and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally +stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic +by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical +imperative"--makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small +amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical +preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by +means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and +mask--in fact, the "love of HIS wisdom," to translate the term fairly +and squarely--in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart +of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible +maiden, that Pallas Athene:--how much of personal timidity and +vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray! + +6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up +till now has consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and +a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover +that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted +the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. +Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a +philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first +ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at?" Accordingly, +I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of +philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made +use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever +considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining +how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and +cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time +or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to +look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate +LORD over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as +SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in +the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if +you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to +knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well +wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of +the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual +"interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another +direction--in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; +it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little +machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a +good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not +CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the +contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, +his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE +IS,--that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature +stand to each other. + +7. How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging +than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the +Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, +and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of +Dionysius"--consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles; +besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They are all ACTORS, +there is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was a popular +name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that +Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the +mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters--of +which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos, +who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three +hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who +knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god +Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out? + +8. There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of +the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an +ancient mystery: + +Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus. + +9. You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what +fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly +extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, +without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: +imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live +in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just +endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, +preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? +And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means +actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do +DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves +are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: +while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, +you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players +and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and +ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; +you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would +like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal +glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, +you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such +hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, +that you are no longer able to see it otherwise--and to crown all, some +unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that +BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is +self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is +not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting +story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, +as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always +creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy +is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the +will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. + +10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with +which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at +present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and +he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else, +cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated +cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth--a certain +extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the +forlorn hope--has participated therein: that which in the end always +prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful +possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, +who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an +uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, +mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a +virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger +and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side +AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in +that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the +credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and +thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession +to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than +in one's body?),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back +something which was formerly an even securer possession, something +of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal +soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live +better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by +"modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode +of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed +yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety +and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the +most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on +the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair +motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom +there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it +seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and +knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels +them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted... what do their retrograde +by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish +to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE +strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF--and +not back! + +11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to +divert attention from the actual influence which Kant exercised on +German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which +he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of +Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult +thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let us +only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a +new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting +that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid +flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and +on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible +something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still +prouder!--But let us reflect for a moment--it is high time to do so. +"How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?" Kant asks himself--and +what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"--but +unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, +and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that +one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved +in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this +new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further +discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time Germans were still +moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact." Then came +the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the +Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves--all seeking for +"faculties." And what did they not find--in that innocent, rich, and +still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the +malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish +between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the +"transcendental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, +and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally +pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of +this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness, +notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile +conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral +indignation. Enough, however--the world grew older, and the dream +vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still +rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost--old +Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)"--he had said, or at least meant to +say. But, is that--an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely +a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By means of +a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in +Moliere, + + Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, + Cujus est natura sensus assoupire. + +But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time +to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI +possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments +necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand +that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the +preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might +naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and +readily--synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all; +we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false +judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as +plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view +of life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which +"German philosophy"--I hope you understand its right to inverted commas +(goosefeet)?--has exercised throughout the whole of Europe, there is +no doubt that a certain VIRTUS DORMITIVA had a share in it; thanks to +German philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous, +the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths Christians, and the +political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still +overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into +this, in short--"sensus assoupire."... + +12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best-refuted +theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps +no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious +signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as an +abbreviation of the means of expression)--thanks chiefly to the Pole +Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest +and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For while Copernicus +has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth +does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the +last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in +"matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest +triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One +must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war +to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a +dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more +celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give +the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which +Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it be +permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the +soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, +as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between +ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, +and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as +happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly +touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open +for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such +conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity," +and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want +henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW +psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have +hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of +the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert +and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a +merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds +that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT--and, who knows? +perhaps to DISCOVER the new. + +13. Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the +instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic +being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength--life +itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect +and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, +let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles!--one of which +is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's +inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must +be essentially economy of principles. + +14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural +philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according +to us, if I may say so!) and NOT a world-explanation; but in so far as +it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a +long time to come must be regarded as more--namely, as an explanation. +It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and +palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and +CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes--in fact, it +follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism. +What is clear, what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and +felt--one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the +charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode, +consisted precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence--perhaps +among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our +contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining +masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional +networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the +mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and +interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT +different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and likewise +the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers, +with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest +possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there +is also nothing more for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative +different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right +imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders +of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform. + +15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on +the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the +idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes! +Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as +heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world +is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external +world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves +would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a +complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something +fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work +of our organs--? + +16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are +"immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition +of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will"; as though cognition here got hold +of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any +falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the +object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate +certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," +involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves +from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may +think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher +must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in +the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the +argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: +for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be +something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the +part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' +and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by +thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided +within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether +that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In +short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the +present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to +determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with +further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for +me."--In place of the "immediate certainty" in which the people may +believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of +metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions +of the intellect, to wit: "Whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'? +Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak +of an 'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego' +as cause of thought?" He who ventures to answer these metaphysical +questions at once by an appeal to a sort of INTUITIVE perception, like +the person who says, "I think, and know that this, at least, is +true, actual, and certain"--will encounter a smile and two notes of +interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the philosopher will +perhaps give him to understand, "it is improbable that you are not +mistaken, but why should it be the truth?" + +17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire +of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by +these credulous minds--namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, +and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the +case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate +"think." ONE thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old +"ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and +assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too +far with this "one thinks"--even the "one" contains an INTERPRETATION of +the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here +according to the usual grammatical formula--"To think is an activity; +every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"... It +was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides +the operating "power," the material particle wherein it resides and out +of which it operates--the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at +last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we +shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point of view, to +get along without the little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego" has +refined itself). + +18. It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is +refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle +minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" +owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing +who feels himself strong enough to refute it. + +19. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were +the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us +to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and +completely known, without deduction or addition. But it again and +again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what +philosophers are in the habit of doing--he seems to have adopted a +POPULAR PREJUDICE and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above +all something COMPLICATED, something that is a unity only in name--and +it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got +the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages. +So let us for once be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical": let +us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, +namely, the sensation of the condition "AWAY FROM WHICH we go," the +sensation of the condition "TOWARDS WHICH we go," the sensation of this +"FROM" and "TOWARDS" itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular +sensation, which, even without our putting in motion "arms and legs," +commences its action by force of habit, directly we "will" anything. +Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are +to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, +thinking is also to be recognized; in every act of the will there is +a ruling thought;--and let us not imagine it possible to sever this +thought from the "willing," as if the will would then remain over! +In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and +thinking, but it is above all an EMOTION, and in fact the emotion of the +command. That which is termed "freedom of the will" is essentially the +emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey: "I am free, 'he' +must obey"--this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally +so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself +exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that "this and +nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience +will be rendered--and whatever else pertains to the position of the +commander. A man who WILLS commands something within himself which +renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But now let +us notice what is the strangest thing about the will,--this affair so +extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as +in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding AND +the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of +constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually +commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other +hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive +ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term "I": a whole series +of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the +will itself, has become attached to the act of willing--to such a degree +that he who wills believes firmly that willing SUFFICES for action. +Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will +when the effect of the command--consequently obedience, and therefore +action--was to be EXPECTED, the APPEARANCE has translated itself into +the sentiment, as if there were a NECESSITY OF EFFECT; in a word, he who +wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are +somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, +to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation +of power which accompanies all success. "Freedom of Will"--that is the +expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising +volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with +the executor of the order--who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over +obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will +that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the +feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful +"underwills" or under-souls--indeed, our body is but a social structure +composed of many souls--to his feelings of delight as commander. L'EFFET +C'EST MOI. what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed +and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies +itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is +absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as +already said, of a social structure composed of many "souls", on which +account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-as-such +within the sphere of morals--regarded as the doctrine of the relations +of supremacy under which the phenomenon of "life" manifests itself. + +20. That the separate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or +autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with +each other, that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear +in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to +a system as the collective members of the fauna of a Continent--is +betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how unfailingly the most +diverse philosophers always fill in again a definite fundamental scheme +of POSSIBLE philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve +once more in the same orbit, however independent of each other they +may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something +within them leads them, something impels them in definite order the +one after the other--to wit, the innate methodology and relationship +of their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a +re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, +ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly +grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order. +The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German +philosophizing is easily enough explained. In fact, where there is +affinity of language, owing to the common philosophy of grammar--I mean +owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical +functions--it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset +for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems, +just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of +world-interpretation. It is highly probable that philosophers within the +domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the conception of the subject +is least developed) look otherwise "into the world," and will be +found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germans and +Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately +also the spell of PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and racial conditions.--So +much by way of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard to the +origin of ideas. + +21. The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet been +conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the +extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and +frightfully with this very folly. The desire for "freedom of will" +in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, +unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear +the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and +to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, +involves nothing less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with +more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the +hair, out of the slough of nothingness. If any one should find out in +this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of "free +will" and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry +his "enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of his head the +contrary of this monstrous conception of "free will": I mean "non-free +will," which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect. One +should not wrongly MATERIALISE "cause" and "effect," as the natural +philosophers do (and whoever like them naturalize in thinking at +present), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes +the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use +"cause" and "effect" only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as +conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual +understanding,--NOT for explanation. In "being-in-itself" there is +nothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity," or of "psychological +non-freedom"; there the effect does NOT follow the cause, there "law" +does not obtain. It is WE alone who have devised cause, sequence, +reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, +and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, +as "being-in-itself," with things, we act once more as we have always +acted--MYTHOLOGICALLY. The "non-free will" is mythology; in real life +it is only a question of STRONG and WEAK wills.--It is almost always +a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every +"causal-connection" and "psychological necessity," manifests something +of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; +it is suspicious to have such feelings--the person betrays himself. And +in general, if I have observed correctly, the "non-freedom of the will" +is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but +always in a profoundly PERSONAL manner: some will not give up their +"responsibility," their belief in THEMSELVES, the personal right to +THEIR merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this class); others +on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed +for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to GET OUT OF +THE BUSINESS, no matter how. The latter, when they write books, are +in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of +socialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a matter of +fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly +when it can pose as "la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is ITS +"good taste." + +22. Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from +the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but +"Nature's conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so proudly, +as though--why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad +"philology." It is no matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a +naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which +you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern +soul! "Everywhere equality before the law--Nature is not different in +that respect, nor better than we": a fine instance of secret motive, +in which the vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and +autocratic--likewise a second and more refined atheism--is once more +disguised. "Ni dieu, ni maitre"--that, also, is what you want; and +therefore "Cheers for natural law!"--is it not so? But, as has been +said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might come along, +who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, could read +out of the same "Nature," and with regard to the same phenomena, just +the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims +of power--an interpreter who should so place the unexceptionalness and +unconditionalness of all "Will to Power" before your eyes, that almost +every word, and the word "tyranny" itself, would eventually seem +unsuitable, or like a weakening and softening metaphor--as being too +human; and who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about +this world as you do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calculable" +course, NOT, however, because laws obtain in it, but because they are +absolutely LACKING, and every power effects its ultimate consequences +every moment. Granted that this also is only interpretation--and you +will be eager enough to make this objection?--well, so much the better. + +23. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and +timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far +as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written, +evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if +nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology +and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it. +The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most +intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and +unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, +blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to +contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, +it has "the heart" against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal +conditionalness of the "good" and the "bad" impulses, causes (as +refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still strong and manly +conscience--still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good +impulses from bad ones. If, however, a person should regard even +the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness +as life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present, +fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy of life (which +must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further +developed), he will suffer from such a view of things as from +sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest +and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous +knowledge, and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why every one +should keep away from it who CAN do so! On the other hand, if one has +once drifted hither with one's bark, well! very good! now let us set our +teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast on the helm! +We sail away right OVER morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps the +remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage thither--but +what do WE matter. Never yet did a PROFOUNDER world of insight reveal +itself to daring travelers and adventurers, and the psychologist who +thus "makes a sacrifice"--it is not the sacrifizio dell' intelletto, +on the contrary!--will at least be entitled to demand in return that +psychology shall once more be recognized as the queen of the sciences, +for whose service and equipment the other sciences exist. For psychology +is once more the path to the fundamental problems. + + + +CHAPTER II. THE FREE SPIRIT + + +24. O sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification and +falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering when once one has +got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made everything around +us clear and free and easy and simple! how we have been able to give +our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a godlike +desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences!--how from the beginning, +we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost +inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness, +and gaiety--in order to enjoy life! And only on this solidified, +granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself +hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful +will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as +its opposite, but--as its refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed, that +LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and that +it will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees +and many refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the +incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our unconquerable +"flesh and blood," will turn the words round in the mouths of us +discerning ones. Here and there we understand it, and laugh at the way +in which precisely the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this +SIMPLIFIED, thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and suitably +falsified world: at the way in which, whether it will or not, it loves +error, because, as living itself, it loves life! + +25. After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would fain be +heard; it appeals to the most serious minds. Take care, ye philosophers +and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering "for the +truth's sake"! even in your own defense! It spoils all the innocence +and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong against +objections and red rags; it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes, when +in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even +worse consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last card +as protectors of truth upon earth--as though "the Truth" were such an +innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of +all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance, Messrs Loafers and +Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well that +it cannot be of any consequence if YE just carry your point; ye know +that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that there might +be a more laudable truthfulness in every little interrogative mark +which you place after your special words and favourite doctrines (and +occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn pantomime and +trumping games before accusers and law-courts! Rather go out of the way! +Flee into concealment! And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may +be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray, don't forget +the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work! And have people around +you who are as a garden--or as music on the waters at eventide, when +already the day becomes a memory. Choose the GOOD solitude, the free, +wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the right still to +remain good in any sense whatsoever! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, +does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means +of force! How PERSONAL does a long fear make one, a long watching +of enemies, of possible enemies! These pariahs of society, these +long-pursued, badly-persecuted ones--also the compulsory recluses, the +Spinozas or Giordano Brunos--always become in the end, even under the +most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware +of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-Brewers (just lay bare +the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!), not to speak of +the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a +philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left him. The +martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," +forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; +and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, +with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous +desire to see him also in his deterioration (deteriorated into a +"martyr," into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). Only, that it is necessary +with such a desire to be clear WHAT spectacle one will see in any +case--merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the +continued proof that the long, real tragedy IS AT AN END, supposing that +every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin. + +26. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, +where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority--where he may +forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;--exclusive only of +the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger +instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. Whoever, in +intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green +and grey colours of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy, +gloominess, and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes; +supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all this burden +and disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it, and remains, +as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is then +certain: he was not made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For as +such, he would one day have to say to himself: "The devil take my good +taste! but 'the rule' is more interesting than the exception--than +myself, the exception!" And he would go DOWN, and above all, he would +go "inside." The long and serious study of the AVERAGE man--and +consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad +intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one's +equals):--that constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every +philosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing +part. If he is fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge +should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and +lighten his task; I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize +the animal, the commonplace and "the rule" in themselves, and at the +same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them +talk of themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSES--sometimes they +wallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill. Cynicism is the only +form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the +higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and +congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before +him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are even cases where +enchantment mixes with the disgust--namely, where by a freak of nature, +genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the +case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also +filthiest man of his century--he was far profounder than Voltaire, and +consequently also, a good deal more silent. It happens more frequently, +as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a +fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no means +rare, especially among doctors and moral physiologists. And whenever +anyone speaks without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man +as a belly with two requirements, and a head with one; whenever any one +sees, seeks, and WANTS to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity +as the real and only motives of human actions; in short, when any one +speaks "badly"--and not even "ill"--of man, then ought the lover of +knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he ought, in general, +to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation. For the +indignant man, and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with +his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society), +may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and +self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, +more indifferent, and less instructive case. And no one is such a LIAR +as the indignant man. + +27. It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and +lives gangasrotogati [Footnote: Like the river Ganges: presto.] among +those only who think and live otherwise--namely, kurmagati [Footnote: +Like the tortoise: lento.], or at best "froglike," mandeikagati +[Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (I do everything to be "difficultly +understood" myself!)