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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..47a5d00 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #52319 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52319) diff --git a/old/52319-0.txt b/old/52319-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index cae22cc..0000000 --- a/old/52319-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5485 +0,0 @@ -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52319 *** - -THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS - -A POLEMIC - -BY - -FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE - -TRANSLATED BY - -HORACE B. SAMUEL, M.A. - -PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES (FRAGMENT) - - -T. N. FOULIS - -13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET - -EDINBURGH: AND LONDON - -1913 - - - - -EDITOR'S NOTE. - - -In 1887, with the view of amplifying and completing certain new -doctrines which he had merely sketched in _Beyond Good and Evil_ -(see especially aphorism 260), Nietzsche published _The Genealogy of -Morals_. This work is perhaps the least aphoristic, in form, of all -Nietzsche's productions. For analytical power, more especially in those -parts where Nietzsche examines the ascetic ideal, _The Genealogy of -Morals_ is unequalled by any other of his works; and, in the light -which it throws upon the attitude of the ecclesiast to the man of -resentment and misfortune, it is one of the most valuable contributions -to sacerdotal psychology. - - - - -CONTENTS. - -FIRST ESSAY. "GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD" - -SECOND ESSAY. "GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE - -THIRD ESSAY. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? - -PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. Kennedy - - - - -PREFACE. - - -1. - -We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own -good reason. We have never searched for ourselves--how should it then -come to pass, that we should ever _find_ ourselves? Rightly has it been -said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." _Our_ -treasure is there, where stand the hives of our knowledge. It is to -those hives that we are always striving; as born creatures of flight, -and as the honey-gatherers of the spirit, we care really in our hearts -only for one thing--to bring something "home to the hive!" - -As far as the rest of life with its so-called "experiences" is -concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or -sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are, I -fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is not -there, and certainly not our ear. Rather like one who, delighting -in a divine distraction, or sunken in the seas of his own soul, in -whose ear the clock has just thundered with all its force its twelve -strokes of noon, suddenly wakes up, and asks himself, "What has in -point of fact just struck?" so do we at times rub afterwards, as it -were, our puzzled ears, and ask in complete astonishment and complete -embarrassment, "Through what have we in point of fact just lived?" -further, "Who are we in point of fact?" and count, _after they have -struck_, as I have explained, all the twelve throbbing beats of the -clock of our experience, of our life, of our being--ah!--and count -wrong in the endeavour. Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, -we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, -for of us holds good to all eternity the motto, "Each one is the -farthest away from himself"--as far as ourselves are concerned we are -not "knowers." - - -2. - -My thoughts concerning the _genealogy_ of our moral prejudices--for -they constitute the issue in this polemic--have their first, bald, -and provisional expression in that collection of aphorisms entitled -_Human, all-too-Human, a Book for Free Minds_, the writing of which -was begun in Sorrento, during a winter which allowed me to gaze over -the broad and dangerous territory through which my mind had up to that -time wandered. This took place in the winter of 1876-77; the thoughts -themselves are older. They were in their substance already the same -thoughts which I take up again in the following treatises:--we hope -that they have derived benefit from the long interval, that they have -grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete. The fact, however, -that I still cling to them even now, that in the meanwhile they have -always held faster by each other, have, in fact, grown out of their -original shape and into each other, all this strengthens in my mind the -joyous confidence that they must have been originally neither separate -disconnected capricious nor sporadic phenomena, but have sprung from -a common root, from a fundamental "_fiat_" of knowledge, whose empire -reached to the soul's depth, and that ever grew more definite in its -voice, and more definite in its demands. That is the only state of -affairs that is proper in the case of a philosopher. - -We have no right to be "_disconnected_"; we must neither err -"disconnectedly" nor strike the truth "disconnectedly." Rather with -the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our thoughts, -our values, our Yes's and No's and If's and Whether's, grow connected -and interrelated, mutual witnesses of _one_ will, _one_ health, _one_ -kingdom, _one_ sun--as to whether they are to _your_ taste, these -fruits of ours?--But what matters that to the trees? What matters that -to us, us the philosophers? - - -3. - -Owing to a scrupulosity peculiar to myself, which I confess -reluctantly,--it concerns indeed _morality_,--a scrupulosity, which -manifests itself in my life at such an early period, with so much -spontaneity, with so chronic a persistence and so keen an opposition -to environment, epoch, precedent, and ancestry that I should have -been almost entitled to style it my "_â priori_"--my curiosity and my -suspicion felt themselves betimes bound to halt at the question, of -what in point of actual fact was the _origin_ of our "Good" and of -our "Evil." Indeed, at the boyish age of thirteen the problem of the -origin of Evil already haunted me: at an age "when games and God divide -one's heart," I devoted to that problem my first childish attempt -at the literary game, my first philosophic essay--and as regards my -infantile solution of the problem, well, I gave quite properly the -honour to God, and made him the _father_ of evil. Did my own "_â -priori_" demand that precise solution from me? that new, immoral, or -at least "amoral" "_â priori_" and that "categorical imperative" which -was its voice (but oh! how hostile to the Kantian article, and how -pregnant with problems!), to which since then I have given more and -more attention, and indeed what is more than attention. Fortunately -I soon learned to separate theological from moral prejudices, and -I gave up looking for a _supernatural_ origin of evil. A certain -amount of historical and philological education, to say nothing of -an innate faculty of psychological discrimination _par excellence_ -succeeded in transforming almost immediately my original problem into -the following one:--Under what conditions did Man invent for himself -those judgments of values, "Good" and "Evil"? _And what intrinsic value -do they possess in themselves?_ Have they up to the present hindered -or advanced human well-being? Are they a symptom of the distress, -impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is -it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the -will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? On this -point I found and hazarded in my mind the most diverse answers, I -established distinctions in periods, peoples, and castes, I became a -specialist in my problem, and from my answers grew new questions, new -investigations, new conjectures, new probabilities; until at last I had -a land of my own and a soil of my own, a whole secret world growing and -flowering, like hidden gardens of whose existence no one could have an -inkling--oh, how happy are we, we finders of knowledge, provided that -we know how to keep silent sufficiently long. - - -4. - -My first impulse to publish some of my hypotheses concerning the origin -of morality I owe to a clear, well-written, and even precocious little -book, in which a perverse and vicious kind of moral philosophy (your -real English kind) was definitely presented to me for the first time; -and this attracted me--with that magnetic attraction, inherent in that -which is diametrically opposed and antithetical to one's own ideas. -The title of the book was _The Origin of the Moral Emotions_; its -author, Dr. Paul Rée; the year of its appearance, 1877. I may almost -say that I have never read anything in which every single dogma and -conclusion has called forth from me so emphatic a negation as did that -book; albeit a negation tainted by either pique or intolerance. I -referred accordingly both in season and out of season in the previous -works, at which I was then working, to the arguments of that book, not -to refute them--for what have I got to do with mere refutations but -substituting, as is natural to a positive mind, for an improbable -theory one which is more probable, and occasionally no doubt, for one -philosophic error, another. In that early period I gave, as I have -said, the first public expression to those theories of origin to which -these essays are devoted, but with a clumsiness which I was the last -to conceal from myself, for I was as yet cramped, being still without -a special language for these special subjects, still frequently liable -to relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, compare what I say -in _Human, all-too-Human_, part i., about the parallel early history -of Good and Evil, Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from the castes of the -aristocrats and the slaves); similarly, Aph. 136 et seq., concerning -the birth and value of ascetic morality; similarly, Aphs. 96, 99, -vol. ii., Aph. 89, concerning the Morality of Custom, that far older -and more original kind of morality which is _toto cœlo_ different -from the altruistic ethics (in which Dr. Rée, like all the English -moral philosophers, sees the ethical "Thing-in-itself"); finally, -Aph. 92. Similarly, Aph. 26 in _Human, all-too-Human_, part ii., and -Aph. 112, the _Dawn of Day_, concerning the origin of Justice as a -balance between persons of approximately equal power (equilibrium as -the hypothesis of all contract, consequently of all law); similarly, -concerning the origin of Punishment, _Human, all-too-Human_, part -ii., Aphs. 22, 23, in regard to which the deterrent object is neither -essential nor original (as Dr. Rée thinks:--rather is it that this -object is only imported, under certain definite conditions, and always -as something extra and additional). - - -5. - -In reality I had set my heart at that time on something much more -important than the nature of the theories of myself or others -concerning the origin of morality (or, more precisely, the real -function from my view of these theories was to point an end to which -they were one among many means). The issue for me was the value -of morality, and on that subject I had to place myself in a state -of abstraction, in which I was almost alone with my great teacher -Schopenhauer, to whom that book, with all its passion and inherent -contradiction (for that book also was a polemic), turned for present -help as though he were still alive. The issue was, strangely enough, -the value of the "un-egoistic" instincts, the instincts of pity, -self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently -painted in golden colours, deified and etherealised, that eventually -they appeared to him, as it were, high and dry, as "intrinsic values -in themselves," on the strength of which he uttered both to Life -and to himself his own negation. But against _these very_ instincts -there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a -scepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct -I saw the _great_ danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and -seduction--seduction to what? to nothingness?--in these very instincts -I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes -backwards, the will turning _against_ Life, the last illness announcing -itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality -of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even -philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our -modern European civilisation; I realised that it was the route along -which that civilisation slid on its way to--a new Buddhism?--a European -Buddhism?--_Nihilism_? This exaggerated estimation in which modern -philosophers have held pity, is quite a new phenomenon: up to that time -philosophers were absolutely unanimous as to the worthlessness of pity. -I need only mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant--four -minds as mutually different as is possible, but united on one point; -their contempt of pity. - - -6. - -This problem of the value of pity and of the pity-morality (I am an -opponent of the modern infamous emasculation of our emotions) seems at -the first blush a mere isolated problem, a note of interrogation for -itself; he, however, who once halts at this problem, and learns how to -put questions, will experience what I experienced:--a new and immense -vista unfolds itself before him, a sense of potentiality seizes him -like a vertigo, every species of doubt, mistrust, and fear springs -up, the belief in morality, nay, in all morality, totters,--finally a -new demand voices itself. Let us speak out this _new demand_: we need -a _critique_ of moral values, _the value of these values_ is for the -first time to be called into question--and for this purpose a knowledge -is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these -values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and -their distortion (morality as a result, as a symptom, as a mask, as -Tartuffism, as disease, as a misunderstanding; but also morality as a -cause, as a remedy, as a stimulant, as a fetter, as a drug), especially -as such a knowledge has neither existed up to the present time nor is -even now generally desired. The value of these "values" was taken for -granted as an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one -has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in -judging the "good man" to be of a higher value than the "evil man," of -a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, -and prosperity generally, not forgetting the future. What? Suppose the -converse were the truth! What? Suppose there lurked in the "good man" -a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, -a _narcotic_, by means of which the present _battened on the future_! -More comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also -pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the -guilt, if the _maximum potentiality of the power and splendour_ of the -human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would -be the danger of dangers? - - -7. - -Enough, that after this vista had disclosed itself to me, I myself had -reason to search for learned, bold, and industrious colleagues (I am -doing it even to this very day). It means traversing with new clamorous -questions, and at the same time with new eyes, the immense, distant, -and completely unexplored land of morality--of a morality which has -actually existed and been actually lived! and is this not practically -equivalent to first _discovering_ that land? If, in this context, I -thought, amongst others, of the aforesaid Dr. Rée, I did so because I -had no doubt that from the very nature of his questions he would be -compelled to have recourse to a truer method, in order to obtain his -answers. Have I deceived myself on that score? I wished at all events -to give a better direction of vision to an eye of such keenness, and -such impartiality. I wished to direct him to the real _history of -morality_, and to warn him, while there was yet time, against a world -of English theories that culminated in _the blue vacuum of heaven_. -Other colours, of course, rise immediately to one's mind as being a -hundred times more potent than blue for a genealogy of morals:--for -instance, grey, by which I mean authentic facts capable of definite -proof and having actually existed, or, to put it shortly, the whole -of that long hieroglyphic script (which is so hard to decipher) about -the past history of human morals. This script was unknown to Dr. Rée; -but he had read Darwin:--and so in his philosophy the Darwinian beast -and that pink of modernity, the demure weakling and dilettante, who -"bites no longer," shake hands politely in a fashion that is at least -instructive, the latter exhibiting a certain facial expression of -refined and good-humoured indolence, tinged with a touch of pessimism -and exhaustion; as if it really did not pay to take all these things--I -mean moral problems--so seriously. I, on the other hand, think that -there are no subjects which pay better for being taken seriously; part -of this payment is, that perhaps eventually they admit of being taken -gaily. This gaiety indeed, or, to use my own language, this joyful -wisdom, is a payment; a payment for a protracted, brave, laborious, and -burrowing seriousness, which, it goes without saying, is the attribute -of but a few. But on that day on which we say from the fullness of our -hearts, "Forward! our old morality too is fit material for Comedy," -we shall have discovered a new plot, and a new possibility for the -Dionysian drama entitled The Soul's Fate--and he will speedily utilise -it, one can wager safely, he, the great ancient eternal dramatist of -the comedy of our existence. - - -8. - -If this writing be obscure to any individual, and jar on his ears, I -do not think that it is necessarily I who am to blame. It is clear -enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose, namely, that the reader -has first read my previous writings and has not grudged them a certain -amount of trouble: it is not, indeed, a simple matter to get really at -their essence. Take, for instance, my _Zarathustra_; I allow no one -to pass muster as knowing that book, unless every single word therein -has at some time wrought in him a profound wound, and at some time -exercised on him a profound enchantment: then and not till then can he -enjoy the privilege of participating reverently in the halcyon element, -from which that work is born, in its sunny brilliance, its distance, -its spaciousness, its certainty. In other cases the aphoristic form -produces difficulty, but this is only because this form is treated -_too casually_. An aphorism properly coined and cast into its final -mould is far from being "deciphered" as soon as it has been read; on -the contrary, it is then that it first requires _to be expounded_--of -course for that purpose an art of exposition is necessary. The third -essay in this book provides an example of what is offered, of what in -such cases I call exposition: an aphorism is prefixed to that essay, -the essay itself is its commentary. Certainly one _quality_ which -nowadays has been best forgotten--and that is why it will take some -time yet for my writings to become readable--is essential in order -to practise reading as an art--a quality for the exercise of which it -is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a modern man!-- -rumination. - -Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine, July 1887. - - - - -FIRST ESSAY. "GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD." - - -1. - -Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only -philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far -as a history of the origin of morality--these men, I say, offer us -in their own personalities no paltry problem;--they even have, if I -am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, -an advantage over their books--_they themselves are interesting!_ -These English psychologists--what do they really mean? We always -find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing -to the front the _partie honteuse_ of our inner world, and looking -for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise -quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be -the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the _vis inertiæ_ of -habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism -and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, -reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)--what is the real motive -power which always impels these psychologists in precisely _this_ -direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, -vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or -perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned -idealists who have become gloomy, poisoned, and bitter? or a petty -subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that -has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a -vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully -paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a -dash of each of these motives--a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, -a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy? - -But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs -crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as -thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a _swamp_. - -I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and if, in -the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish -from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that -these analysts with their psychological microscopes should be, at -bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle -both their hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained -themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, any truth -in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and -immoral truths--for there are truths of that description. - - -2. - -All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these -historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the -_historical sense_ itself, that they themselves are quite deserted -by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their -thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on -thoroughly unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The -crass ineptitude of their genealogy of morals is immediately apparent -when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and -judgment of "good." "Man had originally," so speaks their decree, -"praised and called 'good' altruistic acts from the standpoint of -those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were -_useful_; subsequently the origin of this praise was _forgotten_, and -altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were -praised as good, came also to be felt as good--as though they contained -in themselves some intrinsic goodness." The thing is obvious:--this -initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic -traits of the English psychologists--we have "utility," "forgetting," -"habit," and finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis -of a system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present -prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. -This pride _must_ be brought low, this system of values _must_ lose its -values: is that attained? - -Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real -homestead of the concept "good" is sought and located in the wrong -place: the judgment "good" did not originate among those to whom -goodness was shown. Much rather has it been the good themselves, -that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the -high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that -their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in -contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and -the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first -arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to -coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The -standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could -possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of -supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within -themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation -of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition -on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of -practical expediency is always based--and not for one occasional, not -for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility -and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic _esprit de -corps_ and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into -association with a meaner race, an "under race," this is the origin of -the antithesis of good and bad. - -(The masters' right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible -to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the -masters: they say "this _is_ that, and that," they seal finally every -object and every event with a sound, and thereby at the same time take -possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word "good" -is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, in -accordance with the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. -On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the _decay_ of aristocratic -values, that the antitheses between "egoistic" and "altruistic" -presses more and more heavily on the human conscience--it is, to use -my own language, the _herd instinct_ which finds in this antithesis an -expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time -for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation -to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in -contemporary Europe); for to-day that prejudice is predominant, which, -acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain -disease, holds that "moral," "altruistic," and "_désintéressé_" are -concepts of equal value. - - -3. - -In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as -to the genesis of the value "good" cannot be historically upheld, it -suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of -altruistic conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised, -and this origin has become _forgotten_:--But in what conceivable way is -this forgetting _possible_! Has perchance the utility of such conduct -ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has -rather been experienced every day at all times, and is consequently -a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh -day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so -far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed -on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much -more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) -which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places -the concept "good" as essentially similar to the concept "useful," -"purposive," so that in the judgments "good" and "bad" mankind is -simply summarising and investing with a sanction its _unforgotten_ and -_unforgettable_ experiences concerning the "useful-purposive" and the -"mischievous-non-purposive." According to this theory, "good" is the -attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so -is able to claim to be considered "valuable in the highest degree," -"valuable in itself." This method of explanation is also, as I have -said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and -psychologically tenable. - - -4. - -The guide-post which first put me on the right track was this -question--what is the true etymological significance of the various -symbols for the idea "good" which have been coined in the various -languages? I then found that they all led back to _the same evolution -of the same idea_--that everywhere "aristocrat," "noble" (in the -social sense), is the root idea, out of which have necessarily -developed "good" in the sense of "with aristocratic soul," "noble," -in the sense of "with a soul of high calibre," "with a privileged -soul"--a development which invariably runs parallel with that other -evolution by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low," are made to change -finally into "bad." The most eloquent proof of this last contention -is the German word "_schlecht_" itself: this word is identical with -"_schlicht_"--(compare "_schlechtweg_" and "_schlechterdings_")--which, -originally and as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply denoted -the plebeian man in contrast to the aristocratic man. It is at the -sufficiently late period of the Thirty Years' War that this sense -becomes changed to the sense now current. From the standpoint of -the Genealogy of Morals this discovery seems to be substantial: the -lateness of it is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised -in the modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all -questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown, even to -the province of natural science and physiology, which, _prima facie_ -is the most objective. The extent of the mischief which is caused by -this prejudice (once it is free of all trammels except those of its own -malice), particularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the notorious -case of Buckle: it was in Buckle that that _plebeianism_ of the modern -spirit, which is of English origin, broke out once again from its -malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that -salted, rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present time -all volcanoes have spoken. - - -5. - -With regard to our problem, which can justly be called an intimate -problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears: -it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and roots -which denote "good" we catch glimpses of that arch-trait, on the -strength of which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings of -a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they call themselves in -perhaps the most frequent instances simply after their superiority -in power (_e.g._ "the powerful," "the lords," "the commanders"), or -after the most obvious sign of their superiority, as for example -"the rich," "the possessors" (that is the meaning of _arya_; and the -Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But they also call themselves -after some _characteristic idiosyncrasy_; and this is the case which -now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, "the truthful": -this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouthpiece is found in -Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word ἐσθλος, which is coined for the -purpose, signifies etymologically "one who _is_," who has reality, who -is real, who is true; and then with a subjective twist, the "true," -as the "truthful": at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it -becomes the motto and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes -the transition to the meaning "noble," so as to place outside the pale -the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him--till -finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to delineate -psychological _noblesse_, and becomes as it were ripe and mellow. In -the word κακός as in δειλός (the plebeian in contrast to the ἀγαθός) -the cowardice is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling on what -lines the etymological origin of the very ambiguous ἀγαθός is to be -investigated. In the Latin _malus_ (which I place side by side with -μέλας) the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and -above all as the black-haired ("_hic niger est_"), as the pre-Aryan -inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest -feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan -conquering race:--at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact -analogue--_Fin_ (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal), the distinctive -word of the nobility, finally--good, noble, clean, but originally the -blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The -Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a blonde -race; and it is wrong to connect, as Virchow still connects, those -traces of an essentially dark-haired population which are to be seen -on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany with any Celtic -ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is -rather the _pre-Aryan_ population of Germany which surges up to these -districts. (The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in -point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper -hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in -the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern -democracy, still more modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the -"Commune," the most primitive form of society, which is now common to -all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a -monstrous reversion--and that the conquering and _master_ race--the -Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe -that I can explain the Latin _bonus_ as the "warrior": my hypothesis -is that I am right in deriving _bonus_ from an older _duonus_ (compare -_bellum_ = _duellum_ = _duen-lum_, in which the word _duonus_ appears -to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of -variance, "entzweiung" (_duo_), as the warrior: one sees what in -ancient Rome "the good" meant for a man. Must not our actual German -word _gut_ mean "_the godlike_, the man of godlike race"? and be -identical with the national name (originally the nobles' name) of the -_Goths_? - -The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this work. - - -6. - -Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for -exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority -always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, in -those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the _priestly_ -caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers on -itself the privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its -priestly function. It is in these cases, for instance, that "clean" and -"unclean" confront each other for the first time as badges of class -distinction; here again there develops a "good" and a "bad," in a sense -which has ceased to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken -not to take these ideas of "clean" and "unclean" too seriously, too -broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have, on -the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in a sense -which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude, coarse, physical, -and narrow, and above all essentially unsymbolical. The "clean man" is -originally only a man who washes himself, who abstains from certain -foods which are conducive to skin diseases, who does not sleep with -the unclean women of the lower classes, who has a horror of blood--not -more, not much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestly -aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such an early juncture -there should ensue a really dangerous sharpening and intensification -of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed values that -gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable Achilles of -free thought would shudder to cross. There is from the outset a -certain _diseased taint_ in such sacerdotal aristocracies, and in the -habits which prevail in such societies--habits which, _averse_ as they -are to action, constitute a compound of introspection and explosive -emotionalism, as a result of which there appears that introspective -morbidity and neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to all -priests at all times: with regard, however, to the remedy which they -themselves have invented for this disease--the philosopher has no -option but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred -times more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have been -the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects of -the naïvetés of this priestly cure. Take, for instance, certain kinds -of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight -into the wilderness (a kind of Weir-Mitchell isolation, though of -course without that system of excessive feeding and fattening which -is the most efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic -ideal); consider too the whole metaphysic of the priests, with its -war on the senses, its enervation, its hair-splitting; consider its -self-hypnotism on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as -a glass disc and obsession), and that climax which we can understand -only too well of an unusual satiety with its panacea of _nothingness_ -(or God:--the demand for a _unio mystica_ with God is the demand of the -Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana--and nothing else!). In sacerdotal -societies _every_ element is on a more dangerous scale, not merely -cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love, -ambition, virtue, morbidity:--further, it can fairly be stated that it -is on the soil of this _essentially dangerous_ form of human society, -the sacerdotal form, that man really becomes for the first time an -_interesting animal_, that it is in this form that the soul of man has -in a higher sense attained _depths_ and become _evil_--and those are -the two fundamental forms of the superiority which up to the present -man has exhibited over every other animal. - - -7. - -The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode -of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and -then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus -is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the -priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and -cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic "values" are -based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and -even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what -is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, -the dance, the tourney--on everything, in fact, which is contained -in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode -of valuation is--we have seen--based on other hypotheses: it is bad -enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests -are, as is notorious, _the worst enemies_--why? Because they are the -weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous -and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. -The really great haters in the history of the world have always been -priests, who are also the cleverest haters--in comparison with the -cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is -practically negligible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything -were it not for the cleverness imported into it by the weak--take at -once the most important instance. All the world's efforts against the -"aristocrats," the "mighty," the "masters," the "holders of power," -are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against -those classes by _the Jews_--the Jews, that priestly nation which -eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on -its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of -values, which was at the same time an act of the _cleverest revenge_. -Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation -of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews -who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic -= beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying -logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with -the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this -contrary equation, namely, "the wretched are alone the good; the poor, -the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the -sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones -who are blessed, for them alone is salvation--but you, on the other -hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the -evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally -also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!" We know who -it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the -context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which -the Jews have exhibited in connection with this most fundamental of -all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen -on another occasion (_Beyond Good and Evil_, Aph. 195)--that it was, -in fact, with the Jews that the _revolt of the slaves_ begins in the -sphere _of morals_; that revolt which has behind it a history of two -millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our -sight, because it--has achieved victory. - - -8. - -But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which -has taken two thousand years to achieve victory?--There is nothing -wonderful in this: all _lengthy_ processes are hard to see and to -realise. But _this_ is what took place: from the trunk of that tree -of revenge and hate, Jewish hate,--that most profound and sublime -hate, which creates ideals and changes old values to new creations, -the like of which has never been on earth,--there grew a phenomenon -which was equally incomparable, _a new love_, the most profound and -sublime of all kinds of love;--and from what other trunk could it have -grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on its upward -growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as -an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the contrary is the truth! This -love grew out of that hate, as its crown, as its triumphant crown, -circling wider and wider amid the clarity and fulness of the sun, and -pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height its goal of hatred, -its victory, its spoil, its strategy, with the same intensity with -which the roots of that tree of hate sank into everything which was -deep and evil with increasing stability and increasing desire. This -Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this "Redeemer" -bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful--was -he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, -temptation to take the tortuous path to those very _Jewish_ values and -those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel really obtained the final goal -of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this "Redeemer," for -all that he might pose as Israel's adversary and Israel's destroyer? Is -it not due to the black magic of a really _great_ policy of revenge, -of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with -slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the -actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so -that all the world--that is, all the enemies of Israel--could nibble -without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human mind -with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly -_dangerous_? Anything that was even equivalent in the power of its -seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and corrupting influence to that -symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox of a "god on the -cross," to that mystery of the unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror -of the self-crucifixion of a god for the _salvation of man_? It is -at least certain that _sub hoc signo_ Israel, with its revenge and -transvaluation of all values, has up to the present always triumphed -again over all other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals. - - -9. - -"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; -that the people have triumphed--or the slaves, or the populace, or the -herd, or whatever name you care to give them--if this has happened -through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater -mission in the world's history. The 'masters' have been done away -with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may -also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)--I -do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication -has succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from the -masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming -Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the -words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning -through the whole body politic of mankind--but its _tempo_ and pace -may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more -discreet--there is time enough. In view of this context has the Church -nowadays any necessary purpose? has it, in fact, a right to live? Or -could man get on without it? _Quæritur_. It seems that it fetters and -retards this tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that -might be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish -institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at -delicacy, to a really modern taste. Should it not at any rate learn to -be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays, more than it allures. -Which of us would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no Church? -It is the Church which repels us, not its poison--apart from the Church -we like the poison." This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my -discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof), -and a democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and -could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard to this -topic there is much on which to be silent. - - -10. - -The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of -_resentment_ becoming creative and giving birth to values--a resentment -experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet -of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary -revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant -affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the -very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and -"not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of -the valuing standpoint--this _inevitable_ gravitation to the objective -instead of back to the subjective--is typical of "resentment": the -slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external -and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires -objective stimuli to be capable of action at all--its action is -fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to -the aristocrat's system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously, -it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful -and exultant "yes" to its own self;--its negative conception, "low," -"vulgar," "bad," is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its -positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and -passion), of "we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy -ones." - -When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits sacrilege on -reality, this is limited to that particular sphere with which it -is _not_ sufficiently acquainted--a sphere, in fact, from the real -knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself. It misjudges, in -some cases, the sphere which it despises, the sphere of the common -vulgar man and the low people: on the other hand, due weight should be -given to the consideration that in any case the mood of contempt, of -disdain, of superciliousness, even on the supposition that it _falsely_ -portrays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed from -that degree of falsity which will always characterise the attacks--in -effigy, of course--of the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of -the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In point of fact, there is -in contempt too strong an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, -of boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation, for it to be -capable of distorting its victim into a real caricature or a real -monstrosity. Attention again should be paid to the almost benevolent -_nuances_ which, for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all -the words by which it distinguishes the common people from itself; -note how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration imparts -its honeyed _flavour_, until at last almost all the words which are -applied to the vulgar man survive finally as expressions for "unhappy," -"worthy of pity" (compare δειλο, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός]; the -latter two names really denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave -and beast of burden)--and how, conversely, "bad," "low," "unhappy" -have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which -"unhappy" is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble -aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in contempt -(let philologists remember the sense in which ὀιζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, -δυστυχεῑν, ξυμφορά used to be employed). The "well-born" simply -_felt_ themselves the "happy"; they did not have to manufacture their -happiness artificially through looking at their enemies, or in cases -to talk and _lie themselves_ into happiness (as is the custom with all -resentful men); and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant -with strength, and consequently _necessarily_ energetic, they were too -wise to dissociate happiness from action--activity becomes in their -minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is the etymology of εὖ -πρἆττειν)--all in sharp contrast to the "happiness" of the weak and -the oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity, among whom -happiness appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, -a peace, a "Sabbath," an enervation of the mind and relaxation -of the limbs,--in short, a purely _passive_ phenomenon. While the -aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself -(gennaios, "noble-born," emphasises the nuance "sincere," and perhaps -also "naïf"), the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere -nor naïf, nor honest and candid with himself. His soul _squints_; his -mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and back-doors, everything -secret appeals to him as _his_ world, _his_ safety, _his_ balm; he is -past master in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional -self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race of such _resentful_ men -will of necessity eventually prove more _prudent_ than any aristocratic -race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a -paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men -is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement; -so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete -certainty of function of the governing _unconscious_ instincts, or -as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant -charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic -bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times -noble souls have recognised each other. When the resentment of the -aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in -an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no _venom_: on the -other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless instances, -when in the case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable. An -inability to take seriously for any length of time their enemies, -their disasters, their _misdeeds_--that is the sign of the full strong -natures who possess a superfluity of moulding plastic force, that -heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in -the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and -meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable -of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a -shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is -only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing, -of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real -"_love_ of one's enemies." What respect for his enemies is found, -forsooth, in an aristocratic man--and such a reverence is already -a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his -distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character -there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand, -imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him--and it is here -exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the -evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from -which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good -one," himself--his very self! - - -11 - -The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic -man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight -away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then -creates for himself a concept of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic -origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred--the -former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter, -on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in -the conception of a slave-morality--these two words "bad" and "evil," -how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they -have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea "good" is -not the same: much rather let the question be asked, "Who is really -evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In -all sternness let it be answered thus:--_just_ the good man of the -other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who -rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, -into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This -particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to -know those "good" ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not -to know them only as "_evil enemies_" and the same men who _inter -pares_ were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, -custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance -and jealousy _inter pares_, these men who in their relations with -each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, -self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men -are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign -element, a _foreign_ country, begins), not much better than beasts -of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from -all social control, they feel that in the wilderness they can give -vent with impunity to that tension which is produced by enclosure and -imprisonment in the peace of society, they _revert_ to the innocence -of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps -come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with -bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student's -prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an -ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognise -at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the -magnificent _blonde brute_, avidly rampant for spoil and victory; -this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must -get loose again, must return into the wilderness--the Roman, Arabic, -German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian -Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who -have left the idea "Barbarian" on all the tracks in which they have -marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even -a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilisation -(for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians in that celebrated -funeral oration, "Our audacity has forced a way over every land and -sea, rearing everywhere imperishable memorials of itself for _good_ -and for _evil_"). This audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, -and spasmodic as may be its expression; the incalculable and fantastic -nature of their enterprises,Pericles sets in special relief and -glory the ᾽ραθυμία of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for -safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight -in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty,--all -these features become crystallised, for those who suffered thereby -in the picture of the "barbarian," of the "evil enemy," perhaps of -the "Goth" and of the "Vandal." The profound, icy mistrust which -the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power,--even at the -present time,--is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable -horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath -of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and -ourselves there exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, -relationship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of -Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and endeavoured -to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He could only dispose -of the contradiction, with which he was confronted, by the Homeric -world, an age magnificent indeed, but at the same time so awful and -so violent, by making two ages out of one, which he henceforth placed -one behind each other--first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as -that world had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families, -who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze age, as -that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of the oppressed, -spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as an age of bronze, -as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without -conscience, crushing everything, and bespattering everything with -blood. Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that -the very _essence of all civilisation_ is to _train_ out of man, the -beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal, -it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real _tools of -civilisation_ all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the -help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals, -were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come -to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also -_represented_ the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is -not only probable--nay, it is _palpable_ to-day; these bearers of -vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up, these descendants of -all European and non-European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan -population--these people, I say, represent the _decline_ of humanity! -These "tools of civilisation" are a disgrace to humanity, and -constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation, more -of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. One may be perfectly -justified in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at -the core of all aristocratic races, and in being on one's guard: but -who would not a hundred times prefer to be afraid, when one at the -same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of being -perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the -dwarfed, the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What -produces to-day our repulsion towards "man"?--for we _suffer_ from -"man," there is no doubt about it. It is not fear; it is rather that -we have nothing more to fear from men; it is that the worm "man" is in -the foreground and pullulates; it is that the "tame man," the wretched -mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal -and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a "higher -man"; yes, it is that he has a certain right so to consider himself, -in so far as he feels that in contrast to that excess of deformity, -disease, exhaustion, and effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute -present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved a relative success, he -at any rate still says "yes" to life. - - -12. - -I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last -hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone -cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! bad air! -That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour -of the entrails of a misbegotten soul!--That excepted, what can one -not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, -solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everything, born -as one is to a burrowing and battling existence; one always returns -once again to the light, one always lives again one's golden hour of -victory--and then one stands as one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready -for something more difficult, for something more distant, like a bow -stretched but the tauter by every strain. But from time to time do ye -grant me--assuming that "beyond good and evil" there are goddesses who -can grant--one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something -perfect, fully realised, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something -that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of a man that justifies -the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that -realises and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to _the -belief in man_! For the position is this: in the dwarfing and levelling -of the European man lurks _our_ greatest peril, for it is this outlook -which fatigues--we see to-day nothing which wishes to be greater, we -surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards -towards something more attenuated, more inoffensive, more cunning, -more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more -Christian--man, there is no doubt about it, grows always "better" ---the destiny of Europe lies even in this--that in losing the fear of -man, we have also lost the hope in man, yea, the will to be man. The -sight of man now fatigues.--What is present-day Nihilism if it is not -_that_?--We are tired of _man_. - - -13. - -But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the -_good_--of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out--demands -its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge -against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the -great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs -say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as -far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, -a lamb,--is he not good?" then there is nothing to cavil at in the -setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey -will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, -"_We_ bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them: -nothing is tastier than a tender lamb." To require of strength that it -should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to -overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for -enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require -of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of -force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action--rather it -is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing, -acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of -language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become -petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all -working as conditioned by a worker, by a "subject." And just exactly -as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the -latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called -lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the -expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed -some indifferent neutral _substratum_, which enjoyed a _caprice and -option_ as to whether or not it should express strength. But there -is no such _substratum_, there is no "being" behind doing, working, -becoming; "the doer" is a mere appanage to the action. The action is -everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they -make the lightning lighten, that is a "doing-doing": they make the same -phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. -The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, "Force moves, -force causes," and so on. Our whole science is still, in spite of all -its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of -language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious -changeling "the subject" (the atom, to give another instance, is such -a changeling, just as the Kantian "Thing-in-itself"). What wonder, -if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and -hatred exploit for their own advantage this belief, and indeed hold no -belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this--"that the strong -has the _option_ of being weak, and the bird of prey of being a lamb." -Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the -birds of prey the _responsibility_ for being birds of prey: when the -oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the -vindictive guile of weakness, "Let us be otherwise than the evil, -namely, good! and good is every one who does not oppress, who hurts -no one, who does not attack, who does not pay back, who hands over -revenge to God, who holds himself, as we do, in hiding; who goes out -of the way of evil, and demands, in short, little from life; like -ourselves the patient, the meek, the just,"--yet all this, in its cold -and unprejudiced interpretation, means nothing more than "once for -all, the weak are weak; it is good to do _nothing for which we are not -strong enough_"; but this dismal state of affairs, this prudence of the -lowest order, which even insects possess (which in a great danger are -fain to sham death so as to avoid doing "too much"), has, thanks to -the counterfeiting and self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade -in the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue, just as though -the _very_ weakness of the weak--that is, forsooth, its _being_, its -working, its whole unique inevitable inseparable reality--were a -voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed, an act of _merit_. -This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing "subject" -_necessary_ from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion, -in which every lie is fain to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to -use popular language, the _soul_) has perhaps proved itself the best -dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde -of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most -sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as -freedom, of being this, or being that, as _merit_. - - -14. - -Will any one look a little into--right into--the mystery of how _ideals -are manufactured_ in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come! - -Here we have a vista opened into these grimy workshops. Wait just a -moment, dear Mr. Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow -accustomed to this false changing light--Yes! Enough! Now speak! What -is happening below down yonder? Speak out that what you see, man of the -most dangerous curiosity--for now _I_ am the listener. - -"I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a cautious, spiteful, gentle -whispering and muttering together in all the corners and crannies. It -seems to me that they are lying; a sugary softness adheres to every -sound. Weakness is turned to _merit_, there is no doubt about it--it is -just as you say." - -Further! - -"And the impotence which requites not, is turned to 'goodness,' craven -baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience -(namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this -submission--they call him God). The inoffensive character of the weak, -the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his -forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as 'patience,' -which is also called 'virtue'; not being able to avenge one's self, is -called not wishing to avenge one's self, perhaps even forgiveness (for -_they_ know not what they do--we alone know what _they_ do). They also -talk of the 'love of their enemies' and sweat thereby." - -Further! - -"They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers -and counterfeiters in the corners, although they try to get warm by -crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is -a favour and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the -dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a -probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which -will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in -gold, nay in happiness. This they call 'Blessedness.'" - -Further! - -"They are now giving me to understand, that not only are they better -men than the mighty, the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have -got to lick (not out of fear, not at all out of fear! But because -God ordains that one should honour all authority)--not only are they -better men, but that they also have a 'better time,' at any rate, -will one day have a 'better time.' But enough! Enough! I can endure -it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops _where ideals are -manufactured_--verily they reek with the crassest lies." - -Nay. Just one minute! You are saying nothing about the masterpieces -of these virtuosos of black magic, who can produce whiteness, milk, -and innocence out of any black you like: have you not noticed what a -pitch of refinement is attained by their _chef d'œuvre_, their most -audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick? Take care! These -cellar-beasts, full of revenge and hate--what do they make, forsooth, -out of their revenge and hate? Do you hear these words? Would you -suspect, if you trusted only their words, that you are among men of -resentment and nothing else? - -"I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah! ah! ah! and I hold my -nose). Now do I hear for the first time that which they have said so -often: 'We good, _we are the righteous_'--what they demand they call -not revenge but 'the triumph of _righteousness_'; what they hate is -not their enemy, no, they hate 'unrighteousness,' 'godlessness'; what -they believe in and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication -of sweet revenge (--"sweeter than honey," did Homer call it?), but the -victory of God, of the _righteous_ _God_ over the 'godless'; what is -left for them to love in this world is not _their_ brothers in hate, -but their 'brothers in love,' as they say, all the good and righteous -on the earth." - -And how do they name that which serves them as a solace against all -the troubles of life--their phantasmagoria of their anticipated future -blessedness? - -"How? Do I hear right? They call it 'the last judgment,' the advent of -their kingdom, 'the kingdom of God'--but _in the meanwhile_ they live -'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'" - -Enough! Enough! - - -15. - -In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the hope of what? These -weaklings!--they also, forsooth, wish to be the strong some time; there -is no doubt about it, some time _their_ kingdom also must come--"the -kingdom of God" is their name for it, as has been mentioned: they are -so meek in everything! Yet in order to experience _that_ kingdom it -is necessary to live long, to live beyond death,--yes, _eternal_ life -is necessary so that one can make up for ever for that earthly life -"in faith," "in love," "in hope." Make up for what? Make up by what? -Dante, as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with awe-inspiring -ingenuity he placed that inscription over the gate of his hell, "Me too -made eternal love": at any rate the following inscription would have -a much better right to stand over the gate of the Christian Paradise -and its "eternal blessedness"--"Me too made eternal hate"--granted -of course that a truth may rightly stand over the gate to a lie! For -what is the blessedness of that Paradise? Possibly we could quickly -surmise it; but it is better that it should be explicitly attested by -an authority who in such matters is not to be disparaged, Thomas of -Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. "_Beati in regno celesti_" says -he, as gently as a lamb, "_videbunt pœnas damnatorum, ut beatitudo -illis magis complaceat_." Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word -from the mouth of a triumphant father of the Church, who warned his -disciples against the cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles--But -why? Faith offers us much more,--says he, _de Spectac._, c. 29 -ss.,--something much stronger; thanks to the redemption, joys of quite -another kind stand at our disposal; instead of athletes we have our -martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the blood of Christ--but -what then awaits us on the day of his return, of his triumph. And -then does he proceed, does this enraptured visionary: "_at enim -supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimas et perpetuus judicii dies, ille -nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vetustas et tot -ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quæ tunc spectaculi latitudo! -Quid admirer! quid rideam! Ubigaudeam! Ubi exultem, spectans tot et -tantos reges, qui in cœlum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis -suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item præsides_" (the -provincial governors) "_persecutores dominici nominis sævioribus quam -ipsi flammis sævierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes! -Quos præterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una -conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant, -quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora redituras -affirmabant! Etiam poetas non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad -inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragœdi audiendi, -magis scilicet vocales_" (with louder tones and more violent shrieks) -"_in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores -multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens, -tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi -quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius -conspectum insatiabilem conferre, qui in dominum scevierunt. Hic est -ille, dicam fabri aut quæstuariæ filius_" (as is shown by the whole of -the following, and in particular by this well-known description of the -mother of Jesus from the Talmud, Tertullian is henceforth referring to -the Jews), "_sabbati destructor, Samarites et dæmonium habens. Hic est -quem a Juda redemistis, hic est ille arundine et colaphis diverberatus, -sputamentis de decoratus, felle et acete potatus. Hic est, quem -clam discentes subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus -detraxit, ne lactucæ suæ frequentia commeantium laderentur. Ut talia -species, ut talibus exultes, quis tibi prætor aut consul aut sacerdos -de sua liberalitate prastabit? Et tamen hæc jam habemus quodammodo per -fidem spiritu imaginante repræsentata. Ceterum qualia illa sunt, quæ -nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascenderunt?_" (I -Cor. ii. 9.) "_Credo circo et utraque cavea_" (first and fourth row, -or, according to others, the comic and the tragic stage) "_et omni -studio gratiora._" _Per fidem_: so stands it written. - - -16. - -Let us come to a conclusion. The two _opposing values_, "good and bad," -"good and evil," have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the -world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time -in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune -of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost be said that in the -meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the -meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more -psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark -of the _higher nature_, of the more psychological nature, than to be in -that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battleground -for those two opposites. The symbol of this fight, written in a writing -which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history -up to the present time, is called "Rome against Judæa, Judæa against -Rome." Hitherto there has been no greater event than _that_ fight, -the putting of _that_ question, _that_ deadly antagonism. Rome found -in the Jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its -diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was held to -be _convicted of hatred_ of the whole human race: and rightly so, in -so far as it is right to link the well-being and the future of the -human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of -the Roman values. What, conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome? -One can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to -carry one's mind back to the Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene -of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience. -(One should also appraise at its full value the profound logic of the -Christian instinct, when over this very book of hate it wrote the name -of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple to whom it attributed -that impassioned and ecstatic Gospel--therein lurks a portion of -truth, however much literary forging may have been necessary for -this purpose.) The Romans were the strong and aristocratic; a nation -stronger and more aristocratic has never existed in the world, has -never even been dreamed of; every relic of them, every inscription -enraptures, granted that one can divine _what_ it is that writes the -inscription. The Jews, conversely, were that priestly nation of -resentment par excellence, possessed by a unique genius for popular -morals: just compare with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts, -such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to realise afterwards what is -first rate, and what is fifth rate. - -Which of them has been provisionally victorious, Rome or Judæa? but -there is not a shadow of doubt; just consider to whom in Rome itself -nowadays you bow down, as though before the quintessence of all the -highest values--and not only in Rome, but almost over half the world, -everywhere where man has been tamed or is about to be tamed--to _three -Jews_, as we know, and _one Jewess_ (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter -the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the mother of the aforesaid -Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome is undoubtedly -defeated. At any rate there took place in the Renaissance a brilliantly -sinister revival of the classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation -of all things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from a trance, -stirred beneath the burden of the new Judaised Rome that had been built -over her, which presented the appearance of an œcumenical synagogue -and was called the "Church": but immediately Judæa triumphed again, -thanks to that fundamentally popular (German and English) movement -of revenge, which is called the Reformation, and taking also into -account its inevitable corollary, the restoration of the Church--the -restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace of classical Rome. -Judæa proved yet once more victorious over the classical ideal in the -French Revolution, and in a sense which was even more crucial and even -more profound: the last political aristocracy that existed in Europe, -that of the _French_ seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, broke into -pieces beneath the instincts of a resentful populace--never had the -world heard a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm: indeed, -there took place in the midst of it the most monstrous and unexpected -phenomenon; the ancient ideal _itself_ swept before the eyes and -conscience of humanity with all its life and with unheard-of splendour, -and in opposition to resentment's lying war-cry of _the prerogative -of the most_, in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement, and -equalisation, the will to a retrogression and twilight of humanity, -there rang out once again, stronger, simpler, more penetrating than -ever, the terrible and enchanting counter-warcry of _the prerogative of -the few_! Like a final signpost to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, -the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him -the incarnate problem _of the aristocratic ideal in itself_--consider -well what a problem it is:--Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and -Superman. - - -17. - -Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals -thereby relegated _ad acta_ for all time? Or only postponed, postponed -for a long time? May there not take place at some time or other a -much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old -conflagration? Further! Should not one wish _that_ consummation with -all one's strength?--will it one's self? demand it one's self? He who -at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, -will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion,--ground enough -for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for -some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly -_mean_ by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my -last book: _Beyond Good and Evil_--at any rate that is not the same as -"Beyond Good and Bad." - - -Note.--I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to -express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only -been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, -that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize -essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the -_history of morals_--perhaps this book may serve to give forcible -impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this -character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits -quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual -professional philosophers. - -"_What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is -afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation?_" - -On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to induce -physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems (_of the -value of the valuations_ which have prevailed up to the present): in -this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act -as the spokesmen and intermediaries in these particular instances, -after, of course, they have quite succeeded in transforming the -relationship between philosophy and physiology and medicine, which -is originally one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly -and fruitful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values, -all the "thou shalts" known to history and ethnology, need primarily -a _physiological_, at any rate in preference to a psychological, -elucidation and interpretation; all equally require a critique from -medical science. The question, "What is the _value_ of this or that -table of 'values' and morality?" will be asked from the most varied -standpoints. For instance, the question of "valuable _for what_" can -never be analysed with sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which -would evidently have value with regard to promoting in a race the -greatest possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing its -adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the preservation -of the greatest number) would have nothing like the same value, if it -were a question of evolving a stronger species. In gauging values, -the good of the majority and the good of the minority are opposed -standpoints: we leave it to the naïveté of English biologists to regard -the former standpoint as _intrinsically_ superior. _All_ the sciences -have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher; this -task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of -_value_, that he has to fix the _hierarchy of values_. - - - - -SECOND ESSAY. "GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE. - - -1. - -The breeding of an animal that _can promise_--is not this just that -very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is -not this the very problem of man? The fact that this problem has been -to a great extent solved, must appear all the more phenomenal to one -who can estimate at its full value that force of _forgetfulness_ which -works in opposition to it. Forgetfulness is no mere _vis inertiæ_, -as the superficial believe, rather is it a power of obstruction, -active and, in the strictest sense of the word, positive--a power -responsible for the fact that what we have lived, experienced, taken -into ourselves, no more enters into consciousness during the process -of digestion (it might be called psychic absorption) than all the -whole manifold process by which our physical nutrition, the so-called -"incorporation," is carried on. The temporary shutting of the doors -and windows of consciousness, the relief from the clamant alarums and -excursions, with which our subconscious world of servant organs works -in mutual co-operation and antagonism; a little quietude, a little -_tabula rasa_ of the consciousness, so as to make room again for the -new, and above all for the more noble functions and functionaries, room -for government, foresight, predetermination (for our organism is on an -oligarchic model)--this is the utility, as I have said, of the active -forgetfulness, which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, -repose, etiquette; and this shows at once why it is that there can -exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real _present_, -without forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventative apparatus is -damaged and discarded, is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is -something more than a comparison--he can "get rid of" nothing. But -this very animal who finds it necessary to be forgetful, in whom, in -fact, forgetfulness represents a force and a form of _robust_ health, -has reared for himself an opposition-power, a memory, with whose help -forgetfulness is, in certain instances, kept in check--in the cases, -namely, where promises have to be made;--so that it is by no means -a mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented impression, -not merely the indigestion occasioned by a once pledged word, which -one cannot dispose of, but an _active_ refusal to get rid of it, a -continuing and a wish to continue what has once been willed, an actual -_memory of the will_; so that between the original "I will," "I shall -do," and the actual discharge of the will, its act, we can easily -interpose a world of new strange phenomena, circumstances, veritable -volitions, without the snapping of this long chain of the will. But -what is the underlying hypothesis of all this? How thoroughly, in order -to be able to regulate the future in this way, must man have first -learnt to distinguish between necessitated and accidental phenomena, to -think causally, to see the distant as present and to anticipate it, to -fix with certainty what is the end, and what is the means to that end; -above all, to reckon, to have power to calculate--how thoroughly must -man have first become _calculable, disciplined, necessitated_ even for -himself and his own conception of himself, that, like a man entering -into a promise, he could guarantee himself _as a future_. - - -2. - -This is simply the long history of the origin of _responsibility_. -That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as -we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more -immediate task of first _making_ man to a certain extent, necessitated, -uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The -immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom"[1] (cp. _Dawn -of Day_, Aphs. 9, 14, and 16), the actual work of man on himself during -the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, -finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate -hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with -the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, -was _made_ genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at -the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally -matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally -bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as -the ripest fruit on its tree the _sovereign individual_, that resembles -only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the -autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are -mutually-exclusive terms),--in short, the man of the personal, long, -and independent will, _competent to promise_, and we find in him a -proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of _what_ has been at -last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of -power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this -man who has grown to freedom, who is really _competent_ to promise, -this lord of the _free_ will, this sovereign--how is it possible for -him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable -of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great -is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes--he "deserves" -all three--not to know that with this mastery over himself he is -necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, -over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? -The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this -possession his _standard of value_: looking out from himself upon -the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he -honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind -themselves by promises),--that is, every one who promises like a -sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his -trusts but confers _honour_ by the very fact of trusting, who gives -his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself -strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the -"teeth of fate,"--so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his -foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have -no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, -who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. -The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of _responsibility_, -the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and -over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become -an instinct, a dominating instinct--what name will he give to it, to -this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there -is no doubt about it--the sovereign man calls it his _conscience_. - - -3. - -His conscience?--One apprehends at once that the idea "conscience," -which is here seen in its supreme manifestation, supreme in fact to -almost the point of strangeness, should already have behind it a long -history and evolution. The ability to guarantee one's self with all -due pride, and also at the same time to _say yes_ to one's self--that -is, as has been said, a ripe fruit, but also a _late_ fruit:--How long -must needs this fruit hang sour and bitter on the tree! And for an even -longer period there was not a glimpse of such a fruit to to be had--no -one had taken it on himself to promise it, although everything on the -tree was quite ready for it, and everything was maturing for that very -consummation. "How is a memory to be made for the man-animal? How is an -impression to be so deeply fixed upon this ephemeral understanding, -half dense, and half silly, upon this incarnate forgetfulness, that -it will be permanently present?" As one may imagine, this primeval -problem was not solved by exactly gentle answers and gentle means; -perhaps there is nothing more awful and more sinister in the early -history of man than his _system of mnemonics_. "Something is burnt in -so as to remain in his memory: only that which never stops _hurting_ -remains in his memory." This is an axiom of the oldest (unfortunately -also the longest) psychology in the world. It might even be said that -wherever solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and gloomy colours are now -found in the life of the men and of nations of the world, there is some -_survival_ of that horror which was once the universal concomitant of -all promises, pledges, and obligations. The past, the past with all -its length, depth, and hardness, wafts to us its breath, and bubbles -up in us again, when we become "serious." When man thinks it necessary -to make for himself a memory, he never accomplishes it without blood, -tortures, and sacrifice; the most dreadful sacrifices and forfeitures -(among them the sacrifice of the first-born), the most loathsome -mutilation (for instance, castration), the most cruel rituals of all -the religious cults (for all religions are really at bottom systems -of cruelty)--all these things originate from that instinct which -found in pain its most potent mnemonic. In a certain sense the whole -of asceticism is to be ascribed to this: certain ideas have got to -be made inextinguishable, omnipresent, "fixed," with the object of -hypnotising the whole nervous and intellectual system through these -"fixed ideas"--and the ascetic methods and modes of life are the means -of freeing those ideas from the competition of all other ideas so as to -make them "unforgettable." The worse memory man had, the ghastlier the -signs presented by his customs; the severity of the penal laws affords -in particular a gauge of the extent of man's difficulty in conquering -forgetfulness, and in keeping a few primal postulates of social -intercourse ever present to the minds of those who were the slaves -of every momentary emotion and every momentary desire. We Germans do -certainly not regard ourselves as an especially cruel and hard-hearted -nation, still less as an especially casual and happy-go-lucky one; -but one has only to look at our old penal ordinances in order to -realise what a lot of trouble it takes in the world to evolve a -"nation of thinkers" (I mean: _the_ European nation which exhibits at -this very day the maximum of reliability, seriousness, bad taste, and -positiveness, which has on the strength of these qualities a right to -train every kind of European mandarin). These Germans employed terrible -means to make for themselves a memory, to enable them to master their -rooted plebeian instincts and the brutal crudity of those instincts: -think of the old German punishments, for instance, stoning (as far back -as the legend, the millstone falls on the head of the guilty man), -breaking on the wheel (the most original invention and speciality of -the German genius in the sphere of punishment), dart-throwing, tearing, -or trampling by horses ("quartering"), boiling the criminal in oil or -wine (still prevalent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the -highly popular flaying ("slicing into strips"), cutting the flesh out -of the breast; think also of the evil-doer being besmeared with honey, -and then exposed to the flies in a blazing sun. It was by the help of -such images and precedents that man eventually kept in his memory five -or six "I will nots" with regard to which he had already given his -_promise_, so as to be able to enjoy the advantages of society--and -verily with the help of this kind of memory man eventually attained -"reason"! Alas! reason, seriousness, mastery over the emotions, all -these gloomy, dismal things which are called reflection, all these -privileges and pageantries of humanity: how dear is the price that they -have exacted! How much blood and cruelty is the foundation of all "good -things"! - - -4. - -But how is it that that other melancholy object, the consciousness of -sin, the whole "bad conscience," came into the world? And it is here -that we turn back to our genealogists of morals. For the second time -I say--or have I not said it yet?--that they are worth nothing. Just -their own five-spans-long limited modern experience; no knowledge of -the past, and no wish to know it; still less a historic instinct, a -power of "second sight" (which is what is really required in this -case)--and despite this to go in for the history of morals. It stands -to reason that this must needs produce results which are removed from -the truth by something more than a respectful distance. - -Have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to -have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral -idea of "ought"[2] originates from the very material idea of "owe"? Or -that punishment developed as a retaliation absolutely independently -of any preliminary hypothesis of the freedom or determination of the -will?