--and one should be heartily grateful for the +good will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good +friends," however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as +friends they have a right to ease, one does well at the very first to +grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding--one can +thus laugh still; or get rid of them altogether, these good friends--and +laugh then also! + +28. What is most difficult to render from one language into another +is the TEMPO of its style, which has its basis in the character of the +race, or to speak more physiologically, in the average TEMPO of the +assimilation of its nutriment. There are honestly meant translations, +which, as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the +original, merely because its lively and merry TEMPO (which overleaps and +obviates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be +rendered. A German is almost incapacitated for PRESTO in his language; +consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of the most +delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spirited thought. And just +as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience, +so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything +ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying +species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans--pardon +me for stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture of +stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good +old time" to which it belongs, and as an expression of German taste at a +time when there was still a "German taste," which was a rococo-taste +in moribus et artibus. Lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionic +nature, which understood much, and was versed in many things; he who was +not the translator of Bayle to no purpose, who took refuge willingly in +the shadow of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more willingly among the +Roman comedy-writers--Lessing loved also free-spiritism in the TEMPO, +and flight out of Germany. But how could the German language, even +in the prose of Lessing, imitate the TEMPO of Machiavelli, who in his +"Principe" makes us breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot +help presenting the most serious events in a boisterous allegrissimo, +perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense of the contrast he +ventures to present--long, heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts, and +a TEMPO of the gallop, and of the best, wantonest humour? Finally, who +would venture on a German translation of Petronius, who, more than any +great musician hitherto, was a master of PRESTO in invention, ideas, and +words? What matter in the end about the swamps of the sick, evil world, +or of the "ancient world," when like him, one has the feet of a wind, +the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a wind, which makes +everything healthy, by making everything RUN! And with regard to +Aristophanes--that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose +sake one PARDONS all Hellenism for having existed, provided one has +understood in its full profundity ALL that there requires pardon and +transfiguration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on +PLATO'S secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit +fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no +"Bible," nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic--but a book of +Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life--a Greek life which +he repudiated--without an Aristophanes! + +29. It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a +privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best +right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably +not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a +labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself +already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see +how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal +by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it +is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor +sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go +back again to the sympathy of men! + +30. Our deepest insights must--and should--appear as follies, and under +certain circumstances as crimes, when they come unauthorizedly to +the ears of those who are not disposed and predestined for them. The +exoteric and the esoteric, as they were formerly distinguished by +philosophers--among the Indians, as among the Greeks, Persians, and +Mussulmans, in short, wherever people believed in gradations of rank and +NOT in equality and equal rights--are not so much in contradistinction +to one another in respect to the exoteric class, standing without, and +viewing, estimating, measuring, and judging from the outside, and not +from the inside; the more essential distinction is that the class in +question views things from below upwards--while the esoteric class views +things FROM ABOVE DOWNWARDS. There are heights of the soul from which +tragedy itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and if all the +woe in the world were taken together, who would dare to decide whether +the sight of it would NECESSARILY seduce and constrain to sympathy, and +thus to a doubling of the woe?... That which serves the higher class of +men for nourishment or refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely +different and lower order of human beings. The virtues of the common +man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it might be +possible for a highly developed man, supposing him to degenerate and go +to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone, for the sake of which he +would have to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into which he +had sunk. There are books which have an inverse value for the soul and +the health according as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the +higher and more powerful, make use of them. In the former case they are +dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they are +herald-calls which summon the bravest to THEIR bravery. Books for the +general reader are always ill-smelling books, the odour of paltry people +clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they +reverence, it is accustomed to stink. One should not go into churches if +one wishes to breathe PURE air. + +31. In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art +of NUANCE, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do +hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and Nay. +Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, THE TASTE FOR +THE UNCONDITIONAL, is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns +to introduce a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try +conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life. The +angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no +peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able +to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something +falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by +continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself--still +ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how +it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it revenges +itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had been a voluntary +blindness! In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one's +sentiments; one tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the +good conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and +lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses +upon principle the cause AGAINST "youth."--A decade later, and one +comprehends that all this was also still--youth! + +32. Throughout the longest period of human history--one calls it the +prehistoric period--the value or non-value of an action was inferred +from its CONSEQUENCES; the action in itself was not taken into +consideration, any more than its origin; but pretty much as in China at +present, where the distinction or disgrace of a child redounds to +its parents, the retro-operating power of success or failure was what +induced men to think well or ill of an action. Let us call this period +the PRE-MORAL period of mankind; the imperative, "Know thyself!" was +then still unknown.--In the last ten thousand years, on the other hand, +on certain large portions of the earth, one has gradually got so far, +that one no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its origin, +decide with regard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole, an +important refinement of vision and of criterion, the unconscious effect +of the supremacy of aristocratic values and of the belief in "origin," +the mark of a period which may be designated in the narrower sense as +the MORAL one: the first attempt at self-knowledge is thereby +made. Instead of the consequences, the origin--what an inversion +of perspective! And assuredly an inversion effected only after long +struggle and wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, a +peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely +thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite +sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people were agreed in the +belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention. +The intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action: +under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been +bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the +present day.--Is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now +have arisen of again making up our minds with regard to the reversing +and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a new self-consciousness +and acuteness in man--is it not possible that we may be standing on +the threshold of a period which to begin with, would be distinguished +negatively as ULTRA-MORAL: nowadays when, at least among us immoralists, +the suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely +in that which is NOT INTENTIONAL, and that all its intentionalness, all +that is seen, sensible, or "sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or +skin--which, like every skin, betrays something, but CONCEALS still +more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign or symptom, +which first requires an explanation--a sign, moreover, which has too +many interpretations, and consequently hardly any meaning in itself +alone: that morality, in the sense in which it has been understood +hitherto, as intention-morality, has been a prejudice, perhaps a +prematureness or preliminariness, probably something of the same rank +as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something which must be +surmounted. The surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even the +self-mounting of morality--let that be the name for the long-secret +labour which has been reserved for the most refined, the most upright, +and also the most wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones +of the soul. + +33. It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for +one's neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must be mercilessly +called to account, and brought to judgment; just as the aesthetics +of "disinterested contemplation," under which the emasculation of art +nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself a good conscience. +There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments "for others" +and "NOT for myself," for one not needing to be doubly distrustful here, +and for one asking promptly: "Are they not perhaps--DECEPTIONS?"--That +they PLEASE--him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also +the mere spectator--that is still no argument in their FAVOUR, but just +calls for caution. Let us therefore be cautious! + +34. At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays, +seen from every position, the ERRONEOUSNESS of the world in which we +think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light +upon: we find proof after proof thereof, which would fain allure us into +surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the "nature of things." +He, however, who makes thinking itself, and consequently "the spirit," +responsible for the falseness of the world--an honourable exit, which +every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of--he +who regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, as +falsely DEDUCED, would have at least good reason in the end to become +distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto been playing upon +us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give that +it would not continue to do what it has always been doing? In all +seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and +respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon +consciousness with the request that it will give them HONEST answers: +for example, whether it be "real" or not, and why it keeps the outer +world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same +description. The belief in "immediate certainties" is a MORAL NAIVETE +which does honour to us philosophers; but--we have now to cease being +"MERELY moral" men! Apart from morality, such belief is a folly which +does little honour to us! If in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust +is regarded as the sign of a "bad character," and consequently as an +imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas +and Nays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying: the +philosopher has at length a RIGHT to "bad character," as the being who +has hitherto been most befooled on earth--he is now under OBLIGATION +to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of +suspicion.--Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of +expression; for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate +differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at +least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which +philosophers struggle against being deceived. Why NOT? It is nothing +more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it +is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world. So much must be +conceded: there could have been no life at all except upon the basis +of perspective estimates and semblances; and if, with the virtuous +enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away +altogether with the "seeming world"--well, granted that YOU could do +that,--at least nothing of your "truth" would thereby remain! Indeed, +what is it that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an +essential opposition of "true" and "false"? Is it not enough to suppose +degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darker shades and +tones of semblance--different valeurs, as the painters say? Why might +not the world WHICH CONCERNS US--be a fiction? And to any one who +suggested: "But to a fiction belongs an originator?"--might it not be +bluntly replied: WHY? May not this "belong" also belong to the fiction? +Is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical towards the +subject, just as towards the predicate and object? Might not the +philosopher elevate himself above faith in grammar? All respect +to governesses, but is it not time that philosophy should renounce +governess-faith? + +35. O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in +"the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it +too humanely--"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"--I wager he +finds nothing! + +36. Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our world of +desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other "reality" +but just that of our impulses--for thinking is only a relation of these +impulses to one another:--are we not permitted to make the attempt and +to ask the question whether this which is "given" does not SUFFICE, by +means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called +mechanical (or "material") world? I do not mean as an illusion, a +"semblance," a "representation" (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian +sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions +themselves--as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, in +which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards +branches off and develops itself in organic processes (naturally also, +refines and debilitates)--as a kind of instinctive life in which all +organic functions, including self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, +secretion, and change of matter, are still synthetically united with +one another--as a PRIMARY FORM of life?--In the end, it is not only +permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the conscience of +LOGICAL METHOD. Not to assume several kinds of causality, so long as +the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its +furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so): that is +a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays--it follows +"from its definition," as mathematicians say. The question is ultimately +whether we really recognize the will as OPERATING, whether we believe in +the causality of the will; if we do so--and fundamentally our belief IN +THIS is just our belief in causality itself--we MUST make the attempt +to posit hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality. +"Will" can naturally only operate on "will"--and not on "matter" (not +on "nerves," for instance): in short, the hypothesis must be +hazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever "effects" +are recognized--and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power +operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of will. +Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive +life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of +will--namely, the Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all +organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that +the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition--it is one +problem--could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the +right to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER. The +world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to +its "intelligible character"--it would simply be "Will to Power," and +nothing else. + +37. "What? Does not that mean in popular language: God is disproved, but +not the devil?"--On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who +the devil also compels you to speak popularly! + +38. As happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern times with +the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quite superfluous when +judged close at hand, into which, however, the noble and visionary +spectators of all Europe have interpreted from a distance their own +indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately, UNTIL THE TEXT HAS +DISAPPEARED UNDER THE INTERPRETATION), so a noble posterity might once +more misunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps only thereby make +ITS aspect endurable.--Or rather, has not this already happened? Have +not we ourselves been--that "noble posterity"? And, in so far as we now +comprehend this, is it not--thereby already past? + +39. Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely because +it makes people happy or virtuous--excepting, perhaps, the amiable +"Idealists," who are enthusiastic about the good, true, and beautiful, +and let all kinds of motley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilities +swim about promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no +arguments. It is willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of +thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as +little counter-arguments. A thing could be TRUE, although it were in +the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamental +constitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by a full +knowledge of it--so that the strength of a mind might be measured by +the amount of "truth" it could endure--or to speak more plainly, by the +extent to which it REQUIRED truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped, +and falsified. But there is no doubt that for the discovery of certain +PORTIONS of truth the wicked and unfortunate are more favourably +situated and have a greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the +wicked who are happy--a species about whom moralists are silent. Perhaps +severity and craft are more favourable conditions for the development of +strong, independent spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, +yielding good-nature, and habit of taking things easily, which are +prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. Presupposing always, +to begin with, that the term "philosopher" be not confined to the +philosopher who writes books, or even introduces HIS philosophy into +books!--Stendhal furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the +free-spirited philosopher, which for the sake of German taste I will +not omit to underline--for it is OPPOSED to German taste. "Pour etre +bon philosophe," says this last great psychologist, "il faut etre sec, +clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du +caractere requis pour faire des decouvertes en philosophie, c'est-a-dire +pour voir clair dans ce qui est." + +40. Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things +have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the CONTRARY only +be the right disguise for the shame of a God to go about in? A question +worth asking!--it would be strange if some mystic has not already +ventured on the same kind of thing. There are proceedings of such a +delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness +and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an +extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take +a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his +recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in +order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: +shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is +most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask--there is so much +goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and +fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like +an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame +requiring it to be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his +destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, +and with regard to the existence of which his nearest and most intimate +friends may be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from their +eyes, and equally so his regained security. Such a hidden nature, +which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is +inexhaustible in evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a +mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his +friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be +opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there--and +that it is well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more, +around every profound spirit there continually grows a mask, owing to +the constantly false, that is to say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation +of every word he utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he +manifests. + +41. One must subject oneself to one's own tests that one is destined +for independence and command, and do so at the right time. One must not +avoid one's tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous +game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves +and before no other judge. Not to cleave to any person, be it even the +dearest--every person is a prison and also a recess. Not to cleave to +a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous--it is even +less difficult to detach one's heart from a victorious fatherland. Not +to cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men, into whose peculiar +torture and helplessness chance has given us an insight. Not to cleave +to a science, though it tempt one with the most valuable discoveries, +apparently specially reserved for us. Not to cleave to one's own +liberation, to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which +always flies further aloft in order always to see more under it--the +danger of the flier. Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor become as +a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our "hospitality" for +instance, which is the danger of dangers for highly developed +and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally, almost indifferently with +themselves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes +a vice. One must know how TO CONSERVE ONESELF--the best test of +independence. + +42. A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize +them by a name not without danger. As far as I understand them, as far +as they allow themselves to be understood--for it is their nature to +WISH to remain something of a puzzle--these philosophers of the +future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as +"tempters." This name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be +preferred, a temptation. + +43. Will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philosophers? Very +probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. But +assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to their +pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still +be truth for every one--that which has hitherto been the secret wish +and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. "My opinion is MY opinion: +another person has not easily a right to it"--such a philosopher of the +future will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to +agree with many people. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbour +takes it into his mouth. And how could there be a "common good"! The +expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of +small value. In the end things must be as they are and have always +been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the +profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up +shortly, everything rare for the rare. + + +44. Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free, VERY +free spirits, these philosophers of the future--as certainly also they +will not be merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater, +and fundamentally different, which does not wish to be misunderstood and +mistaken? But while I say this, I feel under OBLIGATION almost as much +to them as to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds and +forerunners), to sweep away from ourselves altogether a stupid old +prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made the +conception of "free spirit" obscure. In every country of Europe, and the +same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse of +this name a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, +who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts +prompt--not to mention that in respect to the NEW philosophers who are +appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors. +Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the LEVELLERS, these wrongly +named "free spirits"--as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of +the democratic taste and its "modern ideas" all of them men without +solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom +neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they +are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their +innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL human misery and +failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed--a notion +which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain +with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the +herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life +for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines +are called "Equality of Rights" and "Sympathy with All Sufferers"--and +suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be +DONE AWAY WITH. We opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye and +conscience to the question how and where the plant "man" has hitherto +grown most vigorously, believe that this has always taken place under +the opposite conditions, that for this end the dangerousness of his +situation had to be increased enormously, his inventive faculty and +dissembling power (his "spirit") had to develop into subtlety and daring +under long oppression and compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be +increased to the unconditioned Will to Power--we believe that severity, +violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, +stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind,--that everything +wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves +as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite--we do +not even say enough when we only say THIS MUCH, and in any case we +find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, at the OTHER +extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desirability, as their +antipodes perhaps? What wonder that we "free spirits" are not exactly +the most communicative spirits? that we do not wish to betray in every +respect WHAT a spirit can free itself from, and WHERE perhaps it will +then be driven? And as to the import of the dangerous formula, "Beyond +Good and Evil," with which we at least avoid confusion, we ARE something +else than "libres-penseurs," "liben pensatori" "free-thinkers," +and whatever these honest advocates of "modern ideas" like to call +themselves. Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of +the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable +nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident +of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, +full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed +in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even +for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free +us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, +sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the +point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with +teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business +that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, +owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, +into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with +foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden +ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble +heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till +night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical +in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of +tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of +work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows--and it is +necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, +jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday +solitude--such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are +also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye NEW philosophers? + + + +CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD + + +45. The human soul and its limits, the range of man's inner experiences +hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these +experiences, the entire history of the soul UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, +and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained +hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a "big hunt". But +how often must he say despairingly to himself: "A single individual! +alas, only a single individual! and this great forest, this virgin +forest!" So he would like to have some hundreds of hunting assistants, +and fine trained hounds, that he could send into the history of the +human soul, to drive HIS game together. In vain: again and again he +experiences, profoundly and bitterly, how difficult it is to find +assistants and dogs for all the things that directly excite his +curiosity. The evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous +hunting-domains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every sense +are required, is that they are no longer serviceable just when the "BIG +hunt," and also the great danger commences,--it is precisely then that +they lose their keen eye and nose. In order, for instance, to divine and +determine what sort of history the problem of KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIENCE +has hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a person would +perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an +experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal; and then he would +still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality, +which, from above, would be able to oversee, arrange, and effectively +formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.--But who +could do me this service! And who would have time to wait for such +servants!--they evidently appear too rarely, they are so improbable at +all times! Eventually one must do everything ONESELF in order to know +something; which means that one has MUCH to do!--But a curiosity like +mine is once for all the most agreeable of vices--pardon me! I mean to +say that the love of truth has its reward in heaven, and already upon +earth. + +46. Faith, such as early Christianity desired, and not infrequently +achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly free-spirited world, +which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind +it and in it, counting besides the education in tolerance which +the Imperium Romanum gave--this faith is NOT that sincere, austere +slave-faith by which perhaps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other +northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his God and +Christianity, it is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in +a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason--a tough, long-lived, +worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single +blow. The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice +of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at +the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is +cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which is adapted to a +tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience, it takes for granted +that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably PAINFUL, that all the +past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum, in +the form of which "faith" comes to it. Modern men, with their obtuseness +as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the +terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by +the paradox of the formula, "God on the Cross". Hitherto there had never +and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so +dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised a +transvaluation of all ancient values--It was the Orient, the PROFOUND +Orient, it was the Oriental slave who thus took revenge on Rome and its +noble, light-minded toleration, on the Roman "Catholicism" of non-faith, +and it was always not the faith, but the freedom from the faith, the +half-stoical and smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, +which made the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against +them. "Enlightenment" causes revolt, for the slave desires the +unconditioned, he understands nothing but the tyrannous, even in morals, +he loves as he hates, without NUANCE, to the very depths, to the point +of pain, to the point of sickness--his many HIDDEN sufferings make +him revolt against the noble taste which seems to DENY suffering. The +skepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of +aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the +last great slave-insurrection which began with the French Revolution. + +47. Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, +we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: +solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence--but without its being possible +to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or IF +any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. This latter doubt +is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among +savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and +excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into +penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both +symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it +MORE obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there +grown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to +have been more interesting to men and even to philosophers--perhaps it +is time to become just a little indifferent here, to learn caution, or, +better still, to look AWAY, TO GO AWAY--Yet in the background of the +most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find almost as the +problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the religious +crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will POSSIBLE? how is the +saint possible?--that seems to have been the very question with which +Schopenhauer made a start and became a philosopher. And thus it was a +genuine Schopenhauerian consequence, that his most convinced adherent +(perhaps also his last, as far as Germany is concerned), namely, Richard +Wagner, should bring his own life-work to an end just here, and should +finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the stage as Kundry, +type vecu, and as it loved and lived, at the very time that the +mad-doctors in almost all European countries had an opportunity to study +the type close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis--or as I call +it, "the religious mood"--made its latest epidemical outbreak and +display as the "Salvation Army"--If it be a question, however, as to +what has been so extremely interesting to men of all sorts in all ages, +and even to philosophers, in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it +is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein--namely, the +immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as +morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that +a "bad man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. The +hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not +possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed +itself under the dominion of morals, because it BELIEVED in oppositions +of moral values, and saw, read, and INTERPRETED these oppositions +into the text and facts of the case? What? "Miracle" only an error of +interpretation? A lack of philology? + +48. It seems that the Latin races are far more deeply attached to their +Catholicism than we Northerners are to Christianity generally, and +that consequently unbelief in Catholic countries means something quite +different from what it does among Protestants--namely, a sort of revolt +against the spirit of the race, while with us it is rather a return to +the spirit (or non-spirit) of the race. + +We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races, even +as regards our talents for religion--we have POOR talents for it. One +may make an exception in the case of the Celts, who have theretofore +furnished also the best soil for Christian infection in the North: the +Christian ideal blossomed forth in France as much as ever the pale sun +of the north would allow it. How strangely pious for our taste are still +these later French skeptics, whenever there is any Celtic blood in their +origin! How Catholic, how un-German does Auguste Comte's Sociology +seem to us, with the Roman logic of its instincts! How Jesuitical, that +amiable and shrewd cicerone of Port Royal, Sainte-Beuve, in spite of all +his hostility to Jesuits! And even Ernest Renan: how inaccessible to +us Northerners does the language of such a Renan appear, in whom +every instant the merest touch of religious thrill throws his refined +voluptuous and comfortably couching soul off its balance! Let us repeat +after him these fine sentences--and what wickedness and haughtiness is +immediately aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but +harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls!--"DISONS DONC +HARDIMENT QUE LA RELIGION EST UN PRODUIT DE L'HOMME NORMAL, QUE L'HOMME +EST LE PLUS DANS LE VRAI QUANT IL EST LE PLUS RELIGIEUX ET LE PLUS +ASSURE D'UNE DESTINEE INFINIE.... C'EST QUAND IL EST BON QU'IL VEUT QUE +LA VIRTU CORRESPONDE A UN ORDER ETERNAL, C'EST QUAND IL CONTEMPLE LES +CHOSES D'UNE MANIERE DESINTERESSEE QU'IL TROUVE LA MORT REVOLTANTE ET +ABSURDE. COMMENT NE PAS SUPPOSER QUE C'EST DANS CES MOMENTS-LA, QUE +L'HOMME VOIT LE MIEUX?"... These sentences are so extremely ANTIPODAL +to my ears and habits of thought, that in my first impulse of rage +on finding them, I wrote on the margin, "LA NIAISERIE RELIGIEUSE PAR +EXCELLENCE!"--until in my later rage I even took a fancy to them, these +sentences with their truth absolutely inverted! It is so nice and such a +distinction to have one's own antipodes! + +49. That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient +Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of GRATITUDE which it pours +forth--it is a very superior kind of man who takes SUCH an attitude +towards nature and life.--Later on, when the populace got the upper hand +in Greece, FEAR became rampant also in religion; and Christianity was +preparing itself. + +50. The passion for God: there are churlish, honest-hearted, and +importunate kinds of it, like that of Luther--the whole of Protestantism +lacks the southern DELICATEZZA. There is an Oriental exaltation of the +mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as +in the case of St. Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive +manner, all nobility in bearing and desires. There is a feminine +tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs +for a UNIO MYSTICA ET PHYSICA, as in the case of Madame de Guyon. In +many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl's +or youth's puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, +also as her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonized the woman +in such a case. + +51. The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before +the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary +privation--why did they thus bow? They divined in him--and as it were +behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance--the +superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the +strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and +love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something +in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the +contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an +enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been +coveted for nothing--they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a +reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might +wish to be more accurately informed through his secret interlocutors and +visitors? In a word, the mighty ones of the world learned to have a new +fear before him, they divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered +enemy:--it was the "Will to Power" which obliged them to halt before the +saint. They had to question him. + +52. In the Jewish "Old Testament," the book of divine justice, there are +men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale, that Greek and Indian +literature has nothing to compare with it. One stands with fear and +reverence before those stupendous remains of what man was formerly, and +one has sad thoughts about old Asia and its little out-pushed peninsula +Europe, which would like, by all means, to figure before Asia as the +"Progress of Mankind." To be sure, he who is himself only a slender, +tame house-animal, and knows only the wants of a house-animal (like +our cultured people of today, including the Christians of "cultured" +Christianity), need neither be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins--the +taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone with respect to "great" and +"small": perhaps he will find that the New Testament, the book of grace, +still appeals more to his heart (there is much of the odour of the +genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To have bound +up this New Testament (a kind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect) along +with the Old Testament into one book, as the "Bible," as "The Book in +Itself," is perhaps the greatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit" +which literary Europe has upon its conscience. + +53. Why Atheism nowadays? "The father" in God is thoroughly refuted; +equally so "the judge," "the rewarder." Also his "free will": he does +not hear--and even if he did, he would not know how to help. The worst +is that he seems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is he +uncertain?--This is what I have made out (by questioning and listening +at a variety of conversations) to be the cause of the decline of +European theism; it appears to me that though the religious instinct is +in vigorous growth,--it rejects the theistic satisfaction with profound +distrust. + +54. What does all modern philosophy mainly do? Since Descartes--and +indeed more in defiance of him than on the basis of his procedure--an +ATTENTAT has been made on the part of all philosophers on the old +conception of the soul, under the guise of a criticism of the subject +and predicate conception--that is to say, an ATTENTAT on the +fundamental presupposition of Christian doctrine. Modern philosophy, +as epistemological skepticism, is secretly or openly ANTI-CHRISTIAN, +although (for keener ears, be it said) by no means anti-religious. +Formerly, in effect, one believed in "the soul" as one believed in +grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, "I" is the condition, +"think" is the predicate and is conditioned--to think is an activity for +which one MUST suppose a subject as cause. The attempt was then made, +with marvelous tenacity and subtlety, to see if one could not get out +of this net,--to see if the opposite was not perhaps true: "think" the +condition, and "I" the conditioned; "I," therefore, only a synthesis +which has been MADE by thinking itself. KANT really wished to prove +that, starting from the subject, the subject could not be proved--nor +the object either: the possibility of an APPARENT EXISTENCE of the +subject, and therefore of "the soul," may not always have been strange +to him,--the thought which once had an immense power on earth as the +Vedanta philosophy. + +55. There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rounds; but +three of these are the most important. Once on a time men sacrificed +human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the +best--to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive +religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the +Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman +anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed +to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their "nature"; +THIS festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and +"anti-natural" fanatics. Finally, what still remained to be sacrificed? +Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything +comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in +future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God +himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, +gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness--this +paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the +rising generation; we all know something thereof already. + +56. Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long +endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it +from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity in which +it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of +Schopenhauer's philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic and super-Asiatic +eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of +all possible modes of thought--beyond good and evil, and no longer +like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of +morality,--whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, without +really desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the +ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has +not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and +is, but wishes to have it again AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity, +insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole +piece and play; and not only the play, but actually to him who requires +the play--and makes it necessary; because he always requires +himself anew--and makes himself necessary.--What? And this would not +be--circulus vitiosus deus? + +57. The distance, and as it were the space around man, grows with the +strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes +profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into +view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised +its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, +something of a game, something for children and childish minds. Perhaps +the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and +suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will one day seem to us of +no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to +an old man;--and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then +be necessary once more for "the old man"--always childish enough, an +eternal child! + +58. Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or +semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its +favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft +placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetual readiness for the +"coming of God"), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the +idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic +sentiment that work is DISHONOURING--that it vulgarizes body and +soul--is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy, +time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates +and prepares for "unbelief" more than anything else? Among these, for +instance, who are at present living apart from religion in Germany, I +find "free-thinkers" of diversified species and origin, but above all +a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation +has dissolved the religious instincts; so that they no longer know what +purpose religions serve, and only note their existence in the world +with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already fully +occupied, these good people, be it by their business or by their +pleasures, not to mention the "Fatherland," and the newspapers, and +their "family duties"; it seems that they have no time whatever left +for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them whether it is a +question of a new business or a new pleasure--for it is impossible, they +say to themselves, that people should go to church merely to spoil +their tempers. They are by no means enemies of religious customs; +should certain circumstances, State affairs perhaps, require their +participation in such customs, they do what is required, as so many +things are done--with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without +much curiosity or discomfort;--they live too much apart and outside +to feel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINST in such matters. Among +those indifferent persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of +German Protestants of the middle classes, especially in the great +laborious centres of trade and commerce; also the majority of laborious +scholars, and the entire University personnel (with the exception of +the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always gives +psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). On the part of +pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of HOW +MUCH good-will, one might say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a +German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole +profession (and as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to +which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a +lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is +occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness" of spirit +which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong +to the Church. It is only with the help of history (NOT through his own +personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringing +himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid deference +in presence of religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the +stage of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one +step nearer to that which still maintains itself as Church or as piety; +perhaps even the contrary. The practical indifference to religious +matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually +sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness, which +shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the +depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the +delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.--Every age has +its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages +may envy it: and how much naivete--adorable, childlike, and boundlessly +foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in +his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the +unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the +religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and +ABOVE which he himself has developed--he, the little arrogant dwarf +and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of +"modern ideas"! + +59. Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what +wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their +preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and +false. Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration +of "pure forms" in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be +doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the superficial to that +extent, has at one time or another made an unlucky dive BENEATH it. +Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those burnt +children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying +to FALSIFY its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on it), one might +guess to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent to which +they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and +deified,--one might reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as +their HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable +pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a +religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which +divines that truth might be attained TOO soon, before man has become +strong enough, hard enough, artist enough.... Piety, the "Life in God," +regarded in this light, would appear as the most elaborate and +ultimate product of the FEAR of truth, as artist-adoration +and artist-intoxication in presence of the most logical of all +falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth at +any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of +beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so +superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer +offends. + +60. To love mankind FOR GOD'S SAKE--this has so far been the noblest and +remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. That love to mankind, +without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an ADDITIONAL +folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to +get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling +of ambergris from a higher inclination--whoever first perceived +and "experienced" this, however his tongue may have stammered as it +attempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be +holy and respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone +astray in the finest fashion! + +61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits understand him--as the man of +the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general +development of mankind,--will use religion for his disciplining and +educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political +and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining +influence--destructive, as well as creative and fashioning--which can be +exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the +sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For those who are +strong and independent, destined and trained to command, in whom the +judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is +an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of +authority--as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common, +betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter, +their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. And in the +case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior +spirituality they should incline to a more retired and contemplative +life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government +(over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself may +be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of +managing GROSSER affairs, and for securing immunity from the UNAVOIDABLE +filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance, understood +this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they secured to +themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their +sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher +and super-regal mission. At the same time religion gives inducement and +opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future +ruling and commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which, +through fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight in +self-control are on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient +incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to +experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and +of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of +educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary +baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy. And finally, to +ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and +general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives +invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, +ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, +with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of +justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all +the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Religion, together with the +religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such perpetually +harassed men, and makes even their own aspect endurable to them, it +operates upon them as the Epicurean philosophy usually operates upon +sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner, +almost TURNING suffering TO ACCOUNT, and in the end even hallowing and +vindicating it. There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity +and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate +themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby +to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it +difficult enough to live--this very difficulty being necessary. + +62. To be sure--to make also the bad counter-reckoning against such +religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers--the cost is +always excessive and terrible when religions do NOT operate as an +educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher, but +rule voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end, +and not a means along with other means. Among men, as among all other +animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, +infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, +among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that +man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, the rare +exception. But worse still. The higher the type a man represents, the +greater is the improbability that he will SUCCEED; the accidental, the +law of irrationality in the general constitution of mankind, manifests +itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the higher orders of +men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse, and difficult +to determine. What, then, is the attitude of the two greatest religions +above-mentioned to the SURPLUS of failures in life? They endeavour +to preserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved; in fact, as the +religions FOR SUFFERERS, they take the part of these upon principle; +they are always in favour of those who suffer from life as from a +disease, and they would fain treat every other experience of life as +false and impossible. However highly we may esteem this indulgent and +preservative care (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has applied, +and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering type of +man), the hitherto PARAMOUNT religions--to give a general appreciation +of them--are among the principal causes which have kept the type of +"man" upon a lower level--they have preserved too much THAT WHICH SHOULD +HAVE PERISHED. One has to thank them for invaluable services; and who is +sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation +of all that the "spiritual men" of Christianity have done for Europe +hitherto! But when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage to +the oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to the helpless, +and when they had allured from society into convents and spiritual +penitentiaries the broken-hearted and distracted: what else had they +to do in order to work systematically in that fashion, and with a good +conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which +means, in deed and in truth, to work for the DETERIORATION OF THE +EUROPEAN RACE? To REVERSE all estimates of value--THAT is what they +had to do! And to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast +suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything autonomous, +manly, conquering, and imperious--all instincts which are natural to the +highest and most successful type of "man"--into uncertainty, distress +of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all love of the +earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into hatred of the earth and +earthly things--THAT is the task the Church imposed on itself, and +was obliged to impose, until, according to its standard of value, +"unworldliness," "unsensuousness," and "higher man" fused into one +sentiment. If one could observe the strangely painful, equally coarse +and refined comedy of European Christianity with the derisive and +impartial eye of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never cease +marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will +has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a SUBLIME +ABORTION of man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer +Epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this +almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in +the European Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have to +cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: "Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous +pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was that a work for your hands? +How you have hacked and botched my finest stone! What have you presumed +to do!"--I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most +portentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hard enough, +to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning MAN; men, +not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to ALLOW, with sublime +self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and +perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically +different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from +man:--SUCH men, with their "equality before God," have hitherto swayed +the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species +has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, +mediocre, the European of the present day. + + + +CHAPTER IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES + + +63. He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously--and even +himself--only in relation to his pupils. + +64. "Knowledge for its own sake"--that is the last snare laid by +morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more. + +65. The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has +to be overcome on the way to it. + +65A. We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not PERMITTED to +sin. + +66. The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded, robbed, +deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a God among men. + +67. Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense +of all others. Love to God also! + +68. "I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that," says my +pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually--the memory yields. + +69. One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see the hand +that--kills with leniency. + +70. If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which +always recurs. + +71. THE SAGE AS ASTRONOMER.--So long as thou feelest the stars as an +"above thee," thou lackest the eye of the discerning one. + +72. It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that +makes great men. + +73. He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. + +73A. Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye--and calls it his +pride. + +74. A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things +besides: gratitude and purity. + +75. The degree and nature of a man's sensuality extends to the highest +altitudes of his spirit. + +76. Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself. + +77. With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, or justify, +or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: two men with the same +principles probably seek fundamentally different ends therewith. + +78. He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a +despiser. + +79. A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, +betrays its sediment: its dregs come up. + +80. A thing that is explained ceases to concern us--What did the God +mean who gave the advice, "Know thyself!" Did it perhaps imply "Cease to +be concerned about thyself! become objective!"--And Socrates?--And the +"scientific man"? + +81. It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you +should so salt your truth that it will no longer--quench thirst? + +82. "Sympathy for all"--would be harshness and tyranny for THEE, my good +neighbour. + +83. INSTINCT--When the house is on fire one forgets even the +dinner--Yes, but one recovers it from among the ashes. + +84. Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she--forgets how to charm. + +85. The same emotions are in man and woman, but in different TEMPO, on +that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other. + +86. In the background of all their personal vanity, women themselves +have still their impersonal scorn--for "woman". + +87. FETTERED HEART, FREE SPIRIT--When one firmly fetters one's heart +and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one's spirit many liberties: I said +this once before But people do not believe it when I say so, unless they +know it already. + +88. One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become +embarrassed. + +89. Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences +them is not something dreadful also. + +90. Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to their +surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy--by hatred and love. + +91. So cold, so icy, that one burns one's finger at the touch of him! +Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!--And for that very reason +many think him red-hot. + +92. Who has not, at one time or another--sacrificed himself for the sake +of his good name? + +93. In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on that +account a great deal too much contempt of men. + +94. The maturity of man--that means, to have reacquired the seriousness +that one had as a child at play. + +95. To be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at the end +of which one is ashamed also of one's morality. + +96. One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa--blessing +it rather than in love with it. + +97. What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own +ideal. + +98. When one trains one's conscience, it kisses one while it bites. + +99. THE DISAPPOINTED ONE SPEAKS--"I listened for the echo and I heard +only praise." + +100. We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are, we thus +relax ourselves away from our fellows. + +101. A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the +animalization of God. + +102. Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with +regard to the beloved. "What! She is modest enough to love even you? Or +stupid enough? Or--or---" + +103. THE DANGER IN HAPPINESS.--"Everything now turns out best for me, I +now love every fate:--who would like to be my fate?" + +104. Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, +prevents the Christians of today--burning us. + +105. The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the "piety") +of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge") than the impia fraus. +Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, +characteristic of the type "free spirit"--as ITS non-freedom. + +106. By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves. + +107. A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been +taken, to shut the ear even to the best counter-arguments. Occasionally, +therefore, a will to stupidity. + +108. There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral +interpretation of phenomena. + +109. The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates +and maligns it. + +110. The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the +beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer. + +111. Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been +wounded. + +112. To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to +belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against +them. + +113. "You want to prepossess him in your favour? Then you must be +embarrassed before him." + +114. The immense expectation with regard to sexual love, and the coyness +in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women at the outset. + +115. Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman's play is +mediocre. + +116. The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage +to rebaptize our badness as the best in us. + +117. The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of +another, or of several other, emotions. + +118. There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to whom +it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day. + +119. Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our cleaning +ourselves--"justifying" ourselves. + +120. Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its +root remains weak, and is easily torn up. + +121. It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn +author--and that he did not learn it better. + +122. To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness +of heart--and the very opposite of vanity of spirit. + +123. Even concubinage has been corrupted--by marriage. + +124. He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because +of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. A parable. + +125. When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily +to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us. + +126. A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great +men.--Yes, and then to get round them. + +127. In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of +shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it--or +worse still! under their dress and finery. + +128. The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you +allure the senses to it. + +129. The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that +account he keeps so far away from him:--the devil, in effect, as the +oldest friend of knowledge. + +130. What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent +decreases,--when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an +adornment; an adornment is also a concealment. + +131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that +in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to +express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but +in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she +may have assumed the peaceable demeanour. + +132. One is punished best for one's virtues. + +133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and +shamelessly than the man without an ideal. + +134. From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, +all evidence of truth. + +135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable +part of it is rather an essential condition of being good. + +136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some +one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates. + +137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes +of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds +a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very +remarkable man. + +138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and +imagine him with whom we have intercourse--and forget it immediately. + +139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man. + +140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE.--"If the band is not to break, bite it +first--secure to make!" + +141. The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself +for a God. + +142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dans le veritable amour c'est +l'ame qui enveloppe le corps." + +143. Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is +most difficult to us.--Concerning the origin of many systems of morals. + +144. When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally +something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a +certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is "the barren +animal." + +145. Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would +not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the +SECONDARY role. + +146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby +become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will +also gaze into thee. + +147. From old Florentine novels--moreover, from life: Buona femmina e +mala femmina vuol bastone.--Sacchetti, Nov. 86. + +148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and afterwards +to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour--who can do +this conjuring trick so well as women? + +149. That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of +what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal. + +150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the +demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything +becomes--what? perhaps a "world"? + +151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your +permission to possess it;--eh, my friends? + +152. "Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise": +so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents. + +153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. + +154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of +health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. + +155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness. + +156. Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups, parties, +nations, and epochs it is the rule. + +157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one +gets successfully through many a bad night. + +158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our +strongest impulse--the tyrant in us. + +159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us +good or ill? + +160. One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has +communicated it. + +161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them. + +162. "Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour's +neighbour":--so thinks every nation. + +163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover--his +rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his +normal character. + +164. Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants;--love God as I +love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals!" + +165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY.--A shepherd has always need of a +bell-wether--or he has himself to be a wether occasionally. + +166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying +grimace one nevertheless tells the truth. + +167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame--and something +precious. + +168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, +certainly, but degenerated to Vice. + +169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing +oneself. + +170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame. + +171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like +tender hands on a Cyclops. + +172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind +(because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never +confess to the individual. + +173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one +esteems equal or superior. + +174. Ye Utilitarians--ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE for +your inclinations,--ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels +insupportable! + +175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired. + +176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is +counter to our vanity. + +177. With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has ever been +sufficiently truthful. + +178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a +forfeiture of the rights of man! + +179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very +indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed." + +180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a +cause. + +181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed. + +182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be +returned. + +183. "I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can +no longer believe in you." + +184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of +wickedness. + +185. "I dislike him."--Why?--"I am not a match for him."--Did any one +ever answer so? + + + +CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS + + +186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle, +belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science of Morals" +belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:--an +interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious +in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, "Science +of Morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too +presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste,--which is always a foretaste of +more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT +is still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the +present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey +and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth, +and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish--and +perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common +forms of these living crystallizations--as preparation for a THEORY OF +TYPES of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. +All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, +demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and +ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science: +they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality--and every philosopher hitherto +has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has +been regarded as something "given." How far from their awkward pride +was the seemingly insignificant problem--left in dust and decay--of a +description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands +and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to +moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary +epitome, or an accidental abridgement--perhaps as the morality of +their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their +climate and zone--it was precisely because they were badly instructed +with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager +to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the +real problems of morals--problems which only disclose themselves by +a comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals" +hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself +has been OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything +problematic there! That which philosophers called "giving a basis to +morality," and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light, +proved merely a learned form of good FAITH in prevailing morality, a new +means of its EXPRESSION, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the +sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of +denial that it is LAWFUL for this morality to be called in question--and +in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and +vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what +innocence--almost worthy of honour--Schopenhauer represents his own +task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a +"Science" whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and +old wives: "The principle," he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der +Ethik), [Footnote: Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality, +translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M.A. (1903).] "the axiom about the +purport of which all moralists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminem laede, +immo omnes quantum potes juva--is REALLY the proposition which all moral +teachers strive to establish, ... the REAL basis of ethics which +has been sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries."--The +difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be +great--it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his +efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and +sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will +to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, +ACTUALLY--played the flute... daily after dinner: one may read about +the matter in his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, a +repudiator of God and of the world, who MAKES A HALT at morality--who +assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what? +Is that really--a pessimist? + +187. Apart from the value of such assertions as "there is a categorical +imperative in us," one can always ask: What does such an assertion +indicate about him who makes it? There are systems of morals which are +meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems +of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied; +with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others +he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others +to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction,--this system of +morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something +of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and +creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant +especially, gives us to understand by his morals that "what is estimable +in me, is that I know how to obey--and with you it SHALL not be +otherwise than with me!" In short, systems of morals are only a +SIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS. + +188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of +tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason", that is, however, no +objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that +all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is +essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a +long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal, +or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every +language has attained to strength and freedom--the metrical constraint, +the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and +orators of every nation given themselves!--not excepting some of +the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable +conscientiousness--"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers +say, and thereby deem themselves wise--"from submission to arbitrary +laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves "free," even +free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything +of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly +certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, +or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in +conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary +law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely +this is "nature" and "natural"--and not laisser-aller! Every artist +knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his +"most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing, +and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"--and how strictly and +delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness +and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most +stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold, +and ambiguous in it). The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is, +apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE +in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in +the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, +virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything whatever +that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long bondage of +the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of +ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think +in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable +to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret +everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every +occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:--all this +violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness, +has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has +attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility; +granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be +stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere, +"nature" shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFERENT +magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That +for centuries European thinkers only thought in order to prove +something--nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker +who "wishes to prove something"--that it was always settled beforehand +what WAS TO BE the result of their strictest thinking, as it was perhaps +in the Asiatic astrology of former times, or as it is still at the +present day in the innocent, Christian-moral explanation of immediate +personal events "for the glory of God," or "for the good of the +soul":--this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent +stupidity, has EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and +the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual +education and discipline. One may look at every system of morals in this +light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the laisser-aller, +the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for +immediate duties--it teaches the NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in +a certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and development. +"Thou must obey some one, and for a long time; OTHERWISE thou wilt come +to grief, and lose all respect for thyself"--this seems to me to be the +moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical," +as old Kant wished (consequently the "otherwise"), nor does it address +itself to the individual (what does nature care for the individual!), +but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all, however, to the +animal "man" generally, to MANKIND. + +189. Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was a +master stroke of ENGLISH instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to such +an extent that the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week--and +work-day again:--as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated +FAST, such as is also frequently found in the ancient world (although, +as is appropriate in southern nations, not precisely with respect +to work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful +influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary +days are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to +hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations and +epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism, +seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during +which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself--at the same time +also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophical sects likewise +admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst +of Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with +Aphrodisiacal odours).--Here also is a hint for the explanation of the +paradox, why it was precisely in the most Christian period of European +history, and in general only under the pressure of Christian sentiments, +that the sexual impulse sublimated into love (amour-passion). + +190. There is something in the morality of Plato which does not really +belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might +say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he himself was +too noble. "No one desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done +unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do +so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is +only evil through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily +make him--good."--This mode of reasoning savours of the POPULACE, who +perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically +judge that "it is STUPID to do wrong"; while they accept "good" as +identical with "useful and pleasant," without further thought. As +regards every system of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it +has the same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err.--Plato +did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into the +tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them--he, +the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out +of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless +and impossible modifications--namely, in all his own disguises and +multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as well, what is the +Platonic Socrates, if not--[Greek words inserted here.] + +191. The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge," or more +plainly, of instinct and reason--the question whether, in respect to the +valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality, +which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to +a "Why," that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility--it +is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of +Socrates, and had divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates +himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent--that of a +surpassing dialectician--took first the side of reason; and, in fact, +what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the +noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could +never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions? +In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also +at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found +in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"--he said +to himself--"should one on that account separate oneself from the +instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO--one must follow +the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them +with good arguments." This was the real FALSENESS of that great and +mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he +was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived +the irrationality in the moral judgment.