--And this to such an extent, that a high degree of civilisation -was always first necessary for the animal man to begin to make those -much more primitive distinctions of "intentional," "negligent," -"accidental," "responsible," and their contraries, and apply them -in the assessing of punishment. That idea--"the wrong-doer deserves -punishment _because_ he might have acted otherwise," in spite of the -fact that it is nowadays so cheap, obvious, natural, and inevitable, -and that it has had to serve as an illustration of the way in which -the sentiment of justice appeared on earth, is in point of fact -an exceedingly late, and even refined form of human judgment and -inference; the placing of this idea back at the beginning of the world -is simply a clumsy violation of the principles of primitive psychology. -Throughout the longest period of human history punishment was _never_ -based on the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action, and was -consequently not based on the hypothesis that only the guilty should -be punished;--on the contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days -for the same reason that parents punish their children even nowadays, -out of anger at an injury that they have suffered, an anger which vents -itself mechanically on the author of the injury--but this anger is kept -in bounds and modified through the idea that every injury has somewhere -or other its _equivalent_ price, and can really be paid off, even -though it be by means of pain to the author. Whence is it that this -ancient deep-rooted and now perhaps ineradicable idea has drawn its -strength, this idea of an equivalency between injury and pain? I have -already revealed its origin, in the contractual relationship between -_creditor_ and _ower_, that is as old as the existence of legal rights -at all, and in its turn points back to the primary forms of purchase, -sale, barter, and trade. - - -5. - -The realisation of these contractual relations excites, of course (as -would be already expected from our previous observations), a great -deal of suspicion and opposition towards the primitive society which -made or sanctioned them. In this society promises will be made; in -this society the object is to provide the promiser with a memory; -in this society, so may we suspect, there will be full scope for -hardness, cruelty, and pain: the "ower," in order to induce credit -in his promise of repayment, in order to give a guarantee of the -earnestness and sanctity of his promise, in order to drill into his -own conscience the duty, the solemn duty, of repayment, will, by -virtue of a contract with his creditor to meet the contingency of -his not paying, pledge something that he still possesses, something -that he still has in his power, for instance, his life or his wife, -or his freedom or his body (or under certain religious conditions -even his salvation, his soul's welfare, even his peace in the grave; -so in Egypt, where the corpse of the ower found even in the grave no -rest from the creditor--of course, from the Egyptian standpoint, this -peace was a matter of particular importance). But especially has the -creditor the power of inflicting on the body of the ower all kinds of -pain and torture--the power, for instance, of cutting off from it an -amount that appeared proportionate to the greatness of the debt;--this -point of view resulted in the universal prevalence at an early date of -precise schemes of valuation, frequently horrible in the minuteness -and meticulosity of their application, _legally_ sanctioned schemes of -valuation for individual limbs and parts of the body. I consider it as -already a progress, as a proof of a freer, less petty, and more Roman -conception of law, when the Roman Code of the Twelve Tables decreed -that it was immaterial how much or how little the creditors in such a -contingency cut off, "si plus minusve secuerunt, ne fraude esto." Let -us make the logic of the whole of this equalisation process clear; it -is strange enough. The equivalence consists in this: instead of an -advantage directly compensatory of his injury (that is, instead of an -equalisation in money, lands, or some kind of chattel), the creditor -is granted by way of repayment and compensation a certain _sensation -of satisfaction_--the satisfaction of being able to vent, without any -trouble, his power on one who is powerless, the delight "_de faire le -mal pour le plaisir de le faire_," the joy in sheer violence: and this -joy will be relished in proportion to the lowness and humbleness of -the creditor in the social scale, and is quite apt to have the effect -of the most delicious dainty, and even seem the foretaste of a higher -social position. Thanks to the punishment of the "ower," the creditor -participates in the rights of the masters. At last he too, for once in -a way, attains the edifying consciousness of being able to despise and -ill-treat a creature--as an "inferior"--or at any rate of _seeing_ him -being despised and ill-treated, in case the actual power of punishment, -the administration of punishment, has already become transferred to the -"authorities." The compensation consequently consists in a claim on -cruelty and a right to draw thereon. - - -6. - -It is then in _this_ sphere of the law of contract that we find the -cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of "guilt," "conscience," -"duty," the "sacredness of duty,"--their commencement, like the -commencement of all great things in the world, is thoroughly and -continuously saturated with blood. And should we not add that this -world has never really lost a certain savour of blood and torture (not -even in old Kant; the categorical imperative reeks of cruelty). It was -in this sphere likewise that there first became formed that sinister -and perhaps now indissoluble association of the ideas of "guilt" and -"suffering." To put the question yet again, why can suffering be a -compensation for "owing"?--Because the _infliction_ of suffering -produces the highest degree of happiness, because the injured party -will get in exchange for his loss (including his vexation at his loss) -an extraordinary counter-pleasure: the _infliction_ of suffering--a -real _feast_, something that, as I have said, was all the more -appreciated the greater the paradox created by the rank and social -status of the creditor. These observations are purely conjectural; for, -apart from the painful nature of the task, it is hard to plumb such -profound depths: the clumsy introduction of the idea of "revenge" as a -connecting-link simply hides and obscures the view instead of rendering -it clearer (revenge itself simply leads back again to the identical -problem--"How can the infliction of suffering be a satisfaction?"). -In my opinion it is repugnant to the delicacy, and still more to the -hypocrisy of tame domestic animals (that is, modern men; that is, -ourselves), to realise with all their energy the extent to which -_cruelty_ constituted the great joy and delight of ancient man, was -an ingredient which seasoned nearly all his pleasures, and conversely -the extent of the naïveté and innocence with which he manifested his -need for cruelty, when he actually made as a matter of principle -"disinterested malice" (or, to use Spinoza's expression, the _sympathia -malevolens_) into a _normal_ characteristic of man--as consequently -something to which the conscience says a hearty yes. The more profound -observer has perhaps already had sufficient opportunity for noticing -this most ancient and radical joy and delight of mankind; in _Beyond -Good and Evil_, Aph. 188 (and even earlier, in _The Dawn of Day_, Aphs. -18, 77, 113), I have cautiously indicated the continually growing -spiritualisation and "deification" of cruelty, which pervades the -whole history of the higher civilisation (and in the larger sense even -constitutes it). At any rate the time is not so long past when it was -impossible to conceive of royal weddings and national festivals on a -grand scale, without executions, tortures, or perhaps an _auto-da-fé_", -or similarly to conceive of an aristocratic household, without a -creature to serve as a butt for the cruel and malicious baiting of the -inmates. (The reader will perhaps remember Don Quixote at the court of -the Duchess: we read nowadays the whole of _Don Quixote_ with a bitter -taste in the mouth, almost with a sensation of torture, a fact which -would appear very strange and very incomprehensible to the author and -his contemporaries--they read it with the best conscience in the world -as the gayest of books; they almost died with laughing at it.) The -sight of suffering does one good, the infliction of suffering does one -more good--this is a hard maxim, but none the less a fundamental maxim, -old, powerful, and "human, all-too-human"; one, moreover, to which -perhaps even the apes as well would subscribe: for it is said that in -inventing bizarre cruelties they are giving abundant proof of their -future humanity, to which, as it were, they are playing the prelude. -Without cruelty, no feast: so teaches the oldest and longest history of -man--and in punishment too is there so much of the festive. - - -7. - -Entertaining, as I do, these thoughts, I am, let me say in parenthesis, -fundamentally opposed to helping our pessimists to new water for the -discordant and groaning mills of their disgust with life; on the -contrary, it should be shown specifically that, at the time when -mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was -brighter than it is nowadays when there are pessimists. The darkening -of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the -growth of man's shame _before man_. The tired pessimistic outlook, -the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted -ennui, all those are not the signs of the _most evil_ age of the human -race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the -swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong, -comes into existence--I mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, -thanks to which the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of -all his instincts. On the road to angelhood (not to use in this context -a harder word) man has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated -tongue, which have made not only the joy and innocence of the animal -repulsive to him, but also life itself:--so that sometimes he stands -with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like Pope Innocent the -Third, makes a black list of his own horrors ("unclean generation, -loathsome nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of the matter -out of which man develops, awful stench, secretion of saliva, urine, -and excrement"). Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out -as the first argument _against_ existence, as its most sinister -query, it is well to remember the times when men judged on converse -principles because they could not dispense with the _infliction_ of -suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first order, a veritable -bait of seduction to life. - -Perhaps in those days (this is to solace the weaklings) pain did not -hurt so much as it does nowadays: any physician who has treated negroes -(granted that these are taken as representative of the prehistoric -man) suffering from severe internal inflammations which would bring -a European, even though he had the soundest constitution, almost to -despair, would be in a position to come to this conclusion. Pain has -_not_ the same effect with negroes. (The curve of human sensibilities -to pain seems indeed to sink in an extraordinary and almost sudden -fashion, as soon as one has passed the upper ten thousand or ten -millions of over-civilised humanity, and I personally have no doubt -that, by comparison with one painful night passed by one single -hysterical chit of a cultured woman, the suffering of all the animals -taken together who have been put to the question of the knife, so as -to give scientific answers, are simply negligible.) We may perhaps -be allowed to admit the possibility of the craving for cruelty not -necessarily having become really extinct: it only requires, in view -of the fact that pain hurts more nowadays, a certain sublimation and -subtilisation, it must especially be translated to the imaginative and -psychic plane, and be adorned with such smug euphemisms, that even the -most fastidious and hypocritical conscience could never grow suspicious -of their real nature ("Tragic pity" is one of these euphemisms: -another is "_les nostalgies de la croix_"). What really raises one's -indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but -the senselessness of suffering; such a _senselessness_, however, -existed neither in Christianity, which interpreted suffering into a -whole mysterious salvation-apparatus, nor in the beliefs of the naive -ancient man, who only knew how to find a meaning in suffering from -the standpoint of the spectator, or the inflictor of the suffering. -In order to get the secret, undiscovered, and unwitnessed suffering -out of the world it was almost compulsory to invent gods and a -hierarchy of intermediate beings, in short, something which wanders -even among secret places, sees even in the dark, and makes a point -of never missing an interesting and painful spectacle. It was with -the help of such inventions that life got to learn the _tour de -force_, which has become part of its stock-in-trade, the _tour de -force_ of self-justification, of the justification of evil; nowadays -this would perhaps require other auxiliary devices (for instance, -life as a riddle, life as a problem of knowledge). "Every evil is -justified in the sight of which a god finds edification," so rang the -logic of primitive sentiment--and, indeed, was it only of primitive? -The gods conceived as friends of spectacles of cruelty--oh how far -does this primeval conception extend even nowadays into our European -civilisation! One would perhaps like in this context to consult Luther -and Calvin. It is at any rate certain that even the Greeks knew no -more piquant seasoning for the happiness of their gods than the joys -of cruelty. What, do you think, was the mood with which Homer makes -his gods look down upon the fates of men? What final meaning have at -bottom the Trojan War and similar tragic horrors? It is impossible to -entertain any doubt on the point: they were intended as festival games -for the gods, and, in so far as the poet is of a more godlike breed -than other men, as festival games also for the poets. It was in just -this spirit and no other, that at a later date the moral philosophers -of Greece conceived the eyes of God as still looking down on the moral -struggle, the heroism, and the self-torture of the virtuous; the -Heracles of duty was on a stage, and was conscious of the fact; virtue -without witnesses was something quite unthinkable for this nation of -actors. Must not that philosophic invention, so audacious and so fatal, -which was then absolutely new to Europe, the invention of "free will," -of the absolute spontaneity of man in good and evil, simply have been -made for the specific purpose of justifying the idea, that the interest -of the gods in humanity and human virtue was _inexhaustible_? - -There would never on the stage of this free-will world be a dearth of -really new, really novel and exciting situations, plots, catastrophes. -A world thought out on completely deterministic lines would be easily -guessed by the gods, and would consequently soon bore them--sufficient -reason for these _friends of the gods_, the philosophers, not to -ascribe to their gods such a deterministic world. The whole of ancient -humanity is full of delicate consideration for the spectator, being as -it is a world of thorough publicity and theatricality, which could not -conceive of happiness without spectacles and festivals.--And, as has -already been said, even in great punishment there is so much which is -festive. - - -8. - -The feeling of "ought," of personal obligation (to take up again -the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the -oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the -relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and ower: here it -was that individual confronted individual, and that individual -_matched himself against_ individual. There has not yet been found -a grade of civilisation so low, as not to manifest some trace of -this relationship. Making prices, assessing values, thinking out -equivalents, exchanging--all this preoccupied the primal thoughts -of man to such an extent that in a certain sense it constituted -_thinking_ itself: it was here that was trained the oldest form of -sagacity, it was here in this sphere that we can perhaps trace the -first commencement of man's pride, of his feeling of superiority over -other animals. Perhaps our word "Mensch" (_manas_) still expresses -just something of _this_ self-pride: man denoted himself as the being -who measures values, who values and measures, as the "assessing" -animal _par excellence_. Sale and purchase, together with their -psychological concomitants, are older than the origins of any form of -social organisation and union: it is rather from the most rudimentary -form of individual right that the budding consciousness of exchange, -commerce, debt, right, obligation, compensation was first transferred -to the rudest and most elementary of the social complexes (in their -relation to similar complexes), the habit of comparing force with -force, together with that of measuring, of calculating. His eye was -now focussed to this perspective; and with that ponderous consistency -characteristic of ancient thought, which, though set in motion with -difficulty, yet proceeds inflexibly along the line on which it has -started, man soon arrived at the great generalisation, "everything has -its price, _all_ can be paid for," the oldest and most naive moral -canon of _justice_, the beginning of all "kindness," of all "equity," -of all "goodwill," of all "objectivity" in the world. Justice in this -initial phase is the goodwill among people of about equal power to come -to terms with each other, to come to an understanding again by means of -a settlement, and with regard to the less powerful, to _compel_ them -to agree among themselves to a settlement. - - -9. - -Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, -is present or again possible at all periods), the community stands to -its members in that important and radical relationship of creditor to -his "owers." Man lives in a community, man enjoys the advantages of -a community (and what advantages! we occasionally underestimate them -nowadays), man lives protected, spared, in peace and trust, secure -from certain injuries and enmities, to which the man outside the -community, the "peaceless" man, is exposed,--a German understands the -original meaning of "Elend" (_êlend_),--secure because he has entered -into pledges and obligations to the community in respect of these very -injuries and enmities. What happens _when this is not the case_? The -community, the defrauded creditor, will get itself paid, as well as it -can, one can reckon on that. In this case the question of the direct -damage done by the offender is quite subsidiary: quite apart from -this the criminal[3] is above all a breaker, a breaker of word and -covenant _to the whole_, as regards all the advantages and amenities -of the communal life in which up to that time he had participated. The -criminal is an "ower" who not only fails to repay the advances and -advantages that have been given to him, but even sets out to attack -his creditor: consequently he is in the future not only, as is fair, -deprived of all these advantages and amenities--he is in addition -reminded of the _importance_ of those advantages. The wrath of the -injured creditor, of the community, puts him back in the wild and -outlawed status from which he was previously protected: the community -repudiates him--and now every kind of enmity can vent itself on him. -Punishment is in this stage of civilisation simply the copy, the mimic, -of the normal treatment of the hated, disdained, and conquered enemy, -who is not only deprived of every right and protection but of every -mercy; so we have the martial law and triumphant festival of the _væ -victis_! in all its mercilessness and cruelty. This shows why war -itself (counting the sacrificial cult of war) has produced all the -forms under which punishment has manifested itself in history. - - -10. - -As it grows more powerful, the community tends to take the offences of -the individual less seriously, because they are now regarded as being -much less revolutionary and dangerous to the corporate existence: the -evil-doer is no more outlawed and put outside the pale, the common -wrath can no longer vent itself upon him with its old licence,--on -the contrary, from this very time it is against this wrath, and -particularly against the wrath of those directly injured, that the -evil-doer is carefully shielded and protected by the community. As, in -fact, the penal law develops, the following characteristics become -more and more clearly marked: compromise with the wrath of those -directly affected by the misdeed; a consequent endeavour to localise -the matter and to prevent a further, or indeed a general spread of -the disturbance; attempts to find equivalents and to settle the whole -matter (compositio); above all, the will, which manifests itself with -increasing definiteness, to treat every offence as in a certain degree -capable of _being paid off_, and consequently, at any rate up to a -certain point, to _isolate_ the offender from his act. As the power and -the self-consciousness of a community increases, so proportionately -does the penal law become mitigated; conversely every weakening and -jeopardising of the community revives the harshest forms of that law. -The creditor has always grown more humane proportionately as he has -grown more rich; finally the amount of injury he can endure without -really suffering becomes the criterion of his wealth. It is possible -to conceive of a society blessed with so great a _consciousness of its -own power_ as to indulge in the most aristocratic luxury of letting -its wrong-doers go _scot-free_.--"What do my parasites matter to me?" -might society say. "Let them live and flourish! I am strong enough for -it."--The justice which began with the maxim, "Everything can be paid -off, everything must be paid off," ends with connivance at the escape -of those who cannot pay to escape--it ends, like every good thing on -earth, by _destroying itself_.--The self-destruction of Justice! we -know the pretty name it calls itself--_Grace!_ it remains, as is -obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law. - - -11. - -A deprecatory word here against the attempts, that have lately been -made, to find the origin of justice on quite another basis--namely, -on that of _resentment_. Let me whisper a word in the ear of the -psychologists, if they would fain study revenge itself at close -quarters: this plant blooms its prettiest at present among Anarchists -and anti-Semites, a hidden flower, as it has ever been, like the -violet, though, forsooth, with another perfume. And as like must -necessarily emanate from like, it will not be a matter for surprise -that it is just in such circles that we see the birth of endeavours (it -is their old birthplace--compare above, First Essay, paragraph 14), -to sanctify _revenge_ under the name of _justice_ (as though Justice -were at bottom merely a _development_ of the consciousness of injury), -and thus with the rehabilitation of revenge to reinstate generally -and collectively all the _reactive_ emotions. I object to this last -point least of all. It even seems _meritorious_ when regarded from the -standpoint of the whole problem of biology (from which standpoint the -value of these emotions has up to the present been underestimated). -And that to which I alone call attention, is the circumstance that -it is the spirit of revenge itself, from which develops this new -nuance of scientific equity (for the benefit of hate, envy, mistrust, -jealousy, suspicion, rancour, revenge). This scientific "equity" -stops immediately and makes way for the accents of deadly enmity and -prejudice, so soon as another group of emotions comes on the scene, -which in my opinion are of a much higher biological value than these -reactions, and consequently have a paramount claim to the valuation -and appreciation of science: I mean the really _active_ emotions, such -as personal and material ambition, and so forth. (E. Dühring, _Value -of Life; Course of Philosophy_, and _passim_.) So much against this -tendency in general: but as for the particular maxim of Dühring's, -that the home of Justice is to be found in the sphere of the reactive -feelings, our love of truth compels us drastically to invert his own -proposition and to oppose to him this other maxim: the _last_ sphere -conquered by the spirit of justice is the sphere of the feeling of -reaction! When it really comes about that the just man remains just -even as regards his injurer (and not merely cold, moderate, reserved, -indifferent: being just is always a _positive_ state); when, in spite -of the strong provocation of personal insult, contempt, and calumny, -the lofty and clear objectivity of the just and judging eye (whose -glance is as profound as it is gentle) is untroubled, why then we have -a piece of perfection, a past master of the world--something, in fact, -which it would not be wise to expect, and which should not at any -rate be too easily _believed_. Speaking generally, there is no doubt -but that even the justest individual only requires a little dose of -hostility, malice, or innuendo to drive the blood into his brain and -the fairness _from_ it. The active man, the attacking, aggressive man -is always a hundred degrees nearer to justice than the man who merely -reacts; he certainly has no need to adopt the tactics, necessary in the -case of the reacting man, of making false and biassed valuations of his -object. It is, in point of fact, for this reason that the aggressive -man has at all times enjoyed the stronger, bolder, more aristocratic, -and also _freer_ outlook, the _better_ conscience. On the other hand, -we already surmise who it really is that has on his conscience the -invention of the "bad conscience,"--the resentful man! Finally, let man -look at himself in history. In what sphere up to the present has the -whole administration of law, the actual need of law, found its earthly -home? Perchance in the sphere of the reacting man? Not for a minute: -rather in that of the active, strong, spontaneous, aggressive man? I -deliberately defy the above-mentioned agitator (who himself makes this -self-confession, "the creed of revenge has run through all my works -and endeavours like the red thread of Justice"), and say, that judged -historically law in the world represents the very war _against_ the -reactive feelings, the very war waged on those feelings by the powers -of activity and aggression, which devote some of their strength to -damming and keeping within bounds this effervescence of hysterical -reactivity, and to forcing it to some compromise. Everywhere where -justice is practised and justice is maintained, it is to be observed -that the stronger power, when confronted with the weaker powers which -are inferior to it (whether they be groups, or individuals), searches -for weapons to put an end to the senseless fury of resentment, while -it carries on its object, partly by taking the victim of resentment -out of the clutches of revenge, partly by substituting for revenge a -campaign of its own against the enemies of peace and order, partly -by finding, suggesting, and occasionally enforcing settlements, -partly by standardising certain equivalents for injuries, to which -equivalents the element of resentment is henceforth finally referred. -The most drastic measure, however, taken and effectuated by the supreme -power, to combat the preponderance of the feelings of spite and -vindictiveness--it takes this measure as soon as it is at all strong -enough to do so--is the foundation of _law_, the imperative declaration -of what in its eyes is to be regarded as just and lawful, and what -unjust and unlawful: and while, after the foundation of law, the -supreme power treats the aggressive and arbitrary acts of individuals, -or of whole groups, as a violation of law, and a revolt against -itself, it distracts the feelings of its subjects from the immediate -injury inflicted by such a violation, and thus eventually attains the -very opposite result to that always desired by revenge, which sees -and recognises nothing but the standpoint of the injured party. From -henceforth the eye becomes trained to a more and more _impersonal_ -valuation of the deed, even the eye of the injured party himself -(though this is in the final stage of all, as has been previously -remarked)--on this principle "right" and "wrong" first manifest -themselves after the foundation of law (and not, as Dühring maintains, -only after the act of violation). To talk of intrinsic right and -intrinsic wrong is absolutely non-sensical; intrinsically, an injury, -an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, -inasmuch as life is _essentially_ (that is, in its cardinal functions) -something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and -annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character. -It is necessary to make an even more serious confession:--viewed from -the most advanced biological standpoint, conditions of legality can be -only _exceptional conditions_, in that they are partial restrictions -of the real life-will, which makes for power, and in that they are -subordinated to the life-will's general end as particular means, -that is, as means to create _larger_ units of strength. A legal -organisation, conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a weapon -in a fight of complexes of power, but as a weapon _against_ fighting, -generally something after the style of Dühring's communistic model -of treating every will as equal with every other will, would be a -principle _hostile to life_, a destroyer and dissolver of man, an -outrage on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a secret cut to -Nothingness.-- - - -12. - -A word more on the origin and end of punishment--two problems which -are or ought to be kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually -lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists employed -up to the present in these cases? Their inveterate naïveté. They find -out some "end" in the punishment, for instance, revenge and deterrence, -and then in all their innocence set this end at the beginning, as the -_causa fiendi_ of the punishment, and--they have done the trick. But -the patching up of a history of the origin of law is the last use to -which the "End in Law"[4] ought to be put. Perhaps there is no more -pregnant principle for any kind of history than the following, which, -difficult though it is to master, _should_ none the less be _mastered_ -in every detail.--The origin of the existence of a thing and its final -utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of -ends, are _toto cœlo_ opposed to each other--everything, anything, -which exists and which prevails anywhere, will always be put to new -purposes by a force superior to itself, will be commandeered afresh, -will be turned and transformed to new uses; all "happening" in the -organic world consists of _overpowering_ and dominating, and again all -overpowering and domination is a new interpretation and adjustment, -which must necessarily obscure or absolutely extinguish the subsisting -"meaning" and "end." The most perfect comprehension of the utility -of any physiological organ (or also of a legal institution, social -custom, political habit, form in art or in religious worship) does not -for a minute imply any simultaneous comprehension of its origin: this -may seem uncomfortable and unpalatable to the older men,--for it has -been the immemorial belief that understanding the final cause or the -utility of a thing, a form, an institution, means also understanding -the reason for its origin: to give an example of this logic, the eye -was made to see, the hand was made to grasp. So even punishment was -conceived as invented with a view to punishing. But all ends and all -utilities are only _signs_ that a Will to Power has mastered a less -powerful force, has impressed thereon out of its own self the meaning -of a function; and the whole history of a "Thing," an organ, a custom, -can on the same principle be regarded as a continuous "sign-chain" -of perpetually new interpretations and adjustments, whose causes, so -far from needing to have even a mutual connection, sometimes follow -and alternate with each other absolutely haphazard. Similarly, the -evolution of a "thing," of a custom, is anything but its _progressus_ -to an end, still less a logical and direct _progressus_ attained -with the minimum expenditure of energy and cost: it is rather the -succession of processes of subjugation, more or less profound, more -or less mutually independent, which operate on the thing itself; it -is, further, the resistance which in each case invariably displayed -this subjugation, the Protean wriggles by way of defence and reaction, -and, further, the results of successful counter-efforts. The form is -fluid, but the meaning is even more so--even inside every individual -organism the case is the same: with every genuine growth of the whole, -the "function" of the individual organs becomes shifted,--in certain -cases a partial perishing of these organs, a diminution of their -numbers (for instance, through annihilation of the connecting members), -can be a symptom of growing strength and perfection. What I mean is -this: even partial _loss of utility_, decay, and degeneration, loss of -function and purpose, in a word, death, appertain to the conditions -of the genuine _progressus_; which always appears in the shape of -a will and way to _greater_ power, and is always realised at the -expense of innumerable smaller powers. The magnitude of a "progress" -is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires: humanity -as a mass sacrificed to the prosperity of the one _stronger_ species -of Man--that _would be_ a progress. I emphasise all the more this -cardinal characteristic of the historic method, for the reason that in -its essence it runs counter to predominant instincts and prevailing -taste, which much prefer to put up with absolute casualness, even with -the mechanical senselessness of all phenomena, than with the theory -of a power-will, in exhaustive play throughout all phenomena. The -democratic idiosyncrasy against everything which rules and wishes to -rule, the modern _misarchism_ (to coin a bad word for a bad thing), -has gradually but so thoroughly transformed itself into the guise of -intellectualism, the most abstract intellectualism, that even nowadays -it penetrates and _has the right_ to penetrate step by step into the -most exact and apparently the most objective sciences: this tendency -has, in fact, in my view already dominated the whole of physiology -and biology, and to their detriment, as is obvious, in so far as -it has spirited away a radical idea, the idea of true _activity_. -The tyranny of this idiosyncrasy, however, results in the theory -of "adaptation" being pushed forward into the van of the argument, -exploited; adaptation--that means to say, a second-class activity, a -mere capacity for "reacting"; in fact, life itself has been defined -(by Herbert Spencer) as an increasingly effective internal adaptation -to external circumstances. This definition, however, fails to realise -the real essence of life, its will to power. It fails to appreciate the -paramount superiority enjoyed by those plastic forces of spontaneity, -aggression, and encroachment with their new interpretations and -tendencies, to the operation of which adaptation is only a natural -corollary: consequently the sovereign office of the highest -functionaries in the organism itself (among which the life-will appears -as an active and formative principle) is repudiated. One remembers -Huxley's reproach to Spencer of his "administrative Nihilism": but it -is a case of something much _more_ than "administration." - - -13. - -To return to our subject, namely _punishment_, we must make -consequently a double distinction: first, the relatively permanent -_element_, the custom, the act, the "drama," a certain rigid sequence -of methods of procedure; on the other hand, the fluid element, the -meaning, the end, the expectation which is attached to the operation of -such procedure. At this point we immediately assume, _per analogiam_ -(in accordance with the theory of the historic method, which we have -elaborated above), that the procedure itself is something older and -earlier than its utilisation in punishment, that this utilisation was -_introduced_ and interpreted into the procedure (which had existed -for a long time, but whose employment had another meaning), in short, -that the case is _different_ from that hitherto supposed by our _naïf_ -genealogists of morals and of law, who thought that the procedure was -_invented_ for the purpose of punishment, in the same way that the hand -had been previously thought to have been invented for the purpose of -grasping. With regard to the other element in _punishment_, its fluid -element, its meaning, the idea of punishment in a very late stage of -civilisation (for instance, contemporary Europe) is not content with -manifesting merely one meaning, but manifests a whole synthesis "of -meanings." The past general history of punishment, the history of its -employment for the most diverse ends, crystallises eventually into -a kind of unity, which is difficult to analyse into its parts, and -which, it is necessary to emphasise, absolutely defies definition. -(It is nowadays impossible to say definitely _the precise reason_ -for punishment: all ideas, in which a whole process is promiscuously -comprehended, elude definition; it is only that which has no history, -which can be defined.) At an earlier stage, on the contrary, that -synthesis of meanings appears much less rigid and much more elastic; we -can realise how in each individual case the elements of the synthesis -change their value and their position, so that now one element and -now another stands out and predominates over the others, nay, in -certain cases one element (perhaps the end of deterrence) seems to -eliminate all the rest. At any rate, so as to give some idea of the -uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature of the meaning of -punishment and of the manner in which one identical procedure can -be employed and adapted for the most diametrically opposed objects, -I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to -me, a scheme itself based on comparatively small and accidental -material.--Punishment, as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable -of further injury.--Punishment, as compensation for the injury -sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including -the form of sentimental compensation).--Punishment, as an isolation -of that which disturbs the equilibrium, so as to prevent the further -spreading of the disturbance.--Punishment as a means of inspiring -fear of those who determine and execute the punishment.--Punishment -as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has -up to that time enjoyed (for example, when he is utilised as a -slave in the mines).--Punishment, as the elimination of an element -of decay (sometimes of a whole branch, as according to the Chinese -laws, consequently as a means to the purification of the race, or -the preservation of a social type).---Punishment as a festival, as -the violent oppression and humiliation of an enemy that has at last -been subdued.--Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers -the punishment--the so-called "correction," or for the witnesses of -its administration. Punishment, as the payment of a fee stipulated -for by the power which protects the evil-doer from the excesses of -revenge.--Punishment, as a compromise with the natural phenomenon -of revenge, in so far as revenge is still maintained and claimed -as a privilege by the stronger races.--Punishment as a declaration -and measure of war against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, -of authority, who is fought by society with the weapons which war -provides, as a spirit dangerous to the community, as a breaker of the -contract on which the community is based, as a rebel, a traitor, and a -breaker of the peace. - - -14. - -This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment -is overloaded with utilities of all kinds. This makes it all the -more permissible to eliminate one supposed utility, which passes, at -any rate in the popular mind, for its most essential utility, and -which is just what even now provides the strongest support for that -faith in punishment which is nowadays for many reasons tottering. -Punishment is supposed to have the value of exciting in the guilty -the consciousness of guilt; in punishment is sought the proper -instrumentum of that psychic reaction which becomes known as a "bad -conscience," "remorse." But this theory is even, from the point of -view of the present, a violation of reality and psychology: and how -much more so is the case when we have to deal with the longest period -of man's history, his primitive history! Genuine remorse is certainly -extremely rare among wrong-doers and the victims of punishment; prisons -and houses of correction are not _the_ soil on which this worm of -remorse pullulates for choice--this is the unanimous opinion of all -conscientious observers, who in many cases arrive at such a judgment -with enough reluctance and against their own personal wishes. Speaking -generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it -sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of -resistance. When it happens that it breaks the man's energy and brings -about a piteous prostration and abjectness, such a result is certainly -even less salutary than the average effect of punishment, which is -characterised by a harsh and sinister doggedness. The thought of those -_prehistoric_ millennia brings us to the unhesitating conclusion, -that it was simply through punishment that the evolution of the -consciousness of guilt was most forcibly retarded--at any rate in the -victims of the punishing power. In particular, let us not underestimate -the extent to which, by the very sight of the judicial and executive -procedure, the wrong-doer is himself prevented from feeling that his -deed, the character of his act, is _intrinsically_ reprehensible: for -he sees clearly the same kind of acts practised in the service of -justice, and then called good, and practised with a good conscience; -acts such as espionage, trickery, bribery, trapping, the whole -intriguing and insidious art of the policeman and the informer--the -whole system, in fact, manifested in the different kinds of punishment -(a system not excused by passion, but based on principle), of robbing, -oppressing, insulting, imprisoning, racking, murdering.--All this -he sees treated by his judges, not as acts meriting censure and -condemnation _in themselves_, but only in a particular context and -application. It was not on this soil that grew the "bad conscience," -that most sinister and interesting plant of our earthly vegetation-- -in point of fact, throughout a most lengthy period, no suggestion of -having to do with a "guilty man" manifested itself in the consciousness -of the man who judged and punished. One had merely to deal with an -author of an injury, an irresponsible piece of fate. And the man -himself, on whom the punishment subsequently fell like a piece of fate, -was occasioned no more of an "inner pain" than would be occasioned by -the sudden approach of some uncalculated event, some terrible natural -catastrophe, a rushing, crushing avalanche against which there is no -resistance. - - -15. - -This truth came insidiously enough to the consciousness of Spinoza (to -the disgust of his commentators, who (like Kuno Fischer, for instance) -give themselves no end of _trouble_ to misunderstand him on this -point), when one afternoon (as he sat raking up who knows what memory) -he indulged in the question of what was really left for him personally -of the celebrated _morsus conscientiæ_--Spinoza, who had relegated -"good and evil" to the sphere of human imagination, and indignantly -defended the honour of his "free" God against those blasphemers who -affirmed that God did everything _sub ratione boni_ ("but this was -tantamount to subordinating God to fate, and would really be the -greatest of all absurdities"). For Spinoza the world had returned -again to that innocence in which it lay before the discovery of the -bad conscience: what, then, had happened to the _morsus conscientiæ_? -"The antithesis of _gaudium_," said he at last to himself,--"A sadness -accompanied by the recollection of a past event which has turned out -contrary to all expectation" (_Eth_. III., Propos. XVIII. Schol. -i. ii.). Evil-doers have throughout thousands of years felt when -overtaken by punishment _exactly like Spinoza_, on the subject of -their "offence": "here is something which went wrong contrary to my -anticipation," not "I ought not to have done this."--They submitted -themselves to punishment, just as one submits one's self to a disease, -to a misfortune, or to death, with that stubborn and resigned fatalism -which gives the Russians, for instance, even nowadays, the advantage -over us Westerners, in the handling of life. If at that period there -was a critique of action, the criterion was prudence: the real _effect_ -of punishment is unquestionably chiefly to be found in a sharpening -of the sense of prudence, in a lengthening of the memory, in a will -to adopt more of a policy of caution, suspicion, and secrecy; in the -recognition that there are many things which are unquestionably beyond -one's capacity; in a kind of improvement in self-criticism. The broad -effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the -increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery -of the desires: so it is that punishment _tames_ man, but does not make -him "better"--it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert -the contrary ("Injury makes a man cunning," says a popular proverb: so -far as it makes him cunning, it makes him also bad. Fortunately, it -often enough makes him stupid). - - -16. - -At this juncture I cannot avoid trying to give a tentative and -provisional expression to my own hypothesis concerning the origin of -the bad conscience: it is difficult to make it fully appreciated, -and it requires continuous meditation, attention, and digestion. I -regard the bad conscience as the serious illness which man was bound -to contract under the stress of the most radical change which he has -ever experienced--that change, when he found himself finally imprisoned -within the pale of society and of peace. - -Just like the plight of the water-animals, when they were compelled -either to become land-animals or to perish, so was the plight of these -half-animals, perfectly adapted as they were to the savage life of war, -prowling, and adventure--suddenly all their instincts were rendered -worthless and "switched off." Henceforward they had to walk on their -feet--"carry themselves," whereas heretofore they had been carried by -the water: a terrible heaviness oppressed them. They found themselves -clumsy in obeying the simplest directions, confronted with this new -and unknown world they had no longer their old guides--the regulative -instincts that had led them unconsciously to safety--they were reduced, -were those unhappy creatures, to thinking, inferring, calculating, -putting together causes and results, reduced to that poorest and most -erratic organ of theirs, their "consciousness." I do not believe -there was ever in the world such a feeling of misery, such a leaden -discomfort--further, those old instincts had not immediately ceased -their demands! Only it was difficult and rarely possible to gratify -them: speaking broadly, they were compelled to satisfy themselves by -new and, as it were, hole-and-corner methods. All instincts which -do not find a vent without, _turn inwards_--this is what I mean by -the growing "internalisation" of man: consequently we have the first -growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. The whole -inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between -two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionately, and -obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man's external outlet -became _obstructed_. These terrible bulwarks, with which the social -organisation protected itself against the old instincts of freedom -(punishments belong pre-eminently to these bulwarks), brought it -about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man became -turned backwards against man himself. Enmity, cruelty, the delight -in persecution, in surprises, change, destruction--the turning all -these instincts against their own possessors: this is the origin of -the "bad conscience." It was man, who, lacking external enemies and -obstacles, and imprisoned as he was in the oppressive narrowness and -monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted, -gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; it was this animal in the -hands of the tamer, which beat itself against the bars of its cage; it -was this being who, pining and yearning for that desert home of which -it had been deprived, was compelled to create out of its own self, an -adventure, a torture-chamber, a hazardous and perilous desert--it was -this fool, this homesick and desperate prisoner--who invented the "bad -conscience." But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister -illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of -man from the disease called man, as the result of a violent breaking -from his animal past, the result, as it were, of a spasmodic plunge -into a new environment and new conditions of existence, the result of -a declaration of war against the old instincts, which up to that time -had been the staple of his power, his joy, his formidableness. Let -us immediately add that this fact of an animal ego turning against -itself, taking part against itself, produced in the world so novel, -profound, unheard-of, problematic, inconsistent, and _pregnant_ a -phenomenon, that the aspect of the world was radically altered thereby. -In sooth, only divine spectators could have appreciated the drama -that then began, and whose end baffles conjecture as yet--a drama too -subtle, too wonderful, too paradoxical to warrant its undergoing a -non-sensical and unheeded performance on some random grotesque planet! -Henceforth man is to be counted as one of the most unexpected and -sensational lucky shots in the game of the "big baby" of Heracleitus, -whether he be called Zeus or Chance--he awakens on his behalf the -interest, excitement, hope, almost the confidence, of his being the -harbinger and forerunner of something, of man being no end, but only a -stage, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise. - - -17. - -It is primarily involved in this hypothesis of the origin of the bad -conscience, that that alteration was no gradual and no voluntary -alteration, and that it did not manifest itself as an organic -adaptation to new conditions, but as a break, a jump, a necessity, an -inevitable fate, against which there was no resistance and never a -spark of resentment. And secondarily, that the fitting of a hitherto -unchecked and amorphous population into a fixed form, starting as -it had done in an act of violence, could only be accomplished by -acts of violence and nothing else--that the oldest "State" appeared -consequently as a ghastly tyranny, a grinding ruthless piece of -machinery, which went on working, till this raw material of a -semi-animal populace was not only thoroughly kneaded and elastic, but -also _moulded_. I used the word "State": my meaning is self-evident, -namely, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and -masters, which with all its warlike organisation and all its organising -power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers -possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. -Such is the origin of the "State." That fantastic theory that makes it -begin with a contract is, I think, disposed of. He who can command, -he who is a master by "nature," he who comes on the scene forceful -in deed and gesture--what has he to do with contracts? Such beings -defy calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason, notice, -excuse, they are there like the lightning is there, too terrible, too -sudden, too convincing, too "different," to be personally even hated. -Their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they -are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are:--their -appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of sovereignty which is -live, in which the functions are partitioned and apportioned, in which -above all no part is received or finds a place, until pregnant with -a "meaning" in regard to the whole. They are ignorant of the meaning -of guilt, responsibility, consideration, are these born organisers; -in them predominates that terrible artist-egoism, that gleams like -brass, and that knows itself justified to all eternity, in its work, -even as a mother in her child. It is not in _them_ that there grew -the bad conscience, that is elementary--but it would not have grown -_without_ them, repulsive growth as it was, it would be missing, had -not a tremendous quantity of freedom been expelled from the world by -the stress of their hammer-strokes, their artist violence, or been at -any rate made invisible and, as it were, _latent_. This _instinct of -freedom_ forced into being latent--it is already clear--this instinct -of freedom forced back, trodden back, imprisoned within itself, and -finally only able to find vent and relief in itself; this, only this, -is the beginning of the "bad conscience." - - -18. - -Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial -painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at -work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and organisers, -and builds states, which here, internally, on a smaller and pettier -scale and with a retrogressive tendency, makes itself a bad science in -the "labyrinth of the breast," to use Goethe's phrase, and which builds -negative ideals; it is, I repeat, that identical _instinct of freedom_ -(to use my own language, the will to power): only the material, on -which this force with all its constructive and tyrannous nature is -let loose, is here man himself, his whole old animal self--and not as -in the case of that more grandiose and sensational phenomenon, the -_other_ man, _other_ men. This secret self-tyranny, this cruelty of -the artist, this delight in giving a form to one's self as a piece of -difficult, refractory, and suffering material, in burning in a will, a -critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a negation; this sinister and -ghastly labour of love on the part of a soul, whose will is cloven -in two within itself, which makes itself suffer from delight in the -infliction of suffering; this wholly _active_ bad conscience has -finally (as one already anticipates)--true fountainhead as it is of -idealism and imagination--produced an abundance of novel and amazing -beauty and affirmation, and perhaps has really been the first to -give birth to beauty at all. What would beauty be, forsooth, if its -contradiction had not first been presented to consciousness, if the -ugly had not first said to itself, "I am ugly"? At any rate, after this -hint the problem of how far idealism and beauty can be traced in such -opposite ideas as "_selflessness_," _self-denial_, _self-sacrifice_, -becomes less problematical; and indubitably in future we shall -certainly know the real and original character of the _delight_ -experienced by the self-less, the self-denying, the self-sacrificing: -this delight is a phase of cruelty.