--Plato, more innocent in such +matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to +himself, at the expenditure of all his strength--the greatest strength +a philosopher had ever expended--that reason and instinct lead +spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "God"; and since Plato, all +theologians and philosophers have followed the same path--which means +that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it, +"Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless +one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of +rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who +recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and +Descartes was superficial. + +192. Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds in +its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest +processes of all "knowledge and cognizance": there, as here, the +premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to "belief," +and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed--our senses +learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and +cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier on a given +occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon +the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more +force, more "morality." It is difficult and painful for the ear to +listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear +another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds +into words with which we are more familiar and conversant--it was thus, +for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA into +ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the +new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the +emotions DOMINATE--such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion +of indolence.--As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words +(not to speak of syllables) of a page--he rather takes about five out +of every twenty words at random, and "guesses" the probably appropriate +sense to them--just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely +in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so +much easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the +most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the +greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate +any event, EXCEPT as "inventors" thereof. All this goes to prove +that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have +been--ACCUSTOMED TO LYING. Or, to express it more politely and +hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly--one is much more of an artist +than one is aware of.--In an animated conversation, I often see the face +of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined +before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to +be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the +STRENGTH of my visual faculty--the delicacy of the play of the muscles +and of the expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by me. +Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all. + +193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. What we +experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at +last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything +"actually" experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we +have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and +even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some +extent by the nature of our dreams. Supposing that someone has often +flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is +conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his +peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the +slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who +knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards" +without effort or constraint, a "downwards" without descending +or lowering--without TROUBLE!--how could the man with such +dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently +coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could he fail--to +long DIFFERENTLY for happiness? "Flight," such as is described by poets, +must, when compared with his own "flying," be far too earthly, muscular, +violent, far too "troublesome" for him. + +194. The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the +difference of their lists of desirable things--in their regarding +different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to +the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized +desirable things:--it manifests itself much more in what they regard as +actually HAVING and POSSESSING a desirable thing. As regards a woman, +for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification +serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the +more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for +possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere apparentness of such +ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially +whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for +his sake what she has or would like to have--only THEN does he look upon +her as "possessed." A third, however, has not even here got to the limit +of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether +the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do +so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, +profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let +himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in +his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when +she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed +insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One +man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of +Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more +refined thirst for possession, says to himself: "One may not deceive +where one desires to possess"--he is irritated and impatient at the idea +that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: "I must, +therefore, MAKE myself known, and first of all learn to know myself!" +Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward +craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as +though, for instance, he should "merit" help, seek just THEIR help, and +would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them +for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a +property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a +desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or +forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make something like +themselves out of their children--they call that "education"; no mother +doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has borne is +thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to HIS OWN +ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed it +right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly +born (as among the ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the +teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new +individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. The +consequence is... + +195. The Jews--a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole +ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as +they themselves say and believe--the Jews performed the miracle of the +inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new +and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused +into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," +"sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of +reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included +the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the +significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that +the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences. + +196. It is to be INFERRED that there are countless dark bodies near the +sun--such as we shall never see. Among ourselves, this is an allegory; +and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an +allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed. + +197. The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia) +are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as +one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of +all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate "hell" in them--as +almost all moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is +a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? And +that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs, whether +as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and +self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate zones"? In favour +of the temperate men? The "moral"? The mediocre?--This for the chapter: +"Morals as Timidity." + +198. All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to +their "happiness," as it is called--what else are they but suggestions +for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER from themselves in which +the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad +propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like +to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, +permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife +wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form--because +they address themselves to "all," because they generalize where +generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, +and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely +with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even +seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously, +especially of "the other world." That is all of little value when +estimated intellectually, and is far from being "science," much less +"wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is +expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, +stupidity--whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness +towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and +fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the +destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he +recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent +mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; +or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary +attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as +music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake--for in religion +the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that...; or, finally, +even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has +been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the +spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of +wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much +danger."--This also for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity." + +199. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed, there have +also been human herds (family alliances, communities, tribes, peoples, +states, churches), and always a great number who obey in proportion +to the small number who command--in view, therefore, of the fact that +obedience has been most practiced and fostered among mankind hitherto, +one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is +now innate in every one, as a kind of FORMAL CONSCIENCE which gives +the command "Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally +refrain from something", in short, "Thou shalt". This need tries to +satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content, according to its +strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous +appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into +its ear by all sorts of commanders--parents, teachers, laws, class +prejudices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human +development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and +turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of +obedience is transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. If +one imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commanders +and independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether, or they +will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose +a deception on themselves in the first place in order to be able to +command just as if they also were only obeying. This condition of things +actually exists in Europe at present--I call it the moral hypocrisy of +the commanding class. They know no other way of protecting themselves +from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older +and higher orders (of predecessors, of the constitution, of justice, of +the law, or of God himself), or they even justify themselves by maxims +from the current opinions of the herd, as "first servants of their +people," or "instruments of the public weal". On the other hand, the +gregarious European man nowadays assumes an air as if he were the only +kind of man that is allowable, he glorifies his qualities, such as +public spirit, kindness, deference, industry, temperance, modesty, +indulgence, sympathy, by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and +useful to the herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however, +where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed +with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders +by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative +constitutions, for example, are of this origin. In spite of all, what a +blessing, what a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is the +appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious Europeans--of this +fact the effect of the appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof +the history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of +the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its +worthiest individuals and periods. + +200. The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with +one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in his +body--that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary, instincts +and standards of value, which struggle with one another and are seldom +at peace--such a man of late culture and broken lights, will, on an +average, be a weak man. His fundamental desire is that the war which is +IN HIM should come to an end; happiness appears to him in the character +of a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean +or Christian); it is above all things the happiness of repose, of +undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity--it is the "Sabbath of +Sabbaths," to use the expression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine, +who was himself such a man.--Should, however, the contrariety and +conflict in such natures operate as an ADDITIONAL incentive and stimulus +to life--and if, on the other hand, in addition to their powerful and +irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated +into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict +with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and +self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and +inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering +and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades +and Caesar (with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans +according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and +among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in the +same periods when that weaker type, with its longing for repose, comes +to the front; the two types are complementary to each other, and spring +from the same causes. + +201. As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only +gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is only +kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in +what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can be +no "morality of love to one's neighbour." Granted even that there is +already a little constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness, +gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this condition +of society all those instincts are already active which are latterly +distinguished by honourable names as "virtues," and eventually almost +coincide with the conception "morality": in that period they do not +as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations--they are still +ULTRA-MORAL. A sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good +nor bad, moral nor immoral, in the best period of the Romans; and should +it be praised, a sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this +praise, even at the best, directly the sympathetic action is compared +with one which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the RES +PUBLICA. After all, "love to our neighbour" is always a secondary +matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to +our FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. After the fabric of society seems on the +whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this +fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral +valuation. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the love of +enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and +love of power, which up till then had not only to be honoured from the +point of view of general utility--under other names, of course, than +those here given--but had to be fostered and cultivated (because they +were perpetually required in the common danger against the common +enemies), are now felt in their dangerousness to be doubly strong--when +the outlets for them are lacking--and are gradually branded as immoral +and given over to calumny. The contrary instincts and inclinations now +attain to moral honour, the gregarious instinct gradually draws its +conclusions. How much or how little dangerousness to the community or +to equality is contained in an opinion, a condition, an emotion, a +disposition, or an endowment--that is now the moral perspective, here +again fear is the mother of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongest +instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual +far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious +conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed, its +belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks, consequently these +very instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty independent +spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are +felt to be dangers, everything that elevates the individual above the +herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called +EVIL, the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing +disposition, the MEDIOCRITY of desires, attains to moral distinction and +honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always +less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity +and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins +to disturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorous nobleness and +self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, "the lamb," +and still more "the sheep," wins respect. There is a point of diseased +mellowness and effeminacy in the history of society, at which society +itself takes the part of him who injures it, the part of the CRIMINAL, +and does so, in fact, seriously and honestly. To punish, appears to it +to be somehow unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and +"the obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "Is +it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why should we +still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!"--with these questions +gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate +conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear, +one would have done away with this morality at the same time, it +would no longer be necessary, it WOULD NOT CONSIDER ITSELF any longer +necessary!--Whoever examines the conscience of the present-day European, +will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral folds +and hidden recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd "we wish +that some time or other there may be NOTHING MORE TO FEAR!" Some time +or other--the will and the way THERETO is nowadays called "progress" all +over Europe. + +202. Let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred +times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truths--OUR +truths. We know well enough how offensive it sounds when any one +plainly, and without metaphor, counts man among the animals, but it will +be accounted to us almost a CRIME, that it is precisely in respect to +men of "modern ideas" that we have constantly applied the terms "herd," +"herd-instincts," and such like expressions. What avail is it? We cannot +do otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new insight is. We +have found that in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become +unanimous, including likewise the countries where European influence +prevails in Europe people evidently KNOW what Socrates thought he +did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once promised to +teach--they "know" today what is good and evil. It must then sound hard +and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that which +here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise +and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of the herding human +animal, the instinct which has come and is ever coming more and more +to the front, to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts, +according to the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance +of which it is the symptom. MORALITY IN EUROPE AT PRESENT IS +HERDING-ANIMAL MORALITY, and therefore, as we understand the matter, +only one kind of human morality, beside which, before which, and after +which many other moralities, and above all HIGHER moralities, are or +should be possible. Against such a "possibility," against such a "should +be," however, this morality defends itself with all its strength, it +says obstinately and inexorably "I am morality itself and nothing else +is morality!" Indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured +and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have +reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of +this morality even in political and social arrangements: the DEMOCRATIC +movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement. That its TEMPO, +however, is much too slow and sleepy for the more impatient ones, for +those who are sick and distracted by the herding-instinct, is indicated +by the increasingly furious howling, and always less disguised +teeth-gnashing of the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the +highways of European culture. Apparently in opposition to the peacefully +industrious democrats and Revolution-ideologues, and still more so +to the awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call +themselves Socialists and want a "free society," those are really at one +with them all in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every form +of society other than that of the AUTONOMOUS herd (to the extent even of +repudiating the notions "master" and "servant"--ni dieu ni maitre, says +a socialist formula); at one in their tenacious opposition to every +special claim, every special right and privilege (this means ultimately +opposition to EVERY right, for when all are equal, no one needs "rights" +any longer); at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though it +were a violation of the weak, unfair to the NECESSARY consequences of +all former society); but equally at one in their religion of sympathy, +in their compassion for all that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the +very animals, up even to "God"--the extravagance of "sympathy for +God" belongs to a democratic age); altogether at one in the cry and +impatience of their sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering +generally, in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or +ALLOWING it; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening, +under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatened with a new +Buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of MUTUAL sympathy, as +though it were morality in itself, the climax, the ATTAINED climax of +mankind, the sole hope of the future, the consolation of the present, +the great discharge from all the obligations of the past; altogether at +one in their belief in the community as the DELIVERER, in the herd, and +therefore in "themselves." + +203. We, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the democratic +movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, but +as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his +mediocrising and depreciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? In +NEW PHILOSOPHERS--there is no other alternative: in minds strong and +original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue +and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, +who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which +will compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future +of humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make +preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in +rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful +rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of +"history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last +form)--for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will +some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that +has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might +look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before OUR +eyes:--is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The +conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for +their genesis; the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which +a soul should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a +CONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the new +pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart +transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such responsibility; +and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders, the dreadful +danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate:--these +are OUR real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits! +these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the +heaven of OUR life. There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, +divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and +deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger +of "man" himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has recognized the +extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its game in +respect to the future of mankind--a game in which neither the hand, nor +even a "finger of God" has participated!--he who divines the fate that +is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of +"modern ideas," and still more under the whole of Christo-European +morality--suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared. +He sees at a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through +a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and +arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how +unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often +in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions +and new paths:--he knows still better from his painfulest recollections +on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank +have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become +contemptible. The UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of +the "man of the future"--as idealized by the socialistic fools and +shallow-pates--this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely +gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), +this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is +undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to its +ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of +mankind--and perhaps also a new MISSION! + + + +CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS + + +204. At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that +which it has always been--namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES, +according to Balzac--I would venture to protest against an improper and +injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the +best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations +of science and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have the right +out of one's own EXPERIENCE--experience, as it seems to me, always +implies unfortunate experience?--to treat of such an important question +of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST science +like women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful science!" sigh their instinct +and their shame, "it always FINDS THINGS OUT!"). The declaration of +independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy, +is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and +disorganization: the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of +the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best +springtime--which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise +smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom +from all masters!" and after science has, with the happiest results, +resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now +proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for +philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"--what am I saying! +to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory--the memory of +a scientific man, if you please!--teems with the naivetes of insolence +which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young +naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and +most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters, +who are both the one and the other by profession). On one occasion it +was the specialist and the Jack Horner who instinctively stood on the +defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time +it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of OTIUM and refined +luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and felt +himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion it was the +colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but +a series of REFUTED systems, and an extravagant expenditure which "does +nobody any good". At another time the fear of disguised mysticism and of +the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another +time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily +extended to disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most +frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars, +the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the +whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his +scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of--the +result being a general ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to +me, for instance, the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern +Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in +severing the whole of the last generation of Germans from its connection +with German culture, which culture, all things considered, has been +an elevation and a divining refinement of the HISTORICAL SENSE, but +precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive, +and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness.) On the whole, speaking +generally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the +modern philosophers themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which +has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the +doors to the instinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to +what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the +world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal +and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called, and with what +justice an honest man of science MAY feel himself of a better family and +origin, in view of such representatives of philosophy, who, owing to +the fashion of the present day, are just as much aloft as they are down +below--in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist +Eugen Duhring and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially +the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves +"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a +dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those +philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and specialists, +that is very evident! All of them are persons who have been vanquished +and BROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominion of science, who at one time +or another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the +"more" and its responsibility--and who now, creditably, rancorously, and +vindictively, represent in word and deed, DISBELIEF in the master-task +and supremacy of philosophy After all, how could it be otherwise? +Science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible +on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has +gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites +distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity Philosophy reduced to +a "theory of knowledge," no more in fact than a diffident science of +epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even +gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously DENIES itself the right +to enter--that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, +something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy--RULE! + +205. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are, in +fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this fruit +could still come to maturity. The extent and towering structure of the +sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the probability +that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach +himself somewhere and "specialize" so that he will no longer attain to +his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection, +and his DESPECTION. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his +maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and +deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no +longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his +intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the +way, he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a +milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost +his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should +aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and +spiritual rat-catcher--in short, a misleader. This is in the last +instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of +conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is +also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not +concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life--he learns +unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain +this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief +only through the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying) +experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the +philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either +with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously +elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated +man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives +"wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means anything more than +"prudently and apart." Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind +of flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a +bad game; but the GENUINE philosopher--does it not seem so to US, +my friends?--lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all, +IMPRUDENTLY, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts +and temptations of life--he risks HIMSELF constantly, he plays THIS bad +game. + +206. In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who either +ENGENDERS or PRODUCES--both words understood in their fullest sense--the +man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of +the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two +principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and +to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of +indemnification--in these cases one emphasizes the respectability--and +yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture +of vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man? +Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is +to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type +of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file, +equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the +instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require--for +instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which +there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration +(which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability), +the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and +usefulness, with which the inward DISTRUST which lies at the bottom of +the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and +again to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also +maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and +has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations +he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go, +but does not FLOW; and precisely before the man of the great current he +stands all the colder and more reserved--his eye is then like a smooth +and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy. +The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results +from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of +mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of +the exceptional man, and endeavours to break--or still better, to +relax--every bent bow To relax, of course, with consideration, and +naturally with an indulgent hand--to RELAX with confiding sympathy +that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to +introduce itself as the religion of sympathy. + +207. However gratefully one may welcome the OBJECTIVE spirit--and +who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded +IPSISIMOSITY!--in the end, however, one must learn caution even with +regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration with +which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been +celebrated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation +and glorification--as is especially accustomed to happen in the +pessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the +highest honours to "disinterested knowledge" The objective man, who no +longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of learning +in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand +complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly +instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more +powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a MIRROR--he is no +"purpose in himself" The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed +to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such +desires only as knowing or "reflecting" implies--he waits until +something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the +light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on +his surface and film Whatever "personality" he still possesses seems to +him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he +come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms +and events He calls up the recollection of "himself" with an effort, +and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other +persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only +is he unrefined and negligent Perhaps he is troubled about the health, +or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack +of companions and society--indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his +suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the MORE +GENERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how +to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote time +to himself he is serene, NOT from lack of trouble, but from lack +of capacity for grasping and dealing with HIS trouble The habitual +complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant +and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that +comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous +indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which +he has to atone for these virtues of his!--and as man generally, he +becomes far too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should one +wish love or hatred from him--I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and +animal understand them--he will do what he can, and furnish what he can. +But one must not be surprised if it should not be much--if he should +show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and +deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and +rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is +only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality +is he still "nature" and "natural." His mirroring and eternally +self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to +deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE +PRESQUE RIEN"--he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue +the PRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any +one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have +any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. If he has +been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesarian trainer +and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what +is more essential in him has been overlooked--he is an instrument, +something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but +nothing in himself--PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man is an instrument, +a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and +mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he +is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the +REST of existence justifies itself, no termination--and still less a +commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful, +self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated, +delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of content +and frame to "shape" itself thereto--for the most part a man without +frame and content, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, nothing for +women, IN PARENTHESI. + +208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic--I +hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the +objective spirit?--people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on +that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many, +many questions... indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so +many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of +skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening +sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried +somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian +NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS, that not only denies, means +denial, but--dreadful thought! PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of +"good-will"--a will to the veritable, actual negation of life--there is, +as is generally acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative +than skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism; +and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an +antidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "Are not our ears +already full of bad sounds?" say the skeptics, as lovers of repose, and +almost as a kind of safety police; "this subterranean Nay is terrible! +Be still, ye pessimistic moles!" The skeptic, in effect, that delicate +creature, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so +as to start at every Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels +something like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay!--they seem to him opposed +to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue +by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with Montaigne: "What do I +know?" Or with Socrates: "I know that I know nothing." Or: "Here I do +not trust myself, no door is open to me." Or: "Even if the door were +open, why should I enter immediately?" Or: "What is the use of any hasty +hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses +at all. Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is +crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time +enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh, ye demons, can ye not +at all WAIT? The uncertain also has its charms, the Sphinx, too, is a +Circe, and Circe, too, was a philosopher."--Thus does a skeptic console +himself; and in truth he needs some consolation. For skepticism is +the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological +temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and +sickliness; it arises whenever races or classes which have been long +separated, decisively and suddenly blend with one another. In the new +generation, which has inherited as it were different standards and +valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and +tentativeness; the best powers operate restrictively, the very virtues +prevent each other growing and becoming strong, equilibrium, ballast, +and perpendicular stability are lacking in body and soul. That, however, +which is most diseased and degenerated in such nondescripts is the +WILL; they are no longer familiar with independence of decision, or +the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing--they are doubtful of the +"freedom of the will" even in their dreams Our present-day Europe, +the scene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blending of +classes, and CONSEQUENTLY of races, is therefore skeptical in all its +heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticism which +springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch, sometimes with +gloomy aspect, like a cloud over-charged with interrogative signs--and +often sick unto death of its will! Paralysis of will, where do we not +find this cripple sitting nowadays! And yet how bedecked oftentimes' How +seductively ornamented! There are the finest gala dresses and disguises +for this disease, and that, for instance, most of what places itself +nowadays in the show-cases as "objectiveness," "the scientific spirit," +"L'ART POUR L'ART," and "pure voluntary knowledge," is only decked-out +skepticism and paralysis of will--I am ready to answer for this +diagnosis of the European disease--The disease of the will is diffused +unequally over Europe, it is worst and most varied where civilization +has longest prevailed, it decreases according as "the barbarian" +still--or again--asserts his claims under the loose drapery of Western +culture It is therefore in the France of today, as can be readily +disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most infirm, and France, +which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the +portentous crises of its spirit into something charming and seductive, +now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over Europe, +by being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism The +power to will and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is already +somewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the North of Germany it +is stronger than in Central Germany, it is considerably stronger in +England, Spain, and Corsica, associated with phlegm in the former and +with hard skulls in the latter--not to mention Italy, which is too young +yet to know what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise +will, but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that immense +middle empire where Europe as it were flows back to Asia--namely, in +Russia There the power to will has been long stored up and accumulated, +there the will--uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative--waits +threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our +physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would +be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal +subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above +all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the +obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not +say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should rather prefer the +contrary--I mean such an increase in the threatening attitude of +Russia, that Europe would have to make up its mind to become equally +threatening--namely, TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a new caste to +rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that +can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that the long spun-out +comedy of its petty-statism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic +many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close. The time for +petty politics is past; the next century will bring the struggle for the +dominion of the world--the COMPULSION to great politics. + +209. As to how far the new warlike age on which we Europeans have +evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth of another and stronger +kind of skepticism, I should like to express myself preliminarily +merely by a parable, which the lovers of German history will already +understand. That unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers +(who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical +genius--and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged +type of German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great, +had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew +what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred times +more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form--his +ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound +instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; and he suspected, to his bitterest regret, +that his own son was not man enough. There, however, he deceived +himself; but who would not have deceived himself in his place? He saw +his son lapsed to atheism, to the ESPRIT, to the pleasant frivolity of +clever Frenchmen--he saw in the background the great bloodsucker, the +spider skepticism; he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no +longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a broken will that no +longer commands, is no longer ABLE to command. Meanwhile, however, +there grew up in his son that new kind of harder and more dangerous +skepticism--who knows TO WHAT EXTENT it was encouraged just by +his father's hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned to +solitude?--the skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related +to the genius for war and conquest, and made its first entrance into +Germany in the person of the great Frederick. This skepticism despises +and nevertheless grasps; it undermines and takes possession; it does +not believe, but it does not thereby lose itself; it gives the spirit a +dangerous liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the heart. It is the +GERMAN form of skepticism, which, as a continued Fredericianism, risen +to the highest spirituality, has kept Europe for a considerable time +under the dominion of the German spirit and its critical and historical +distrust Owing to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character +of the great German philologists and historical critics (who, +rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of destruction +and dissolution), a NEW conception of the German spirit gradually +established itself--in spite of all Romanticism in music and +philosophy--in which the leaning towards masculine skepticism was +decidedly prominent whether, for instance, as fearlessness of gaze, as +courage and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to +dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized North Pole expeditions +under barren and dangerous skies. There may be good grounds for it when +warm-blooded and superficial humanitarians cross themselves before this +spirit, CET ESPRIT FATALISTE, IRONIQUE, MEPHISTOPHELIQUE, as Michelet +calls it, not without a shudder. But if one would realize how +characteristic is this fear of the "man" in the German spirit which +awakened Europe out of its "dogmatic slumber," let us call to mind the +former conception which had to be overcome by this new one--and that +it is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare, with +unbridled presumption, to recommend the Germans to the interest of +Europe as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed, and poetical fools. +Finally, let us only understand profoundly enough Napoleon's +astonishment when he saw Goethe it reveals what had been regarded for +centuries as the "German spirit" "VOILA UN HOMME!"--that was as much as +to say "But this is a MAN! And I only expected to see a German!" + +210. Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the +future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps +be skeptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be +designated thereby--and not they themselves. With equal right they might +call themselves critics, and assuredly they will be men of experiments. +By the name with which I ventured to baptize them, I have already +expressly emphasized their attempting and their love of attempting is +this because, as critics in body and soul, they will love to make use +of experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense? In +their passion for knowledge, will they have to go further in daring and +painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic +century can approve of?--There is no doubt these coming ones will be +least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities +which distinguish the critic from the skeptic I mean the certainty as to +standards of worth, the conscious employment of a unity of method, +the wary courage, the standing-alone, and the capacity for +self-responsibility, indeed, they will avow among themselves a DELIGHT +in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty, which knows +how to handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds +They will be STERNER (and perhaps not always towards themselves only) +than humane people may desire, they will not deal with the "truth" in +order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them--they +will rather have little faith in "TRUTH" bringing with it such revels +for the feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one +says in their presence "That thought elevates me, why should it not be +true?" or "That work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?" or +"That artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they +will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus +rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic, and if any one +could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easily find therein +the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with "antique taste," +or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation +necessarily found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and +consequently very conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and every +habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters, +will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of +the future, they may even make a display thereof as their special +adornment--nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that +account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to +have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is +criticism and critical science--and nothing else whatever!" Though this +estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the Positivists of +France and Germany (and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste +of KANT: let us call to mind the titles of his principal works), our new +philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of +the philosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, they are +far from being philosophers themselves! Even the great Chinaman of +Konigsberg was only a great critic. + +211. I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding +philosophical workers, and in general scientific men, with +philosophers--that precisely here one should strictly give "each his +own," and not give those far too much, these far too little. It may +be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself +should have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants, +the scientific workers of philosophy, remain standing, and MUST remain +standing he himself must perhaps have been critic, and dogmatist, +and historian, and besides, poet, and collector, and traveler, and +riddle-reader, and moralist, and seer, and "free spirit," and almost +everything, in order to traverse the whole range of human values +and estimations, and that he may BE ABLE with a variety of eyes and +consciences to look from a height to any distance, from a depth up +to any height, from a nook into any expanse. But all these are only +preliminary conditions for his task; this task itself demands something +else--it requires him TO CREATE VALUES. The philosophical workers, after +the excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel, have to fix and formalize some +great existing body of valuations--that is to say, former DETERMINATIONS +OF VALUE, creations of value, which have become prevalent, and are for +a time called "truths"--whether in the domain of the LOGICAL, the +POLITICAL (moral), or the ARTISTIC. It is for these investigators to +make whatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto, conspicuous, +conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to shorten everything long, +even "time" itself, and to SUBJUGATE the entire past: an immense and +wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all refined pride, all +tenacious will, can surely find satisfaction. THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, +HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: "Thus SHALL it be!" +They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby +set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all +subjugators of the past--they grasp at the future with a creative +hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an +instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing" is CREATING, their creating +is a law-giving, their will to truth is--WILL TO POWER.--Are there at +present such philosophers? Have there ever been such philosophers? MUST +there not be such philosophers some day? ... + +212. It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a man +INDISPENSABLE for the morrow and the day after the morrow, has ever +found himself, and HAS BEEN OBLIGED to find himself, in contradiction +to the day in which he lives; his enemy has always been the ideal of his +day. Hitherto all those extraordinary furtherers of humanity whom one +calls philosophers--who rarely regarded themselves as lovers of wisdom, +but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators--have found +their mission, their hard, involuntary, imperative mission (in the end, +however, the greatness of their mission), in being the bad conscience of +their age. In putting the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very +VIRTUES OF THEIR AGE, they have betrayed their own secret; it has been +for the sake of a NEW greatness of man, a new untrodden path to +his aggrandizement. They have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, +indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was +concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality, how +much virtue was OUTLIVED, they have always said "We must remove hence to +where YOU are least at home" In the face of a world of "modern ideas," +which would like to confine every one in a corner, in a "specialty," a +philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled +to place the greatness of man, the conception of "greatness," precisely +in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in his all-roundness, he +would even determine worth and rank according to the amount and variety +of that which a man could bear and take upon himself, according to the +EXTENT to which a man could stretch his responsibility Nowadays the +taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will, nothing is +so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will consequently, in +the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity +for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception +of "greatness", with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its +ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to +an opposite age--such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its +accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods +of selfishness In the time of Socrates, among men only of worn-out +instincts, old conservative Athenians who let themselves go--"for the +sake of happiness," as they said, for the sake of pleasure, as their +conduct indicated--and who had continually on their lips the old pompous +words to which they had long forfeited the right by the life they led, +IRONY was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic +assurance of the old physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly into his +own flesh, as into the flesh and heart of the "noble," with a look that +said plainly enough "Do not dissemble before me! here--we are equal!" +At present, on the contrary, when throughout Europe the herding-animal +alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of +right" can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong--I mean to +say into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged, +against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher +responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness--at present +it belongs to the conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be +apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live +by personal initiative, and the philosopher will betray something of his +own ideal when he asserts "He shall be the greatest who can be the most +solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good +and evil, the master of his virtues, and of super-abundance of will; +precisely this shall be called GREATNESS: as diversified as can be +entire, as ample as can be full." And to ask once more the question: Is +greatness POSSIBLE--nowadays? + +213. It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot +be taught: one must "know" it by experience--or one should have the +pride NOT to know it. The fact that at present people all talk of things +of which they CANNOT have any experience, is true more especially +and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical +matters:--the very few know them, are permitted to know them, and +all popular ideas about them are false. Thus, for instance, the truly +philosophical combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs +at presto pace, and a dialectic rigour and necessity which makes no +false step, is unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own +experience, and therefore, should any one speak of it in their +presence, it is incredible to them. They conceive of every necessity as +troublesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of constraint; +thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating, +almost as a trouble, and often enough as "worthy of the SWEAT of the +noble"--but not at all as something easy and divine, closely related +to dancing and exuberance! "To think" and to take a matter "seriously," +"arduously"--that is one and the same thing to them; such only has been +their "experience."--Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition; they +who know only too well that precisely when they no longer do anything +"arbitrarily," and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, +of subtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping, +reaches its climax--in short, that necessity and "freedom of will" are +then the same thing with them. There is, in fine, a gradation of rank +in psychical states, to which the gradation of rank in the problems +corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruthlessly every one who +ventures too near them, without being predestined for their solution +by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for +nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists +to press, in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as +it were into this "holy of holies"--as so often happens nowadays! But +coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in +the primary law of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders, +though they may dash and break their heads thereon. People have always +to be born to a high station, or, more definitely, they have to be BRED +for it: a person has only a right to philosophy--taking the word in +its higher significance--in virtue of his descent; the ancestors, the +"blood," decide here also. Many generations must have prepared the way +for the coming of the philosopher; each of his virtues must have been +separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and embodied; not only the +bold, easy, delicate course and current of his thoughts, but above all +the readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty of ruling glance +and contemning look, the feeling of separation from the multitude with +their duties and virtues, the kindly patronage and defense of whatever +is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God or devil, the delight and +practice of supreme justice, the art of commanding, the amplitude of +will, the lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely looks up, rarely +loves.... + + + +CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES + + +214. OUR Virtues?--It is probable that we, too, have still our virtues, +although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on +account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little +distance from us. We Europeans of the day after tomorrow, we firstlings +of the twentieth century--with all our dangerous curiosity, our +multifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly +sweetened cruelty in sense and spirit--we shall presumably, IF we must +have virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with our most +secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements: +well, then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!--where, as we know, +so many things lose themselves, so many things get quite lost! And is +there anything finer than to SEARCH for one's own virtues? Is it not +almost to BELIEVE in one's own virtues? But this "believing in one's +own virtues"--is it not practically the same as what was formerly called +one's "good conscience," that long, respectable pigtail of an idea, +which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads, and often enough +also behind their understandings? It seems, therefore, that however +little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly +respectable in other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the +worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans with good +consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.--Ah! if you only knew how +soon, so very soon--it will be different! + +215. As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns which +determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases suns of different +colours shine around a single planet, now with red light, now with +green, and then simultaneously illumine and flood it with motley +colours: so we modern men, owing to the complicated mechanism of our +"firmament," are determined by DIFFERENT moralities; our actions shine +alternately in different colours, and are seldom unequivocal--and there +are often cases, also, in which our actions are MOTLEY-COLOURED. + +216. To love one's enemies? I think that has been well learnt: it takes +place thousands of times at present on a large and small scale; indeed, +at times the higher and sublimer thing takes place:--we learn to DESPISE +when we love, and precisely when we love best; all of it, however, +unconsciously, without noise, without ostentation, with the shame and +secrecy of goodness, which forbids the utterance of the pompous word +and the formula of virtue. Morality as attitude--is opposed to our taste +nowadays. This is ALSO an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers +that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste, +including the enmity and Voltairean bitterness against religion (and all +that formerly belonged to freethinker-pantomime). It is the music in our +conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral +sermons, and goody-goodness won't chime. + +217. Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance +to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment! +They never forgive us if they have once made a mistake BEFORE us +(or even with REGARD to us)--they inevitably become our instinctive +calumniators and detractors, even when they still remain our +"friends."--Blessed are the forgetful: for they "get the better" even of +their blunders. + +218. The psychologists of France--and where else are there still +psychologists nowadays?--have never yet exhausted their bitter and +manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just as though... in +short, they betray something thereby. Flaubert, for instance, the honest +citizen of Rouen, neither saw, heard, nor tasted anything else in the +end; it was his mode of self-torment and refined cruelty. As this is +growing wearisome, I would now recommend for a change something else +for a pleasure--namely, the unconscious astuteness with which good, fat, +honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks +they have to perform, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness, which +is a thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the +middle-class in its best moments--subtler even than the understanding of +its victims:--a repeated proof that "instinct" is the most intelligent +of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered. In +short, you psychologists, study the philosophy of the "rule" in its +struggle with the "exception": there you have a spectacle fit for Gods +and godlike malignity! Or, in plainer words, practise vivisection on +"good people," on the "homo bonae voluntatis," ON YOURSELVES! + +219. The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the favourite +revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so, it is +also a kind of indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature, +and finally, it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and BECOMING +subtle--malice spiritualises. They are glad in their inmost heart that +there is a standard according to which those who are over-endowed with +intellectual goods and privileges, are equal to them, they contend for +the "equality of all before God," and almost NEED the belief in God for +this purpose. It is among them that the most powerful antagonists of +atheism are found. If any one were to say to them "A lofty spirituality +is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely +moral man"--it would make them furious, I shall take care not to say +so. I would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality +itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it +is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the "merely moral" man, +after they have been acquired singly through long training and practice, +perhaps during a whole series of generations, that lofty spirituality +is precisely the spiritualising of justice, and the beneficent severity +which knows that it is authorized to maintain GRADATIONS OF RANK in the +world, even among things--and not only among men. + +220. Now that the praise of the "disinterested person" is so popular +one must--probably not without some danger--get an idea of WHAT people +actually take an interest in, and what are the things generally which +fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men--including the +cultured, even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if +appearances do not deceive. The fact thereby becomes obvious that the +greater part of what interests and charms higher natures, and more +refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely "uninteresting" to +the average man--if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these +interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to +act "disinterestedly." There have been philosophers who could give this +popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-worldly expression +(perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience?), +instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that +"disinterested" action is very interesting and "interested" action, +provided that... "And love?"--What! Even an action for love's sake +shall be "unegoistic"? But you fools--! "And the praise of the +self-sacrificer?"--But whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that +he wanted and obtained something for it--perhaps something from himself +for something from himself; that he relinquished here in order to have +more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even feel himself "more." +But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious +spirit does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so +much when she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth is a woman; one +must not use force with her. + +221. "It sometimes happens," said a moralistic pedant and +trifle-retailer, "that I honour and respect an unselfish man: not, +however, because he is unselfish, but because I think he has a right to +be useful to another man at his own expense. In short, the question +is always who HE is, and who THE OTHER is. For instance, in a person +created and destined for command, self-denial and modest retirement, +instead of being virtues, would be the waste of virtues: so it seems +to me. Every system of unegoistic morality which takes itself +unconditionally and appeals to every one, not only sins against good +taste, but is also an incentive to sins of omission, an ADDITIONAL +seduction under the mask of philanthropy--and precisely a seduction and +injury to the higher, rarer, and more privileged types of men. Moral +systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the GRADATIONS OF +RANK; their presumption must be driven home to their conscience--until +they thoroughly understand at last that it is IMMORAL to say that 'what +is right for one is proper for another.'"--So said my moralistic pedant +and bonhomme. Did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus +exhorted systems of morals to practise morality? But one should not be +too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on ONE'S OWN +side; a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste. + +222. Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays--and, +if I gather rightly, no other religion is any longer preached--let the +psychologist have his ears open through all the vanity, through all the +noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he will +hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of SELF-CONTEMPT. It belongs +to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe, which has been on +the increase for a century (the first symptoms of which are already +specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to Madame +d'Epinay)--IF IT IS NOT REALLY THE CAUSE THEREOF! The man of +"modern ideas," the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with +himself--this is perfectly certain. He suffers, and his vanity wants him +only "to suffer with his fellows." + +223. The hybrid European--a tolerably ugly plebeian, taken all in +all--absolutely requires a costume: he needs history as a storeroom +of costumes. To be sure, he notices that none of the costumes fit him +properly--he changes and changes. Let us look at the nineteenth century +with respect to these hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades +of style, and also with respect to its moments of desperation on account +of "nothing suiting" us. It is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic, +or classical, or Christian, or Florentine, or barocco, or "national," +in moribus et artibus: it does not "clothe us"! But the "spirit," +especially the "historical spirit," profits even by this desperation: +once and again a new sample of the past or of the foreign is tested, +put on, taken off, packed up, and above all studied--we are the first +studious age in puncto of "costumes," I mean as concerns morals, +articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religions; we are prepared as +no other age has ever been for a carnival in the grand style, for the +most spiritual festival--laughter and arrogance, for the transcendental +height of supreme folly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world. Perhaps +we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here, the +domain where even we can still be original, probably as parodists of +the world's history and as God's Merry-Andrews,--perhaps, though nothing +else of the present have a future, our laughter itself may have a +future! + +224. The historical sense (or the capacity for divining quickly +the order of rank of the valuations according to which a people, a +community, or an individual has lived, the "divining instinct" for the +relationships of these valuations, for the relation of the authority +of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces),--this +historical sense, which we Europeans claim as our specialty, has come +to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which +Europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and +races--it is only the nineteenth century that has recognized this +faculty as its sixth sense. Owing to this mingling, the past of every +form and mode of life, and of cultures which were formerly closely +contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth into us "modern +souls"; our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves are +a kind of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit perceives its +advantage therein. By means of our semi-barbarity in body and in desire, +we have secret access everywhere, such as a noble age never had; we have +access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations, and to +every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth; and +in so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto +has just been semi-barbarity, the "historical sense" implies almost the +sense and instinct for everything, the taste and tongue for everything: +whereby it immediately proves itself to be an IGNOBLE sense. For +instance, we enjoy Homer once more: it is perhaps our happiest +acquisition that we know how to appreciate Homer, whom men of +distinguished culture (as the French of the seventeenth century, like +Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his ESPRIT VASTE, and even +Voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot and could not so easily +appropriate--whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy. The very +decided Yea and Nay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, their +hesitating reluctance with regard to everything strange, their horror of +the bad taste even of lively curiosity, and in general the averseness of +every distinguished and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire, +a dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admiration of what is +strange: all this determines and disposes them unfavourably even towards +the best things of the world which are not their property or could not +become their prey--and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men +than just this historical sense, with its truckling, plebeian +curiosity. The case is not different with Shakespeare, that marvelous +Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste, over whom an ancient Athenian +of the circle of AEschylus would have half-killed himself with laughter +or irritation: but we--accept precisely this wild motleyness, this +medley of the most delicate, the most coarse, and the most artificial, +with a secret confidence and cordiality; we enjoy it as a refinement +of art reserved expressly for us, and allow ourselves to be as little +disturbed by the repulsive fumes and the proximity of the English +populace in which Shakespeare's art and taste lives, as perhaps on +the Chiaja of Naples, where, with all our senses awake, we go our way, +enchanted and voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the lower +quarters of the town. That as men of the "historical sense" we have +our virtues, is not to be disputed:--we are unpretentious, unselfish, +modest, brave, habituated to self-control and self-renunciation, very +grateful, very patient, very complaisant--but with all this we are +perhaps not very "tasteful." Let us finally confess it, that what is +most difficult for us men of the "historical sense" to grasp, feel, +taste, and love, what finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost +hostile, is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every +culture and art, the essentially noble in works and men, their moment +of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency, the goldenness and coldness +which all things show that have perfected themselves. Perhaps our great +virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast to GOOD taste, +at least to the very bad taste; and we can only evoke in ourselves +imperfectly, hesitatingly, and with compulsion the small, short, and +happy godsends and glorifications of human life as they shine here and +there: those moments and marvelous experiences when a great power has +voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite,--when a +super-abundance of refined delight has been enjoyed by a sudden checking +and petrifying, by standing firmly and planting oneself fixedly on still +trembling ground. PROPORTIONATENESS is strange to us, let us confess it +to ourselves; our itching is really the itching for the infinite, the +immeasurable. Like the rider on his forward panting horse, we let the +reins fall before the infinite, we modern men, we semi-barbarians--and +are only in OUR highest bliss when we--ARE IN MOST DANGER. + +225. Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudaemonism, +all those modes of thinking which measure the worth of things according +to PLEASURE and PAIN, that is, according to accompanying circumstances +and secondary considerations, are plausible modes of thought and +naivetes, which every one conscious of CREATIVE powers and an artist's +conscience will look down upon with scorn, though not without sympathy. +Sympathy for you!--to be sure, that is not sympathy as you understand +it: it is not sympathy for social "distress," for "society" with its +sick and misfortuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective who lie +on the ground around us; still less is it sympathy for the grumbling, +vexed, revolutionary slave-classes who strive after power--they call it +"freedom." OUR sympathy is a loftier and further-sighted sympathy:--we +see how MAN dwarfs himself, how YOU dwarf him! and there are moments +when we view YOUR sympathy with an indescribable anguish, when we resist +it,--when we regard your seriousness as more dangerous than any kind +of levity. You want, if possible--and there is not a more foolish "if +possible"--TO DO AWAY WITH SUFFERING; and we?--it really seems that WE +would rather have it increased and made worse than it has ever been! +Well-being, as you understand it--is certainly not a goal; it seems +to us an END; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and +contemptible--and makes his destruction DESIRABLE! The discipline +of suffering, of GREAT suffering--know ye not that it is only THIS +discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? +The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, +its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery +in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and +whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has +been bestowed upon the soul--has it not been bestowed through suffering, +through the discipline of great suffering? In man CREATURE and CREATOR +are united: in man there is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, +folly, chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor, the hardness +of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day--do +ye understand this contrast? And that YOUR sympathy for the "creature +in man" applies to that which has to be fashioned, bruised, forged, +stretched, roasted, annealed, refined--to that which must necessarily +SUFFER, and IS MEANT to suffer? And our sympathy--do ye not understand +what our REVERSE sympathy applies to, when it resists your sympathy as +the worst of all pampering and enervation?--So it is sympathy AGAINST +sympathy!--But to repeat it once more, there are higher problems than +the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and all systems of +philosophy which deal only with these are naivetes. + +226. WE IMMORALISTS.--This world with which WE are concerned, in which +we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, inaudible world of +delicate command and delicate obedience, a world of "almost" in every +respect, captious, insidious, sharp, and tender--yes, it is well +protected from clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity! We are +woven into a strong net and garment of duties, and CANNOT disengage +ourselves--precisely here, we are "men of duty," even we! Occasionally, +it is true, we dance in our "chains" and betwixt our "swords"; it +is none the less true that more often we gnash our teeth under the +circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot. But +do what we will, fools and appearances say of us: "These are men WITHOUT +duty,"--we have always fools and appearances against us! + +227. Honesty, granting that it is the virtue of which we cannot rid +ourselves, we free spirits--well, we will labour at it with all our +perversity and love, and not tire of "perfecting" ourselves in OUR +virtue, which alone remains: may its glance some day overspread like +a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this aging civilization with its dull +gloomy seriousness! And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day +grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and +would fain have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, like an agreeable +vice, let us remain HARD, we latest Stoics, and let us send to its +help whatever devilry we have in us:--our disgust at the clumsy +and undefined, our "NITIMUR IN VETITUM," our love of adventure, +our sharpened and fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, disguised, +intellectual Will to Power and universal conquest, which rambles and +roves avidiously around all the realms of the future--let us go with all +our "devils" to the help of our "God"! It is probable that people will +misunderstand and mistake us on that account: what does it matter! They +will say: "Their 'honesty'--that is their devilry, and nothing else!" +What does it matter! And even if they were right--have not all Gods +hitherto been such sanctified, re-baptized devils? And after all, what +do we know of ourselves? And what the spirit that leads us wants TO BE +CALLED? (It is a question of names.) And how many spirits we harbour? +Our honesty, we free spirits--let us be careful lest it become our +vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity! +Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid +to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia,--let us be careful lest +out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores! Is not life +a hundred times too short for us--to bore ourselves? One would have to +believe in eternal life in order to... + +228. I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral philosophy +hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the soporific +appliances--and that "virtue," in my opinion, has been MORE injured +by the TEDIOUSNESS of its advocates than by anything else; at the same +time, however, I would not wish to overlook their general usefulness. It +is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals, +and consequently it is very desirable that morals should not some day +become interesting! But let us not be afraid! Things still remain today +as they have always been: I see no one in Europe who has (or DISCLOSES) +an idea of the fact that philosophizing concerning morals might be +conducted in a dangerous, captious, and ensnaring manner--that CALAMITY +might be involved therein. Observe, for example, the indefatigable, +inevitable English utilitarians: how ponderously and respectably they +stalk on, stalk along (a Homeric metaphor expresses it better) in the +footsteps of Bentham, just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of +the respectable Helvetius! (no, he was not a dangerous man, Helvetius, +CE SENATEUR POCOCURANTE, to use an expression of Galiani). No new +thought, nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression +of an old thought, not even a proper history of what has been previously +thought on the subject: an IMPOSSIBLE literature, taking it all in all, +unless one knows how to leaven it with some mischief. In effect, the +old English vice called CANT, which is MORAL TARTUFFISM, has insinuated +itself also into these moralists (whom one must certainly read with an +eye to their motives if one MUST read them), concealed this time under +the new form of the scientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent +from them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience, from which a +race of former Puritans must naturally suffer, in all their scientific +tinkering with morals. (Is not a moralist the opposite of a Puritan? +That is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as questionable, +as worthy of interrogation, in short, as a problem? Is moralizing +not-immoral?) In the end, they all want English morality to be +recognized as authoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or the "general +utility," or "the happiness of the greatest number,"--no! the happiness +of ENGLAND, will be best served thereby. They would like, by all means, +to convince themselves that the striving after English happiness, I +mean after COMFORT and FASHION (and in the highest instance, a seat in +Parliament), is at the same time the true path of virtue; in fact, that +in so far as there has been virtue in the world hitherto, it has +just consisted in such striving. Not one of those ponderous, +conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to advocate the +cause of egoism as conducive to the general welfare) wants to have +any knowledge or inkling of the facts that the "general welfare" is +no ideal, no goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is only a +nostrum,--that what is fair to one MAY NOT at all be fair to another, +that the requirement of one morality for all is really a detriment to +higher men, in short, that there is a DISTINCTION OF RANK between man +and man, and consequently between morality and morality. They are an +unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men, these utilitarian +Englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as they are tedious, one +cannot think highly enough of their utility. One ought even to ENCOURAGE +them, as has been partially attempted in the following rhymes:-- + + Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling, + "Longer--better," aye revealing, + + Stiffer aye in head and knee; + Unenraptured, never jesting, + Mediocre everlasting, + + SANS GENIE ET SANS ESPRIT! + + +229. In these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity, there +still remains so much fear, so much SUPERSTITION of the fear, of the +"cruel wild beast," the mastering of which constitutes the very pride of +these humaner ages--that even obvious truths, as if by the agreement +of centuries, have long remained unuttered, because they have the +appearance of helping the finally slain wild beast back to life again. +I perhaps risk something when I allow such a truth to escape; let +others capture it again and give it so much "milk of pious sentiment" +[FOOTNOTE: An expression from Schiller's William Tell, Act IV, Scene +3.] to drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old +corner.