--So much provisionally for the -origin of "altruism" as a _moral_ value, and the marking out the ground -from which this value has grown: it is only the bad conscience, only -the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the -existence of altruism as a _value_. - - -19. - -Undoubtedly the bad conscience is an illness, but an illness like -pregnancy is an illness. If we search out the conditions under which -this illness reaches its most terrible and sublime zenith, we shall see -what really first brought about its entry into the world. But to do -this we must take a long breath, and we must first of all go back once -again to an earlier point of view. The relation at civil law of the -ower to his creditor (which has already been discussed in detail), has -been interpreted once again (and indeed in a manner which historically -is exceedingly remarkable and suspicious) into a relationship, which -is perhaps more incomprehensible to us moderns than to any other era; -that is, into the relationship of the _existing_ generation to its -_ancestors_. Within the original tribal association--we are talking of -primitive times--each living generation recognises a legal obligation -towards the earlier generation, and particularly towards the earliest, -which founded the family (and this is something much more than a mere -sentimental obligation, the existence of which, during the longest -period of man's history, is by no means indisputable). There prevails -in them the conviction that it is only thanks to sacrifices and efforts -of their ancestors, that the race _persists_ at all--and that this -has to be _paid back_ to them by sacrifices and services. Thus is -recognised the _owing_ of a debt, which accumulates continually by -reason of these ancestors never ceasing in their subsequent life as -potent spirits to secure by their power new privileges and advantages -to the race. Gratis, perchance? But there is no gratis for that raw -and "mean-souled" age. What return can be made?--Sacrifice (at first, -nourishment, in its crudest sense), festivals, temples, tributes of -veneration, above all, obedience--since all customs are, _quâ_ works of -the ancestors, equally their precepts and commands--are the ancestors -ever given enough? This suspicion remains and grows: from time to time -it extorts a great wholesale ransom, something monstrous in the way of -repayment of the creditor (the notorious sacrifice of the first-born, -for example, blood, human blood in any case). The _fear_ of ancestors -and their power, the consciousness of owing debts to them, necessarily -increases, according to this kind of logic, in the exact proportion -that the race itself increases, that the race itself becomes more -victorious, more independent, more honoured, more feared. This, and not -the contrary, is the fact. Each step towards race decay, all disastrous -events, all symptoms of degeneration, of approaching disintegration, -always _diminish_ the fear of the founders' spirit, and whittle away -the idea of his sagacity, providence, and potent presence. Conceive -this crude kind of logic carried to its climax: it follows that the -ancestors of the _most powerful_ races must, through the growing fear -that they exercise on the imaginations, grow themselves into monstrous -dimensions, and become relegated to the gloom of a divine mystery that -transcends imagination--the ancestor becomes at last necessarily -transfigured into a _god_. Perhaps this is the very origin of the gods, -that is, an origin from _fear_! And those who feel bound to add, "but -from piety also," will have difficulty in maintaining this theory, -with regard to the primeval and longest period of the human race. And -of course this is even more the case as regards the _middle_ period, -the formative period of the aristocratic races--the aristocratic -races which have given back with interest to their founders, the -ancestors (heroes, gods), all those qualities which in the meanwhile -have appeared in themselves, that is, the aristocratic qualities. We -will later on glance again at the ennobling and promotion of the gods -(which of course is totally distinct from their "sanctification"): let -us now provisionally follow to its end the course of the whole of this -development of the consciousness of "owing." - - -20. - -According to the teaching of history, the consciousness of owing -debts to the deity by no means came to an end with the decay of the -clan organisation of society; just as mankind has inherited the -ideas of "good" and "bad" from the race-nobility (together with its -fundamental tendency towards establishing social distinctions), so -with the heritage of the racial and tribal gods it has also inherited -the incubus of debts as yet unpaid and the desire to discharge them. -The transition is effected by those large populations of slaves and -bondsmen, who, whether through compulsion or through submission and -"_mimicry,_" have accommodated themselves to the religion of their -masters; through this channel these inherited tendencies inundate -the world. The feeling of owing a debt to the deity has grown -continuously for several centuries, always in the same proportion in -which the idea of God and the consciousness of God have grown and -become exalted among mankind. (The whole history of ethnic fights, -victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, everything, in fact, which -precedes the eventual classing of all the social elements in each great -race-synthesis, are mirrored in the hotch-potch genealogy of their -gods, in the legends of their fights, victories, and reconciliations. -Progress towards universal empires invariably means progress towards -universal deities; despotism, with its subjugation of the independent -nobility, always paves the way for some system or other of monotheism.) -The appearance of the Christian god, as the record god up to this time, -has for that very reason brought equally into the world the record -amount of guilt consciousness. Granted that we have gradually started -on the _reverse_ movement, there is no little probability in the -deduction, based on the continuous decay in the belief in the Christian -god, to the effect that there also already exists a considerable -decay in the human consciousness of owing (ought); in fact, we cannot -shut our eyes to the prospect of the complete and eventual triumph of -atheism freeing mankind from all this feeling of obligation to their -origin, their _causa prima_. Atheism and a kind of second innocence -complement and supplement each other. - - -21. - -So much for my rough and preliminary sketch of the interrelation of -the ideas "ought" (owe) and "duty" with the postulates of religion. I -have intentionally shelved up to the present the actual moralisation -of these ideas (their being pushed back into the conscience, or more -precisely the interweaving of the _bad_ conscience with the idea of -God), and at the end of the last paragraph used language to the effect -that this moralisation did not exist, and that consequently these ideas -had necessarily come to an end, by reason of what had happened to their -hypothesis, the credence in our "creditor," in God. The actual facts -differ terribly from this theory. It is with the moralisation of the -ideas "ought" and "duty," and with their being pushed back into the -_bad_ conscience, that comes the first actual attempt to _reverse_ the -direction of the development we have just described, or at any rate -to arrest its evolution; it is just at this juncture that the very -hope of an eventual redemption _has to_ put itself once for all into -the prison of pessimism, it is at this juncture that the eye _has to_ -recoil and rebound in despair from off an adamantine impossibility, -it is at this juncture that the ideas "guilt" and "duty" have to turn -backwards--turn backwards against _whom_? There is no doubt about -it; primarily against the "ower," in whom the bad conscience now -establishes itself, eats, extends, and grows like a polypus throughout -its length and breadth, all with such virulence, that at last, with -the impossibility of paying the debt, there becomes conceived the -idea of the impossibility of paying the penalty, the thought of its -inexpiability (the idea of "eternal punishment")--finally, too, it -turns against the "creditor," whether found in the _causa prima_ of -man, the origin of the human race, its sire, who henceforth becomes -burdened with a curse ("Adam," "original sin," "determination of the -will"), or in Nature from whose womb man springs, and on whom the -responsibility for the principle of evil is now cast ("Diabolisation of -Nature"), or in existence generally, on this logic an absolute _white -elephant_, with which mankind is landed (the Nihilistic flight from -life, the demand for Nothingness, or for the opposite of existence, for -some other existence, Buddhism and the like)--till suddenly we stand -before that paradoxical and awful expedient, through which a tortured -humanity has found a temporary alleviation, that stroke of genius -called Christianity:--God personally immolating himself for the debt of -man, God paying himself personally out of a pound of his own flesh, God -as the one being who can deliver man from what man had become unable to -deliver himself--the creditor playing scapegoat for his debtor, from -_love_ (can you believe it?), from love of his debtor!... - - -22. - -The reader will already have conjectured what took place on the stage -and behind the scenes of this drama. That will for self-torture, that -inverted cruelty of the animal man, who, turned subjective and scared -into introspection (encaged as he was in "the State," as part of his -taming process), invented the bad conscience so as to hurt himself, -after the _natural_ outlet for this will to hurt, became blocked--in -other words, this man of the bad conscience exploited the religious -hypothesis so as to carry his martyrdom to the ghastliest pitch of -agonised intensity. Owing something to _God_: this thought becomes his -instrument of torture. He apprehends in God the most extreme antitheses -that he can find to his own characteristic and ineradicable animal -instincts, he himself gives a new interpretation to these animal -instincts as being against what he "owes" to God (as enmity, rebellion, -and revolt against the "Lord," the "Father," the "Sire," the "Beginning -of the world"), he places himself between the horns of the dilemma, -"God" and "Devil." Every negation which he is inclined to utter to -himself, to the nature, naturalness, and reality of his being, he -whips into an ejaculation of "yes," uttering it as something existing, -living, efficient, as being God, as the holiness of God, the judgment -of God, as the hangmanship of God, as transcendence, as eternity, as -unending torment, as hell, as infinity of punishment and guilt. This is -a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty -which is absolutely unparalleled:--man's _will_ to find himself guilty -and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, his _will_ to think of -himself as punished, without the punishment ever being able to balance -the guilt, his _will_ to infect and to poison the fundamental basis -of the universe with the problem of punishment and guilt, in order to -cut off once and for all any escape out of this labyrinth of "fixed -ideas," his will for rearing an ideal--that of the "holy God"--face to -face with which he can have tangible proof of his own un-worthiness. -Alas for this mad melancholy beast man! What phantasies invade it, -what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and _mental -bestiality_ break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its -being the beast of action. All this is excessively interesting, but -at the same time tainted with a black, gloomy, enervating melancholy, -so that a forcible veto must be invoked against looking too long into -these abysses. Here is _disease_, undubitably, the most ghastly disease -that has as yet played havoc among men: and he who can still hear (but -man turns now deaf ears to such sounds), how in this night of torment -and nonsense there has rung out the cry of _love_, the cry of the most -passionate ecstasy, of redemption in _love_, he turns away gripped by -an invincible horror--in man there is so much that is ghastly--too long -has the world been a mad-house. - - -23. - -Let this suffice once for all concerning the origin of the "holy God." -The fact that _in itself_ the conception of gods is not bound to -lead necessarily to this degradation of the imagination (a temporary -representation of whose vagaries we felt bound give), the fact that -there exist nobler methods of utilising the invention of gods than in -this self-crucifixion and self-degradation of man, in which the last -two thousand years of Europe have been past masters--these facts can -fortunately be still perceived from every glance that we cast at the -Grecian gods, these mirrors of noble and grandiose men, in which the -_animal_ in man felt itself deified, and did _not_ devour itself in -subjective frenzy. These Greeks long utilised their gods as simple -buffers against the "bad conscience"--so that they could continue -to enjoy their freedom of soul: this, of course, is diametrically -opposed to Christianity's theory of its god. They went _very far_ on -this principle, did these splendid and lion-hearted children; and -there is no lesser authority than that of the Homeric Zeus for making -them realise occasionally that they are taking life too casually. -"Wonderful," says he on one occasion--it has to do with the case of -Ægistheus, a _very_ bad case indeed-- - - "Wonderful how they grumble, the mortals against the immortals, - _Only from us_, they presume, _comes evil_, but in their folly, - Fashion they, spite of fate, the doom of their own disaster." - -Yet the reader will note and observe that this Olympian spectator and -judge is far from being angry with them and thinking evil of them on -this score. "How _foolish_ they are," so thinks he of the misdeeds -of mortals--and "folly," "imprudence," "a little brain disturbance," -and nothing more, are what the Greeks, even of the strongest, bravest -period, have admitted to be the ground of much that is evil and -fatal.--Folly, _not_ sin, do you understand?... But even this brain -disturbance was a problem--"Come, how is it even possible? How could it -have really got in brains like ours, the brains of men of aristocratic -ancestry, of men of fortune, of men of good natural endowments, of -men of the best society, of men of nobility and virtue?" This was the -question that for century on century the aristocratic Greek put to -himself when confronted with every (to him incomprehensible) outrage -and sacrilege with which one of his peers had polluted himself. "It -must be that a god had infatuated him," he would say at last, nodding -his head.--This solution is _typical_ of the Greeks, ... accordingly -the gods in those times subserved the functions of justifying man to a -certain extent even in evil--in those days they took upon themselves -not the punishment, but, what is more noble, the guilt. - - -24. - -I conclude with three queries, as you will see. "Is an ideal actually -set up here, or is one pulled down?" I am perhaps asked.... But have -ye sufficiently asked yourselves how dear a payment has the setting up -of every ideal in the world exacted? To achieve that consummation how -much truth must always be traduced and misunderstood, how many lies -must be sanctified, how much conscience has got to be disturbed, how -many pounds of "God" have got to be sacrificed every time? To enable -a sanctuary to be set up _a sanctuary has got to be destroyed_: that -is a law--show me an instance where it has not been fulfilled!... -We modern men, we inherit the immemorial tradition of vivisecting -the conscience, and practising cruelty to our animal selves. That is -the sphere of our most protracted training, perhaps of our artistic -prowess, at any rate of our dilettantism and our perverted taste. Man -has for too long regarded his natural proclivities with an "evil eye," -so that eventually they have become in his system affiliated to a -bad conscience. A converse endeavour would be intrinsically feasible ---but who is strong enough to attempt it?--namely, to affiliate to -the "bad conscience" all those _unnatural_ proclivities, all those -transcendental aspirations, contrary to sense, instinct, nature, and -animalism--in short, all past and present ideals, which are all ideals -opposed to life, and traducing the world. To whom is one to turn -nowadays with _such_ hopes and pretensions?--It is just the _good_ -men that we should thus bring about our ears; and in addition, as -stands to reason, the indolent, the hedgers, the vain, the hysterical, -the tired.... What is more offensive or more thoroughly calculated -to alienate, than giving any hint of the exalted severity with which -we treat ourselves? And again how conciliatory, how full of love -does all the world show itself towards us so soon as we do as all -the world docs, and "let ourselves go" like all the world. For such -a consummation we need spirits of _different_ calibre than seems -really feasible in this age; spirits rendered potent through wars and -victories, to whom conquest, adventure, danger, even pain, have become -a need; for such a consummation we need habituation to sharp, rare air, -to winter wanderings, to literal and metaphorical ice and mountains; we -even need a kind of sublime malice, a supreme and most self-conscious -insolence of knowledge, which is the appanage of great health; we need -(to summarise the awful truth) just this _great health_! - -Is this even feasible to-day?... But some day, in a stronger age -than this rotting and introspective present, must he in sooth come -to us, even the _redeemer_ of great love and scorn, the creative -spirit, rebounding by the impetus of his own force back again away -from every transcendental plane and dimension, he whose solitude -is misunderstanded (sic) of the people, as though it were a flight -_from_ reality;--while actually it is only his diving, burrowing, and -penetrating _into_ reality, so that when he comes again to the light -he can at once bring about by these means the _redemption_ of this -reality; its redemption from the curse which the old ideal has laid -upon it. This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from -the old ideal, as he will from that ideal's necessary corollary of -great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon -and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives -back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and -Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness--_he must one -day come_. - - -25. - -But what am I talking of? Enough! Enough? At this juncture I have -only one proper course, silence: otherwise tresspass on a domain open -alone to one who is younger than I, one stronger, more "_future_" than -I--open alone to _Zarathustra, Zarathustra the godless._ - - -[1] The German is: "_Sittlichkeit der Sitte_." H. B. S. - -[2] The German world "_schuld_" means both debt and guilt. Cp. the -English "owe" and "ought," by which I occasionally render the double -meaning.--H. B. S. - -[3] German: "_Verbrecher_."--H.B.S. - -[4] An allusion to _Der Zweck im Recht_, by the great German jurist, -Professor Ihering. - - - - -THIRD ESSAY. - - -WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? - - -"Careless, mocking, forceful--so does wisdom wish us: she is a woman, -and never loves any one but a warrior." Thus Spake Zarathustra. - - -1. - -What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too -much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of "flair" and instinct for -the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, -at best an _additional_ seductive fascination, a little _morbidezza_ -on a fine piece of flesh, the angelhood of a fat, pretty animal; in -physiological failures and whiners (in the _majority_ of mortals), -an attempt to pose as "too good" for this world, a holy form of -debauchery, their chief weapon in the battle with lingering pain and -ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of -power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally -a pretext for hibernation, their _novissima gloriæ cupido_, their -peace in nothingness ("God"), their form of madness. - -But in the very fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so much to -man, lies expressed the fundamental feature of man's will, his -_horror vacui: he needs a goal_--and he will sooner will nothingness -than not will at all.--Am I not understood?--Have I not been -understood?--"Certainly not, sir?"--Well, let us begin at the beginning. - - -2. - -What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? Or, to take an individual -case in regard to which I have often been consulted, what is the -meaning, for example, of an artist like Richard Wagner paying homage -to chastity in his old age? He had always done so, of course, in a -certain sense, but it was not till quite the end, that he did so in -an ascetic sense. What is the meaning of this "change of attitude," -this radical revolution in his attitude--for that was what it was? -Wagner veered thereby straight round into his own opposite. What is -the meaning of an artist veering round into his own opposite? At -this point (granted that we do not mind stopping a little over this -question), we immediately call to mind the best, strongest, gayest, -and boldest period, that there perhaps ever was in Wagner's life: that -was the period, when he was genuinely and deeply occupied with the -idea of "Luther's Wedding." Who knows what chance is responsible for -our now having the _Meistersingers_ instead of this wedding music? -And how much in the latter is perhaps just an echo of the former? But -there is no doubt but that the theme would have dealt with the praise -of chastity. And certainly it would also have dealt with the praise -of sensuality, and even so, it would seem quite in order, and even -so, it would have been equally Wagnerian. For there is no necessary -antithesis between chastity and sensuality: every good marriage, every -authentic heart-felt love transcends this antithesis. Wagner would, it -seems to me, have done well to have brought this _pleasing_ reality -home once again to his Germans, by means of a bold and graceful "Luther -Comedy," for there were and are among the Germans many revilers of -sensuality; and perhaps Luther's greatest merit lies just in the fact -of his having had the courage of his _sensuality_ (it used to be -called, prettily enough, "evangelistic freedom "). But even in those -cases where that antithesis between chastity and sensuality does exist, -there has fortunately been for some time no necessity for it to be in -any way a tragic antithesis. This should, at any rate, be the case with -all beings who are sound in mind and body, who are far from reckoning -their delicate balance between "animal" and "angel," as being on the -face of it one of the principles opposed to existence--the most subtle -and brilliant spirits, such as Goethe, such as Hafiz,> have even seen -in this a _further_ charm of life. Such "conflicts" actually allure -one to life. On the other hand, it is only too clear that when once -these ruined swine are reduced to worshipping chastity--and there -are such swine--they only see and worship in it the antithesis to -themselves, the antithesis to ruined swine. Oh what a tragic grunting -and eagerness! You can just think of it--they worship that painful -and superfluous contrast, which Richard Wagner in his latter days -undoubtedly wished to set to music, and to place on the stage! "_For -what purpose, forsooth?_" as we may reasonably ask. What did the swine -matter to him; what do they matter to us? - - -3. - -At this point it is impossible to beg the further question of what he -really had to do with that manly (ah, so unmanly) country bumpkin, -that poor devil and natural, Parsifal, whom he eventually made a -Catholic by such fraudulent devices. What? Was this Parsifal really -meant _seriously_? One might be tempted to suppose the contrary, even -to wish it--that the Wagnerian Parsifal was meant joyously, like a -concluding play of a trilogy or satyric drama, in which Wagner the -tragedian wished to take farewell of us, of himself, above all of -tragedy, and to do so in a manner that should be quite fitting and -worthy, that is, with an excess of the most extreme and flippant parody -of the tragic itself, of the ghastly earthly seriousness and earthly -woe of old--a parody of that _most crude phase_ in the unnaturalness -of the ascetic ideal, that had at length been overcome. That, as I -have said, would have been quite worthy of a great tragedian; who like -every artist first attains the supreme pinnacle of his greatness when -he can look _down_ into himself and his art, when he can _laugh_ at -himself. Is Wagner's Parsifal his secret laugh of superiority over -himself, the triumph of that supreme artistic freedom and artistic -transcendency which he has at length attained. We might, I repeat, -wish it were so, for what can Parsifal, _taken seriously_, amount to? -Is it really necessary to see in it (according to an expression once -used against me) the product of an insane hate of knowledge, mind, -and flesh? A curse on flesh and spirit in one breath of hate? An -apostasy and reversion to the morbid Christian and obscurantist ideals? -And finally a self-negation and self-elimination on the part of an -artist, who till then had devoted all the strength of his will to the -contrary, namely, the _highest_ artistic expression of soul and body. -And not only of his art; of his life as well. Just remember with what -enthusiasm Wagner followed in the footsteps of Feuerbach. Feuerbach's -motto of "healthy sensuality" rang in the ears of Wagner during the -thirties and forties of the century, as it did in the ears of many -Germans (they dubbed themselves "_Young_ Germans"), like the word of -redemption. Did he eventually _change his mind_ on the subject? For it -seems at any rate that he eventually wished to _change his teaching_ -on that subject ... and not only is that the case with the Parsifal -trumpets on the stage: in the melancholy, cramped, and embarrassed -lucubrations of his later years, there are a hundred places in which -there are manifestations of a secret wish and will, a despondent, -uncertain, unavowed will to preach actual retrogression, conversion, -Christianity, mediævalism, and to say to his disciples, "All is vanity! -Seek salvation elsewhere!" Even the "blood of the Redeemer" is once -invoked. - - -4. - -Let me speak out my mind in a case like this, which has many painful -elements--and it is a typical case: it is certainly best to separate -an artist from his work so completely that he cannot be taken as -seriously as his work. He is after all merely the presupposition of -his work, the womb, the soil, in certain cases the dung and manure, -on which and out of which it grows--and consequently, in most cases, -something that must be forgotten if the work itself is to be enjoyed. -The insight into the _origin_ of a work is a matter for psychologists -and vivisectors, but never either in the present or the future for the -æsthetes, the artists. The author and creator of Parsifal was as little -spared the necessity of sinking and living himself into the terrible -depths and foundations of mediæval soul-contrasts, the necessity of a -malignant abstraction from all intellectual elevation, severity, and -discipline, the necessity of a kind of mental perversity (if the reader -will pardon me such a word), as little as a pregnant woman is spared -the horrors and marvels of pregnancy, which, as I have said, must -be forgotten if the child is to be enjoyed. We must guard ourselves -against the confusion, into which an artist himself would fall only -too easily (to employ the English terminology) out of psychological -"contiguity"; as though the artist himself actually were the object -which he is able to represent, imagine, and express. In point of fact, -the position is that even if he conceived he were such an object, he -would certainly not represent, conceive, express it. Homer would not -have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an -Achilles or if Goethe had been a Faust. A complete and perfect artist -is to all eternity separated from the "real," from the actual; on the -other hand, it will be appreciated that he can at times get tired to -the point of despair of this eternal "unreality" and falseness of his -innermost being--and that he then sometimes attempts to trespass on -to the most forbidden ground, on reality, and attempts to have real -_existence_. With what success? The success will be guessed--it is the -_typical velleity_ of the artist; the same velleity to which Wagner -fell a victim in his old age, and for which he had to pay so dearly and -so fatally (he lost thereby his most valuable friends). But after all, -quite apart from this velleity, who would not wish emphatically for -Wagner's own sake that he had taken farewell of us and of his art in a -_different_ manner, not with a _Parsifal_, but in more victorious, more -self-confident, more Wagnerian style--a style less misleading, a style -less ambiguous with regard to his whole meaning, less Schopenhauerian, -less Nihilistic?... - - -5. - -What, then, is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In the case of an artist -we are getting to understand their meaning: _Nothing at all_ ... or so -much that it is as good as nothing at all. Indeed, what is the use of -them? Our artists have for a long time past not taken up a sufficiently -independent attitude, either in the world or against it, to warrant -their valuations and the changes in these valuations exciting interest. -At all times they have played the valet of some morality, philosophy, -or religion, quite apart from the fact that unfortunately they -have often enough been the inordinately supple courtiers of their -clients and patrons, and the inquisitive toadies of the powers that -are existing, or even of the new powers to come. To put it at the -lowest, they always need a rampart, a support, an already constituted -authority: artists never stand by themselves, standing alone is opposed -to their deepest instincts. So, for example, did _Richard Wagner_ -take, "when the time had come," the philosopher Schopenhauer for his -covering man in front, for his rampart. Who would consider it even -thinkable, that he would have had the _courage_ for an ascetic ideal, -without the support afforded him by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, -without the authority of Schopenhauer, which _dominated_ Europe in the -seventies? (This is without consideration of the question whether an -artist without the milk[1] of an orthodoxy would have been possible at -all.) This brings us to the more serious question: What is the meaning -of a real _philosopher_ paying homage to the ascetic ideal, a really -self-dependent intellect like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with a -glance of bronze, who has the courage to be himself, who knows how to -stand alone without first waiting for men who cover him in front, and -the nods of his superiors? Let us now consider at once the remarkable -attitude of Schopenhauer towards _art_, an attitude which has even a -fascination for certain types. For that is obviously the reason why -Richard Wagner _all at once_ went over to Schopenhauer (persuaded -thereto, as one knows, by a poet, Herwegh), went over so completely -that there ensued the cleavage of a complete theoretic contradiction -between his earlier and his later æsthetic faiths--the earlier, for -example, being expressed in _Opera and Drama_, the later in the -writings which he published from 1870 onwards. In particular, Wagner -from that time onwards (and this is the volte-face which alienates us -the most) had no scruples about changing his judgment concerning the -value and position of music itself. What did he care if up to that time -he had made of music a means, a medium, a "woman," that in order to -thrive needed an end, a man--that is, the drama? He suddenly realised -that _more_ could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian -theory in _majorem musicæ gloriam_--that is to say, by means of the -_sovereignty_ of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music abstracted -from and opposed to all the other arts, music as the independent -art-in-itself, _not_ like the other arts, affording reflections of the -phenomenal world, but rather the language of the will itself, speaking -straight out of the "abyss" as its most personal, original, and direct -manifestation. This extraordinary rise in the value of music (a rise -which seemed to grow out of the Schopenhauerian philosophy) was at -once accompanied by an unprecedented rise in the estimation in which -the musician himself was held: he became now an oracle, a priest, nay, -more than a priest, a kind of mouthpiece for the "intrinsic essence -of things," a telephone from the other world--from henceforward -he talked not only music, did this ventriloquist of God, he talked -metaphysic; what wonder that one day he eventually talked _ascetic -ideals_. - - -6. - -Schopenhauer has made use of the Kantian treatment of the æsthetic -problem--though he certainly did not regard it with the Kantian eyes. -Kant thought that he showed honour to art when he favoured and placed -in the foreground those of the predicates of the beautiful, which -constitute the honour of knowledge: impersonality and universality. -This is not the place to discuss whether this was not a complete -mistake; all that I wish to emphasise is that Kant, just like other -philosophers, instead of envisaging the æsthetic problem from the -standpoint of the experiences of the artist (the creator), has only -considered art and beauty from the standpoint of the spectator, and -has thereby imperceptibly imported the spectator himself into the idea -of the "beautiful"! But if only the philosophers of the beautiful had -sufficient knowledge of this "spectator"!--Knowledge of him as a great -fact of personality, as a great experience, as a wealth of strong and -most individual events, desires, surprises, and raptures in the sphere -of beauty! But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case. And so -we get from our philosophers, from the very beginning, definitions -on which the lack of a subtler personal experience squats like a fat -worm of crass error, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the -beautiful. "That is beautiful," says Kant, "which pleases without -interesting." Without interesting! Compare this definition with this -other one, made by a real "spectator" and "artist"--by Stendhal, who -once called the beautiful _une promesse de bonheur_. Here, at any rate, -the one point which Kant makes prominent in the æsthetic position is -repudiated and eliminated--_le désintéressement_. Who is right, Kant -or Stendhal? When, forsooth, our æsthetes never get tired of throwing -into the scales in Kant's favour the fact that under the magic of -beauty men can look at even naked female statues "without interest," -we can certainly laugh a little at their expense:--in regard to this -ticklish point the experiences of _artists_ are more "interesting," -and at any rate Pygmalion was not necessarily an "unæsthetic man." Let -us think all the better of the innocence of our æsthetes, reflected -as it is in such arguments; let us, for instance, count to Kant's -honour the country-parson naïveté of his doctrine concerning the -peculiar character of the sense of touch! And here we come back to -Schopenhauer, who stood in much closer neighbourhood to the arts -than did Kant, and yet never escaped outside the pale of the Kantian -definition; how was that? The circumstance is marvellous enough: he -interprets the expression, "without interest," in the most personal -fashion, out of an experience which must in his case have been part and -parcel of his regular routine. On few subjects does Schopenhauer speak -with such certainty as on the working of æsthetic contemplation: he -says of it that it simply counteracts sexual interest, like lupulin -and camphor; he never gets tired of glorifying this escape from -the "Life-will" as the great advantage and utility of the æsthetic -state. In fact, one is tempted to ask if his fundamental conception -of Will and Idea, the thought that there can only exist freedom from -the "will" by means of "idea," did not originate in a generalisation -from this sexual experience. (In all questions concerning the -Schopenhauerian philosophy, one should, by the bye, never lose sight of -the consideration that it is the conception of a youth of twenty-six, -so that it participates not only in what is peculiar to Schopenhauer's -life, but in what is peculiar to that special period of his life.) -Let us listen, for instance, to one of the most expressive among the -countless passages which he has written in honour of the æsthetic -state (_World as Will and Idea_, i. 231); let us listen to the tone, -the suffering, the happiness, the gratitude, with which such words -are uttered: "This is the painless state which Epicurus praised as -the highest good and as the state of the gods; we are during that -moment freed from the vile pressure of the will, we celebrate the -Sabbath of the will's hard labour, the wheel of Ixion stands still." -What vehemence of language! What images of anguish and protracted -revulsion! How almost pathological is that temporal antithesis between -"that moment" and everything else, the "wheel of Ixion," "the hard -labour of the will," "the vile pressure of the will." But granted -that Schopenhauer was a hundred times right for himself personally, -how does that help our insight into the nature of the beautiful? -Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful,--the calming -of the will,--but is this effect really normal? As has been mentioned, -Stendhal, an equally sensual but more happily constituted nature than -Schopenhauer, gives prominence to another effect of the "beautiful." -"The beautiful promises happiness." To him it is just the excitement -of the "will"(the "interest") by the beauty that seems the essential -fact. And does not Schopenhauer ultimately lay himself open to the -objection, that he is quite wrong in regarding himself as a Kantian on -this point, that he has absolutely failed to understand in a Kantian -sense the Kantian definition of the beautiful--;that the beautiful -pleased him as well by means of an interest, by means, in fact, of the -strongest and most personal interest of all, that: of the victim of -torture who escapes from his torture?--And to come back again to our -first question, "What is the meaning of a philosopher paying homage to -ascetic ideals?" We get now, at any rate, a first hint; he wishes to -escape _from a torture_. - - -7. - -Let us beware of making dismal faces at the word "torture"--there is -certainly in this case enough to deduct, enough to discount--there is -even something to laugh at. For we must certainly not underestimate -the fact that Schopenhauer, who in practice treated sexuality as -a personal enemy (including its tool, woman, that "_instrumentum -diaboli_"), needed enemies to keep him in a good humour; that he loved -grim, bitter, blackish-green words; that he raged for the sake of -raging, out of passion; that he would have grown ill, would have become -a _pessimist_ (for he was not a pessimist, however much he wished to -be), without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the -whole "will for existence" "keeping on." Without them Schopenhauer -would not have "kept on," that is a safe wager; he would have run away: -but his enemies held him fast, his enemies always enticed him back -again to existence, his wrath was just as theirs' was to the ancient -Cynics, his balm, his recreation, his recompense, his _remedium_ -against disgust, his _happiness_. So much with regard to what is most -personal in the case of Schopenhauer; on the other hand, there is -still much which is typical in him--and only now we come back to our -problem. It is an accepted and indisputable fact, so long as there -are philosophers in the world and wherever philosophers have existed -(from India to England, to take the opposite poles of philosophic -ability), that there exists a real irritation and rancour on the part -of philosophers towards sensuality. Schopenhauer is merely the most -eloquent, and if one has the ear for it, also the most fascinating -and enchanting outburst. There similarly exists a real philosophic -bias and affection for the whole ascetic ideal; there should be no -illusions on this score. Both these feelings, as has been said, belong -to the type; if a philosopher lacks both of them, then he is--you may -be certain of it--never anything but a "pseudo." What does this mean? -For this state of affairs must first be, interpreted: in itself it -stands there stupid, to all eternity, like any "Thing-in-itself." Every -animal, including la bête philosophe, strives instinctively after an -_optimum_ of favourable conditions, under which he can let his whole -strength have play, and achieves his maximum consciousness of power; -with equal instinctiveness, and with a fine perceptive flair which is -superior to any reason, every animal shudders mortally at every kind -of disturbance and hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his way -to that optimum (it is not his way to happiness of which I am talking, -but his way to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in -point of fact in many cases his way to unhappiness). Similarly, the -philosopher shudders mortally at <b>marriage</b>, together with all -that could persuade him to it--marriage as a fatal hindrance on the -way to the _optimum_. Up to the present what great philosophers have -been married? Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, -Schopenhauer--they were not married, and, further, one cannot _imagine_ -them as married. A married philosopher belongs to _comedy_, that is -my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates--the malicious Socrates -married himself, it seems, _ironice_, just to prove this _very_ rule. -Every philosopher would say, as Buddha said, when the birth of a son -was announced to him: "Râhoula has been born to me, a fetter has been -forged for me" (Râhoula means here "a little demon"); there must come -an hour of reflection to every "free spirit" (granted that he has had -previously an hour of thoughtlessness), just as one came once to the -same Buddha: "Narrowly cramped," he reflected, "is life in the house; -it is a place of uncleanness; freedom is found in leaving the house." -Because he thought like this, he left the house. So many bridges to -independence are shown in the ascetic idea], that the philosopher -cannot refrain from exultation and clapping of hands when he hears -the history of all those resolute ones, who on one day uttered a nay -to all servitude and went into some _desert_; even granting that they -were only strong asses, and the absolute opposite of strong minds. -What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my -answer--it will have been guessed long ago: when he sees this ideal -the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an _optimum_ of the -conditions of the highest and boldest intellectuality; he does not -thereby deny "existence," he rather affirms thereby _his_ existence -and _only_ his existence, and this perhaps to the point of not being -far off the blasphemous wish, _pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat -philosophus, fiam!