--One ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one's eyes; +one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest +gross errors--as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and +modern philosophers with regard to tragedy--may no longer wander about +virtuously and boldly. Almost everything that we call "higher culture" +is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of CRUELTY--this is +my thesis; the "wild beast" has not been slain at all, it lives, it +flourishes, it has only been--transfigured. That which constitutes the +painful delight of tragedy is cruelty; that which operates agreeably in +so-called tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything sublime, +up to the highest and most delicate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its +sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. What the +Roman enjoys in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross, +the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot and stake, or of the bull-fight, +the present-day Japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, the workman +of the Parisian suburbs who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions, +the Wagnerienne who, with unhinged will, "undergoes" the performance of +"Tristan and Isolde"--what all these enjoy, and strive with mysterious +ardour to drink in, is the philtre of the great Circe "cruelty." Here, +to be sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of +former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that +it originated at the sight of the suffering of OTHERS: there is an +abundant, super-abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in +causing one's own suffering--and wherever man has allowed himself to be +persuaded to self-denial in the RELIGIOUS sense, or to self-mutilation, +as among the Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general, to +desensualisation, decarnalisation, and contrition, to Puritanical +repentance-spasms, to vivisection of conscience and to Pascal-like +SACRIFIZIA DELL' INTELLETO, he is secretly allured and impelled +forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of cruelty TOWARDS +HIMSELF.--Finally, let us consider that even the seeker of knowledge +operates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that he compels his +spirit to perceive AGAINST its own inclination, and often enough against +the wishes of his heart:--he forces it to say Nay, where he would like +to affirm, love, and adore; indeed, every instance of taking a thing +profoundly and fundamentally, is a violation, an intentional injuring +of the fundamental will of the spirit, which instinctively aims at +appearance and superficiality,--even in every desire for knowledge there +is a drop of cruelty. + +230. Perhaps what I have said here about a "fundamental will of the +spirit" may not be understood without further details; I may be allowed +a word of explanation.--That imperious something which is popularly +called "the spirit," wishes to be master internally and externally, +and to feel itself master; it has the will of a multiplicity for a +simplicity, a binding, taming, imperious, and essentially ruling will. +Its requirements and capacities here, are the same as those assigned by +physiologists to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power +of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong +tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, +to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it +arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies for itself +certain traits and lines in the foreign elements, in every portion of +the "outside world." Its object thereby is the incorporation of new +"experiences," the assortment of new things in the old arrangements--in +short, growth; or more properly, the FEELING of growth, the feeling of +increased power--is its object. This same will has at its service an +apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference +of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closing of windows, an inner +denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of defensive +attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, +with the shutting-in horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: +as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its +appropriating power, its "digestive power," to speak figuratively (and +in fact "the spirit" resembles a stomach more than anything else). Here +also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be +deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is NOT so and so, +but is only allowed to pass as such), a delight in uncertainty and +ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness +and mystery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified, +the diminished, the misshapen, the beautified--an enjoyment of the +arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power. Finally, in this +connection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to +deceive other spirits and dissemble before them--the constant pressing +and straining of a creating, shaping, changeable power: the spirit +enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoys +also its feeling of security therein--it is precisely by its Protean +arts that it is best protected and concealed!--COUNTER TO this +propensity for appearance, for simplification, for a disguise, for a +cloak, in short, for an outside--for every outside is a cloak--there +operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and +INSISTS on taking things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a +kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every +courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought +to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye sufficiently long for +introspection, and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe +words. He will say: "There is something cruel in the tendency of my +spirit": let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not +so! In fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps +our "extravagant honesty" were talked about, whispered about, and +glorified--we free, VERY free spirits--and some day perhaps SUCH will +actually be our--posthumous glory! Meanwhile--for there is plenty of +time until then--we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in +such florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work has +just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are +beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, +love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful--there +is something in them that makes one's heart swell with pride. But we +anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all the +secrecy of an anchorite's conscience, that this worthy parade of +verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment, frippery, and +gold-dust of unconscious human vanity, and that even under such +flattering colour and repainting, the terrible original text HOMO NATURA +must again be recognized. In effect, to translate man back again into +nature; to master the many vain and visionary interpretations and +subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and daubed over +the eternal original text, HOMO NATURA; to bring it about that man shall +henceforth stand before man as he now, hardened by the discipline +of science, stands before the OTHER forms of nature, with fearless +Oedipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old +metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long: "Thou +art more! thou art higher! thou hast a different origin!"--this may be +a strange and foolish task, but that it is a TASK, who can deny! Why did +we choose it, this foolish task? Or, to put the question differently: +"Why knowledge at all?" Every one will ask us about this. And thus +pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have +not found and cannot find any better answer.... + +231. Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not +merely "conserve"--as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom of our +souls, quite "down below," there is certainly something unteachable, +a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to +predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks +an unchangeable "I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and +woman, for instance, but can only learn fully--he can only follow to the +end what is "fixed" about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain +solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they +are henceforth called "convictions." Later on--one sees in them only +footsteps to self-knowledge, guide-posts to the problem which we +ourselves ARE--or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody, +our spiritual fate, the UNTEACHABLE in us, quite "down below."--In view +of this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself, permission +will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about +"woman as she is," provided that it is known at the outset how literally +they are merely--MY truths. + +232. Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she begins to +enlighten men about "woman as she is"--THIS is one of the worst +developments of the general UGLIFYING of Europe. For what must these +clumsy attempts of feminine scientificality and self-exposure bring +to light! Woman has so much cause for shame; in woman there is so +much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, +unbridledness, and indiscretion concealed--study only woman's behaviour +towards children!--which has really been best restrained and dominated +hitherto by the FEAR of man. Alas, if ever the "eternally tedious in +woman"--she has plenty of it!--is allowed to venture forth! if she +begins radically and on principle to unlearn her wisdom and art-of +charming, of playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alleviating and +taking easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for agreeable +desires! Female voices are already raised, which, by Saint Aristophanes! +make one afraid:--with medical explicitness it is stated in a +threatening manner what woman first and last REQUIRES from man. Is +it not in the very worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be +scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men's affair, +men's gift--we remained therewith "among ourselves"; and in the end, +in view of all that women write about "woman," we may well have +considerable doubt as to whether woman really DESIRES enlightenment +about herself--and CAN desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new +ORNAMENT for herself--I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally +feminine?--why, then, she wishes to make herself feared: perhaps she +thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want truth--what +does woman care for truth? From the very first, nothing is more foreign, +more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth--her great art is +falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty. Let us confess +it, we men: we honour and love this very art and this very instinct in +woman: we who have the hard task, and for our recreation gladly seek the +company of beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate follies, our +seriousness, our gravity, and profundity appear almost like follies to +us. Finally, I ask the question: Did a woman herself ever acknowledge +profundity in a woman's mind, or justice in a woman's heart? And is it +not true that on the whole "woman" has hitherto been most despised by +woman herself, and not at all by us?--We men desire that woman should +not continue to compromise herself by enlightening us; just as it was +man's care and the consideration for woman, when the church decreed: +mulier taceat in ecclesia. It was to the benefit of woman when Napoleon +gave the too eloquent Madame de Stael to understand: mulier taceat in +politicis!--and in my opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls +out to women today: mulier taceat de mulierel. + +233. It betrays corruption of the instincts--apart from the fact that +it betrays bad taste--when a woman refers to Madame Roland, or Madame de +Stael, or Monsieur George Sand, as though something were proved thereby +in favour of "woman as she is." Among men, these are the three comical +women as they are--nothing more!--and just the best involuntary +counter-arguments against feminine emancipation and autonomy. + +234. Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible +thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the master of +the house is managed! Woman does not understand what food means, and she +insists on being cook! If woman had been a thinking creature, she should +certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most +important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession +of the healing art! Through bad female cooks--through the entire lack +of reason in the kitchen--the development of mankind has been longest +retarded and most interfered with: even today matters are very little +better. A word to High School girls. + +235. There are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences, little +handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society suddenly +crystallises itself. Among these is the incidental remark of Madame de +Lambert to her son: "MON AMI, NE VOUS PERMETTEZ JAMAIS QUE DES FOLIES, +QUI VOUS FERONT GRAND PLAISIR"--the motherliest and wisest remark, by +the way, that was ever addressed to a son. + +236. I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose what Dante and +Goethe believed about woman--the former when he sang, "ELLA GUARDAVA +SUSO, ED IO IN LEI," and the latter when he interpreted it, "the +eternally feminine draws us ALOFT"; for THIS is just what she believes +of the eternally masculine. + +237. + +SEVEN APOPHTHEGMS FOR WOMEN + +How the longest ennui flees, When a man comes to our knees! + +Age, alas! and science staid, Furnish even weak virtue aid. + +Sombre garb and silence meet: Dress for every dame--discreet. + +Whom I thank when in my bliss? God!--and my good tailoress! + +Young, a flower-decked cavern home; Old, a dragon thence doth roam. + +Noble title, leg that's fine, Man as well: Oh, were HE mine! + +Speech in brief and sense in mass--Slippery for the jenny-ass! + +237A. Woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds, which, losing +their way, have come down among them from an elevation: as something +delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating--but as something +also which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away. + +238. To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of "man and woman," to +deny here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity for an eternally +hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal +training, equal claims and obligations: that is a TYPICAL sign of +shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at +this dangerous spot--shallow in instinct!--may generally be regarded as +suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered; he will probably prove +too "short" for all fundamental questions of life, future as well as +present, and will be unable to descend into ANY of the depths. On the +other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and +has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and +harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of woman as +ORIENTALS do: he must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable +property, as a being predestined for service and accomplishing her +mission therein--he must take his stand in this matter upon the immense +rationality of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia, as +the Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and scholars of Asia--who, +as is well known, with their INCREASING culture and amplitude of power, +from Homer to the time of Pericles, became gradually STRICTER towards +woman, in short, more Oriental. HOW necessary, HOW logical, even HOW +humanely desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves! + +239. The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so +much respect by men as at present--this belongs to the tendency and +fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to +old age--what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of +this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute +of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, +indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is +losing modesty. And let us immediately add that she is also losing +taste. She is unlearning to FEAR man: but the woman who "unlearns to +fear" sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should venture +forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man--or more definitely, +the MAN in man--is no longer either desired or fully developed, is +reasonable enough and also intelligible enough; what is more difficult +to understand is that precisely thereby--woman deteriorates. This is +what is happening nowadays: let us not deceive ourselves about it! +Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military +and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal +independence of a clerk: "woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal +of the modern society which is in course of formation. While she +thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes +"progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite realises +itself with terrible obviousness: WOMAN RETROGRADES. Since the French +Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has DECLINED in proportion +as she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of +woman," insofar as it is desired and demanded by women themselves (and +not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable +symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly +instincts. There is STUPIDITY in this movement, an almost masculine +stupidity, of which a well-reared woman--who is always a sensible +woman--might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground +upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to neglect exercise in +the use of her proper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps +even "to the book," where formerly she kept herself in control and in +refined, artful humility; to neutralize with her virtuous audacity man's +faith in a VEILED, fundamentally different ideal in woman, something +eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and loquaciously +dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved, cared for, +protected, and indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and +often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of +everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of +woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still +entails (as though slavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a +condition of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture):--what +does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts, +a defeminising? Certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends and +corrupters of woman among the learned asses of the masculine sex, who +advise woman to defeminize herself in this manner, and to imitate +all the stupidities from which "man" in Europe, European "manliness," +suffers,--who would like to lower woman to "general culture," indeed +even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Here and there +they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers: as +though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious +or ludicrous to a profound and godless man;--almost everywhere her +nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music +(our latest German music), and she is daily being made more hysterical +and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of +bearing robust children. They wish to "cultivate" her in general still +more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" STRONG by +culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that +the "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening--that is to say, the +weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his FORCE OF WILL--have +always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and +influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) +had just to thank their force of will--and not their schoolmasters--for +their power and ascendancy over men. That which inspires respect +in woman, and often enough fear also, is her NATURE, which is more +"natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning +flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her NAIVETE in egoism, +her untrainableness and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness, +extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. That which, in spite +of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat, +"woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more +necessitous of love, and more condemned to disillusionment than any +other creature. Fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has +hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in +tragedy, which rends while it delights--What? And all that is now to +be at an end? And the DISENCHANTMENT of woman is in progress? The +tediousness of woman is slowly evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know +the horned animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which +danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once more +become "history"--an immense stupidity might once again overmaster +thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed beneath it--no! only an +"idea," a "modern idea"! + + + +CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES + + +240. I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner's overture +to the Mastersinger: it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy, +latter-day art, which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music +as still living, in order that it may be understood:--it is an honour +to Germans that such a pride did not miscalculate! What flavours +and forces, what seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It +impresses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter, +and too modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional, it +is not infrequently roguish, still oftener rough and coarse--it has fire +and courage, and at the same time the loose, dun-coloured skin of fruits +which ripen too late. It flows broad and full: and suddenly there is a +moment of inexplicable hesitation, like a gap that opens between cause +and effect, an oppression that makes us dream, almost a nightmare; but +already it broadens and widens anew, the old stream of delight--the most +manifold delight,--of old and new happiness; including ESPECIALLY +the joy of the artist in himself, which he refuses to conceal, his +astonished, happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedients here +employed, the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested expedients of art +which he apparently betrays to us. All in all, however, no beauty, no +South, nothing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky, nothing +of grace, no dance, hardly a will to logic; a certain clumsiness even, +which is also emphasized, as though the artist wished to say to us: "It +is part of my intention"; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily +barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits +and witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of +the word, something in the German style, manifold, formless, and +inexhaustible; a certain German potency and super-plenitude of +soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of +decadence--which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, +genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and +aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity. This kind of music +expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day +before yesterday and the day after tomorrow--THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY. + +241. We "good Europeans," we also have hours when we allow ourselves a +warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow +views--I have just given an example of it--hours of national excitement, +of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of +sentiment. Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines +its operations in us to hours and plays itself out in hours--in a +considerable time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime, +according to the speed and strength with which they digest and "change +their material." Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, +which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century +ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and +soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to +"good Europeanism." And while digressing on this possibility, I +happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old +patriots--they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently +spoke all the louder. "HE has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as +a peasant or a corps-student," said the one--"he is still innocent. But +what does that matter nowadays! It is the age of the masses: they lie on +their belly before everything that is massive. And so also in politicis. +A statesman who rears up for them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity +of empire and power, they call 'great'--what does it matter that we more +prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief +that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or +affair. Supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the position +of being obliged henceforth to practise 'high politics,' for which they +were by nature badly endowed and prepared, so that they would have +to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues, out of love to a new and +doubtful mediocrity;--supposing a statesman were to condemn his people +generally to 'practise politics,' when they have hitherto had something +better to do and think about, and when in the depths of their souls +they have been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of +the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the essentially +politics-practising nations;--supposing such a statesman were to +stimulate the slumbering passions and avidities of his people, were to +make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness, +an offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency, were to +depreciate their most radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, +make their minds narrow, and their tastes 'national'--what! a statesman +who should do all this, which his people would have to do penance for +throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a statesman +would be GREAT, would he?"--"Undoubtedly!" replied the other old patriot +vehemently, "otherwise he COULD NOT have done it! It was mad perhaps to +wish such a thing! But perhaps everything great has been just as mad +at its commencement!"--"Misuse of words!" cried his interlocutor, +contradictorily--"strong! strong! Strong and mad! NOT great!"--The old +men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their "truths" in +each other's faces, but I, in my happiness and apartness, considered how +soon a stronger one may become master of the strong, and also that +there is a compensation for the intellectual superficialising of a +nation--namely, in the deepening of another. + +242. Whether we call it "civilization," or "humanising," or "progress," +which now distinguishes the European, whether we call it simply, without +praise or blame, by the political formula the DEMOCRATIC movement in +Europe--behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by +such formulas, an immense PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS goes on, which is ever +extending the process of the assimilation of Europeans, their +increasing detachment from the conditions under which, climatically and +hereditarily, united races originate, their increasing independence of +every definite milieu, that for centuries would fain inscribe itself +with equal demands on soul and body,--that is to say, the slow emergence +of an essentially SUPER-NATIONAL and nomadic species of man, who +possesses, physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and power +of adaptation as his typical distinction. This process of the EVOLVING +EUROPEAN, which can be retarded in its TEMPO by great relapses, but +will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in vehemence and depth--the +still-raging storm and stress of "national sentiment" pertains to it, +and also the anarchism which is appearing at present--this process +will probably arrive at results on which its naive propagators and +panegyrists, the apostles of "modern ideas," would least care to reckon. +The same new conditions under which on an average a levelling and +mediocrising of man will take place--a useful, industrious, variously +serviceable, and clever gregarious man--are in the highest degree +suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and +attractive qualities. For, while the capacity for adaptation, which is +every day trying changing conditions, and begins a new work with every +generation, almost with every decade, makes the POWERFULNESS of the type +impossible; while the collective impression of such future Europeans +will probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very +handy workmen who REQUIRE a master, a commander, as they require their +daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising of Europe will tend to +the production of a type prepared for SLAVERY in the most subtle +sense of the term: the STRONG man will necessarily in individual and +exceptional cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever +been before--owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to +the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. I meant to say +that the democratising of Europe is at the same time an involuntary +arrangement for the rearing of TYRANTS--taking the word in all its +meanings, even in its most spiritual sense. + +243. I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the +constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this earth will do +like the sun. And we foremost, we good Europeans! + +244. There was a time when it was customary to call Germans "deep" +by way of distinction; but now that the most successful type of new +Germanism is covetous of quite other honours, and perhaps misses +"smartness" in all that has depth, it is almost opportune and patriotic +to doubt whether we did not formerly deceive ourselves with that +commendation: in short, whether German depth is not at bottom something +different and worse--and something from which, thank God, we are on the +point of successfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then, to relearn +with regard to German depth; the only thing necessary for the purpose is +a little vivisection of the German soul.--The German soul is above all +manifold, varied in its source, aggregated and super-imposed, rather +than actually built: this is owing to its origin. A German who would +embolden himself to assert: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast," would +make a bad guess at the truth, or, more correctly, he would come far +short of the truth about the number of souls. As a people made up of +the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a +preponderance of the pre-Aryan element as the "people of the centre" in +every sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample, +more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, +and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:--they +escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the despair of the French. It +IS characteristic of the Germans that the question: "What is German?" +never dies out among them. Kotzebue certainly knew his Germans well +enough: "We are known," they cried jubilantly to him--but Sand also +thought he knew them. Jean Paul knew what he was doing when he declared +himself incensed at Fichte's lying but patriotic flatteries and +exaggerations,--but it is probable that Goethe thought differently about +Germans from Jean Paul, even though he acknowledged him to be right with +regard to Fichte. It is a question what Goethe really thought about the +Germans?--But about many things around him he never spoke explicitly, +and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence--probably he +had good reason for it. It is certain that it was not the "Wars of +Independence" that made him look up more joyfully, any more than it was +the French Revolution,--the event on account of which he RECONSTRUCTED +his "Faust," and indeed the whole problem of "man," was the appearance +of Napoleon. There are words of Goethe in which he condemns with +impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that which Germans take a +pride in, he once defined the famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence +towards its own and others' weaknesses." Was he wrong? it is +characteristic of Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them. +The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, +hiding-places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm +of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths to +chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves the +clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and +shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, +self-displacing, and growing is "deep". The German himself does not +EXIST, he is BECOMING, he is "developing himself". "Development" is +therefore the essentially German discovery and hit in the great domain +of philosophical formulas,--a ruling idea, which, together with German +beer and German music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners +are astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature +at the basis of the German soul propounds to them (riddles which +Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to music). +"Good-natured and spiteful"--such a juxtaposition, preposterous in the +case of every other people, is unfortunately only too often justified +in Germany one has only to live for a while among Swabians to know this! +The clumsiness of the German scholar and his social distastefulness +agree alarmingly well with his physical rope-dancing and nimble +boldness, of which all the Gods have learnt to be afraid. If any one +wishes to see the "German soul" demonstrated ad oculos, let him +only look at German taste, at German arts and manners what boorish +indifference to "taste"! How the noblest and the commonest stand there +in juxtaposition! How disorderly and how rich is the whole constitution +of this soul! The German DRAGS at his soul, he drags at everything he +experiences. He digests his events badly; he never gets "done" +with them; and German depth is often only a difficult, hesitating +"digestion." And just as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics like what +is convenient, so the German loves "frankness" and "honesty"; it is +so CONVENIENT to be frank and honest!--This confidingness, this +complaisance, this showing-the-cards of German HONESTY, is probably the +most dangerous and most successful disguise which the German is up to +nowadays: it is his proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can "still +achieve much"! The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with +faithful, blue, empty German eyes--and other countries immediately +confound him with his dressing-gown!--I meant to say that, let "German +depth" be what it will--among ourselves alone we perhaps take the +liberty to laugh at it--we shall do well to continue henceforth to +honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our +old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian "smartness," and +Berlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to pose, and LET itself +be regarded, as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and foolish: it +might even be--profound to do so! Finally, we should do honour to +our name--we are not called the "TIUSCHE VOLK" (deceptive people) for +nothing.... + +245. The "good old" time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart--how +happy are WE that his ROCOCO still speaks to us, that his "good +company," his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight in the Chinese and +its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for the elegant, the +amorous, the tripping, the tearful, and his belief in the South, can +still appeal to SOMETHING LEFT in us! Ah, some time or other it will be +over with it!--but who can doubt that it will be over still sooner with +the intelligence and taste for Beethoven! For he was only the last echo +of a break and transition in style, and NOT, like Mozart, the last echo +of a great European taste which had existed for centuries. Beethoven +is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that is constantly +breaking down, and a future over-young soul that is always COMING; +there is spread over his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal +extravagant hope,--the same light in which Europe was bathed when it +dreamed with Rousseau, when it danced round the Tree of Liberty of the +Revolution, and finally almost fell down in adoration before Napoleon. +But how rapidly does THIS very sentiment now pale, how difficult +nowadays is even the APPREHENSION of this sentiment, how strangely does +the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and Byron sound to our ear, +in whom COLLECTIVELY the same fate of Europe was able to SPEAK, which +knew how to SING in Beethoven!--Whatever German music came afterwards, +belongs to Romanticism, that is to say, to a movement which, +historically considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and more +superficial than that great interlude, the transition of Europe from +Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the rise of democracy. Weber--but what do +WE care nowadays for "Freischutz" and "Oberon"! Or Marschner's "Hans +Heiling" and "Vampyre"! Or even Wagner's "Tannhauser"! That is extinct, +although not yet forgotten music. This whole music of Romanticism, +besides, was not noble enough, was not musical enough, to maintain its +position anywhere but in the theatre and before the masses; from the +beginning it was second-rate music, which was little thought of by +genuine musicians. It was different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon +master, who, on account of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly +acquired admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful +EPISODE of German music. But with regard to Robert Schumann, who took +things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the first--he +was the last that founded a school,--do we not now regard it as a +satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this very Romanticism +of Schumann's has been surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the "Saxon +Switzerland" of his soul, with a half Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like +nature (assuredly not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron!)--his +MANFRED music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of +injustice; Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a PETTY +taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity--doubly dangerous among +Germans--for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going +constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who +revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning +a sort of girl and NOLI ME TANGERE--this Schumann was already merely a +GERMAN event in music, and no longer a European event, as Beethoven had +been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been; with Schumann German +music was threatened with its greatest danger, that of LOSING THE VOICE +FOR THE SOUL OF EUROPE and sinking into a merely national affair. + +246. What a torture are books written in German to a reader who has a +THIRD ear! How indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp +of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance, which Germans call +a "book"! And even the German who READS books! How lazily, how +reluctantly, how badly he reads! How many Germans know, and consider it +obligatory to know, that there is ART in every good sentence--art which +must be divined, if the sentence is to be understood! If there is a +misunderstanding about its TEMPO, for instance, the sentence itself +is misunderstood! That one must not be doubtful about the +rhythm-determining syllables, that one should feel the breaking of the +too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm, that one should lend a +fine and patient ear to every STACCATO and every RUBATO, that one should +divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs, and how +delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of +their arrangement--who among book-reading Germans is complaisant enough +to recognize such duties and requirements, and to listen to so much art +and intention in language? After all, one just "has no ear for it"; +and so the most marked contrasts of style are not heard, and the most +delicate artistry is as it were SQUANDERED on the deaf.