_ - - -8. - -These philosophers, you see, are by no means uncorrupted witnesses and -judges of the _value_ of the ascetic ideal. They think _of themselves_ ---what is the "saint" to them? They think of that which to them -personally is most indispensable; of freedom from compulsion, -disturbance, noise: freedom from business, duties, cares; of clear -head; of the dance, spring, and flight of thoughts; of good air--rare, -clear, free, dry, as is the air on the heights, in which every animal -creature becomes more intellectual and gains wings; they think of -peace in every cellar; all the hounds neatly chained; no baying of -enmity and uncouth rancour; no remorse of wounded ambition; quiet -and submissive internal organs, busy as mills, but unnoticed; the -heart alien, transcendent, future, posthumous--to summarise, they -mean by the ascetic ideal the joyous asceticism of a deified and -newly fledged animal, sweeping over life rather than resting. We know -what are the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, -humility, chastity; and now just look closely at the life of all -the great fruitful inventive spirits--you will always find again -and again these three qualities up to a certain extent. _Not_ for a -minute, as is self-evident, as though, perchance, they were part of -their virtues--what has this type of man to do with virtues?--but as -the most essential and natural conditions of their _best_ existence, -their _finest_ fruitfulness. In this connection it is quite possible -that their predominant intellectualism had first to curb an unruly and -irritable pride, or an insolent sensualism, or that it had all its -work cut out to maintain its wish for the "desert" against perhaps -an inclination to luxury and dilettantism, or similarly against an -extravagant liberality of heart and hand. But their intellect did -effect all this, simply because it was the _dominant_ instinct, which -carried through its orders in the case of all the other instincts. -It effects it still; if it ceased to do so, it would simply not be -dominant. But there is not one iota of "virtue" in all this. Further, -the _desert_, of which I just spoke, in which the strong, independent, -and well-equipped spirits retreat into their hermitage--oh, how -different is it from the cultured classes' dream of a desert! In -certain cases, in fact, the cultured classes themselves are the desert. -And it is certain that all the actors of the intellect would not endure -this desert for a minute. It is nothing like romantic and Syrian enough -for them, nothing like enough of a stage desert! Here as well there -are plenty of asses, but at this point the resemblance ceases. But a -desert nowadays is something like this--perhaps a deliberate obscurity; -a getting-out-of the way of one's self; a fear of noise, admiration, -papers, influence; a little office, a daily task, something that hides -rather than brings to light; sometimes associating with harmless, -cheerful beasts and fowls, the sight of which refreshes; a mountain for -company, but not a dead one, one with _eyes_ (that is, with lakes); -in certain cases even a room in a crowded hotel where one can reckon -on not being recognised, and on being able to talk with impunity to -every one: here is the desert--oh, it is lonely enough, believe me! -I grant that when Heracleitus retreated to the courts and cloisters -of the colossal temple of Artemis, that "wilderness" was worthier; -why do we _lack_ such temples? (perchance we do not lack them: I just -think of my splendid study in the _Piazza di San Marco_, in spring, of -course, and in the morning, between ten and twelve). But that which -Heracleitus shunned is still just what we too avoid nowadays: the -noise and democratic babble of the Ephesians, their politics, their -news from the "empire" (I mean, of course, Persia), their market-trade -in "the things of to-day "--for there is one thing from which we -philosophers especially need a rest--from the things of "to-day." We -honour the silent, the cold, the noble, the far, the past, everything, -in fact, at the sight of which the soul is not bound to brace itself up -and defend itself--something with which one can speak without _speaking -aloud_. Just listen now to the tone a spirit has when it speaks; every -spirit has its own tone and loves its own tone. That thing yonder, for -instance, is bound to be an agitator, that is, a hollow head, a hollow -mug: whatever may go into him, everything comes back from him dull and -thick, heavy with the echo of the great void. That spirit yonder nearly -always speaks hoarse: has he, perchance, _thought_ himself hoarse? -It may be so--ask the physiologists--but he who thinks in _words_, -thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not -think of objects or think objectively, but only of his relations -with objects--that, in point of fact, he only thinks of himself and -his audience). This third one speaks aggressively, he comes too near -our body, his breath blows on us--we shut our mouth involuntarily, -although he speaks to us through a book: the tone of his style supplies -the reason--he has no time, he has small faith in himself, he finds -expression now or never. But a spirit who is sure of himself speaks -softly; he seeks secrecy, he lets himself be awaited, A philosopher -is recognised by the fact that he shuns three brilliant and noisy -things--fame, princes, and women: which is not to say that they do not -come to him. He shuns every glaring light: therefore he shuns his time -and its "daylight." Therein he is as a shadow; the deeper sinks the -sun, the greater grows the shadow. As for his humility, he endures, as -he endures darkness, a certain dependence and obscurity: further, he is -afraid of the shock of lightning, he shudders at the insecurity of a -tree which is too isolated and too exposed, on which every storm vents -its temper, every temper its storm. His "maternal" instinct, his secret -love for that which grows in him, guides him into states where he is -relieved from the necessity of taking care of _himself_, in the same -way in which the "_mother_" instinct in woman has thoroughly maintained -up to the present woman's dependent position. After all, they demand -little enough, do these philosophers, their favourite motto is, "He -who possesses is possessed." All this is _not_, as I must say again -and again, to be attributed to a virtue, to a meritorious wish for -moderation and simplicity; but because their supreme lord so demands -of them, demands wisely and inexorably; their lord who is eager only -for one thing, for which alone he musters, and for which alone he -hoards everything--time, strength, love, interest. This kind of man -likes not to be disturbed by enmity, he likes not to be disturbed by -friendship, it is a type which forgets or despises easily. It strikes -him as bad form to play the martyr, "to _suffer_ for truth"--he leaves -all that to the ambitious and to the stage-heroes of the intellect, -and to all those, in fact, who have time enough for such luxuries -(they themselves, the philosophers, have something _to do_ for truth). -They make a sparing use of big words; they are said to be adverse to -the word "truth" itself: it has a "high falutin'" ring. Finally, as -far as the chastity of philosophers is concerned, the fruitfulness -of this type of mind is manifestly in another sphere than that of -children; perchance in some other sphere, too, they have the survival -of their name, their little immortality (philosophers in ancient -India would express themselves with still greater boldness: "Of what -use is posterity to him whose soul is the world?"). In this attitude -there is not a trace of chastity, by reason of any ascetic scruple or -hatred of the flesh, any more than it is chastity for an athlete or a -jockey to abstain from women; it is rather the will of the dominant -instinct, at any rate, during the period of their advanced philosophic -pregnancy. Every artist knows the harm done by sexual intercourse -on occasions of great mental strain and preparation; as far as the -strongest artists and those with the surest instincts are concerned, -this is not necessarily a case of experience--hard experience--but it -is simply their "maternal" instinct which, in order to benefit the -growing work, disposes recklessly (beyond all its normal stocks and -supplies) of the _vigour_ of its _animal_ life; the greater power then -_absorbs_ the lesser. Let us now apply this interpretation to gauge -correctly the case of Schopenhauer, which we have already mentioned: in -his case, the sight of the beautiful acted manifestly like a resolving -irritant on the chief power of his nature (the power of contemplation -and of intense penetration); so that this strength exploded and became -suddenly master of his consciousness. But this by no means excludes -the possibility of that particular sweetness and fulness, which is -peculiar to the æsthetic state, springing directly from the ingredient -of sensuality (just as that "idealism" which is peculiar to girls at -puberty originates in the same source)--it may be, consequently, that -sensuality is not removed by the approach of the æsthetic state, as -Schopenhauer believed, but merely becomes transfigured, and ceases to -enter into the consciousness as sexual excitement. (I shall return once -again to this point in connection with the more delicate problems of -the _physiology of the æsthetic_, a subject which up to the present has -been singularly untouched and unelucidated.) - - -9. - -A certain asceticism, a grimly gay whole-hearted renunciation, is, as -we have seen, one of the most favourable conditions for the highest -intellectualism, and, consequently, for the most natural corollaries -of such intellectualism: we shall therefore be proof against any -surprise at the philosophers in particular always treating the ascetic -ideal with a certain amount of predilection. A serious historical -investigation shows the bond between the ascetic ideal and philosophy -to be still much tighter and still much stronger. It may be said that -it was only in the _leading strings_ of this ideal that philosophy -really learnt to make its first steps and baby paces--alas how -clumsily, alas how crossly, alas how ready to tumble down and lie on -its stomach was this shy little darling of a brat with its bandy legs! -The early history of philosophy is like that of all good things;--for a -long time they had not the courage to be themselves, they kept always -looking round to see if no one would come to their help; further, they -were afraid of all who looked at them. Just enumerate in order the -particular tendencies and virtues of the philosopher--his tendency to -doubt, his tendency to deny, his tendency to wait (to be "ephectic"), -his tendency to analyse, search, explore, dare, his tendency to compare -and to equalise, his will to be neutral and objective, his will for -everything which is "_sine ira et studio_":--has it yet been realised -that for quite a lengthy period these tendencies went counter to the -first claims of morality and conscience? (To say nothing at all of -_Reason_, which even Luther chose to call _Frau Klüglin_,[2] the sly -whore.) Has it been yet appreciated that a philosopher, in the event -of his _arriving_ at self-consciousness, must needs feel himself an -incarnate "nitimur in vetitum"--and consequently guard himself against -"his own sensations," against self-consciousness? It is, I repeat, just -the same with all good things, on which we now pride ourselves; even -judged by the standard of the ancient Greeks, our whole modern life, -in so far as it is not weakness, but power and the consciousness of -power, appears pure "Hybris" and godlessness: for the things which are -the very reverse of those which we honour to-day, have had for a long -time conscience on their side, and God as their guardian. "Hybris" -is our whole attitude to nature nowadays, our violation of nature -with the help of machinery, and all the unscrupulous ingenuity of our -scientists and engineers. "Hybris" is our attitude to God, that is, to -some alleged teleological and ethical spider behind the meshes of the -great trap of the causal web. Like Charles the Bold in his war with -Louis the Eleventh, we may say, "je combats l'universelle araignée"; -"Hybris" is our attitude to ourselves--for we experiment with ourselves -in a way that we would not allow with any animal, and with pleasure -and curiosity open our soul in our living body: what matters now to -us the "salvation" of the soul? We heal ourselves afterwards: being -ill is instructive, we doubt it not, even more instructive than being -well--inoculators of disease seem to us to-day even more necessary -than any medicine-men and "saviours." There is no doubt we do violence -to ourselves nowadays, we crackers of the soul's kernel, we incarnate -riddles, who are ever asking riddles, as though life were naught else -than the cracking of a nut; and even thereby must we necessarily become -day by day more and more worthy to be asked questions and worthy to ask -them, even thereby do we perchance also become worthier to--live? - -... All good things were once bad things; from every original sin has -grown an original virtue. Marriage, for example, seemed for a long time -a sin against the rights of the community; a man formerly paid a fine -for the insolence of claiming one woman to himself (to this phase -belongs, for instance, the _jus primæ noctis_, to-day still in Cambodia -the privilege of the priest, that guardian of the "good old customs"). - -The soft, benevolent, yielding, sympathetic feelings--eventually valued -so highly that they almost became "intrinsic values," were for a very -long time actually despised by their possessors: gentleness was then -a subject for shame, just as hardness is now (compare _Beyond Good -and Evil_, Aph. 260). The submission to law: oh, with what qualms of -conscience was it that the noble races throughout the world renounced -the _vendetta_ and gave the law power over themselves! Law was long a -_vetitum_, a blasphemy, an innovation; it was introduced with force, -like a force, to which men only submitted with a sense of personal -shame. Every tiny step forward in the world was formerly made at -the cost of mental and physical torture. Nowadays the whole of this -point of view--"that not only stepping forward, nay, stepping at all, -movement, change, all needed their countless martyrs," rings in our -ears quite strangely. I have put it forward in the _Dawn of Day_, Aph. -18. "Nothing is purchased more dearly," says the same book a little -later, "than the modicum of human reason and freedom which is now our -pride. But that pride is the reason why it is now almost impossible -for us to feel in sympathy with those immense periods of the 'Morality -of Custom,' which lie at the beginning of the 'world's history,' -constituting as they do the real decisive historical principle which -has fixed the character of humanity; those periods, I repeat, when -throughout the world suffering passed for virtue, cruelty for virtue, -deceit for virtue, revenge for virtue, repudiation of the reason for -virtue; and when, conversely, well-being passed current for danger, the -desire for knowledge for danger, pity for danger, peace for danger, -being pitied for shame, work for shame, madness for divinity, and -_change_ for immorality and incarnate corruption!" - - -10. - -There is in the same book, Aph. 12, an explanation of the _burden_ -of unpopularity under which the earliest race of contemplative men -had to live--despised almost as widely as they were first feared! -Contemplation first appeared on earth in a disguised shape, in an -ambiguous form, with an evil heart and often with an uneasy head: -there is no doubt about it. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike element -in the instincts of contemplative men long invested them with a cloud -of suspicion: the only way to combat this was to excite a definite -_fear_. And the old Brahmans, for example, knew to a nicety how to do -this! The oldest philosophers were well versed in giving to their very -existence and appearance, meaning, firmness, background, by reason -whereof men learnt to _fear_ them; considered more precisely, they -did this from an even more fundamental need, the need of inspiring -in themselves fear and self-reverence. For they found even in their -own souls all the valuations turned _against_ themselves; they had -to fight down every kind of suspicion and antagonism against "the -philosophic element in themselves." Being men of a terrible age, -they did this with terrible means: cruelty to themselves, ingenious -self-mortification--this was the chief method of these ambitious -hermits and intellectual revolutionaries, who were obliged to force -down the gods and the traditions of their own soul, so as to enable -themselves to _believe_ in their own revolution. I remember the famous -story of the King Vicvamitra, who, as the result of a thousand years -of self-martyrdom, reached such a consciousness of power and such a -confidence in himself that he undertook to build a _new heaven_: the -sinister symbol of the oldest and newest history of philosophy in the -whole world. Every one who has ever built anywhere a "_new heaven_" -first found the power thereto in his _own hell_.. .. Let us compress -the facts into a short formula. The philosophic spirit had, in order -to be _possible_ to any extent at all, to masquerade and disguise -itself as one of the _previously fixed_ types of the contemplative -man, to disguise itself as priest, wizard, soothsayer, as a religious -man generally: the _ascetic ideal_ has for a long time served the -philosopher as a superficial form, as a condition which enabled him -to exist. .. . To be able to be a philosopher he had to exemplify the -ideal; to exemplify it, he was bound to _believe_ in it. The peculiarly -etherealised abstraction of philosophers, with their negation of the -world, their enmity to life, their disbelief in the senses, which has -been maintained up to the most recent time, and has almost thereby come -to be accepted as the ideal _philosophic attitude_--this abstraction -is the result of those enforced conditions under which philosophy -came into existence, and continued to exist; inasmuch as for quite -a very long time philosophy would have been _absolutely impossible_ -in the world without an ascetic cloak and dress, without an ascetic -self-misunderstanding. Expressed plainly and palpably, the _ascetic -priest_ has taken the repulsive and sinister form of the caterpillar, -beneath which and behind which alone philosophy could live and slink -about.. .. - -Has all that really changed? Has that flamboyant and dangerous winged -creature, that "spirit" which that caterpillar concealed within itself, -has it, I say, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, lighter world, really -and finally flung off its hood and escaped into the light? Can we -to-day point to enough pride, enough daring, enough courage, enough -self-confidence, enough mental will, enough will for responsibility, -enough freedom of the will, to enable the philosopher to be now in the -world really--_possible_? - - -11. - -And now, after we have caught sight of the _ascetic priest_, let us -tackle our problem. What is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? It now -first becomes serious--vitally serious. We are now confronted with the -_real representatives of the serious_. "What is the meaning of all -seriousness?" This even more radical question is perchance already -on the tip of our tongue: a question, fairly, for physiologists, but -which we for the time being skip. In that ideal the ascetic priest -finds not only his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest. -His _right_ to existence stands and falls with that ideal. What wonder -that we here run up against a terrible opponent (on the supposition, -of course, that we are the opponents of that ideal), an opponent -fighting for his life against those who repudiate that ideal!. .. On -the other hand, it is from the outset improbable that such a biased -attitude towards our problem will do him any particular good; the -ascetic priest himself will scarcely prove the happiest champion of -his own ideal (on the same principle on which a woman usually fails -when she wishes to champion "woman")--let alone proving the most -objective critic and judge of the controversy now raised. We shall -therefore--so much is already obvious--rather have actually to help -him to defend himself properly against ourselves, than we shall have -to fear being too well beaten by him. The idea, which is the subject -of this dispute, is the value of our life from the standpoint of the -ascetic priests: this life, then (together with the whole of which it -is a part, "Nature," "the world," the whole sphere of becoming and -passing away), is placed by them in relation to an existence of quite -another character, which it excludes and to which it is opposed, unless -it _deny_ its own self: in this case, the case of an ascetic life, -life is taken as a bridge to another existence. The ascetic treats -life as a maze, in which one must walk backwards till one comes to the -place where it starts; or he treats it as an error which one may, nay -_must_, refute by action: for he demands that he should be followed; -he enforces, where he can, his valuation of existence. What does this -mean? Such a monstrous valuation is not an exceptional case, or a -curiosity recorded in human history: it is one of the most general -and persistent facts that there are. The reading from the vantage -of a distant star of the capital letters of our earthly life, would -perchance lead to the conclusion that the earth was the especially -_ascetic planet_, a den of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive -creatures, who never got rid of a deep disgust of themselves, of the -world, of all life, and did themselves as much hurt as possible out -of pleasure in hurting--presumably their one and only pleasure. Let -us consider how regularly, how universally, how practically at every -single period the ascetic priest puts in his appearance: he belongs to -no particular race; he thrives everywhere; he grows out of all classes. -Not that he perhaps bred this valuation by heredity and propagated -it--the contrary is the case. It must be a necessity of the first order -which makes this species, hostile, as it is, to _life_, always grow -again and always thrive again.--_Life_ itself must certainly _have an -interest_ in the continuance of such a type of self-contradiction. For -an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules resentment without -parallel, the resentment of an insatiate instinct and ambition, that -would be master, not over some element in life, but over life itself, -over life's deepest, strongest, innermost conditions; here is an -attempt made to utilise power to dam the sources of power; here does -the green eye of jealousy turn even against physiological well-being, -especially against the expression of such well-being, beauty, joy; -while a sense of pleasure is experienced and _sought_ in abortion, in -decay, in pain, in misfortune, in ugliness, in voluntary punishment, -in the exercising, flagellation, and sacrifice of the self. All this -is in the highest degree paradoxical: we are here confronted with a -rift that _wills_ itself to be a rift, which _enjoys_ itself in this -very _suffering_, and even becomes more and more certain of itself, -more and more triumphant, in proportion as its own presupposition, -physiological vitality, _decreases_. "The triumph just in the supreme -agony ": under this extravagant emblem did the ascetic ideal fight from -of old; in this mystery of seduction, in this picture of rapture and -torture, it recognised its brightest light, its salvation, its final -victory. _Crux, nux, lux_--it has all these three in one. - - -12. - -Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness -is induced to _philosophise_; on what will it vent its pet caprice? -On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, -to be real; it will look for _error_ in those very places where the -life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for -instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, -reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multiplicity, -the whole logical contrast of "_Subject_" and "_Object_"--errors, -nothing but errors! To renounce the belief in one's own ego, to -deny to one's self one's own "reality"--what a triumph! and here -already we have a much higher kind of triumph, which is not merely -a triumph over the senses, over the palpable, but an infliction of -violence and cruelty on _reason_; and this ecstasy culminates in the -ascetic self-contempt, the ascetic scorn of one's own reason making -this decree: _there is_ a domain of truth and of life, but reason is -specially _excluded_ therefrom.. .. By the bye, even in the Kantian -idea of "the intellegible character of things" there remains a trace -of that schism, so dear to the heart of the ascetic, that schism -which likes to turn reason against reason; in fact, "intelligible -character" means in Kant a kind of quality in things of which the -intellect comprehends this much, that for it, the intellect, it is -_absolutely incomprehensible_. After all, let us, in our character -of knowers, not be ungrateful towards such determined reversals of -the ordinary perspectives and values, with which the mind had for -too long raged against itself with an apparently futile sacrilege! -In the same way the very seeing of another vista, the very _wishing_ -to see another vista, is no little training and preparation of the -intellect for its eternal "_Objectivity_"--objectivity being understood -not as "contemplation without interest" (for that is inconceivable -and non-sensical), but as the ability to have the pros and cons _in -one's power_ and to switch them on and off, so as to get to know how -to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the _difference_ in -the perspective and in the emotional interpretations. But let us, -forsooth, my philosophic colleagues, henceforward guard ourselves more -carefully against this mythology of dangerous ancient ideas, which has -set up a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge"; -let us guard ourselves from the tentacles of such contradictory ideas -as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge-in-itself":--in -these theories an eye that cannot be thought of is required to think, -an eye which ex hypothesi has no direction at all, an eye in which -the active and interpreting functions are cramped, are absent; those -functions, I say, by means of which "abstract" seeing first became -seeing something; in these theories consequently the absurd and the -non-sensical is always demanded of the eye. There is only a seeing -from a perspective, only a "knowing" from a perspective, and the more -emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we -train on the same thing, the more complete will be our "idea" of that -thing, our "objectivity." But the elimination of the will altogether, -the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could -do so, what! would not that be called intellectual castration? - - -13. - -But let us turn back. Such a self-contradiction, as apparently -manifests itself among the ascetics, "Life turned against Life," -is--this much is absolutely obvious--from the physiological and not now -from the psychological standpoint, simply nonsense. It can only be an -apparent contradiction; it must be a kind of provisional expression, an -explanation, a formula, an adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding -of something, whose real nature could not be understood for a long -time, and whose _real essence_ could not be described; a mere word -jammed into an old _gap_ of human knowledge. To put briefly the -facts against its being real: _the ascetic ideal springs from the -prophylactic and self-preservative instincts which mark a decadent -life_, which seeks by every means in its power to maintain its position -and fight for its existence; it points to a partial physiological -depression and exhaustion, against which the most profound and intact -life-instincts fight ceaselessly with new weapons and discoveries. The -ascetic ideal is such a weapon: its position is consequently exactly -the reverse of that which the worshippers of the ideal imagine--life -struggles in it and through it with death and against death; the -ascetic ideal is a dodge for the _preservation_ of life. An important -fact is brought out in the extent to which, as history teaches, this -ideal could rule and exercise power over man, especially in all those -places where the civilisation and taming of man was completed: that -fact is, the diseased state of man up to the present, at any rate, of -the man who has been tamed, the physiological struggle of man with -death (more precisely, with the disgust with life, with exhaustion, -with the wish for the "end"). The ascetic priest is the incarnate wish -for an existence of another kind, an existence on another plane,--he -is, in fact, the highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and -passion: but it is the very _power_ of this wish which is the fetter -that binds him here; it is just that which makes him into a tool that -must labour to create more favourable conditions for earthly existence, -for existence on the human plane--it is with this very power that he -keeps the whole herd of failures, distortions, abortions, unfortunates, -_sufferers from themselves_ of every kind, fast to existence, while -he as the herdsman goes instinctively on in front. You understand -me already: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this -denier--he actually belongs to the really great _conservative_ and -_affirmative_ forces of life.... What does it come from, this diseased -state? For man is more diseased, more uncertain, more changeable, -more unstable than any other animal, there is no doubt of it--he is -the diseased animal: what does it spring from? Certainly he has also -dared, innovated, braved more, challenged fate more than all the other -animals put together; he, the great experimenter with himself, the -unsatisfied, the insatiate, who struggles for the supreme mastery with -beast, Nature, and gods, he, the as yet ever uncompelled, the ever -future, who finds no more any rest from his own aggressive strength, -goaded inexorably on by the spur of the future dug into the flesh of -the present:--how should not so brave and rich an animal also be the -most endangered, the animal with the longest and deepest sickness -among all sick animals?... Man is sick of it, oft enough there are -whole epidemics of this satiety (as about 1348, the time of the Dance -of Death): but even this very nausea, this tiredness, this disgust -with himself, all this is discharged from him with such force that -it is immediately made into a new fetter. His "nay," which he utters -to life, brings to light as though by magic an abundance of graceful -"yeas"; even when he _wounds_ himself, this master of destruction, of -self-destruction, it is subsequently the wound itself that forces him -to live. - - -14. - -The more normal is this sickliness in man--and we cannot dispute -this normality--the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases -of psychical and physical powerfulness, the _windfalls_ of humanity, -and the more strictly should the sound be guarded from that worst of -air, the air of the sick-room. Is that done? The sick are the greatest -danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to -the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? Broadly considered, -it is not for a minute the fear of man, whose diminution should be -wished for; for this fear forces the strong to be strong, to be at -times terrible--it preserves in its integrity the sound type of man. -What is to be feared, what does work with a fatality found in no other -fate, is not the great fear of, but the great _nausea_ with, man; and -equally so the great pity for man. Supposing that both these things -were one day to espouse each other, then inevitably the maximum of -monstrousness would immediately come into the world--the "last will" -of man, his will for nothingness, Nihilism. And, in sooth, the way is -well paved thereto. He who not only has his nose to smell with, but -also has eyes and ears, he sniffs almost wherever he goes to-day an -air something like that of a mad-house, the air of a hospital--I am -speaking, as stands to reason, of the cultured areas of mankind, of -every kind of "Europe" that there is in fact in the world. The _sick_ -are the great danger of man, _not_ the evil, _not_ the "beasts of -prey." They who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken, those -are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the -feet of man, who instil the most dangerous venom and scepticism into -our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where shall we escape from -it, from that covert look (from which we carry away a deep sadness), -from that averted look of him who is misborn from the beginning, that -look which betrays what such a man says to himself--that look which is -a groan?" Would that I were something else," so groans this look, "but -there is no hope. I am what I am: how could I get away from myself? -And, verily--_I am sick of myself!_" On such a soil of self-contempt, -a veritable swamp soil, grows that weed, that poisonous growth, and -all so tiny, so hidden, so ignoble, so sugary. Here teem the worms -of revenge and vindictiveness; here the air reeks of things secret -and unmentionable; here is ever spun the net of the most malignant -conspiracy--the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the -victorious; here is the sight of the victorious _hated_. And what -lying so as not to acknowledge this hate as hate! What a show of big -words and attitudes, what an art of "righteous" calumniation! These -abortions! what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips! What an -amount of sugary, slimy, humble submission oozes in their eyes! What do -they really want? At any rate to _represent_ righteousness ness, love, -wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these "lowest ones," these -sick ones! And how clever does such an ambition make them! You cannot, -in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp -of virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue, is here imitated. -They have taken a lease of virtue absolutely for themselves, have these -weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it; "We alone are -the good, the righteous," so do they speak, "we alone are the _homines -bonæ voluntatis_." They stalk about in our midst as living reproaches, -as warnings to us--as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the -sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for -which one would have some day to do penance, bitter penance. Oh, how -they themselves are ready in their hearts to exact penance, how they -thirst after being _hangmen_! - -Among them is an abundance of revengeful ones disguised as judges, -who ever mouth the word righteousness like a venomous spittle--with -mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit at everything, -which does not wear a discontented look, but is of good cheer as it -goes on its way. Among them, again, is that most loathsome species -of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point of representing -"beautiful souls," and perchance of bringing to the market as "purity -of heart" their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and other -bandages; the species of "self-comforters" and masturbators of their -own souls. The sick man's will to represent _some_ form or other of -superiority, his instinct for crooked paths, which lead to a tyranny -over the healthy--where can it not be found, this will to power of -the very weakest? The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her -in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising. The sick woman, -moreover, spares nothing living, nothing dead; she grubs up again the -most buried things (the Bogos say, "Woman is a hyena"). Look into -the background of every family, of every body, of every community: -everywhere the fight of the sick against the healthy--a silent fight -for the most part with minute poisoned powders, with pin-pricks, with -spiteful grimaces of patience, but also at times with that diseased -pharisaism of _pure_ pantomime, which plays for choice the rôle of -"righteous indignation." Right into the hallowed chambers of knowledge -can it make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick hounds, this -rabid lying and frenzy of such "noble" Pharisees (I remind readers, who -have ears, once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen Dühring, -who makes the most disreputable and revolting use in all present-day -Germany of moral refuse; Dühring, the paramount moral blusterer that -there is to-day, even among his own kidney, the Anti-Semites). They -are all men of resentment, are these physiological distortions and -worm-riddled objects, a whole quivering kingdom of burrowing revenge, -indefatigable and insatiable in its outbursts against the happy, and -equally so in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge: when -will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of -revenge? At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their -own misery, in fact, all misery, _into the consciousness_ of the happy; -so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, -and perchance say to themselves when they meet, "It is a shame to be -happy! _there is too much misery!_" ... But there could not possibly -be a greater and more fatal misunderstanding than that of the happy, -the fit, the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way to doubt -their right to happiness. Away with this "perverse world"! Away with -this shameful soddenness of sentiment! Preventing the sick making the -healthy sick--for that is what such a soddenness comes to--this ought -to be our supreme object in the world--but for this it is above all -essential that the healthy should remain _separated_ from the sick, -that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that -they should not even associate with the sick. Or may it, perchance, -be their mission to be nurses or doctors? But they could not mistake -and disown their mission more grossly--the higher must not degrade -itself to be the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance must to all -eternity keep their missions also separate. The right of the happy to -existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant -cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater: they alone are the -_sureties_ of the future, they alone are _bound_ to man's future. What -they can, what they must do, that can the sick never do, should never -do! but if _they are to_ be enabled to do what _only_ they must do, -how can they possibly be free to play the doctor, the comforter, the -"Saviour" of the sick?... And therefore good air! good air! and away, -at any rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses and hospitals -of civilisation! And therefore good company, _our own_ company, or -solitude, if it must be so! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes -of internal corruption and the secret worm-eaten state of the sick! -that, forsooth, my friends, we may defend ourselves, at any rate for -still a time, against the two worst plagues that could have been -reserved for us--against the _great nausea with man_! against the_ -great pity for man_! - - -15. - -If you have understood in all their depths--and I demand that you -should _grasp them profoundly_ and understand them profoundly--the -reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the healthy -to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, it follows that you have -grasped this further necessity--the necessity of doctors and nurses -_who themselves are sick_. And now we have and hold with both our hands -the essence of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted -by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick -herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The -_lordship over sufferers_ is his kingdom, to that points his instinct, -in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of -happiness. He must himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the -sick and the abortions so as to understand them, so as to arrive at an -understanding with them; but he must also be strong, even more master -of himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his will for -power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he -can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god. -He has to protect them, protect his herds--_against_ whom? Against -the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He -must be the natural adversary and _scorner_ of every rough, stormy, -reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is -the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily -than it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war with the beasts -of prey, a war of guile (of "spirit") rather than of force, as is -self-evident--he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up -out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of -the beast of prey--a new animal monstrosity in which the polar bear, -the supple, cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox, -are joined together in a trinity as fascinating as it is fearsome. -If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish -seriousness, venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority, as -the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among -even the other kind of beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on -their soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction, -and only too sure of his art, always to be lord of _sufferers_ at all -times. He brings with him, doubtless, salve and balsam; but before he -can play the physician he must first wound; so, while he soothes the -pain which the wound makes, _he at the same time poisons the wound_. -Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild -beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become -ill, and everything ill must needs become tame. He protects, in sooth, -his sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman; he protects -them also against themselves, against the sparks (even in the centre -of the herd) of wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills -that the plaguey and the sick are heir to; he fights with cunning, -hardness, and stealth against anarchy and against the ever imminent -break-up inside the herd, where _resentment_, that most dangerous -blasting-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and accumulates. Getting -rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the -herd and the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme utility; -if you wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the -priestly life, it would be correct to say the priest is the _diverter -of the course of resentment_. Every sufferer, in fact, searches -instinctively for a cause of his suffering; to put it more exactly, -a doer,--to put it still more precisely, a sentient _responsible_ -doer,--in brief, something living, on which, either actually or in -_effigie_, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting -of emotions is the sufferer's greatest attempt at alleviation, that -is to say, _stupefaction_, his mechanically desired narcotic against -pain of any kind. It is in this phenomenon alone that is found, -according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment, -revenge, and their family is to be found--that is, in a demand for the -_deadening of pain through emotion_: this cause is generally, but in -my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare -protective principle of reaction, of a "reflex movement" in the case -of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner that a decapitated -frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the -difference is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being -hurt any more; in the other case the object is to _deaden_ a racking, -insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any -kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of -the consciousness--for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an -emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other -is needed. "It must be somebody's fault that I feel bad"--this kind of -reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and is but the more pronounced, -the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, -the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a disease of the _nervus -sympathicus_, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of -sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure in the -bowels which stops the circulation of the blood, or in degeneration of -the ovaries, and so forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness -and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions; they even -enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent -injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present -in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty -to wallow in a torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom of their -own malice--they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves -bleed from the scars which have long been healed, they make evil-doers -out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them. -"I suffer: it must be somebody's fault"--so thinks every sick sheep. -But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says to him, "Quite so, my sheep, -it must be the fault of some one; but thou thyself art that some one, -it is all the fault of thyself alone--_it is the fault of thyself alone -against thyself_": that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is -at least attained; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment -is--_diverted_. - - -16. - -You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least _tried_ -to effect, according to my conception, through the ascetic priest, -and the purpose for which he had to employ a temporary tyranny of -such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as "guilt," "sin," "sinfulness," -"corruption," "damnation." What was done was to make the sick -_harmless_ up to a certain point, to destroy the incurable by means of -themselves, to turn the milder cases severely on to themselves, to give -their resentment a backward direction ("man needs but one thing"), and -to _exploit_ similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view -to self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that -there can be no question at all in the case of a "medication" of this -kind, a mere emotional medication, of any real _healing_ of the sick in -the physiological sense; it cannot even for a moment be asserted that -in this connection the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal -and purpose. On the one hand, a kind of congestion and organisation of -the sick (the word "Church" is the most popular name for it): on the -other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy, -the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a _rift_ between healthy -and sick--for a long time that was all! and it was much! it was very -much! - -I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which, -as far as such readers as I want are concerned, does not require to be -proved; the hypothesis that "sinfulness" in man is not an actual fact, -but rather merely the interpretation of a fact, of a physiological -discomfort,--a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective -which is no longer binding upon us. The fact, therefore, that any one -feels "guilty," "sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he is -right in feeling so, any more than any one is healthy simply because -he feels healthy. Remember the celebrated witch-ordeals: in those days -the most acute and humane judges had no doubt but that in these cases -they were confronted with guilt,--the "witches"_ themselves had no -doubt on the point_,--and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate -this hypothesis: I do not for a minute accept the very "pain in the -soul" as a real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual explanation) -of facts that could not hitherto be precisely formulated; I regard -it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid of -scientific cogency--just a nice fat word in the place of a lean note -of interrogation. When any one fails to get rid of his "pain in the -soul," the cause is, speaking crudely, to be found _not_ in his "soul" -but more probably in his stomach (speaking crudely, I repeat, but by -no means wishing thereby that you should listen to me or understand -me in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his -experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his -meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to -"relieve himself" of an experience, this kind of indigestion is quite -as much physiological as the other indigestion--and indeed, in more -ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. You can adopt -such a theory, and yet _entre nous_ be nevertheless the strongest -opponent of all materialism. - - -17. - -But is he really a _physician_, this ascetic priest? We already -understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however -much he likes to feel a "saviour" and let himself be worshipped as a -saviour.[3] It is only the actual suffering, the discomfort of the -sufferer, which he combats, _not_ its cause, not the actual state of -sickness--this needs must constitute our most radical objection to -priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of -view, of which the priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to -exhaust your amazement, at what from that standpoint he has completely -seen, sought, and found. The _mitigation_ of suffering, every kind of -"consoling"--all this manifests itself as his very genius: with what -ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb -and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christianity -in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious -consolations,--such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs -has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and -daring expedients has it hazarded; with such subtlety, refinement, -Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can -conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep depression, the leaden -fatigue, the black melancholy of physiological cripples--for, speaking -generally, all religions are mainly concerned with fighting a certain -fatigue and heaviness that has infected everything. You can regard it -as _prima facie_ probable that in certain places in the world there -was almost bound to prevail from time to time among large masses of -the population a _sense of physiological depression_, which, however, -owing to their lack of physiological knowledge, did not appear to their -consciousness as such, so that consequently its "cause" and its _cure_ -can only be sought and essayed in the science of moral psychology -(this, in fact, is my most general formula for what is generally called -a "_religion_"). Such a feeling of depression can have the most diverse -origins; it may be the result of the crossing of too heterogeneous -races (or of classes--genealogical and racial differences are also -brought out in the classes: the European "Weltschmerz," the "Pessimism" -of the nineteenth century, is really the result of an absurd and sudden -class-mixture); it may be brought about by a mistaken emigration--a -race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is -insufficient (the case of the Indians in India); it may be the effect -of old age and fatigue (the Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it -may be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the nonsense -of vegetarianism--which, however, have in their favour the authority -of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare); it may be blood-deterioration, -malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty -Years' War, which infected half Germany with evil diseases, and -thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity). -In such a case there is invariably recourse to a _war_ on a grand scale -with the feeling of depression; let us inform ourselves briefly on its -most important practices and phases (I leave on one side, as stands to -reason, the actual _philosophic_ war against the feeling of depression -which is usually simultaneous--it is interesting enough, but too -absurd, too practically negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a -hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake, -on the _naïf_ hypothesis that pain must needs _vanish_ when the mistake -underlying it is recognised--but behold! it does anything but vanish -...). That dominant depression is _primarily fought_ by weapons which -reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever -possible, no more wishes, no more wants; shun everything which produces -emotion, which produces "blood" (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene); -no love; no hate; equanimity; no revenge; no getting rich; no work; -begging; as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible; -as far as the intellect is concerned, Pascal's principle, "_il faut -s'abêtir._" To put the result in ethical and psychological language, -"self-annihilation," "sanctification"; to put it in physiological -language, "hypnotism"--the attempt to find some approximate human -equivalent for what _hibernation_ is for certain animals, for what -_æstivation_ is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation -and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really -coming into the consciousness. An amazing amount of human energy -has been devoted to this object--perhaps uselessly? There cannot be -the slightest doubt but that such _sportsmen_ of "saintliness," in -whom at times nearly every nation has abounded, have really found a -genuine relief from that which they have combated with such a rigorous -_training_--in countless cases they really escaped by the help of their -system of hypnotism _away_ from deep physiological depression; their -method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological -facts. Similarly it is improper to consider such a plan for starving -the physical element and the desires, as in itself a symptom of -insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating "freethinkers" and -Sir Christophers are fain to do); all the more certain is it that their -method can and does pave the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, -for instance, "inner lights" (as far as the case of the Hesychasts of -Mount Athos), auditory and visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies -and effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The -explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of -fanatical falsehood; this is self-evident. Note well, however, the tone -of implicit gratitude that rings in the very _will_ for an explanation -of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that final -goal of universal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as -the mystery of mysteries, which even the most supreme symbols are -inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry and homecoming to the -essence of things, as a liberation from all illusions, as "knowledge," -as "truth," as "being" as an escape from every end, every wish, every -action, as something even beyond Good and Evil. - -"Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, "both are fetters. The perfect -man is master of them both." - -"The done and the undone," quoth the disciple of the Vedanta, "do -him no hurt; the good and the evil he shakes from off him, sage that -he is; his kingdom suffers no more from any act; good and evil, he -goes beyond them both."--An absolutely Indian conception, as much -Brahmanist as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian -doctrine is this "Redemption" regarded as attainable by means of -virtue and moral improvement, however high they may place the value of -the hypnotic efficiency of virtue: keep clear on this point--indeed -it simply corresponds with the facts. The fact that they remained -_true_ on this point is perhaps to be regarded as the best specimen -of realism in the three great religions, absolutely soaked as they -are with morality, with this one exception. "For those who know, -there is no duty." "Redemption is not attained by the acquisition of -virtues; for redemption consists in being one with Brahman, who is -incapable of acquiring any perfection; and equally little does it -consist in the _giving up of faults_, for the Brahman, unity with whom -is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure" (these passages -are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted from the first real -European _expert_ of the Indian philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen). -We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of "redemption" in -the great religions, but it is somewhat hard to remain serious in -view of the appreciation meted out to the _deep sleep_ by these -exhausted pessimists who are too tired even to dream--to the deep -sleep considered, that is, as already a fusing into Brahman, as the -attainment of the _unio mystica_ with God. "When he has completely gone -to sleep," says on this point the oldest and most venerable "script," -"and come to perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then, -oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has entered into his own -self--encircled by the Self with its absolute knowledge, he has no -more any consciousness of that which is without or of that which is -within. Day and night cross not these bridges, nor age, nor death, -nor suffering, nor good deeds, nor evil deeds." "In deep sleep," say -similarly the believers in this deepest of the three great religions, -"does the soul lift itself from out this body of ours, enters the -supreme light and stands out therein in its true shape: therein is it -the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while it jests and -plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends; -there do its thoughts turn no more back to this appanage of a body, -to which the 'prana' (the vital breath) is harnessed like a beast of -burden to the cart." None the less we will take care to realise (as -we did when discussing "redemption") that in spite of all its pomps -of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on -life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus. -The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace of deepest sleep, -anæsthesia in short––that is what passes with the sufferers and the -absolutely depressed for, forsooth, their supreme good, their value -of values; that is what <b>must</b> be treasured by them as something -positive, be felt by them as the essence of _the_ Positive (according -to the same logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessimistic -religions called God). - - -18. - -Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and susceptibility to pain, -which presupposes somewhat rare powers, especially courage, contempt -of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another -and certainly easier _training_ which is tried against states of -depression. I mean _mechanical activity_. It is indisputable that a -suffering existence can be thereby considerably alleviated. This fact -is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the "Blessing of -work." The alleviation consists in the attention of the sufferer being -absolutely diverted from suffering, in the incessant monopoly of the -consciousness by action, so that consequently there is little room left -for suffering––for _narrow_ is it, this chamber of human consciousness! -Mechanical activity and its corollaries, such as absolute regularity, -punctilious unreasoning obedience, the chronic routine of life, the -complete occupation of time, a certain liberty to be impersonal, nay, a -training in "impersonality," self-forgetfulness, "_incuria sui_"––with -what thoroughness and expert subtlety have all these methods been -exploited by the ascetic priest in his war with pain! - -When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower orders, slaves, or -prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of -labour-slave and prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little -with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make them see henceforth -a benefit, a comparative happiness, in objects which they hated--the -slave's discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented by the -priests. An even more popular means of fighting depression is the -ordaining of a _little joy_, which is easily accessible and can be made -into a rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with -the former ones. The most frequent form in which joy is prescribed -as a cure is the joy in _producing_ joy (such as doing good, giving -presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting, praising, -treating with distinction); together with the prescription of "love -your neighbour." The ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most -cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation of the strongest -and most life-assertive impulse--the Will for Power. The happiness -involved in the "smallest superiority" which is the concomitant of all -benefiting, helping, extolling, making one's self useful, is the most -ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological -distortions avail themselves: in other cases they hurt each other, and -naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation -of the origin of Christianity in the Roman world shows that -co-operative unions for poverty, sickness, and burial sprang up in the -lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote -against depression, the little joy experienced in mutual benefits, -was deliberately fostered. Perchance this was then a novelty, a real -discovery? This conjuring up of the will for co-operation, for family -organisation, for communal life, for "_Cœnacula_" necessarily brought -the Will for Power, which had been already infinitesimally stimulated, -to a new and much fuller manifestation. The herd organisation is a -genuine advance and triumph in the fight with depression. With the -growth of the community there matures even to individuals a new -interest, which often enough takes him out of the more personal -element in his discontent, his aversion to himself, the "_despectus -sui_" of Geulincx. All sick and diseased people strive instinctively -after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of -oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this -instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct -of weakness which has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the -priests which has organised it, for, mark this: by an equally natural -necessity the strong strive as much for _isolation_ as the weak for -_union_: when the former bind themselves it is only with a view to an -aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their Will for Power, -much against the wishes of their individual consciences; the latter, -on the contrary, range themselves together with positive _delight_ in -such a muster--their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the -instincts of the "born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey -species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the quick by organisation. -There is always lurking beneath every oligarchy--such is the -universal lesson of history--the desire for tyranny. Every oligarchy -is continually quivering with the tension of the effort required by -each individual to keep mastering this desire. (Such, _e.g._, was -the Greek; Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who knew his -contemporaries--and _himself_.) - - -19. - -The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already -learnt to know--stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the -little joy, and especially the method of "love your neighbour" -herd-organisation, the awaking of the communal consciousness of power, -to such a pitch that the individual's disgust with himself becomes -eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the community--these are, -according to modern standards, the "innocent" methods employed in -the fight with depression; let us turn now to the more interesting -topic of the "guilty" methods. The guilty methods spell one thing: -to produce _emotional excess_--which is used as the most efficacious -anæsthetic against their depressing state of protracted pain; this -is why priestly ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in thinking -out this one question: "_By what means_ can you produce an emotional -excess?" This sounds harsh: it is manifest that it would sound nicer -and would grate on one's ears less, if I were to say, forsooth: "The -ascetic priest made use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in all -strong emotions." But what is the good of still soothing the delicate -ears of our modern effeminates? What is the good _on our side_ of -budging one single inch before their verbal Pecksniffianism. For us -psychologists to do that would be at once _practical Pecksniffianism_, -apart from the fact of its nauseating us. The _good taste_ (others -might say, the righteousness) of a psychologist nowadays consists, if -at all, in combating the shamefully moralised language with which all -modern judgments on men and things are smeared. For, do not deceive -yourself: what constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and -of modern books is not the lying, but the _innocence_ which is part -and parcel of their intellectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up -against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes the most distasteful -feature of the somewhat dangerous business which a modern psychologist -has to undertake: it is a part of our great danger--it is a road which -perhaps leads us straight to the great nausea--I know quite well the -purpose which all modern books will and can serve (granted that they -last, which I am not afraid of, and granted equally that there is to -be at some future day a generation with a more rigid, more severe, -and _healthier_ taste)--the _function_ which all modernity generally -will serve with posterity: that of an emetic,--and this by reason of -its moral sugariness and falsity, its ingrained feminism, which it is -pleased to call "Idealism," and at any rate believes to be idealism. -Our cultured men of to-day, our "good" men, do not lie--that is true; -but it does _not_ redound to their honour! The real lie, the genuine, -determined, "honest" lie (on whose value you can listen to Plato) would -prove too tough and strong an article for them by a long way; it would -be asking them to do what people have been forbidden to ask them to do, -to open their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to distinguish -between "true" and "false" in their own selves. The dishonest lie alone -suits them: everything which feels a good man is perfectly incapable of -any other attitude to anything than that of a dishonourable liar, an -absolute liar, but none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar, a -virtuous liar. These "good men," they are all now tainted with morality -through and through, and as far as honour is concerned they are -disgraced and corrupted for all eternity. Which of them _could stand_ a -further truth "about man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them could -put up with a true biography? One or two instances: Lord Byron composed -a most personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was "too good" for it; -he burnt his friend's papers. Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is -said to have done the same; for Schopenhauer as well wrote much about -himself, and perhaps also against himself: (εἰς ἑαντόν). The virtuous -American Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly stopped his work: he -had come to a certain point in that honourable and simple life, and -could stand it no longer. Moral: What sensible man nowadays writes one -honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order of Holy -Foolhardiness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner; who -doubts but that it would be a _clever_ autobiography? Think, forsooth, -of the grotesque horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in -Germany with his inconceivably square and harmless pictures of the -German Reformation; what wouldn't people do if some real psychologist -were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us, not with the moralist -simplicity of a country priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a -Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness of a Taine, that -springs from force of character and not from a prudent toleration of -force. (The Germans, by the bye, have already produced the classic -specimen of this toleration--they may well be allowed to reckon him as -one of their own, in Leopold Ranke, that born classical advocate of -every _causa fortior_, that cleverest of all the clever opportunists.) - - -20. - -But you will soon understand me.--Putting it shortly, there is reason -enough, is there not, for us psychologists nowadays never getting from -a certain mistrust of out _own selves_? Probably even we ourselves are -still "too good" for our work, probably, whatever contempt we feel -for this popular craze for morality, we ourselves are perhaps none -the less its victims, prey, and slaves; probably it infects even us. -Of what was that diplomat warning us, when he said to his colleagues: -"Let us especially mistrust our first impulses, gentlemen! _they are -almost always good_"? So should nowadays every psychologist talk to -his colleagues. And thus we get back to our problem, which in point -of fact does require from us a certain severity, a certain mistrust -especially against "first impulses." The ascetic ideal in the service -of projected emotional excess:--he who remembers the previous essay -will already partially anticipate the essential meaning compressed -into these above ten words. The thorough unswitching of the human -soul, the plunging of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture, so as -to free it, as through some lightning shock, from all the smallness -and pettiness of unhappiness, depression, and discomfort: what ways -lead to _this_ goal? And which of these ways does so most safely?... -At bottom all great emotions have this power, provided that they find -a sudden outlet--emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge, hope, -triumph, despair, cruelty; and, in sooth, the ascetic priest has had -no scruples in taking into his service the whole pack of hounds that -rage in the human kennel, unleashing now these and now those, with the -same constant object of waking man out of his protracted melancholy, -of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull pain, his shrinking -misery, but always under the sanction of a religious interpretation -and justification. This emotional excess has subsequently to be _paid -for_, this is self-evident--it makes the ill more ill--and therefore -this kind of remedy for pain is according to modern standards a -"guilty" kind. - -The dictates of fairness, however, require that we should all the -more emphasise the fact that this remedy is applied with _a good -conscience_, that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the most -implicit belief in its utility and indispensability;--often enough -almost collapsing in the presence of the pain which he created;--that -we should similarly emphasise the fact that the violent physiological -revenges of such excesses, even perhaps the mental disturbances, are -not absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of this kind of -remedy; this remedy, which, as we have shown previously, is _not_ for -the purpose of healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness of -that depression, the alleviation and deadening of which was its object. -The object was consequently achieved. The keynote by which the ascetic -priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music -to play on the fibres of the human soul--was, as every one knows, the -exploitation of the feeling of "_guilt_." I have already indicated in -the previous essay the origin of this feeling--as a piece of animal -psychology and nothing else: we were thus confronted with the -feeling of "guilt," in its crude state, as it were. It was first in -the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of -guilt, that it took shape--oh, what a shape! "Sin"--for that is the -name of the new priestly version of the animal "bad-conscience" (the -inverted cruelty)--has up to the present been the greatest event in the -history of the diseased soul: in "sin" we find the most perilous and -fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering -from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically, -perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and -the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons--reasons bring -relief--in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting -one, who knows even the occult--and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint -from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his _first_ hint on the "cause" of -his trouble: he must search for it in _himself_, in his guiltiness, in -a piece of the past, he must understand his very suffering as a _state -of punishment_. He has heard, he has understood, has the unfortunate: -he is now in the plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn. He -never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned -into "the sinner"--and now for a few thousand years we never get away -from the sight of this new invalid, of "a sinner"--shall we ever get -away from it?--wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of -the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt, -the _only_ cause of suffering); everywhere the evil conscience, this -"_greuliche thier_,"[4] to use Luther's language; everywhere rumination -over the past, a distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed -monster" turned on all action; everywhere the wilful misunderstanding -of suffering, its transvaluation into feelings of guilt, fear of -retribution; everywhere the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving -body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the ghastly -wheel of a restless and morbidly eager conscience; everywhere mute -pain, extreme fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of an -unknown happiness, the shriek for "redemption." In point of fact, -thanks to this system of procedure, the old depression, dullness, -and fatigue were absolutely conquered, life itself became _very_ -interesting again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, burnt -away, exhausted and yet not tired--such was the figure cut by man, -"the sinner," who was initiated into these mysteries. This grand old -wizard of an ascetic priest fighting with depression--he had clearly -triumphed, _his_ kingdom had come: men no longer grumbled at pain, men -_panted_ after pain: "_More pain!_ More pain!" So for centuries on end -shrieked the demand of his acolytes and initiates. Every emotional -excess which hurt; everything which broke, overthrew, crushed, -transported, ravished; the mystery of torture-chambers, the ingenuity -of hell itself--all this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all -this was at the service of the wizard, all this served to promote the -triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. "_My kingdom is not of this -world_," quoth he, both at the beginning and at the end: had he still -the right to talk like that?--Goethe has maintained that there are only -thirty-six tragic situations: we would infer from that, did we not know -otherwise, that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He--knows more. - - -21. - -So far as all _this_ kind of priestly medicine-mongering, the "guilty" -kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the -suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which in these cases -the ascetic priest is fain to order to his sick patients (under the -most sacred euphemism, as is obvious, and equally impregnated with -the sanctity of his purpose), has ever really been of use to any sick -man, who, forsooth, would feel inclined to maintain a proposition of -that character? At any rate, some understanding should be come to as -to the expression "be of use." If you only wish to express that such a -system of treatment has _reformed_ man, I do not gainsay it: I merely -add that "reformed" conveys to my mind as much as "tamed," "weakened," -"discouraged," "refined," "daintified," "emasculated" (and thus it -means almost as much as injured). But when you have to deal principally -with sick, depressed, and oppressed creatures, such a system, even -granted that it makes the ill "better," under any circumstances also -makes them more _ill_: ask the mad-doctors the invariable result of a -methodical application of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation -ecstasies. Similarly ask history. In every body politic where the -ascetic priest has established this treatment of the sick, disease has -on every occasion spread with sinister speed throughout its length -and breadth. What was always the "result"? A shattered nervous system, -in addition to the existing malady, and this in the greatest as in the -smallest, in the individuals as in masses. We find, in consequence of -the penance and redemption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the -greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and St. John dances -of the Middle Ages; we find, as another phase of its after-effect, -frightful mutilations and chronic depressions, by means of which the -temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva, Bale) is turned once for -all into its opposite;--this _training_, again, is responsible for -the witch-hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambulism (eight -great epidemic outbursts of this only between 1564 and 1605);--we -find similarly in its train those delirious death-cravings of large -masses, whose awful "shriek," "_evviva la morte!_" was heard over the -whole of Europe, now interrupted by voluptuous variations and anon by -a rage for destruction, just as the same emotional sequence with the -same intermittencies and sudden changes is now universally observed -in every case where the ascetic doctrine of sin scores once more a -great success (religious neurosis _appears_ as a manifestation of the -devil, there is no doubt of it. What is it? _Quæritur_). Speaking -generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-moral cult, this most -ingenious, reckless, and perilous systematisation of all methods of -emotional excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable fashion -on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on history. -I was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked -the health and race efficiency of Europeans with more destructive -power than did this ideal; it can be dubbed,without exaggeration, -_the real fatality_ in the history of the health of the European man. -At the most you can merely draw a comparison with the specifically -German influence: I mean the alcohol poisoning of Europe, which up -to the present has kept pace exactly with the political and racial -pre–dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated their blood, -there too did they inoculate their vice). Third in the series comes -syphilis--_magno sed proximo intervallo_. - - -22. - -The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained the mastery, corrupted -the health of the soul, he has consequently also corrupted _taste in -artibus et litteris_--he corrupts it still. "Consequently?" I hope I -shall be granted this "consequently "; at any rate, I am not going to -prove it first. One solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of -Christian literature, their real model, their "book-in-itself." In the -very midst of the Græco-Roman splendour, which was also a splendour -of books, face to face with an ancient world of writings which had -not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a time when certain books were -still to be read, to possess which we would give nowadays half our -literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity and vanity of -Christian agitators (they are generally called Fathers of the Church) -dared to declare: "We too have our classical literature, we _do not -need that of the Greeks_"--and meanwhile they proudly pointed to their -books of legends, their letters of apostles, and their apologetic -tractlets, just in the same way that to-day the English "Salvation -Army" wages its fight against Shakespeare and other "heathens" with -an analogous literature. You already guess it, I do not like the "New -Testament"; it almost upsets me that I stand so isolated in my taste -so far as concerns this valued, this over-valued Scripture; the taste -of two thousand years is _against_ me; but what boots it! "Here I -stand! I cannot help myself"[5]--I have the courage of my bad taste. -The Old Testament--yes, that is something quite different, all honour -to the Old Testament! I find therein great men, an heroic landscape, -and one of the rarest phenomena in the world, the incomparable naïveté -_of the strong heart_; further still, I find a people. In the New, on -the contrary, just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the soul, -twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but conventicle air, not to -forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the -epoch (_and_ the Roman province) and is less Jewish than Hellenistic. -Meekness and braggadocio cheek by jowl; an emotional garrulousness -that almost deafens; passionate hysteria, but no passion; painful -pantomime; here manifestly every one lacked good breeding. How dare any -one make so much fuss about their little failings as do these pious -little fellows! No one cares a straw about it--let alone God. Finally -they actually wish to have "the crown of eternal life," do all these -little provincials! In return for what, in sooth? For what end? It is -impossible to carry insolence any further. An immortal Peter! who could -stand _him_! They have an ambition which makes one laugh: the _thing_ -dishes up cut and dried his most personal life, his melancholies, and -common-or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself were under -an obligation to bother itself about them, for it never gets tired of -wrapping up God Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles are -involved. And how about the atrocious form of this chronic hobnobbing -with God? This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing -importunacy towards God!--There exist little despised "heathen nations" -in East Asia, from whom these first Christians could have learnt -something worth learning, a little tact in worshiping; these nations -do not allow themselves to say aloud the name of their God. This seems -to me delicate enough, it is certain that it is _too_ delicate, and -not only for primitive Christians; to take a contrast, just recollect -Luther, the most "eloquent" and insolent peasant whom Germany has had, -think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite the most in his -element during his _tête-à-têtes_ with God. Luther's opposition to the -mediæval saints of the Church (in particular, against "that devil's -hog, the Pope"), was, there is no doubt, at bottom the opposition of -a boor, who was offended at the _good etiquette_ of the Church, that -worship-etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits to the -holy of holies the initiated and the silent, and shuts the door against -the boors. These definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this -planet--but Luther the peasant simply wished it otherwise; as it was, -it was not German enough for him. He personally wished himself to talk -direct, to talk personally, to talk "straight from the shoulder" with -his God. Well, he's done it. The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at -no time and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of good -manners--at the best it was a school for sacerdotal manners: that is, -it contains in itself something which was a deadly enemy to all good -manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure, it is itself a "_non -plus ultra_." - - -23. - -The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are -also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted--I -shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should I get to -the end?). I have here to expose not what this ideal effected; but -rather only what it _means_, on what it is based, what lies lurking -behind it and under it, that of which it is the provisional expression, -an obscure expression bristling with queries and misunderstandings. -And with _this_ object only in view I presumed "not to spare" my -readers a glance at the awfulness of its results, a glance at its -fatal results; I did this to prepare them for the final and most -awful aspect presented to me by the question of the significance of -that ideal. What is the significance of the _power_ of that ideal, -the monstrousness of its power? Why is it given such an amount of -scope? Why is not a better resistance offered against it? The ascetic -ideal expresses one will: where is the opposition will, in which an -opposition ideal expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim-- -this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of -human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; -it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it -forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it repudiates, denies, -affirms, confirms, only in the sense of its own interpretation (and was -there ever a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation?); -it subjects itself to no power, rather does it believe in its own -precedence over every power--it believes that nothing powerful exists -in the world that has not first got to receive from "it" a meaning, -a right to exist, a value, as being an instrument in its work, a -way and means to its end, to one end. Where is the _counterpart_ of -this complete system of will, end, and interpretation? Why is the -counterpart lacking? Where is the other "one aim"? But I am told it -is not lacking, that not only has it fought a long and fortunate fight -with that ideal, but that further it has already won the mastery over -that ideal in all essentials: let our whole modern _science_ attest -this--that modern science, which, like the genuine reality-philosophy -which it is, manifestly believes in itself alone, manifestly has the -courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has got on well -enough without God, another world, and negative virtues. - -With all their noisy agitator-babble, however, they effect nothing with -me; these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices do -not come from the deeps with sufficient audibility, they are not the -mouthpiece for the abyss of scientific knowledge--for to-day scientific -knowledge is an abyss--the word "science," in such trumpeter-mouths, -is a prostitution, an abuse, an impertinence. The truth is just the -opposite from what is maintained in the ascetic theory. Science has -to-day absolutely no belief in itself, let alone in an ideal superior -to itself, and wherever science still consists of passion, love, -ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to that ascetic ideal, but -rather the _incarnation of its latest and noblest form_. Does that ring -strange? There are enough brave and decent working people, even among -the learned men of to-day, who like their little corner, and who, just -because they are pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud with -their demand, that people to-day should be quite content, especially -in science--for in science there is so much useful work to do. I do -not deny it--there is nothing I should like less than to spoil the -delight of these honest workers in their handiwork; for I rejoice in -their work. But the fact of science requiring hard work, the fact of -its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science as a -whole having to-day one end, one will, one ideal, one passion for a -great faith; the contrary, as I have said, is the case. When science -is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal--but these are -cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisiteness, as to preclude the -general judgment being affected thereby--science is a _hiding-place_ -for every kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, _despectio sui_, bad -conscience--it is the very _anxiety_ that springs from having no ideal, -the suffering from the _lack_ of a great love, the discontent with an -enforced moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover to-day? How -much, at any rate, does it not try to cover? The diligence of our best -scholars, their senseless industry, their burning the candle of their -brain at both ends--their very mastery in their handiwork--how often is -the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves continuing to see a -certain thing? Science as a self-anæsthetic: _do you know that_? You -wound them--every one who consorts with scholars experiences this--you -wound them sometimes to the quick through just a harmless word; when -you think you are paying them a compliment you embitter them beyond all -bounds, simply because you didn't have the _finesse_ to infer the real -kind of customers you had to tackle, the _sufferer_ kind (who won't own -up even to themselves what they really are), the dazed and unconscious -kind who have only one fear--_coming to consciousness_. - - -24. - -And now look at the other side, at those rare cases, of which I spoke, -the most supreme idealists to be found nowadays among philosophers and -scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the sought-for _opponents_ -of the ascetic ideal, its _anti-idealists_? In fact, they _believe_ -themselves to be such, these "unbelievers" (for they are all of them -that): it seems that this idea is their last remnant of faith, the idea -of being opponents of this ideal, so earnest are they on this subject, -so passionate in word and gesture;--but does it follow that what -they believe must necessarily be _true_? We "knowers" have grown by -degrees suspicious of all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by -step habituated us to draw just the opposite conclusions to what people -have drawn before; that is to say, wherever the strength of a belief -is particularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the difficulty of -proving what is believed, the conclusion of its actual _improbability_. -We do not again deny that "faith produces salvation": _for that very -reason_ we do deny that faith _proves_ anything,--a strong faith, which -produces happiness, causes suspicion of the object of that faith, it -does not establish its "truth," it does establish a certain probability -of--_illusion_. What is now the position in these cases? These -solitaries and deniers of to-day; these fanatics in one thing, in their -claim to intellectual cleanness; these hard, stern, continent, heroic -spirits, who constitute the glory of our time; all these pale atheists, -anti-Christians, immoralists, Nihilists; these sceptics, "ephectics," -and "hectics" of the intellect (in a certain sense they are the -latter, both collectively and individually); these supreme idealists -of knowledge, in whom alone nowadays the intellectual conscience -dwells and is alive--in point of fact they believe themselves as far -away as possible from the ascetic ideal, do these "free, very free -spirits": and yet, if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see--for -they stand too near themselves: this ideal is simply _their_ ideal, -they represent it nowadays and perhaps no one else, they themselves -are its most spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of -skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate and elusive form -of seduction.--If I am in any way a reader of riddles, then I will -be one with this sentence: for some time past there have been no -free spirits; _for they still believe in truth_. When the Christian -Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order -of assassins, that order of free spirits _par excellence_, whose -lowest grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order of monks -has ever attained, then in some way or other they managed to get an -inkling of that symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the -highest grade alone as their _secretum_, "Nothing is true, everything -is allowed,"--in sooth, that was _freedom_ of thought, thereby was -_taking leave_ of the very belief in truth. Has indeed any European, -any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into this proposition -and its labyrinthine consequences? Does he know _from experience_ the -Minotauros of this den.--I doubt it--nay, I know otherwise. Nothing -is more really alien to these "mono-fanatics," these _so-called_ -"free spirits," than freedom and unfettering in that sense; in no -respect are they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of their -belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this perhaps too much from -experience at close quarters--that dignified philosophic abstinence -to which a belief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism of -the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation as rigidly as it does -affirmation, that wish for standing still in front of the actual, -the _factum brutum_, that fatalism in "_petits faits_" (ce petit -faitalism, as I call it), in which French Science now attempts a kind -of moral superiority over German, this renunciation of interpretation -generally (that is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, -suppressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other _essential_ -attributes of interpretation)--all this, considered broadly, expresses -the asceticism of virtue, quite as efficiently as does any repudiation -of the senses (it is at bottom only a _modus_ of that repudiation.) -But what forces it into that unqualified will for truth is the faith -_in the ascetic ideal itself_, even though it take the form of its -unconscious imperatives,--make no mistake about it, it is the faith, -I repeat, in a _metaphysical_ value, an _intrinsic_ value of truth, -of a character which is only warranted and guaranteed in this ideal -(it stands and falls with that ideal). Judged strictly, there does -not exist a science without its "hypotheses," the thought of such a -science is inconceivable, illogical: a philosophy, a faith, must always -exist first to enable science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, -a limit and method, a _right_ to existence. (He who holds a contrary -opinion on the subject--he, for example, who takes it upon himself to -establish philosophy "upon a strictly scientific basis"--has first got -to "turn up-side-down" not only philosophy but also truth itself--the -gravest insult which could possibly be offered to two such respectable -females!) Yes, there is no doubt about it--and here I quote my _Joyful -Wisdom_, cp. Book V. Aph. 344: "The man who is truthful in that -daring and extreme fashion, which is the presupposition of the faith -in science, _asserts thereby a different world_ from that of life, -nature, and history; and in so far as he asserts the existence of that -different world, come, must he not similarly repudiate its counterpart, -this world, _our_ world? The belief on which our faith in science is -based has remained to this day a metaphysical belief--even we knowers -of to-day, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too take our fire from -that conflagration which was kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, -from that Christian belief, which was also Plato's belief, the belief -that God is truth, that truth is _divine_.... But what if this belief -becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself to -be divine, unless it be error, blindness, lies--what if God, Himself -proved Himself to be our _oldest lie_?"