--These were my +thoughts when I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in +the art of prose-writing have been confounded: one, whose words drop +down hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp cave--he counts +on their dull sound and echo; and another who manipulates his language +like a flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes feels the +dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-sharp blade, which wishes to +bite, hiss, and cut. + +247. How little the German style has to do with harmony and with the +ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians themselves +write badly. The German does not read aloud, he does not read for the +ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for +the time. In antiquity when a man read--which was seldom enough--he read +something to himself, and in a loud voice; they were surprised when +any one read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a +loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and +variations of key and changes of TEMPO, in which the ancient PUBLIC +world took delight. The laws of the written style were then the same +as those of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on the +surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx; +partly on the strength, endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In +the ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch +as it is comprised in one breath. Such periods as occur in Demosthenes +and Cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath, +were pleasures to the men of ANTIQUITY, who knew by their own schooling +how to appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty +in the deliverance of such a period;--WE have really no right to the +BIG period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! Those +ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequently +connoisseurs, consequently critics--they thus brought their orators to +the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the last century, when all +Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song +(and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany, +however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began +shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings), there was +properly speaking only one kind of public and APPROXIMATELY artistical +discourse--that delivered from the pulpit. The preacher was the only one +in Germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a +sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone +had a conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons +are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be especially seldom +attained by a German, or almost always too late. The masterpiece of +German prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its +greatest preacher: the BIBLE has hitherto been the best German +book. Compared with Luther's Bible, almost everything else is merely +"literature"--something which has not grown in Germany, and therefore +has not taken and does not take root in German hearts, as the Bible has +done. + +248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and +seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified +and brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are +those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the +secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the Greeks, for +instance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the French; and others +which have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life--like +the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the +Germans?--nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and +irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for +foreign races (for such as "let themselves be fructified"), and withal +imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force, +and consequently empowered "by the grace of God." These two kinds of +geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand +each other--like man and woman. + +249. Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," and calls that its +virtue.--One does not know--cannot know, the best that is in one. + +250. What Europe owes to the Jews?--Many things, good and bad, and above +all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand +style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of +infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral +questionableness--and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, +and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, +in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening +sky, now glows--perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among the +spectators and philosophers, are--grateful to the Jews. + +251. It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and +disturbances--in short, slight attacks of stupidity--pass over the +spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national +nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day +Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic +folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the +Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at +those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely +bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the +German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that +I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not +remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began +to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me--the first +symptom of political infection. About the Jews, for instance, listen +to the following:--I have never yet met a German who was favourably +inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual +anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this +prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the +sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially +against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of +sentiment;--on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany +has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood, +has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this +quantity of "Jew"--as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman +have done by means of a stronger digestion:--that is the unmistakable +declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen +and according to which one must act. "Let no more Jews come in! And shut +the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!"--thus +commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and +uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by +a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, +toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how +to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under +favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like +nowadays to label as vices--owing above all to a resolute faith which +does not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas", they alter only, +WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes +its conquest--as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of +yesterday--namely, according to the principle, "as slowly as possible"! +A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his +perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he +will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest +factors in the great play and battle of forces. That which is at present +called a "nation" in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA +(indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in +every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet +a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such +"nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and +hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired--or if they +were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish--COULD now have the +ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT +working and planning for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they +rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and +absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and +respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the +"wandering Jew",--and one should certainly take account of this impulse +and tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation +of the Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful +and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country. One +should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much +as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the more powerful +and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation +with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman +officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways +to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some +intellect and intellectuality--sadly lacking in the place referred to) +could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of +commanding and obeying--for both of which the country in question has +now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break off my festal +discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have already reached my +SERIOUS TOPIC, the "European problem," as I understand it, the rearing +of a new ruling caste for Europe. + +252. They are not a philosophical race--the English: Bacon represents an +ATTACK on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, +an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a "philosopher" for more +than a century. It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself; +it was Locke of whom Schelling RIGHTLY said, "JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in the +struggle against the English mechanical stultification of the world, +Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one accord; the +two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who pushed in different +directions towards the opposite poles of German thought, and thereby +wronged each other as only brothers will do.--What is lacking in +England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician +knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head, Carlyle, who sought to conceal +under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was +LACKING in Carlyle--real POWER of intellect, real DEPTH of intellectual +perception, in short, philosophy. It is characteristic of such an +unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to Christianity--they NEED its +discipline for "moralizing" and humanizing. The Englishman, more gloomy, +sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German--is for that very +reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the +MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity +itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic +excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote--the +finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is +in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards +spiritualization. The English coarseness and rustic demureness is still +most satisfactorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by praying +and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and +differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who +formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism (and +more recently as the "Salvation Army"), a penitential fit may really be +the relatively highest manifestation of "humanity" to which they can +be elevated: so much may reasonably be admitted. That, however, which +offends even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of music, to speak +figuratively (and also literally): he has neither rhythm nor dance in +the movements of his soul and body; indeed, not even the desire for +rhythm and dance, for "music." Listen to him speaking; look at the most +beautiful Englishwoman WALKING--in no country on earth are there more +beautiful doves and swans; finally, listen to them singing! But I ask +too much... + +253. There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds, +because they are best adapted for them, there are truths which only +possess charms and seductive power for mediocre spirits:--one is pushed +to this probably unpleasant conclusion, now that the influence of +respectable but mediocre Englishmen--I may mention Darwin, John +Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer--begins to gain the ascendancy in the +middle-class region of European taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it +is a useful thing for SUCH minds to have the ascendancy for a time? It +would be an error to consider the highly developed and independently +soaring minds as specially qualified for determining and collecting many +little common facts, and deducing conclusions from them; as exceptions, +they are rather from the first in no very favourable position towards +those who are "the rules." After all, they have more to do than merely +to perceive:--in effect, they have to BE something new, they have to +SIGNIFY something new, they have to REPRESENT new values! The gulf +between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also more +mysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grand style, the +creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant person;--while on the +other hand, for scientific discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain +narrowness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short, something +English) may not be unfavourable for arriving at them.--Finally, let +it not be forgotten that the English, with their profound mediocrity, +brought about once before a general depression of European intelligence. + +What is called "modern ideas," or "the ideas of the eighteenth century," +or "French ideas"--that, consequently, against which the GERMAN mind +rose up with profound disgust--is of English origin, there is no doubt +about it. The French were only the apes and actors of these ideas, their +best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first and profoundest VICTIMS; +for owing to the diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the AME +FRANCAIS has in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present +one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profound, +passionate strength, its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief. +One must, however, maintain this verdict of historical justice in +a determined manner, and defend it against present prejudices and +appearances: the European NOBLESSE--of sentiment, taste, and manners, +taking the word in every high sense--is the work and invention of +FRANCE; the European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas--is +ENGLAND'S work and invention. + +254. Even at present France is still the seat of the most intellectual +and refined culture of Europe, it is still the high school of taste; but +one must know how to find this "France of taste." He who belongs to it +keeps himself well concealed:--they may be a small number in whom it +lives and is embodied, besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon +the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in +part persons over-indulged, over-refined, such as have the AMBITION to +conceal themselves. + +They have all something in common: they keep their ears closed in +presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic +BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls +in the foreground--it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste, +and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo. +There is also something else common to them: a predilection to resist +intellectual Germanizing--and a still greater inability to do so! +In this France of intellect, which is also a France of pessimism, +Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and more indigenous than +he has ever been in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who has +long ago been re-incarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyrists +of Paris; or of Hegel, who at present, in the form of Taine--the FIRST +of living historians--exercises an almost tyrannical influence. As +regards Richard Wagner, however, the more French music learns to +adapt itself to the actual needs of the AME MODERNE, the more will it +"Wagnerite"; one can safely predict that beforehand,--it is already +taking place sufficiently! There are, however, three things which the +French can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession, +and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority +in Europe, in spite of all voluntary or involuntary Germanizing and +vulgarizing of taste. FIRSTLY, the capacity for artistic emotion, for +devotion to "form," for which the expression, L'ART POUR L'ART, along +with numerous others, has been invented:--such capacity has not been +lacking in France for three centuries; and owing to its reverence for +the "small number," it has again and again made a sort of chamber +music of literature possible, which is sought for in vain elsewhere +in Europe.--The SECOND thing whereby the French can lay claim to +a superiority over Europe is their ancient, many-sided, MORALISTIC +culture, owing to which one finds on an average, even in the petty +ROMANCIERS of the newspapers and chance BOULEVARDIERS DE PARIS, a +psychological sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one +has no conception (to say nothing of the thing itself!) in Germany. +The Germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite +thereto, which, as we have said, France has not grudged: those who call +the Germans "naive" on that account give them commendation for a defect. +(As the opposite of the German inexperience and innocence IN VOLUPTATE +PSYCHOLOGICA, which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness +of German intercourse,--and as the most successful expression of +genuine French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate +thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and +forerunning man, who, with a Napoleonic TEMPO, traversed HIS Europe, +in fact, several centuries of the European soul, as a surveyor and +discoverer thereof:--it has required two generations to OVERTAKE him +one way or other, to divine long afterwards some of the riddles +that perplexed and enraptured him--this strange Epicurean and man of +interrogation, the last great psychologist of France).--There is yet +a THIRD claim to superiority: in the French character there is a +successful half-way synthesis of the North and South, which makes them +comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them other things, which an +Englishman can never comprehend. Their temperament, turned alternately +to and from the South, in which from time to time the Provencal and +Ligurian blood froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern +grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty of +blood--our GERMAN infirmity of taste, for the excessive prevalence +of which at the present moment, blood and iron, that is to say "high +politics," has with great resolution been prescribed (according to +a dangerous healing art, which bids me wait and wait, but not yet +hope).--There is also still in France a pre-understanding and +ready welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men, who are too +comprehensive to find satisfaction in any kind of fatherlandism, and +know how to love the South when in the North and the North when in the +South--the born Midlanders, the "good Europeans." For them BIZET +has made music, this latest genius, who has seen a new beauty and +seduction,--who has discovered a piece of the SOUTH IN MUSIC. + +255. I hold that many precautions should be taken against German music. +Suppose a person loves the South as I love it--as a great school +of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills, as a +boundless solar profusion and effulgence which o'erspreads a sovereign +existence believing in itself--well, such a person will learn to be +somewhat on his guard against German music, because, in injuring his +taste anew, it will also injure his health anew. Such a Southerner, a +Southerner not by origin but by BELIEF, if he should dream of the future +of music, must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the +North; and must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier, and +perhaps more perverse and mysterious music, a super-German music, which +does not fade, pale, and die away, as all German music does, at the +sight of the blue, wanton sea and the Mediterranean clearness of sky--a +super-European music, which holds its own even in presence of the brown +sunsets of the desert, whose soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can be +at home and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey... I +could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew +nothing more of good and evil; only that here and there perhaps some +sailor's home-sickness, some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might +sweep lightly over it; an art which, from the far distance, would see +the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensible MORAL world fleeing +towards it, and would be hospitable enough and profound enough to +receive such belated fugitives. + +256. Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has +induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing also to the +short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this +craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the +disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude +policy--owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable +at present, the most unmistakable signs that EUROPE WISHES TO BE ONE, +are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all +the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general +tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prepare the way +for that new SYNTHESIS, and tentatively to anticipate the European of +the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in +old age perhaps, did they belong to the "fatherlands"--they only rested +from themselves when they became "patriots." I think of such men as +Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it +must not be taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among them, about +whom one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings +(geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand themselves), +still less, of course, by the unseemly noise with which he is now +resisted and opposed in France: the fact remains, nevertheless, that +Richard Wagner and the LATER FRENCH ROMANTICISM of the forties, are +most closely and intimately related to one another. They are akin, +fundamentally akin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements; +it is Europe, the ONE Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly, +outwards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art--whither? +into a new light? towards a new sun? But who would attempt to express +accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not +express distinctly? It is certain that the same storm and stress +tormented them, that they SOUGHT in the same manner, these last great +seekers! All of them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears--the +first artists of universal literary culture--for the most part even +themselves writers, poets, intermediaries and blenders of the arts and +the senses (Wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters, as poet +among musicians, as artist generally among actors); all of them fanatics +for EXPRESSION "at any cost"--I specially mention Delacroix, the nearest +related to Wagner; all of them great discoverers in the realm of the +sublime, also of the loathsome and dreadful, still greater discoverers +in effect, in display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them talented +far beyond their genius, out and out VIRTUOSI, with mysterious accesses +to all that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of +logic and of the straight line, hankering after the strange, the +exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory; as men, +Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be +incapable of a noble TEMPO or of a LENTO in life and action--think +of Balzac, for instance,--unrestrained workers, almost destroying +themselves by work; antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and +insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finally +shattering and sinking down at the Christian cross (and with right +and reason, for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and +sufficiently original for an ANTI-CHRISTIAN philosophy?);--on the +whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and +aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their +century--and it is the century of the MASSES--the conception "higher +man."... Let the German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to +whether there is anything purely German in the Wagnerian art, or whether +its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from SUPER-GERMAN +sources and impulses: in which connection it may not be underrated +how indispensable Paris was to the development of his type, which the +strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most +decisive time--and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his +self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sight of the French +socialistic original. On a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be +found, to the honour of Richard Wagner's German nature, that he has +acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation +than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could have done--owing to the +circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the +French;--perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is +not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and +inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried, +that VERY FREE man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too +cheerful, too healthy, too ANTI-CATHOLIC for the taste of old and mellow +civilized nations. He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this +anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old +sad days, when--anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into +politics--he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to +preach, at least, THE WAY TO ROME, if not to walk therein.--That +these last words may not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few +powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I +mean--what I mean COUNTER TO the "last Wagner" and his Parsifal music:-- + +--Is this our mode?--From German heart came this vexed ululating? From +German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation, +This incense-fuming exaltation? Is ours this faltering, falling, +shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling? This sly +nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured +heaven-o'erspringing?--Is this our mode?--Think well!--ye still wait for +admission--For what ye hear is ROME--ROME'S FAITH BY INTUITION! + + + +CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE? + + +257. EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an +aristocratic society and so it will always be--a society believing in +a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human +beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the PATHOS +OF DISTANCE, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes, +out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on +subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant +practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a +distance--that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the +longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, +the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more +comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type "man," +the continued "self-surmounting of man," to use a moral formula in +a supermoral sense. To be sure, one must not resign oneself to +any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an +aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for +the elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge +unprejudicedly how every higher civilization hitherto has ORIGINATED! +Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of +the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will +and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more +peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon +old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering +out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. At the commencement, +the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did +not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical +power--they were more COMPLETE men (which at every point also implies +the same as "more complete beasts"). + +258. Corruption--as the indication that anarchy threatens to break out +among the instincts, and that the foundation of the emotions, called +"life," is convulsed--is something radically different according to +the organization in which it manifests itself. When, for instance, an +aristocracy like that of France at the beginning of the Revolution, +flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself +to an excess of its moral sentiments, it was corruption:--it was really +only the closing act of the corruption which had existed for centuries, +by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its +lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a FUNCTION of royalty (in +the end even to its decoration and parade-dress). The essential thing, +however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard +itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but +as the SIGNIFICANCE and highest justification thereof--that it should +therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion +of individuals, who, FOR ITS SAKE, must be suppressed and reduced to +imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must +be precisely that society is NOT allowed to exist for its own sake, but +only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class +of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and +in general to a higher EXISTENCE: like those sun-seeking climbing plants +in Java--they are called Sipo Matador,--which encircle an oak so +long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but +supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and +exhibit their happiness. + +259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, +and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a +certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary +conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals +in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one +organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle +more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF +SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will +to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one +must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental +weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest +of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of +peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, +exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words +on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the +organization within which, as was previously supposed, the +individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every +healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying +organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals +within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the +incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, +attract to itself and acquire ascendancy--not owing to any morality or +immorality, but because it LIVES, and because life IS precisely Will to +Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans +more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave +everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of +society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent--that sounds +to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should +refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a +depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of +the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence +of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to +Life--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is +the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of all history let us be so far honest towards +ourselves! + +260. In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have +hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits +recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until +finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical +distinction was brought to light. There is MASTER-MORALITY and +SLAVE-MORALITY,--I would at once add, however, that in all higher and +mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of +the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and +mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close +juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions +of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly +conscious of being different from the ruled--or among the ruled class, +the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the first case, when it is +the rulers who determine the conception "good," it is the exalted, proud +disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that +which determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates +from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud +disposition displays itself he despises them. Let it at once be noted +that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad" +means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable",--the antithesis +"good" and "EVIL" is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the +insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; +moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the +self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, +the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:--it is a fundamental +belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. "We +truthful ones"--the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves. It is +obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first +applied to MEN; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied +to ACTIONS; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals +start with questions like, "Why have sympathetic actions been praised?" +The noble type of man regards HIMSELF as a determiner of values; he +does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is +injurious to me is injurious in itself;" he knows that it is he himself +only who confers honour on things; he is a CREATOR OF VALUES. He +honours whatever he recognizes in himself: such morality equals +self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, +of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the +consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:--the noble +man also helps the unfortunate, but not--or scarcely--out of pity, but +rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The +noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power +over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who +takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has +reverence for all that is severe and hard. "Wotan placed a hard heart in +my breast," says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed +from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not +being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly: +"He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one." The noble +and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality +which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, +or in DESINTERESSEMENT, the characteristic of the moral; faith +in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards +"selflessness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless +scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart."--It +is the powerful who KNOW how to honour, it is their art, their domain +for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition--all law +rests on this double reverence,--the belief and prejudice in favour of +ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of +the powerful; and if, reversely, men of "modern ideas" believe almost +instinctively in "progress" and the "future," and are more and more +lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas" has +complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of the ruling class, +however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste +in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's +equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all +that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or "as the heart desires," +and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and +similar sentiments can have a place. The ability and obligation to +exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge--both only within the +circle of equals,--artfulness in retaliation, RAFFINEMENT of the idea +in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the +emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact, in order to be +a good FRIEND): all these are typical characteristics of the noble +morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modern +ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and also to +unearth and disclose.--It is otherwise with the second type of morality, +SLAVE-MORALITY. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, +the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should +moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? +Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of +man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with +his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the +powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a REFINEMENT of distrust of +everything "good" that is there honoured--he would fain persuade himself +that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand, THOSE +qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are +brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that +sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, +humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most +useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of +existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility. +Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and +"evil":--power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, +a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of +being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man +arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good" +man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is +regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when, +in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade +of depreciation--it may be slight and well-intentioned--at last attaches +itself to the "good" man of this morality; because, according to the +servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the SAFE +man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un +bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendancy, language +shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words "good" +and "stupid."--A last fundamental difference: the desire for FREEDOM, +the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty +belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice and +enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an +aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.--Hence we can understand +without further detail why love AS A PASSION--it is our European +specialty--must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its +invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, +ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and +almost owes itself. + +261. Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps most difficult for +a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny it, where another +kind of man thinks he sees it self-evidently. The problem for him is +to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of +themselves which they themselves do not possess--and consequently also +do not "deserve,"--and who yet BELIEVE in this good opinion +afterwards. This seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so +self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable, +that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful +about it in most cases when it is spoken of. He will say, for +instance: "I may be mistaken about my value, and on the other hand +may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others +precisely as I rate it:--that, however, is not vanity (but self-conceit, +or, in most cases, that which is called 'humility,' and also +'modesty')." Or he will even say: "For many reasons I can delight in +the good opinion of others, perhaps because I love and honour them, +and rejoice in all their joys, perhaps also because their good opinion +endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion, perhaps +because the good opinion of others, even in cases where I do not share +it, is useful to me, or gives promise of usefulness:--all this, however, +is not vanity." The man of noble character must first bring it home +forcibly to his mind, especially with the aid of history, that, from +time immemorial, in all social strata in any way dependent, the ordinary +man WAS only that which he PASSED FOR:--not being at all accustomed to +fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value than that +which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar RIGHT OF MASTERS to +create values). It may be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary +atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always WAITING +for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself +to it; yet by no means only to a "good" opinion, but also to a bad +and unjust one (think, for instance, of the greater part of the +self-appreciations and self-depreciations which believing women learn +from their confessors, and which in general the believing Christian +learns from his Church). In fact, conformably to the slow rise of the +democratic social order (and its cause, the blending of the blood +of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of +the masters to assign a value to themselves and to "think well" of +themselves, will now be more and more encouraged and extended; but +it has at all times an older, ampler, and more radically ingrained +propensity opposed to it--and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this older +propensity overmasters the younger. The vain person rejoices over EVERY +good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the point +of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or +falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: for he subjects +himself to both, he feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest +instinct of subjection which breaks forth in him.--It is "the slave" +in the vain man's blood, the remains of the slave's craftiness--and how +much of the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance!--which +seeks to SEDUCE to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, who +immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as +though he had not called them forth.--And to repeat it again: vanity is +an atavism. + +262. A SPECIES originates, and a type becomes established and strong in +the long struggle with essentially constant UNFAVOURABLE conditions. On +the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species +which receive super-abundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of +protection and care, immediately tend in the most marked way to develop +variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in +monstrous vices). Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say +an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary or involuntary +contrivance for the purpose of REARING human beings; there are there men +beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make +their species prevail, chiefly because they MUST prevail, or else +run the terrible danger of being exterminated. The favour, the +super-abundance, the protection are there lacking under which variations +are fostered; the species needs itself as species, as something which, +precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of +structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in +constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or +rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experience teaches it +what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that +it still exists, in spite of all Gods and men, and has hitherto been +victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone +it develops to maturity. It does so with severity, indeed it desires +severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education +of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the +relations of old and young, in the penal laws (which have an eye only +for the degenerating): it counts intolerance itself among the virtues, +under the name of "justice." A type with few, but very marked features, +a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved, and reticent +men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and +nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes +of generations; the constant struggle with uniform UNFAVOURABLE +conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming +stable and hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results, the +enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more enemies among the +neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment +of life, are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and +constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as +necessary, as a condition of existence--if it would continue, it can +only do so as a form of LUXURY, as an archaizing TASTE. Variations, +whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or +deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the +greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual +and detach himself. At this turning-point of history there manifest +themselves, side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a +magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a +kind of TROPICAL TEMPO in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary +decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly +exploding egoisms, which strive with one another "for sun and light," +and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for +themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality. It was this +morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent +the bow in so threatening a manner:--it is now "out of date," it is +getting "out of date." The dangerous and disquieting point has been +reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life IS +LIVED BEYOND the old morality; the "individual" stands out, and is +obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and +artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-deliverance. +Nothing but new "Whys," nothing but new "Hows," no common formulas any +longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay, +deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the +genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, +a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms +and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied +corruption. Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great +danger; this time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and +friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, +into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and +volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have +to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the +end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and +produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow, +except one species of man, the incurably MEDIOCRE. The mediocre alone +have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves--they will +be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become +mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a significance, +which still obtains a hearing.--But it is difficult to preach this +morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it +desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly +love--it will have difficulty IN CONCEALING ITS IRONY! + +263. There is an INSTINCT FOR RANK, which more than anything else is +already the sign of a HIGH rank; there is a DELIGHT in the NUANCES +of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and habits. The +refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test +when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not +yet protected by the awe of authority from obtrusive touches and +incivilities: something that goes its way like a living touchstone, +undistinguished, undiscovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled +and disguised. He whose task and practice it is to investigate souls, +will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the +ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which +it belongs: he will test it by its INSTINCT FOR REVERENCE. DIFFERENCE +ENGENDRE HAINE: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like +dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed shrines, any +book bearing the marks of great destiny, is brought before it; while +on the other hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of the +eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is indicated that a soul +FEELS the nearness of what is worthiest of respect. The way in which, on +the whole, the reverence for the BIBLE has hitherto been maintained +in Europe, is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of +manners which Europe owes to Christianity: books of such profoundness +and supreme significance require for their protection an external +tyranny of authority, in order to acquire the PERIOD of thousands of +years which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them. Much has been +achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses +(the shallow-pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are not +allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences before +which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand--it +is almost their highest advance towards humanity. On the contrary, in +the so-called cultured classes, the believers in "modern ideas," nothing +is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of +eye and hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it +is possible that even yet there is more RELATIVE nobility of taste, and +more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of +the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading +DEMIMONDE of intellect, the cultured class. + +264. It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have +preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent +economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like +in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were +accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures +and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether, +finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of +birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith--for their +"God,"--as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes +at every compromise. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have +the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his +constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is +the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents, +it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind +of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy +self-vaunting--the three things which together have constituted the +genuine plebeian type in all times--such must pass over to the child, as +surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture +one will only succeed in DECEIVING with regard to such heredity.--And +what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very +democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" MUST +be essentially the art of deceiving--deceiving with regard to origin, +with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator +who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out +constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you +are!"--even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time +to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what +results? "Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET. [FOOTNOTE: Horace's "Epistles," +I. x. 24.] + +265. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit that egoism +belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief +that to a being such as "we," other beings must naturally be in +subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the +fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of +harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something +that may have its basis in the primary law of things:--if he sought a +designation for it he would say: "It is justice itself." He acknowledges +under certain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that +there are other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this +question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged +ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect, +which he enjoys in intercourse with himself--in accordance with an +innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand. It is an +ADDITIONAL instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-limitation +in intercourse with his equals--every star is a similar egoist; he +honours HIMSELF in them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he +has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the ESSENCE of +all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things. The +noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive +instinct of requital, which is at the root of his nature. The notion of +"favour" has, INTER PARES, neither significance nor good repute; there +may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from +above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those +arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him +here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly--he looks either FORWARD, +horizontally and deliberately, or downwards--HE KNOWS THAT HE IS ON A +HEIGHT. + +266. "One can only truly esteem him who does not LOOK OUT FOR +himself."--Goethe to Rath Schlosser. + +267. The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: +"SIAO-SIN" ("MAKE THY HEART SMALL"). This is the essentially fundamental +tendency in latter-day civilizations. I have no doubt that an ancient +Greek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans +of today--in this respect alone we should immediately be "distasteful" +to him. + +268. What, after all, is ignobleness?--Words are vocal symbols for +ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols +for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of +sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to +understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same +kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences IN +COMMON. On this account the people of one nation understand one another +better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use +the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under +similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there +ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that "understands itself"--namely, a +nation. In all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences +have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about +these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more +rapidly--the history of language is the history of a process of +abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension people always +unite closer and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the +need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary; not to +misunderstand one another in danger--that is what cannot at all be +dispensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friendships one has +the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery +has been made that in using the same words, one of the two parties has +feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears different from those of +the other. (The fear of the "eternal misunderstanding": that is the good +genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from too +hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them--and NOT some +Schopenhauerian "genius of the species"!) Whichever groups of sensations +within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of +command--these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and +determine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man's estimates of +value betray something of the STRUCTURE of his soul, and wherein it +sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing now that +necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could +express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols, +it results on the whole that the easy COMMUNICABILITY of need, +which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and COMMON +experiences, must have been the most potent of all the forces which +have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary +people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more +select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are +liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and +seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces, +in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE, +the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the +gregarious--to the IGNOBLE--! + +269. The more a psychologist--a born, an unavoidable psychologist +and soul-diviner--turns his attention to the more select cases and +individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: +he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For +the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually +constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a +rule always before one's eyes. The manifold torment of the psychologist +who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then +discovers ALMOST repeatedly throughout all history, this universal +inner "desperateness" of higher men, this eternal "too late!" in every +sense--may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with +bitterness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at +self-destruction--of his "going to ruin" himself. One may perceive +in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delightful +intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men; the fact is thereby +disclosed that he always requires healing, that he needs a sort +of flight and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and +incisiveness--from what his "business"--has laid upon his conscience. +The fear of his memory is peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the +judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour, +admire, love, and glorify, where he has PERCEIVED--or he even conceals +his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. Perhaps +the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely +where he has learnt GREAT SYMPATHY, together with great CONTEMPT, the +multitude, the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learnt +great reverence--reverence for "great men" and marvelous animals, for +the sake of whom one blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the +dignity of mankind, and one's own self, to whom one points the young, +and in view of whom one educates them. And who knows but in all great +instances hitherto just the same happened: that the multitude worshipped +a God, and that the "God" was only a poor sacrificial animal! SUCCESS +has always been the greatest liar--and the "work" itself is a success; +the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in +their creations until they are unrecognizable; the "work" of the artist, +of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is REPUTED +to have created it; the "great men," as they are reverenced, are poor +little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values +spurious coinage PREVAILS. Those great poets, for example, such as +Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention +much greater names, but I have them in my mind), as they now appear, and +were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, +and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust; +with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking +revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking +forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in +the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the +Will-o'-the-Wisps around the swamps, and PRETEND TO BE stars--the people +then call them idealists,--often struggling with protracted disgust, +with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold, +and obliges them to languish for GLORIA and devour "faith as it is" +out of the hands of intoxicated adulators:--what a TORMENT these great +artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once +found them out! It is thus conceivable that it is just from woman--who +is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunately eager +to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers--that THEY have +learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted SYMPATHY, which +the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand, +and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This +sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would +like to believe that love can do EVERYTHING--it is the SUPERSTITION +peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, +helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love +is--he finds that it rather DESTROYS than saves!--It is possible that +under the holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden +one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LOVE: +the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that +never had enough of any human love, that DEMANDED love, that demanded +inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible +outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor +soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send +thither those who WOULD NOT love him--and that at last, enlightened +about human love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire +CAPACITY for love--who takes pity on human love, because it is so +paltry, so ignorant! He who has such sentiments, he who has such +KNOWLEDGE about love--SEEKS for death!--But why should one deal with +such painful matters? Provided, of course, that one is not obliged to do +so. + +270. The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has +suffered deeply--it almost determines the order of rank HOW deeply men +can suffer--the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued +and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he KNOWS MORE than the +shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, +and "at home" in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which "YOU know +nothing"!--this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this +pride of the elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost +sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from +contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all +that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble: +it separates.--One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, +along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes +suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that +is sorrowful and profound. They are "gay men" who make use of gaiety, +because they are misunderstood on account of it--they WISH to be +misunderstood. There are "scientific minds" who make use of science, +because it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to +the conclusion that a person is superficial--they WISH to mislead to a +false conclusion. There are free insolent minds which would fain conceal +and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of +Hamlet--the case of Galiani); and occasionally folly itself is the mask +of an unfortunate OVER-ASSURED knowledge.--From which it follows that it +is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask," +and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place. + +271. That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense +and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and +reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual +good-will: the fact still remains--they "cannot smell each other!" The +highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the +most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just +holiness--the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any +kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, +any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out +of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into +clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:--just as much as such a +tendency DISTINGUISHES--it is a noble tendency--it also SEPARATES.--The +pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human. +And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as +impurity, as filth. + +272. Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the +rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share +our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of +them, among our DUTIES. + +273. A man who strives after great things, looks upon every one whom +he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and +hindrance--or as a temporary resting-place. His peculiar lofty BOUNTY +to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his elevation and +dominates. Impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemned +to comedy up to that time--for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the +end, as every means does--spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of +man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous in it. + +274. THE PROBLEM OF THOSE WHO WAIT.--Happy chances are necessary, and +many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the +solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or "break forth," +as one might say--at the right moment. On an average it DOES NOT happen; +and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who +hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they +wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late--the +chance which gives "permission" to take action--when their best youth, +and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many +a one, just as he "sprang up," has found with horror that his limbs are +benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! "It is too late," he has +said to himself--and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever +useless.--In the domain of genius, may not the "Raphael without +hands" (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the +exception, but the rule?--Perhaps genius is by no means so rare: but +rather the five hundred HANDS which it requires in order to tyrannize +over the [GREEK INSERTED HERE], "the right time"--in order to take +chance by the forelock! + +275. He who does not WISH to see the height of a man, looks all the +more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground--and thereby +betrays himself. + +276. In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is +better off than the nobler soul: the dangers of the latter must be +greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in +fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its +existence.--In a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost; not so +in man.-- + +277. It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man has finished +building his house, he finds that he has learnt unawares something +which he OUGHT absolutely to have known before he--began to build. The +eternal, fatal "Too late!" The melancholia of everything COMPLETED--! + +278.--Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow thy path without scorn, +without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has +returned to the light insatiated out of every depth--what did it seek +down there?--with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their +loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what +hast thou done? Rest thee here: this place has hospitality for every +one--refresh thyself! And whoever thou art, what is it that now pleases +thee? What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it, whatever I have +I offer thee! "To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thou prying one, +what sayest thou! But give me, I pray thee---" What? what? Speak out! +"Another mask! A second mask!" + +279. Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they +have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and +strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will +flee from them! + +280. "Bad! Bad! What? Does he not--go back?" Yes! But you misunderstand +him when you complain about it. He goes back like every one who is about +to make a great spring. + +281.--"Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it +of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about +myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without +delight in 'the subject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' and always +without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the +POSSIBILITY of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a +CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' which +theorists allow themselves:--this matter of fact is almost the most +certain thing I know about myself. There must be a sort of repugnance +in me to BELIEVE anything definite about myself.--Is there perhaps +some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own +teeth.--Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?--but not to +myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me." + +282.--"But what has happened to you?"--"I do not know," he said, +hesitatingly; "perhaps the Harpies have flown over my table."--It +sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes +suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves, +and shocks everybody--and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at +himself--whither? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with +his memories?--To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul, +and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger +will always be great--nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so. +Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does +not like to eat out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger +and thirst--or, should he nevertheless finally "fall to," of sudden +nausea.--We have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong; +and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult to +nourish, know the dangerous DYSPEPSIA which originates from a sudden +insight and disillusionment about our food and our messmates--the +AFTER-DINNER NAUSEA. + +283. If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the +same time a noble self-control, to praise only where one DOES NOT +agree--otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is contrary +to good taste:--a self-control, to be sure, which offers excellent +opportunity and provocation to constant MISUNDERSTANDING. To be able to +allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must +not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose +misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement--or one will +have to pay dearly for it!--"He praises me, THEREFORE he acknowledges me +to be right"--this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life +of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and +friendship. + +284. To live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond... To have, +or not to have, one's emotions, one's For and Against, according to +choice; to lower oneself to them for hours; to SEAT oneself on them as +upon horses, and often as upon asses:--for one must know how to make +use of their stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserve one's +three hundred foregrounds; also one's black spectacles: for there are +circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our +"motives." And to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice, +politeness. And to remain master of one's four virtues, courage, +insight, sympathy, and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as +a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of +man and man--"in society"--it must be unavoidably impure. All society +makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime--"commonplace." + +285. The greatest events and thoughts--the greatest thoughts, however, +are the greatest events--are longest in being comprehended: the +generations which are contemporary with them do not EXPERIENCE such +events--they live past them. Something happens there as in the realm of +stars. The light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; and +before it has arrived man DENIES--that there are stars there. "How +many centuries does a mind require to be understood?"--that is also a +standard, one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith, +such as is necessary for mind and for star. + +286. "Here is the prospect free, the mind exalted." [FOOTNOTE: Goethe's +"Faust," Part II, Act V. The words of Dr. Marianus.]--But there is a +reverse kind of man, who is also upon a height, and has also a free +prospect--but looks DOWNWARDS. + +287. What is noble? What does the word "noble" still mean for us +nowadays? How does the noble man betray himself, how is he recognized +under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeianism, by which +everything is rendered opaque and leaden?--It is not his actions which +establish his claim--actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable; +neither is it his "works." One finds nowadays among artists and scholars +plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound longing for +nobleness impels them; but this very NEED of nobleness is radically +different from the needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the +eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof. It is not the works, +but the BELIEF which is here decisive and determines the order of +rank--to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper +meaning--it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about +itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and +perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--THE NOBLE SOUL HAS REVERENCE FOR +ITSELF.-- + +288. There are men who are unavoidably intellectual, let them turn +and twist themselves as they will, and hold their hands before their +treacherous eyes--as though the hand were not a betrayer; it always +comes out at last that they have something which they hide--namely, +intellect. One of the subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as +possible, and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider +than one really is--which in everyday life is often as desirable as +an umbrella,--is called ENTHUSIASM, including what belongs to it, for +instance, virtue. For as Galiani said, who was obliged to know it: VERTU +EST ENTHOUSIASME. + +289. In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo +of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance +of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there +sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. He who +has sat day and night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his +soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, +or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave--it +may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine--his ideas themselves +eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much +of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, +which blows chilly upon every passer-by. The recluse does not believe +that a philosopher--supposing that a philosopher has always in the first +place been a recluse--ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in +books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?--indeed, +he will doubt whether a philosopher CAN have "ultimate and actual" +opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must +necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer +world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every +"foundation." Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy--this is a +recluse's verdict: "There is something arbitrary in the fact that the +PHILOSOPHER came to a stand here, took a retrospect, and looked around; +that he HERE laid his spade aside and did not dig any deeper--there +is also something suspicious in it." Every philosophy also CONCEALS a +philosophy; every opinion is also a LURKING-PLACE, every word is also a +MASK. + +290. Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being +misunderstood. The latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former +wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says: "Ah, why would you +also have as hard a time of it as I have?" + +291. Man, a COMPLEX, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable animal, uncanny +to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity, rather than by his +strength, has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his +soul as something SIMPLE; and the whole of morality is a long, audacious +falsification, by virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight of +the soul becomes possible. From this point of view there is perhaps much +more in the conception of "art" than is generally believed. + +292. A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, +hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck +by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and +below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes PECULIAR TO HIM; who +is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous +man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and +something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often +runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself--but whose curiosity +always makes him "come to himself" again. + +293. A man who says: "I like that, I take it for my own, and mean to +guard and protect it from every one"; a man who can conduct a case, +carry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep hold of a woman, +punish and overthrow insolence; a man who has his indignation and his +sword, and to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and even the +animals willingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a man who is a +MASTER by nature--when such a man has sympathy, well! THAT sympathy has +value! But of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer! Or of +those even who preach sympathy! There is nowadays, throughout almost the +whole of Europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, +and also a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an effeminizing, +which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense, seeks +to deck itself out as something superior--there is a regular cult of +suffering. The UNMANLINESS of that which is called "sympathy" by such +groups of visionaries, is always, I believe, the first thing that +strikes the eye.--One must resolutely and radically taboo this latest +form of bad taste; and finally I wish people to put the good amulet, +"GAI SABER" ("gay science," in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as +a protection against it. + +294. THE OLYMPIAN VICE.--Despite the philosopher who, as a genuine +Englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking +minds--"Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature, which every +thinking mind will strive to overcome" (Hobbes),--I would even +allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their +laughing--up to those who are capable of GOLDEN laughter. And supposing +that Gods also philosophize, which I am strongly inclined to believe, +owing to many reasons--I have no doubt that they also know how to laugh +thereby in an overman-like and new fashion--and at the expense of all +serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule: it seems that they cannot +refrain from laughter even in holy matters. + +295. The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious one possesses +it, the tempter-god and born rat-catcher of consciences, whose voice can +descend into the nether-world of every soul, who neither speaks a word +nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch +of allurement, to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to +appear,--not as he is, but in a guise which acts as an ADDITIONAL +constraint on his followers to press ever closer to him, to follow him +more cordially and thoroughly;--the genius of the heart, which imposes +silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which +smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing--to lie placid +as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;--the genius +of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, +and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten +treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark +ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and +imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with +which every one goes away richer; not favoured or surprised, not as +though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer +in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a +thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more +bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will +and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current... but what am I +doing, my friends? Of whom am I talking to you? Have I forgotten myself +so far that I have not even told you his name? Unless it be that you +have already divined of your own accord who this questionable God +and spirit is, that wishes to be PRAISED in such a manner? For, as it +happens to every one who from childhood onward has always been on his +legs, and in foreign lands, I have also encountered on my path many +strange and dangerous spirits; above all, however, and again and again, +the one of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no less a personage than +the God DIONYSUS, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you +know, I once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits--the +last, as it seems to me, who has offered a SACRIFICE to him, for I +have found no one who could understand what I was then doing. In +the meantime, however, I have learned much, far too much, about the +philosophy of this God, and, as I said, from mouth to mouth--I, the last +disciple and initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last +begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste of +this philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do +with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. The +very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore Gods also +philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might +perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers;--among you, my +friends, there is less to be said against it, except that it comes too +late and not at the right time; for, as it has been disclosed to me, you +are loth nowadays to believe in God and gods. It may happen, too, that +in the frankness of my story I must go further than is agreeable to the +strict usages of your ears? Certainly the God in question went further, +very much further, in such dialogues, and was always many paces ahead of +me... Indeed, if it were allowed, I should have to give him, according +to human usage, fine ceremonious tides of lustre and merit, I should +have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer, his fearless +honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a God does not know +what to do with all that respectable trumpery and pomp. "Keep that," he +would say, "for thyself and those like thee, and whoever else require +it! I--have no reason to cover my nakedness!" One suspects that this +kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame?--He once said: +"Under certain circumstances I love mankind"--and referred thereby to +Ariadne, who was present; "in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave, +inventive animal, that has not his equal upon earth, he makes his way +even through all labyrinths. I like man, and often think how I can +still further advance him, and make him stronger, more evil, and more +profound."--"Stronger, more evil, and more profound?" I asked in horror. +"Yes," he said again, "stronger, more evil, and more profound; also more +beautiful"--and thereby the tempter-god smiled with his halcyon smile, +as though he had just paid some charming compliment. One here sees at +once that it is not only shame that this divinity lacks;--and in general +there are good grounds for supposing that in some things the Gods could +all of them come to us men for instruction. We men are--more human.-- + +296. Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not +long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns +and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh--and now? You +have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready +to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so +tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint, +we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of things which LEND +themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only +that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, +only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, +only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be +captured with the hand--with OUR hand! We immortalize what cannot live +and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it +is only for your AFTERNOON, you, my written and painted thoughts, for +which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated +softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;--but +nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden +sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved--EVIL thoughts! + + + + +FROM THE HEIGHTS + +By F W Nietzsche + +Translated by L. A. Magnus + + + 1. + + MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight! + My summer's park! + Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark-- + I peer for friends, am ready day and night,-- + Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right! + + 2. + + Is not the glacier's grey today for you + Rose-garlanded? + The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread + And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue, + To spy for you from farthest eagle's view. + + 3. + + My table was spread out for you on high-- + Who dwelleth so + Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?-- + My realm--what realm hath wider boundary? + My honey--who hath sipped its fragrancy? + + 4. + + Friends, ye are there! Woe me,--yet I am not + He whom ye seek? + Ye stare and stop--better your wrath could speak! + I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what + I am, to you my friends, now am I not? + + 5. + + Am I an other? Strange am I to Me? + Yet from Me sprung? + A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung? + Hindering too oft my own self's potency, + Wounded and hampered by self-victory? + + 6. + + I sought where-so the wind blows keenest. There + I learned to dwell + Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell, + And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer? + Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare? + + 7. + + Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er + With love and fear! + Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here. + Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur, + A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar. + + 8. + + An evil huntsman was I? See how taut + My bow was bent! + Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent-- + Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught, + Perilous as none.--Have yon safe home ye sought! + + 9. + + Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;-- + Strong was thy hope; + Unto new friends thy portals widely ope, + Let old ones be. Bid memory depart! + Wast thou young then, now--better young thou art! + + 10. + + What linked us once together, one hope's tie-- + (Who now doth con + Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon?)-- + Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy + To touch--like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry. + + 11. + + Oh! Friends no more! They are--what name for those?-- + Friends' phantom-flight + Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night, + Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,-- + Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose! + + 12. + + Pinings of youth that might not understand! + For which I pined, + Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind: + But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned: + None but new kith are native of my land! + + 13. + + Midday of life! My second youth's delight! + My summer's park! + Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark! + I peer for friends!--am ready day and night, + For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right! + + 14. + + This song is done,--the sweet sad cry of rue + Sang out its end; + A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend, + The midday-friend,--no, do not ask me who; + At midday 'twas, when one became as two. + + 15. + + We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne, + Our aims self-same: + The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came! + The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn, + And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL *** + +***** This file should be named 4363.txt or 4363.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/6/4363/ + +Produced by John Mamoun, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +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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