--It is necessary to stop at -this point and to consider the situation carefully. Science itself now -_needs_ a justification (which is not for a minute to say that there -is such a justification). Turn in this context to the most ancient and -the most modern philosophers: they all fail to realise the extent of -the need of a justification on the part of the Will for Truth--here -is a gap in every philosophy--what is it caused by? Because up to the -present the ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because Truth was -fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme Court of Appeal, because Truth -was not allowed to be a problem. Do you understand this "allowed"? -From the minute that the belief in the God of the ascetic ideal is -repudiated, there exists _a new problem_: the problem of the value of -truth. The Will for Truth needed a critique--let us define by these -words our own task---the value of truth is tentatively _to be called -in question_.... (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recommend -the reader to peruse again that passage from the _Joyful Wisdom_ which -bears the title, "How far we also are still pious," Aph. 344, and best -of all the whole fifth book of that work, as well as the Preface to -_The Dawn of Day_.) - - -25. - -No! You can't get round me with science, when I search for the natural -antagonists of the ascetic ideal, when I put the question: "_Where_ -is the opposed will in which the _opponent ideal_ expresses itself?" -Science is not, by a long way, independent enough to fulfil this -function; in every department science needs an ideal value, a power -which creates values, and in whose _service_ it _can believe_ in itself ---science itself never creates values. Its relation to the ascetic -ideal is not in itself antagonistic; speaking roughly, it rather -represents the progressive force in the inner evolution of that ideal. -Tested more exactly, its opposition and antagonism are concerned not -with the ideal itself, but only with that ideal's outworks, its outer -garb, its masquerade, with its temporary hardening, stiffening, and -dogmatising--it makes the life in the ideal free once more, while it -repudiates its superficial elements. These two phenomena, science and -the ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis––I have already made -this clear––the basis, I say, oft the same over-appreciation of truth -(more accurately the same belief in the _impossibility_ of valuing and -of criticising truth), and consequently they are _necessarily_ allies, -so that, in the event of their being attacked, they must always be -attacked and called into question together. A valuation of the ascetic -ideal inevitably entails a valuation of science as well; lose no time -in seeing this clearly, and be sharp to catch it! (_Art_, I am speaking -provisionally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in greater -detail,––art, I repeat, in which lying is sanctified and the _will for -deception_ has good conscience on its side, is much more fundamentally -opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science: Plato's instinct felt -this––Plato, the greatest enemy of art which Europe has produced up -to the present. Plato _versus_ Homer, that is the complete, the true -antagonism––on the one side, the whole–hearted "transcendental," the -great defamer of life; on the other, its involuntary panegyrist, the -_golden_ nature. An artistic subservience to the service of the ascetic -ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic _corruption_ that -there can be, though unfortunately it is one of the most frequent -phases, for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Considered -physiologically, moreover, science rests on the same, basis as -does the ascetic ideal: a certain _impoverishment of life_ is the -presupposition of the latter as of the former––add, frigidity of the -emotions, slackening of the _tempo_, the substitution of dialectic for -instinct, _seriousness_ impressed on mien and gesture (seriousness, -that most unmistakable sign of strenuous metabolism, of struggling, -toiling life). Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned -man comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often -of sunset, of decay--the effervescing strength, the confidence in -life, the confidence in the future are no more. The preponderance of -the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent -of democracy, or arbitration instead of war, equal rights for women, -the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. -(Science handled as a problem! what is the meaning of science?--upon -this point the Preface to the _Birth of Tragedy_.) No! this "modern -science"--mark you this well--is at times the _best_ ally for the -ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the ally which is -most unconscious, most automatic, most secret, and most subterranean! -They have been playing into each other's hands up to the present, have -these "poor in spirit" and the scientific opponents of that ideal (take -care, by the bye, not to think that these opponents are the antithesis -of this ideal, that they are the _rich_ in spirit--that they are _not_; -I have called them the _hectic_ in spirit). As for these celebrated -victories of science; there is no doubt that they are _victories_--but -victories over what? There was not for a single minute any victory -among their list over the ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, -that is to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious, from -the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had got built on to the main -fortress and disfigured its appearance, should from time to time be -ruthlessly destroyed and broken down by science. Does any one seriously -suggest that the downfall of the theological astronomy signified the -downfall of that ideal?--Has, perchance, man grown _less in need_ of a -transcendental solution of his riddle of existence, because since that -time this existence has become more random, casual, and superfluous in -the _visible_ order of the universe? Has there not been since the time -of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the self-belittling of man and -his _will_ for belittling himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his -uniquenesses irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence, is gone--he -has become animal, literal, unqualified, and unmitigated animal, he -who in his earlier belief was almost God ("child of God," "demi-God"). -Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to a steep plane--he rolls -faster and faster away from the centre--whither? into nothingness? -into the "thrilling sensation of his own nothingness"--Well! this -would be the straight way--to the old ideal?--All science (and by no -means only astronomy, with regard to the humiliating and deteriorating -effect of which Kant has made a remarkable confession, "it annihilates -my own importance"), all science, natural as much as _unnatural_--by -unnatural I mean the self-critique of reason--nowadays sets out to -talk man out of his present opinion of himself, as though that opinion -had been nothing but a bizarre piece of conceit; you might go so far -as to say that science finds its peculiar pride, its peculiar bitter -form of stoical ataraxia, in preserving man's _contempt of himself_, -that state which it took so much trouble to bring about, as man's final -and most serious claim to self-appreciation (rightly so, in point -of fact, for he who despises is always "one who has not forgotten -how to appreciate"). But does all this involve any real effort to -_counteract_ the ascetic ideal? Is it really seriously suggested that -Kant's _victory_ over the theological dogmatism about "God," "Soul," -"Freedom," "Immortality," has damaged that ideal in any way (as the -theologians have imagined to be the case for a long time past)?–– -And in this connection it does not concern us for a single minute, -if Kant himself intended any such consummation. It is certain that -from the time of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a -winning game––they are emancipated from the theologians; what luck!––he -has revealed to them that secret art, by which they can now pursue -their "heart's desire" on their own responsibility, and with all the -respectability of science. Similarly, who can grumble at the agnostics, -reverers, as they are, of the unknown and the absolute mystery, if they -now worship _their very query_ as God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere -of the _ravages_ which _l'habitude d'admirer l'inintelligible au lieu -de rester tout simplement dans l'inconnu_ has produced––the ancients, -he thinks, must have been exempt from those ravages.) Supposing that -everything, "known" to man, fails to satisfy his desires, and on the -contrary contradicts and horrifies them, what a divine way out of all -this to be able to look for the responsibility, not in the "desiring" -but in "knowing"!––"There is no knowledge. _Consequently_––there is -a God"; what a novel _elegantia syllogism_i! what a triumph for the -ascetic ideal! - - -26. - -Or, perchance, does the whole of modern history show in its demeanour -greater confidence in life, greater confidence in its ideals? Its -loftiest pretension is now to be a _mirror_; it repudiates all -teleology; it will have no more "proving"; it disdains to play the -judge, and thereby shows its good taste––it asserts as little as it -denies, it fixes, it "describes." All this is to a high degree ascetic, -but at the same time it is to a much greater degree _nihilistic_; make -no mistake about this! You see in the historian a gloomy, hard, but -determined gaze,––an eye that _looks out_ as an isolated North Pole -explorer looks out (perhaps so as not to look within, so as not to look -back?)––there is snow––here is life silenced, the last crows which -caw here are called "whither?" "Vanity," "Nada"––here nothing more -flourishes and grows, at the most the metapolitics of St. Petersburg -and the "pity" of Tolstoi. But as for that other school of historians, -a perhaps still more "modern" school, a voluptuous and lascivious -school which ogles life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, -which uses the word "artist" as a glove, and has nowadays established -a "corner" for itself, in all the praise given to contemplation; oh, -what a thirst do these sweet intellectuals excite even for ascetics -and winter landscapes! Nay! The devil take these "contemplative" folk! -How much liefer would I wander with those historical Nihilists through -the gloomiest, grey, cold mist!––nay, I shall not mind listening -(supposing I have to choose) to one who is completely unhistorical -and anti-historical (a man, like Dühring for instance, over whose -periods a hitherto shy and unavowed species of "beautiful souls" has -grown intoxicated in contemporary Germany, _the species anarchistica_ -within the educated proletariate). The "contemplative" are a hundred -times worse––I never knew anything which produced such intense -nausea as one of those "objective" _chairs_,[6] one of those scented -mannikins-about-town of history, a thing half-priest, half-satyr (Renan -_parfum_), which betrays by the high, shrill falsetto of his applause -what he lacks and where he lacks it, who betrays where in this case -the Fates have plied their ghastly shears, alas! in too surgeon-like -a fashion! This is distasteful to me, and irritates my patience; let -him keep patient at such sights who has nothing to lose thereby,––such -a sight enrages me, such spectators embitter me against the "play," -even more than does the play itself (history itself, you understand); -Anacreontic moods imperceptibly come over me. This Nature, who gave -to the steer its horn, to the lion its χάσμ ὀδοντων, for what purpose -did Nature give me my foot?––To kick, by St. Anacreon, and not merely -to run away! To trample on all the worm-eaten "chairs," the cowardly -contemplators, the lascivious eunuchs of history, the flirters with -ascetic ideals, the righteous hypocrites of impotence! All reverence -on my part to the ascetic ideal, _in so far as it is honourable_! So -long as it believes in itself and plays no pranks on us! But I like -not all these coquettish bugs who have an insatiate ambition to smell -of the infinite, until eventually the infinite smells of bugs; I like -not the whited sepulchres with their stagey reproduction of life; -I like not the tired and the used up who wrap themselves in wisdom -and look "objective"; I like not the agitators dressed up as heroes, -who hide their dummy-heads behind the stalking-horse of an ideal; I -like not the ambitious artists who would fain play the ascetic and -the priest, and are at bottom nothing but tragic clowns; I like not, -again, these newest speculators in idealism, the Anti-Semites, who -nowadays roll their eyes in the patent Christian-Aryan-man-of-honour -fashion, and by an abuse of moralist attitudes and agitation dodges, so -cheap as to exhaust any patience, strive to excite all the blockhead -elements in the populace (the invariable success of _every_ kind of -intellectual charlatanism in present-day Germany hangs together with -the almost indisputable and already quite palpable desolation of the -German mind, whose cause I look for in a too exclusive diet, of papers, -politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, not forgetting the condition -precedent of this diet, the national exclusiveness and vanity, the -strong but narrow principle, "Germany, Germany above everything,"[7] -and finally the _paralysis agitans_ of "modern ideas"). Europe -nowadays is, above all, wealthy and ingenious in means of excitement; -it apparently has no more crying necessity than _stimulantia_ and -alcohol. Hence the enormous counterfeiting of ideals, those most fiery -spirits of the mind; hence too the repulsive, evil-smelling, perjured, -pseudo–alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many cargoes -of imitation idealism, of hero-costumes and high falutin' clap-trap, -how many casks of sweetened pity liqueur (Firm: _la religion de la -souffrance_), how many crutches of righteous indignation for the help -of these flat-footed intellects, how many _comedians_ of the Christian -moral ideal would need to-day to be exported from Europe, to enable -its air to smell pure again. It is obvious that, in regard to this -over-production, a new _trade_ possibility lies open; it is obvious -that there is a new business to be done in little ideal idols and -obedient "idealists"--don't pass over this tip! Who has sufficient -courage? We have in _our hands_ the possibility of idealising the whole -earth. But what am I talking about courage? we only need one thing -here--a hand, a free, a very free hand. - - -27. - -Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of -the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our -problem can certainly do without them, the problem of _meaning_ of -the ascetic ideal--what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day? -those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely in -another connection (under the title "A Contribution to the History of -European Nihilism," I refer for this to a work which I am preparing: -_The Will to Power, an Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values_). -The only reason why I come to allude to it here is this: the ascetic -ideal has at times, even in the most intellectual sphere, only one -real kind of enemies and _damagers_: these are the comedians of this -ideal--for they awake mistrust. Everywhere otherwise, where the mind -is at work seriously, powerfully, and without counterfeiting, it -dispenses altogether now with an ideal (the popular expression for this -abstinence is "Atheism")--_with the exception of the will for truth_. -But this will, this _remnant_ of an ideal, is, if you will believe me, -that ideal itself in its severest and cleverest formulation, esoteric -through and through, stripped of all outworks, and consequently not so -much its remnant as its _kernel_. Unqualified honest atheism (and its -air only do we breathe, we, the most intellectual men of this age) is -_not_ opposed to that ideal, to the extent that it appears to be; it is -rather one of the final phases of its evolution, one of its syllogisms -and pieces of inherent logic--it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of -a two-thousand-year training in truth, which finally forbids itself -_the lie of the belief in God_. (The same course of development in -India--quite independently, and consequently of some demonstrative -value--the same ideal driving to the same conclusion the decisive point -reached five hundred years before the European era, or more precisely -at the time of Buddha--it started in the Sankhyam philosophy, and then -this was popularised through Buddha, and made into a religion.) - -_What_, I put the question with all strictness, has really _triumphed_ -over the Christian God? The answer stands in my _Joyful Wisdom_, Aph. -357: "the Christian morality itself, the idea of truth, taken as it was -with increasing seriousness, the confessor-subtlety of the Christian -conscience translated and sublimated into the scientific conscience -into intellectual cleanness at any price. Regarding Nature as though -it were a proof of the goodness and guardianship of God; interpreting -history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant proof of a moral -order of the world and a moral teleology; explaining our own personal -experiences, as pious men have for long enough explained them, as -though every arrangement, every nod, every single thing were invented -and sent out of love for the salvation of the soul; all this is now -done away with, all this has the conscience _against_ it, and is -regarded by every subtler conscience as disreputable, dishonourable, -as lying, feminism, weakness, cowardice--by means of this severity, -if by means of anything at all, are we, in sooth, _good Europeans_ -and heirs of Europe's longest and bravest self-mastery.". .. All -great things go to ruin by reason of themselves, by reason of an act -of self-dissolution: so wills the law of life, the law of necessary -"self-mastery" even in the essence of life--ever is the law-giver -finally exposed to the cry, "_patere legem quam ipse tulisti_"; in -thus wise did Christianity _go to ruin as a dogma_, through its own -morality; in thus wise must Christianity go again to ruin to-day as -a morality--we are standing on the threshold of this event. After -Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after the other, it -finally draws its _strongest conclusion_, its conclusion against -itself; this, however, happens, when it puts the question, "_what is -the meaning of every will for truth?_" And here again do I touch on my -problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for as yet _I know_ of no -friends): what sense has our whole being, if it does not mean that in -our own selves that will for truth has come to its own consciousness -_as a problem_?---By reason of this attainment of self-consciousness -on the part of the will for truth, morality from henceforward--there -is no doubt about it--goes _to pieces_: this is that great hundred-act -play that is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe, the most -terrible, the most mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all -plays. - - -28. - -If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. -His existence on earth contained no end; "What is the purpose of man -at all?" was a question without an answer; the _will_ for man and the -world was lacking; behind every great human destiny rang as a refrain -a still greater "Vanity!" The ascetic ideal simply means this: that -something _was lacking_, that a tremendous _void_ encircled man--he did -not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm himself, -he _suffered_ from the problem of his own meaning. He suffered also in -other ways, he was in the main a _diseased_ animal; but his problem -was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to that crying -question, "_To what purpose_ do we suffer?" Man, the bravest animal -and the one most inured to suffering, does _not_ repudiate suffering in -itself: he _wills_ it, he even seeks it out, provided that he is shown -a meaning for it, a _purpose_ of suffering. _Not_ suffering, but the -senselessness of suffering was the curse which till then lay spread -over humanity--_and the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning!_ It was up -till then the only meaning; but any meaning is better than no meaning; -the ascetic ideal was in that connection the _"faute de mieux" par -excellence_ that existed at that time. In that ideal suffering _found -an explanation_; the tremendous gap seemed filled; the door to all -suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation--there is no doubt about -it--brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more -venomous, gnawing more brutally into life: it brought all suffering -under the perspective of _guilt_; but in spite of all that--man was -_saved_ thereby, he had a _meaning_, and from henceforth was no more -like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-cock of chance, of nonsense, he -could now "will" something--absolutely immaterial to what end, to what -purpose, with what means he wished: _the will itself was saved_. It -is absolutely impossible to disguise _what_ in point of fact is made -clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the -ascetic ideal: this hate of the human, and even more of the animal, -and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason -itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get right -away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even -desiring--all this means--let us have the courage to grasp it--a will -for Nothingness, a will opposed to life, a repudiation of the most -fundamental conditions of life, but it is and remains _a will_!--and -to say at the end that which I said at the beginning--man will wish -_Nothingness_ rather than not wish _at all_. - - - -[1] An allusion to the celebrated monologue in William Tell. - -[2] Mistress Sly.--Tr. - -[3] In the German text "Heiland." This has the double meaning of -"healer" and "saviour."--H. B. S. - -[4] "Horrible beast." - -[5] "Here I stand! I cannot help myself. God help me! Amen"--were -Luther's words before the Reichstag at Worms.--H. B. S. - -[6] E.g. Lectureships. - -[7] An allusion to the well-known patriotic song.--H. B. S. - - - - -PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. KENNEDY. - - -[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by Nietzsche to -form a supplement to Chapter VIII. of _Beyond Good and Evil_, dealing -with Peoples and Countries.] - - -1. - -The Europeans now imagine themselves as representing, in the main, the -highest types of men on earth. - - -2. - -A characteristic of Europeans: inconsistency between word and deed; -the Oriental is true to himself in daily life. How the European has -established colonies is explained by his nature, which resembles that -of a beast of prey. - -This inconsistency is explained by the fact that Christianity has -abandoned the class from which it sprang. - -This is the difference between us and the Hellenes: their morals grew -up among the governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the same as those -that exploded everywhere with Plato. - -Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance, for example: always for -the benefit of the arts. Michael Angelo's conception of God as the -"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one. - - -3. - -I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael, because, through all the -Christian clouds and prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a -culture _nobler_ than the Christo-Raphaelian: whilst Raphael truly -and modestly glorified only the values handed down to him, and did -not carry within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts. Michael -Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt the problem of the law-giver of -new values: the problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first had -to subdue the "hero within himself," the man exalted to his highest -pedestal, master even of his pity, who mercilessly shatters and -annihilates everything that does not bear his own stamp, shining in -Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo was naturally only at certain moments -so high and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe: for the most -part he adopted a condescending attitude towards the eternal feminine -in Christianity; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he broke down -before her, and gave up the ideal of his most inspired hours. It was -an ideal which only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of life -could bear; but not a man advanced in years! Indeed, he would have had -to demolish Christianity with his ideal! But he was not thinker and -philosopher enough for that Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci alone of those -artists had a really super-Christian outlook. He knows the East, the -"land of dawn," within himself as well as without himself. There is -something super-European and silent in him: a characteristic of every -one who has seen too wide a circle of things good and bad. - - -4. - -How much we have learnt and learnt anew in fifty years! The whole -Romantic School with its belief in "the people" is refuted! No Homeric -poetry as "popular" poetry! No deification of the great powers of -Nature! No deduction from language-relationship to race-relationship! -No "intellectual contemplations" of the supernatural! No truth -enshrouded in religion! - -The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one. I am astonished. From -this standpoint we regard such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of -carelessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of modesty; we would -condemn Plato for his _pia fraus_, Kant for the derivation of his -Categorical Imperative, his own belief certainly not having come to him -from this source. - -Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt in doubt. And the -question as to the _value_ of truthfulness and its extent lies _there_. - - -5. - -What I observe with pleasure in the German is his Mephistophelian -nature; but, to tell the truth, one must have a higher conception of -Mephistopheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary to _diminish_ -his Mephistopheles in order to magnify his "inner Faust." The true -German Mephistopheles is much more dangerous, bold, wicked, and -cunning, and consequently more open-hearted: remember the nature -of Frederick the Great, or of that much greater Frederick, the -Hohenstaufen, Frederick II. - -The real German Mephistopheles crosses the Alps, and believes that -everything there belongs to him. Then he recovers himself, like -Winckelmann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and Hamlet as -caricatures, invented to be laughed at, and upon Luther also. Goethe -had his good German moments, when he laughed inwardly at all these -things. But then he fell back again into his cloudy moods. - - -6. - -Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a wrong climate! There is -something in them that might be Hellenic!--something that is awakened -when they are brought into touch with the South--Winckelmann, Goethe, -Mozart. We should not forget, however, that we are still young. Luther -is still our last event; our last book is still the Bible. The Germans -have never yet "moralised." Also, the very food of the Germans was -their doom: its consequence, Philistinism. - - -7. - -The Germans are a dangerous people: they are experts at inventing -intoxicants. Gothic, rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense -and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner--Leibniz, too (dangerous at the -present day)--(they even idealised the serving soul as the virtue of -scholars and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The Germans may well -be the most composite people on earth. - -"The people of the Middle," the inventors of porcelain, and of a kind -of Chinese breed of Privy Councillor. - - -8. - -The smallness and baseness of the German soul were not and are not -consequences of the system of small states; for it is well known that -the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud and independent: -and it is not a large state _per se_ that makes souls freer and more -manly. The man whose soul obeys the slavish command: "Thou shalt and -must kneel!" in whose body there is an involuntary bowing and scraping -to titles, orders, gracious glances from above--well, such a man -in an "Empire" will only bow all the more deeply and lick the dust -more fervently in the presence of the greater sovereign than in the -presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted. We can still see in the -lower classes of Italians that aristocratic self-sufficiency; manly -discipline and self-confidence still form a part of the long history -of their country: these are virtues which once manifested themselves -before their eyes. A poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure -than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even a better man in the -end--any one can see this. Just ask the women. - - -9. - -Most artists, even some of the greatest (including the historians) have -up to the present belonged to the serving classes (whether they serve -people of high position or princes or women or "the masses"), not to -speak of their dependence upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus -Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but only according to their -vague conception of taste, not according to his own measure of beauty -on the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van Dyck was nobler in -this respect: who in all those whom he painted added a certain amount -of what he himself most highly valued: he did not descend from himself, -but rather lifted up others to himself when he "rendered." - -The slavish humility of the artist to his public (as Sebastian Bach has -testified in undying and outrageous words in the dedication of his High -Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in music; but it is all the -more deeply engrained. A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured -to impart my views on this subject. Chopin possesses distinction, like -Van Dyck. The disposition of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant; -of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn, too, possesses -distinction--like Goethe, in the most natural way in the world. - - -10. - -We could at any time have counted on the fingers of one hand those -German learned men who possessed wit: the remainder have understanding, -and a few of them, happily, that famous "childlike character" -which divines.... It is our privilege: with this "divination" German -science has discovered some things which we can hardly conceive of, and -which, after all, do not exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the -Germans who do not "divine" like them. - - -11. - -As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and _esprit_ of French society, -so do Germans reflect something of the deep, pensive earnestness of -their mystics and musicians, and also of their silly childishness. The -Italian exhibits a great deal of republican distinction and art, and -can show himself to be noble and proud without vanity. - - -12. - -A larger number of the higher and better-endowed men will, I hope, have -in the end so much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their bad -taste for affectation and sentimental darkness, and to turn against -Richard Wagner as much as against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are -leading us to ruin; they flatter our dangerous qualities. A stronger -future is prepared for us in Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in -these racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers yet. - - -13. - -The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse, for he is dependent upon -himself most of all. Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany ---for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck. - -Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the face of Germans. Everything -that had manly, exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the smug -populace remaining, the slave-souled people, there came an improvement -from abroad, especially by a mixture of Slavonic blood. - -The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian nobility in general (and the -peasant of certain North German districts), comprise at present the -most manly natures in Germany. - -That the manliest men shall rule: this is only the natural order of -things. - - -14. - -The future of German culture rests with the sons of the Prussian -officers. - - -15. - -There has always been a want of wit in Germany, and mediocre heads -attain there to the highest honours, because even they are rare. What -is most highly prized is diligence and perseverance and a certain -cold-blooded, critical outlook, and, for the sake of such qualities, -German scholarship and the German military system have become paramount -in Europe. - - -16. - -Parliaments may be very useful to a strong and versatile statesman: -he has something there to rely upon (every such thing must, however, -be able to resist!)--upon which he can throw a great deal of -responsibility. On the whole, however, I could wish that the counting -mania and the superstitious belief in majorities were not established -in Germany, as with the Latin races, and that one could finally invent -something new even in politics! It is senseless and dangerous to let -the custom of universal suffrage--which is still but a short time under -cultivation, and could easily be uprooted--take a deeper root: whilst, -of course, its introduction was merely an expedient to steer clear of -temporary difficulties. - - -17. - -Can any one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new -thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it -does not know its own mind. Peace and laisser aller are not types of -politics for which I have any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest -thoughts to victory--the only things that can make me interested in -Germany. England's small-mindedness is the great danger now on earth. -I observe more inclination towards greatness in the feelings of the -Russian Nihilists than in those of the English Utilitarians. We require -an intergrowth of the German and Slav races, and we require, too, the -cleverest financiers, the Jews, for us to become masters of the world. - -(a) The sense of reality. - -(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the people's right of -representation. We require the representation of the great interests. - -(c) We require an unconditional union with Russia, together with a -mutual plan of action which shall not permit any English schemata to -obtain the mastery in Russia. No American future! - -(d) A national system of politics is untenable, and embarrassment by -Christian views is a very great evil. In Europe all sensible people are -sceptics, whether they say so or not. - - -18. - -I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and -whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with--for I -see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly--is the United Europe. -It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the -broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century--this preparation -of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future -of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew -old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the -"Fatherlanders"--then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking -of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, -Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, -concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can -be said without some such "perhaps." - -But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there -comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe--I -refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires"--will in a short time -become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle -for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even -now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In -order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery -of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive -against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to -an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for -this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new rôle of -broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. -For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to -continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility -of shutting out _homines novi_ from the government will ruin her, and -her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the -carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long -period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that -he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, -as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in -the footsteps of Napoleon--the first man, and the man of greatest -initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the -next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are -the most inappropriate imaginable. - - -19. - -The condition of Europe in the next century will once again lead to the -breeding of manly virtues, because men will live in continual danger. -Universal military service is already the curious antidote which we -possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas, and it has grown up out -of the struggle of the nations. (Nation--men who speak one language -and read the same newspapers. These men now call themselves "nations," -and would far too readily trace their descent from the same source and -through the same history; which, however, even with the assistance of -the most malignant lying in the past, they have not succeeded in -doing.) - - -20. - -What quagmires and mendacity must there be about if it is possible, -in the modern European hotch-potch, to raise questions of "race"! (It -being premised that the origin of such writers is not in Horneo and -Borneo.) - - -21. - -Maxim: To associate with no man who takes any part in the mendacious -race swindle. - - -22. - -With the freedom of travel now existing, groups of men of the same -kindred can join together and establish communal habits and customs. -The overcoming of "nations." - - -23. - -To make Europe a centre of culture, national stupidities should not -make us blind to the fact that in the higher regions there is already a -continuous reciprocal dependence. France and German philosophy. Richard -Wagner and Paris (1830-50). Goethe and Greece. All things are impelled -towards, a synthesis of the European past in the highest types of mind. - - -24. - -Mankind has still much before it--how, generally speaking, could -the ideal be taken from the past? Perhaps merely in relation to the -present, which latter is possibly a lower region. - - -25. - -This is our distrust, which recurs again and again; our care, which -never lets us sleep; our question, which no one listens to or wishes -to listen to; our Sphinx, near which there is more than one precipice: -we believe that the men of present-day Europe are deceived in regard -to the things which we love best, and a pitiless demon (no, not -pitiless, only indifferent and puerile)--plays with our hearts and -their enthusiasm, as it may perhaps have already played with everything -that lived and loved; I believe that everything which we Europeans -of to-day are in the habit of admiring as the values of all these -respected things called "humanity," "mankind," "sympathy," "pity," may -be of some value as the debilitation and moderating of certain powerful -and dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless, in the long run all -these things are nothing else than the belittlement of the entire type -"man," his mediocrisation, if in such a desperate situation I may make -use of such a desperate expression. I think that the commedia umana for -an epicurean spectator-god must consist in this: that the Europeans, by -virtue of their growing morality, believe in all their innocence and -vanity that they are rising higher and higher, whereas the truth is -that they are sinking lower and lower--i.e. through the cultivation of -all the virtues which are useful to a herd, and through the repression -of the other and contrary virtues which give rise to a new, higher, -stronger, masterful race of men--the first-named virtues merely develop -the herd-animal in man and stabilitate the animal "man," for until now -man has been "the animal as yet unstabilitated." - - -26. - -Genius and Epoch.--Heroism is no form of selfishness, for one is -shipwrecked by it.... The direction of power is often conditioned by -the state of the period in which the great man happens to be born; and -this fact brings about the superstition that he is the expression of -his time. But this same power could be applied in several different -ways; and between him and his time there is always this difference: -that public opinion always worships the herd instinct,--_i.e._ the -instinct of the weak,--while he, the strong man, rights for strong -ideals. - - -27. - -The fate now overhanging Europe is simply this: that it is exactly -her strongest sons that come rarely and late to the spring-time of -their existence; that, as a rule, when they are already in their early -youth they perish, saddened, disgusted, darkened in mind, just because -they have already, with the entire passion of their strength, drained -to the dregs the cup of disillusionment, which in our days means the -cup of knowledge, and they would not have been the strongest had -they not also been the most disillusionised. For that is the test of -their power--they must first of all rise out of the illness of their -epoch to reach their own health. A late spring-time is their mark of -distinction; also, let us add, late merriment, late folly, the late -exuberance of joy! For this is the danger of to-day: everything that we -loved when we were young has betrayed us. Our last love--the love which -makes us acknowledge her, our love for Truth--let us take care that -she, too, does not betray us! - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Genealogy of Morals, by -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52319 *** diff --git a/old/52319-h/52319-h.htm b/old/52319-h/52319-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 6edc5ac..0000000 --- a/old/52319-h/52319-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5712 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Genealogy of Morals, by Friedrich Nietzsche. - </title> - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} -.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} -.p6 {margin-top: 6em;} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; - clear: both; -} - -hr.tb {width: 45%;} -hr.chap {width: 65%} -hr.full {width: 95%;} - -hr.r5 {width: 5%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;} -hr.r65 {width: 65%; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 3em;} - - -.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ - /* visibility: hidden; */ - position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; -} /* page numbers */ - -a:link {color: #000099; text-decoration: none; } - -v:link {color: #000099; text-decoration: none; } - -.parnum {margin-top: 2em; - text-align: center; -} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - -.u {text-decoration: underline;} - -.gesperrt -{ - letter-spacing: 0.15em; - margin-right: -0.15em; -} - -em.gesperrt -{ - font-style: normal; -} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.figleft { - float: left; - clear: left; - margin-left: 0; - margin-bottom: 1em; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-right: 1em; - padding: 0; - text-align: center; -} - -.figright { - float: right; - clear: right; - margin-left: 1em; - margin-bottom: - 1em; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-right: 0; - padding: 0; - text-align: center; -} - -/* Footnotes */ -.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} - -.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} - -.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} - -.fnanchor { - vertical-align: super; - font-size: .8em; - text-decoration: - none; -} - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52319 ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> -<h1>THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS</h1> - -<h3>A POLEMIC</h3> - -<h3>BY</h3> - -<h2>FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE</h2> - -<h4>TRANSLATED BY</h4> - -<h4>HORACE B. SAMUEL, M.A.</h4> - -<h4>PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES (FRAGMENT)</h4> - -<h4>TRANSLATED BY J. M. KENNEDY</h4> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 175px;"> -<img src="images/ill_niet.jpg" width="175" alt="" /> -</div> -<h4>The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche</h4> - -<h5>The First Complete and Authorised English Translation</h5> - -<h4>Edited by Dr Oscar Levy</h4> - -<h4>Volume Eight</h4> - -<h5>T.N. FOULIS</h5> - -<h5>13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET</h5> - -<h5>EDINBURGH: AND LONDON</h5> - -<h5>1913</h5> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p style="font-size: 0.8em;">CONTENTS.<br /> -<br /> -<a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE.</a><br /> -<a href="#FIRST_ESSAY">FIRST ESSAY. "GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD."</a><br /> -<a href="#SECOND_ESSAY">SECOND ESSAY. "GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE.</a><br /> -<a href="#THIRD_ESSAY">THIRD ESSAY.</a><br /> -<a href="#PEOPLES_AND_COUNTRIES">PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.</a><br /> -</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="EDITORS_NOTE" id="EDITORS_NOTE">EDITOR'S NOTE.</a></h4> - -<blockquote> -<p>In 1887, with the view of amplifying and completing certain new -doctrines which he had merely sketched in <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i> -(see especially aphorism 260), Nietzsche published <i>The Genealogy of -Morals</i>. This work is perhaps the least aphoristic, in form, of all -Nietzsche's productions. For analytical power, more especially in those -parts where Nietzsche examines the ascetic ideal, <i>The Genealogy of -Morals</i> is unequalled by any other of his works; and, in the light -which it throws upon the attitude of the ecclesiast to the man of -resentment and misfortune, it is one of the most valuable contributions -to sacerdotal psychology.</p> -</blockquote> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE">PREFACE.</a></h4> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own -good reason. We have never searched for ourselves—how should it then -come to pass, that we should ever <i>find</i> ourselves? Rightly has it been -said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." <i>Our</i> -treasure is there, where stand the hives of our knowledge. It is to -those hives that we are always striving; as born creatures of flight, -and as the honey-gatherers of the spirit, we care really in our hearts -only for one thing—to bring something "home to the hive!"</p> - -<p>As far as the rest of life with its so-called "experiences" is -concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or -sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are, I -fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is not -there, and certainly not our ear. Rather like one who, delighting -in a divine distraction, or sunken in the seas of his own soul, in -whose ear the clock has just thundered with all its force its twelve -strokes of noon, suddenly wakes up, and asks himself, "What has in -point of fact just struck?" so do we at times rub afterwards, as it -were, our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> puzzled ears, and ask in complete astonishment and complete -embarrassment, "Through what have we in point of fact just lived?" -further, "Who are we in point of fact?" and count, <i>after they have -struck</i>, as I have explained, all the twelve throbbing beats of the -clock of our experience, of our life, of our being—ah!—and count -wrong in the endeavour. Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, -we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, -for of us holds good to all eternity the motto, "Each one is the -farthest away from himself"—as far as ourselves are concerned we are -not "knowers."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>My thoughts concerning the <i>genealogy</i> of our moral prejudices—for -they constitute the issue in this polemic—have their first, bald, -and provisional expression in that collection of aphorisms entitled -<i>Human, all-too-Human, a Book for Free Minds</i>, the writing of which -was begun in Sorrento, during a winter which allowed me to gaze over -the broad and dangerous territory through which my mind had up to that -time wandered. This took place in the winter of 1876-77; the thoughts -themselves are older. They were in their substance already the same -thoughts which I take up again in the following treatises:—we hope -that they have derived benefit from the long interval, that they have -grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete. The fact, however, -that I still cling to them even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> now, that in the meanwhile they have -always held faster by each other, have, in fact, grown out of their -original shape and into each other, all this strengthens in my mind the -joyous confidence that they must have been originally neither separate -disconnected capricious nor sporadic phenomena, but have sprung from -a common root, from a fundamental "<i>fiat</i>" of knowledge, whose empire -reached to the soul's depth, and that ever grew more definite in its -voice, and more definite in its demands. That is the only state of -affairs that is proper in the case of a philosopher.</p> - -<p>We have no right to be "<i>disconnected</i>"; we must neither err -"disconnectedly" nor strike the truth "disconnectedly." Rather with -the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our thoughts, -our values, our Yes's and No's and If's and Whether's, grow connected -and interrelated, mutual witnesses of <i>one</i> will, <i>one</i> health, <i>one</i> -kingdom, <i>one</i> sun—as to whether they are to <i>your</i> taste, these -fruits of ours?—But what matters that to the trees? What matters that -to us, us the philosophers?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>Owing to a scrupulosity peculiar to myself, which I confess -reluctantly,—it concerns indeed <i>morality</i>,—a scrupulosity, which -manifests itself in my life at such an early period, with so much -spontaneity, with so chronic a persistence and so keen an opposition -to environment, epoch,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> precedent, and ancestry that I should have -been almost entitled to style it my "<i>â priori</i>"—my curiosity and my -suspicion felt themselves betimes bound to halt at the question, of -what in point of actual fact was the <i>origin</i> of our "Good" and of -our "Evil." Indeed, at the boyish age of thirteen the problem of the -origin of Evil already haunted me: at an age "when games and God divide -one's heart," I devoted to that problem my first childish attempt -at the literary game, my first philosophic essay—and as regards my -infantile solution of the problem, well, I gave quite properly the -honour to God, and made him the <i>father</i> of evil. Did my own "<i>â -priori</i>" demand that precise solution from me? that new, immoral, or -at least "amoral" "<i>â priori</i>" and that "categorical imperative" which -was its voice (but oh! how hostile to the Kantian article, and how -pregnant with problems!), to which since then I have given more and -more attention, and indeed what is more than attention. Fortunately -I soon learned to separate theological from moral prejudices, and -I gave up looking for a <i>supernatural</i> origin of evil. A certain -amount of historical and philological education, to say nothing of -an innate faculty of psychological discrimination <i>par excellence</i> -succeeded in transforming almost immediately my original problem into -the following one:—Under what conditions did Man invent for himself -those judgments of values, "Good" and "Evil"? <i>And what intrinsic value -do they possess in themselves?</i> Have they up to the present hindered -or advanced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> human well-being? Are they a symptom of the distress, -impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is -it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the -will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? On this -point I found and hazarded in my mind the most diverse answers, I -established distinctions in periods, peoples, and castes, I became a -specialist in my problem, and from my answers grew new questions, new -investigations, new conjectures, new probabilities; until at last I had -a land of my own and a soil of my own, a whole secret world growing and -flowering, like hidden gardens of whose existence no one could have an -inkling—oh, how happy are we, we finders of knowledge, provided that -we know how to keep silent sufficiently long.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>My first impulse to publish some of my hypotheses concerning the origin -of morality I owe to a clear, well-written, and even precocious little -book, in which a perverse and vicious kind of moral philosophy (your -real <i>English</i> kind) was definitely presented to me for the first time; -and this attracted me—with that magnetic attraction, inherent in that -which is diametrically opposed and antithetical to one's own ideas. -The title of the book was <i>The Origin of the Moral Emotions</i>; its -author, Dr. Paul Rée; the year of its appearance, 1877. I may almost -say that I have never read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> anything in which every single dogma and -conclusion has called forth from me so emphatic a negation as did that -book; albeit a negation tainted by either pique or intolerance. I -referred accordingly both in season and out of season in the previous -works, at which I was then working, to the arguments of that book, not -to refute them—for what have I got to do with mere refutations but -substituting, as is natural to a positive mind, for an improbable -theory one which is more probable, and occasionally no doubt, for one -philosophic error, another. In that early period I gave, as I have -said, the first public expression to those theories of origin to which -these essays are devoted, but with a clumsiness which I was the last -to conceal from myself, for I was as yet cramped, being still without -a special language for these special subjects, still frequently liable -to relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, compare what I say -in <i>Human, all-too-Human</i>, part i., about the parallel early history -of Good and Evil, Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from the castes of the -aristocrats and the slaves); similarly, Aph. 136 et seq., concerning -the birth and value of ascetic morality; similarly, Aphs. 96, 99, -vol. ii., Aph. 89, concerning the Morality of Custom, that far older -and more original kind of morality which is <i>toto cœlo</i> different -from the altruistic ethics (in which Dr. Rée, like all the English -moral philosophers, sees the ethical "Thing-in-itself"); finally, -Aph. 92. Similarly, Aph. 26 in <i>Human, all-too-Human</i>, part ii., and -Aph. 112, the <i>Dawn of Day</i>, concerning the origin of Justice as a -balance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> between persons of approximately equal power (equilibrium as -the hypothesis of all contract, consequently of all law); similarly, -concerning the origin of Punishment, <i>Human, all-too-Human</i>, part -ii., Aphs. 22, 23, in regard to which the deterrent object is neither -essential nor original (as Dr. Rée thinks:—rather is it that this -object is only imported, under certain definite conditions, and always -as something extra and additional).</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>In reality I had set my heart at that time on something much more -important than the nature of the theories of myself or others -concerning the origin of morality (or, more precisely, the real -function from my view of these theories was to point an end to which -they were one among many means). The issue for me was the value -of morality, and on that subject I had to place myself in a state -of abstraction, in which I was almost alone with my great teacher -Schopenhauer, to whom that book, with all its passion and inherent -contradiction (for that book also was a polemic), turned for present -help as though he were still alive. The issue was, strangely enough, -the value of the "un-egoistic" instincts, the instincts of pity, -self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently -painted in golden colours, deified and etherealised, that eventually -they appeared to him, as it were, high and dry, as "intrinsic values -in themselves," on the strength of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> he uttered both to Life -and to himself his own negation. But against <i>these very</i> instincts -there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a -scepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct -I saw the <i>great</i> danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and -seduction—seduction to what? to nothingness?—in these very instincts -I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes -backwards, the will turning <i>against</i> Life, the last illness announcing -itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality -of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even -philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our -modern European civilisation; I realised that it was the route along -which that civilisation slid on its way to—a new Buddhism?—a European -Buddhism?—<i>Nihilism</i>? This exaggerated estimation in which modern -philosophers have held pity, is quite a new phenomenon: up to that time -philosophers were absolutely unanimous as to the <i>worthlessness</i> of pity. -I need only mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant—four -minds as mutually different as is possible, but united on one point; -their contempt of pity.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>This problem of the value of pity and of the pity-morality (I am an -opponent of the modern infamous emasculation of our emotions) seems at -the first blush a mere isolated problem, a note of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> interrogation for -itself; he, however, who once halts at this problem, and learns how to -put questions, will experience what I experienced:—a new and immense -vista unfolds itself before him, a sense of potentiality seizes him -like a vertigo, every species of doubt, mistrust, and fear springs -up, the belief in morality, nay, in all morality, totters,—finally a -new demand voices itself. Let us speak out this <i>new demand</i>: we need -a <i>critique</i> of moral values, <i>the value of these values</i> is for the -first time to be called into question—and for this purpose a knowledge -is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these -values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and -their distortion (morality as a result, as a symptom, as a mask, as -Tartuffism, as disease, as a misunderstanding; but also morality as a -cause, as a remedy, as a stimulant, as a fetter, as a drug), especially -as such a knowledge has neither existed up to the present time nor is -even now generally desired. The value of these "values" was taken for -granted as an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one -has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in -judging the "good man" to be of a higher value than the "evil man," of -a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, -and prosperity generally, not forgetting the future. What? Suppose the -converse were the truth! What? Suppose there lurked in the "good man" -a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, -a <i>narcotic</i>, by means of which the present <i>battened on the future</i>! -More<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also -pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the -guilt, if the <i>maximum potentiality of the power and splendour</i> of the -human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would -be the danger of dangers?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>Enough, that after this vista had disclosed itself to me, I myself had -reason to search for learned, bold, and industrious colleagues (I am -doing it even to this very day). It means traversing with new clamorous -questions, and at the same time with new eyes, the immense, distant, -and completely unexplored land of morality—of a morality which has -actually existed and been actually lived! and is this not practically -equivalent to first <i>discovering</i> that land? If, in this context, I -thought, amongst others, of the aforesaid Dr. Rée, I did so because I -had no doubt that from the very nature of his questions he would be -compelled to have recourse to a truer method, in order to obtain his -answers. Have I deceived myself on that score? I wished at all events -to give a better direction of vision to an eye of such keenness, and -such impartiality. I wished to direct him to the real <i>history of -morality</i>, and to warn him, while there was yet time, against a world -of English theories that culminated in <i>the blue vacuum of heaven</i>. -Other colours, of course, rise immediately to one's mind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> as being a -hundred times more potent than blue for a genealogy of morals:—for -instance, <i>grey</i>, by which I mean authentic facts capable of definite -proof and having actually existed, or, to put it shortly, the whole -of that long hieroglyphic script (which is so hard to decipher) about -the past history of human morals. This script was unknown to Dr. Rée; -but he had read Darwin:—and so in his philosophy the Darwinian beast -and that pink of modernity, the demure weakling and dilettante, who -"bites no longer," shake hands politely in a fashion that is at least -instructive, the latter exhibiting a certain facial expression of -refined and good-humoured indolence, tinged with a touch of pessimism -and exhaustion; as if it really did not pay to take all these things—I -mean moral problems—so seriously. I, on the other hand, think that -there are no subjects which <i>pay</i> better for being taken seriously; part -of this payment is, that perhaps eventually they admit of being taken -<i>gaily</i>. This gaiety indeed, or, to use my own language, this <i>joyful -wisdom</i>, is a payment; a payment for a protracted, brave, laborious, and -burrowing seriousness, which, it goes without saying, is the attribute -of but a few. But on that day on which we say from the fullness of our -hearts, "Forward! our old morality too is fit material <i>for Comedy</i>," -we shall have discovered a new plot, and a new possibility for the -Dionysian drama entitled <i>The Soul's Fate</i>—and he will speedily utilise -it, one can wager safely, he, the great ancient eternal dramatist of -the comedy of our existence.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>If this writing be obscure to any individual, and jar on his ears, I -do not think that it is necessarily I who am to blame. It is clear -enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose, namely, that the reader -has first read my previous writings and has not grudged them a certain -amount of trouble: it is not, indeed, a simple matter to get really at -their essence. Take, for instance, my <i>Zarathustra</i>; I allow no one -to pass muster as knowing that book, unless every single word therein -has at some time wrought in him a profound wound, and at some time -exercised on him a profound enchantment: then and not till then can he -enjoy the privilege of participating reverently in the halcyon element, -from which that work is born, in its sunny brilliance, its distance, -its spaciousness, its certainty. In other cases the aphoristic form -produces difficulty, but this is only because this form is treated -<i>too casually</i>. An aphorism properly coined and cast into its final -mould is far from being "deciphered" as soon as it has been read; on -the contrary, it is then that it first requires <i>to be expounded</i>—of -course for that purpose an art of exposition is necessary. The third -essay in this book provides an example of what is offered, of what in -such cases I call exposition: an aphorism is prefixed to that essay, -the essay itself is its commentary. Certainly one <i>quality</i> which -nowadays has been best forgotten—and that is why it will take some -time yet for my writings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> to become readable—is essential in order -to practise reading as an art—a quality for the exercise of which it -is necessary to be a cow, and under <i>no circumstances</i> a modern man!— -<i>rumination</i>.</p> - -<p>Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10%;"><i>July</i> 1887.</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> -<h5><a name="FIRST_ESSAY" id="FIRST_ESSAY">FIRST ESSAY.</a></h5> - -<h4>"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD."</h4> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only -philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far -as a history of the origin of morality—these men, I say, offer us -in their own personalities no paltry problem;—they even have, if I -am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, -an advantage over their books—<i>they themselves are interesting!</i> -These English psychologists—what do they really mean? We always -find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing -to the front the <i>partie honteuse</i> of our inner world, and looking -for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise -quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be -the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the <i>vis inertiæ</i> of -habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism -and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, -reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)—what is the real motive -power which always impels these psychologists in precisely <i>this</i> -direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, -vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or -perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned -idealists who have become gloomy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> poisoned, and bitter? or a petty -subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that -has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a -vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully -paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a -dash of each of these motives—a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, -a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy?</p> - -<p>But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs -crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as -thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a <i>swamp</i>.</p> - -<p>I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and if, in -the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish -from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that -these analysts with their psychological microscopes should be, at -bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle -both their hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained -themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, <i>any</i> truth -in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and -immoral truths—for there are truths of that description.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these -historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the -<i>historical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> sense</i> itself, that they themselves are quite deserted -by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their -thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on -<i>thoroughly</i> unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The -crass ineptitude of their genealogy of morals is immediately apparent -when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and -judgment of "good." "Man had originally," so speaks their decree, -"praised and called 'good' altruistic acts from the standpoint of -those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were -<i>useful</i>; subsequently the origin of this praise was <i>forgotten</i>, and -altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were -praised as good, came also to be felt as good—as though they contained -in themselves some intrinsic goodness." The thing is obvious:—this -initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic -traits of the English psychologists—we have "utility," "forgetting," -"habit," and finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis -of a system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present -prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. -This pride <i>must</i> be brought low, this system of values <i>must</i> lose its -values: is that attained?</p> - -<p>Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real -homestead of the concept "good" is sought and located in the wrong -place: the judgment "good" did <i>not</i> originate among those to whom -goodness was shown. Much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> rather has it been the good themselves, -that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the -high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that -their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in -contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and -the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first -arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to -coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The -standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could -possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of -supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within -themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation -of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition -on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of -practical expediency is always based—and not for one occasional, not -for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility -and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic <i>esprit de -corps</i> and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into -association with a meaner race, an "under race," this is the origin of -the antithesis of good and bad.</p> - -<p>(The masters' right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible -to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the -masters: they say "this <i>is</i> that, and that," they seal finally every -object and every event with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> sound, and thereby at the same time take -possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word "good" -is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, in -accordance with the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. -On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the <i>decay</i> of aristocratic -values, that the antitheses between "egoistic" and "altruistic" -presses more and more heavily on the human conscience—it is, to use -my own language, the <i>herd instinct</i> which finds in this antithesis an -expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time -for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation -to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in -contemporary Europe); for to-day that prejudice is predominant, which, -acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain -disease, holds that "moral," "altruistic," and "<i>désintéressé</i>" are -concepts of equal value.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as -to the genesis of the value "good" cannot be historically upheld, it -suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of -altruistic conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised, -and this origin has become <i>forgotten</i>:—But in what conceivable way is -this forgetting <i>possible</i>! Has perchance the utility of such conduct -ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has -rather been experienced every day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> at all times, and is consequently -a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh -day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so -far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed -on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much -more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) -which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places -the concept "good" as essentially similar to the concept "useful," -"purposive," so that in the judgments "good" and "bad" mankind is -simply summarising and investing with a sanction its <i>unforgotten</i> and -<i>unforgettable</i> experiences concerning the "useful-purposive" and the -"mischievous-non-purposive." According to this theory, "good" is the -attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so -is able to claim to be considered "valuable in the highest degree," -"valuable in itself." This method of explanation is also, as I have -said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and -psychologically tenable.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>The guide-post which first put me on the <i>right</i> track was this -question—what is the true etymological significance of the various -symbols for the idea "good" which have been coined in the various -languages? I then found that they all led back to <i>the same evolution -of the same idea</i>—that everywhere "aristocrat," "noble" (in the -social sense), is the root idea, out of which have necessarily -developed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> "good" in the sense of "with aristocratic soul," "noble," -in the sense of "with a soul of high calibre," "with a privileged -soul"—a development which invariably runs parallel with that other -evolution by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low," are made to change -finally into "bad." The most eloquent proof of this last contention -is the German word "<i>schlecht</i>" itself: this word is identical with -"<i>schlicht</i>"—(compare "<i>schlechtweg</i>" and "<i>schlechterdings</i>")—which, -originally and as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply denoted -the plebeian man in contrast to the aristocratic man. It is at the -sufficiently late period of the Thirty Years' War that this sense -becomes changed to the sense now current. From the standpoint of -the Genealogy of Morals this discovery seems to be substantial: the -lateness of it is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised -in the modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all -questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown, even to -the province of natural science and physiology, which, <i>prima facie</i> -is the most objective. The extent of the mischief which is caused by -this prejudice (once it is free of all trammels except those of its own -malice), particularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the notorious -case of Buckle: it was in Buckle that that <i>plebeianism</i> of the modern -spirit, which is of English origin, broke out once again from its -malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that -salted, rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present time -all volcanoes have spoken.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>With regard to <i>our</i> problem, which can justly be called an <i>intimate</i> -problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears: -it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and roots -which denote "good" we catch glimpses of that arch-trait, on the -strength of which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings of -a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they call themselves in -perhaps the most frequent instances simply after their superiority -in power (<i>e.g.</i> "the powerful," "the lords," "the commanders"), or -after the most obvious sign of their superiority, as for example -"the rich," "the possessors" (that is the meaning of <i>arya</i>; and the -Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But they also call themselves -after some <i>characteristic idiosyncrasy</i>; and this is the case which -now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, "the truthful": -this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouthpiece is found in -Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word ἐσθλος, which is coined for the -purpose, signifies etymologically "one who <i>is</i>," who has reality, who -is real, who is true; and then with a subjective twist, the "true," -as the "truthful": at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it -becomes the motto and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes -the transition to the meaning "noble," so as to place outside the pale -the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him—till -finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to delineate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> -psychological <i>noblesse</i>, and becomes as it were ripe and mellow. In -the word κακός as in δειλός (the plebeian in contrast to the ἀγαθός) -the cowardice is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling on what -lines the etymological origin of the very ambiguous ἀγαθός is to be -investigated. In the Latin <i>malus</i> (which I place side by side with -μέλας) the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and -above all as the black-haired ("<i>hic niger est</i>"), as the pre-Aryan -inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest -feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan -conquering race:—at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact -analogue—<i>Fin</i> (for instance, in the name <i>Fin-Gal</i>), the distinctive -word of the nobility, finally—good, noble, clean, but originally the -blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The -Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a blonde -race; and it is wrong to connect, as Virchow still connects, those -traces of an essentially dark-haired population which are to be seen -on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany with any Celtic -ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is -rather the <i>pre-Aryan</i> population of Germany which surges up to these -districts. (The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in -point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper -hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in -the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern -democracy, still more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the -"Commune," the most primitive form of society, which is now common to -all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a -monstrous reversion—and that the conquering and <i>master</i> race—the -Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe -that I can explain the Latin <i>bonus</i> as the "warrior": my hypothesis -is that I am right in deriving <i>bonus</i> from an older <i>duonus</i> (compare -<i>bellum</i> = <i>duellum</i> = <i>duen-lum</i>, in which the word <i>duonus</i> appears -to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of -variance, "entzweiung" (<i>duo</i>), as the warrior: one sees what in -ancient Rome "the good" meant for a man. Must not our actual German -word <i>gut</i> mean "<i>the godlike</i>, the man of godlike race"? and be -identical with the national name (originally the nobles' name) of the -<i>Goths</i>?</p> - -<p>The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this work.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for -exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority -always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, in -those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the <i>priestly</i> -caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers on -itself the privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its -priestly function. It is in these cases, for instance, that "clean" and -"unclean" confront<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> each other for the first time as badges of class -distinction; here again there develops a "good" and a "bad," in a sense -which has ceased to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken -not to take these ideas of "clean" and "unclean" too seriously, too -broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have, on -the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in a sense -which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude, coarse, physical, -and narrow, and above all essentially <i>unsymbolical</i>. The "clean man" is -originally only a man who washes himself, who abstains from certain -foods which are conducive to skin diseases, who does not sleep with -the unclean women of the lower classes, who has a horror of blood—not -more, not much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestly -aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such an early juncture -there should ensue a really dangerous sharpening and intensification -of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed values that -gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable Achilles of -free thought would shudder to cross. There is from the outset a -certain <i>diseased taint</i> in such sacerdotal aristocracies, and in the -habits which prevail in such societies—habits which, <i>averse</i> as they -are to action, constitute a compound of introspection and explosive -emotionalism, as a result of which there appears that introspective -morbidity and neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to all -priests at all times: with regard, however, to the remedy which they -themselves have invented<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> for this disease—the philosopher has no -option but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred -times more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have been -the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects of -the naïvetés of this priestly cure. Take, for instance, certain kinds -of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight -into the wilderness (a kind of Weir-Mitchell isolation, though of -course without that system of excessive feeding and fattening which -is the most efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic -ideal); consider too the whole metaphysic of the priests, with its -war on the senses, its enervation, its hair-splitting; consider its -self-hypnotism on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as -a glass disc and obsession), and that climax which we can understand -only too well of an unusual satiety with its panacea of <i>nothingness</i> -(or God:—the demand for a <i>unio mystica</i> with God is the demand of the -Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana—and nothing else!). In sacerdotal -societies <i>every</i> element is on a more dangerous scale, not merely -cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love, -ambition, virtue, morbidity:—further, it can fairly be stated that it -is on the soil of this <i>essentially dangerous</i> form of human society, -the sacerdotal form, that man really becomes for the first time an -<i>interesting animal</i>, that it is in this form that the soul of man has -in a higher sense attained <i>depths</i> and become <i>evil</i>—and those are -the two fundamental forms of the superiority which up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> to the present -man has exhibited over every other animal.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode -of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and -then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus -is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the -priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and -cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic "values" are -based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and -even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what -is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, -the dance, the tourney—on everything, in fact, which is contained -in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode -of valuation is—we have seen—based on other hypotheses: it is bad -enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests -are, as is notorious, <i>the worst enemies</i>—why? Because they are the -weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous -and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. -The really great haters in the history of the world have always been -priests, who are also the cleverest haters—in comparison with the -cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is -practically negligible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything -were it not for the cleverness imported into it by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> weak—take at -once the most important instance. All the world's efforts against the -"aristocrats," the "mighty," the "masters," the "holders of power," -are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against -those classes by <i>the Jews</i>—the Jews, that priestly nation which -eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on -its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of -values, which was at the same time an act of the <i>cleverest revenge</i>. -Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation -of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews -who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic -= beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying -logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with -the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this -contrary equation, namely, "the wretched are alone the good; the poor, -the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the -sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones -who are blessed, for them alone is salvation—but you, on the other -hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the -evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally -also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!" We know who -it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the -context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which -the Jews have exhibited in connection with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> this most fundamental of -all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen -on another occasion (<i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>, Aph. 195)—that it was, -in fact, with the Jews that the <i>revolt of the slaves</i> begins in the -sphere <i>of morals</i>; that revolt which has behind it a history of two -millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our -sight, because it—has achieved victory.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which -has taken two thousand years to achieve victory?—There is nothing -wonderful in this: all <i>lengthy</i> processes are hard to see and to -realise. But <i>this</i> is what took place: from the trunk of that tree -of revenge and hate, Jewish hate,—that most profound and sublime -hate, which creates ideals and changes old values to new creations, -the like of which has never been on earth,—there grew a phenomenon -which was equally incomparable, <i>a new love</i>, the most profound and -sublime of all kinds of love;—and from what other trunk could it have -grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on its upward -growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as -an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the contrary is the truth! This -love grew out of that hate, as its crown, as its triumphant crown, -circling wider and wider amid the clarity and fulness of the sun, and -pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height its goal of hatred, -its victory, its spoil, its strategy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> with the same intensity with -which the roots of that tree of hate sank into everything which was -deep and evil with increasing stability and increasing desire. This -Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this "Redeemer" -bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful—was -he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, -temptation to take the tortuous path to those very <i>Jewish</i> values and -those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel really obtained the final goal -of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this "Redeemer," for -all that he might pose as Israel's adversary and Israel's destroyer? Is -it not due to the black magic of a really <i>great</i> policy of revenge, -of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with -slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the -actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so -that all the world—that is, all the enemies of Israel—could nibble -without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human mind -with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly -<i>dangerous</i>? Anything that was even equivalent in the power of its -seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and corrupting influence to that -symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox of a "god on the -cross," to that mystery of the unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror -of the self-crucifixion of a god for the <i>salvation of man</i>? It is -at least certain that <i>sub hoc signo</i> Israel, with its revenge and -transvaluation of all values, has up to the present always triumphed -again over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> all other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; -that the people have triumphed—or the slaves, or the populace, or the -herd, or whatever name you care to give them—if this has happened -through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater -mission in the world's history. The 'masters' have been done away -with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may -also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)—I -do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication -has succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from the -masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming -Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the -words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning -through the whole body politic of mankind—but its <i>tempo</i> and pace -may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more -discreet—there is time enough. In view of this context has the Church -nowadays any necessary purpose? has it, in fact, a right to live? Or -could man get on without it? <i>Quæritur</i>. It seems that it fetters and -retards this tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that -might be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish -institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at -delicacy, to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> really modern taste. Should it not at any rate learn to -be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays, more than it allures. -Which of us would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no Church? -It is the Church which repels us, not its poison—apart from the Church -we like the poison." This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my -discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof), -and a democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and -could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard to this -topic there is much on which to be silent.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of -<i>resentment</i> becoming creative and giving birth to values—a resentment -experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet -of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary -revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant -affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the -very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and -"not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of -the valuing standpoint—this <i>inevitable</i> gravitation to the objective -instead of back to the subjective—is typical of "resentment": the -slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external -and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires -objective stimuli<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> to be capable of action at all—its action is -fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to -the aristocrat's system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously, -it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful -and exultant "yes" to its own self;—its negative conception, "low," -"vulgar," "bad," is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its -positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and -passion), of "we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy -ones."</p> - -<p>When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits sacrilege on -reality, this is limited to that particular sphere with which it -is <i>not</i> sufficiently acquainted—a sphere, in fact, from the real -knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself. It misjudges, in -some cases, the sphere which it despises, the sphere of the common -vulgar man and the low people: on the other hand, due weight should be -given to the consideration that in any case the mood of contempt, of -disdain, of superciliousness, even on the supposition that it <i>falsely</i> -portrays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed from -that degree of falsity which will always characterise the attacks—in -effigy, of course—of the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of -the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In point of fact, there is -in contempt too strong an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, -of boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation, for it to be -capable of distorting its victim into a real caricature or a real -monstrosity. Attention again should be paid to the almost benevolent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> -<i>nuances</i> which, for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all -the words by which it distinguishes the common people from itself; -note how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration imparts -its honeyed <i>flavour</i>, until at last almost all the words which are -applied to the vulgar man survive finally as expressions for "unhappy," -"worthy of pity" (compare δειλο, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός]; the -latter two names really denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave -and beast of burden)—and how, conversely, "bad," "low," "unhappy" -have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which -"unhappy" is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble -aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in contempt -(let philologists remember the sense in which ὀιζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, -δυστυχεῑν, ξυμφορά used to be employed). The "well-born" simply -<i>felt</i> themselves the "happy"; they did not have to manufacture their -happiness artificially through looking at their enemies, or in cases -to talk and <i>lie themselves</i> into happiness (as is the custom with all -resentful men); and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant -with strength, and consequently <i>necessarily</i> energetic, they were too -wise to dissociate happiness from action—activity becomes in their -minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is the etymology of εὖ -πρἆττειν)—all in sharp contrast to the "happiness" of the weak and -the oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity, among whom -happiness appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, -a peace, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> "Sabbath," an enervation of the mind and relaxation -of the limbs,—in short, a purely <i>passive</i> phenomenon. While the -aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself -(γενναῐος, "nobleε-born," emphasises the nuance "sincere," and perhaps -also "naïf"), the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere -nor naïf, nor honest and candid with himself. His soul <i>squints</i>; his -mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and back-doors, everything -secret appeals to him as <i>his</i> world, <i>his</i> safety, <i>his</i> balm; he is -past master in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional -self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race of such <i>resentful</i> men -will of necessity eventually prove more <i>prudent</i> than any aristocratic -race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a -paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men -is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement; -so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete -certainty of function of the governing <i>unconscious</i> instincts, or -as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant -charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic -bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times -noble souls have recognised each other. When the resentment of the -aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in -an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no <i>venom</i>: on the -other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless instances, -when in the case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable. An<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> -inability to take seriously for any length of time their enemies, -their disasters, their <i>misdeeds</i>—that is the sign of the full strong -natures who possess a superfluity of moulding plastic force, that -heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in -the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and -meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable -of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a -shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is -only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing, -of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real -"<i>love</i> of one's enemies." What respect for his enemies is found, -forsooth, in an aristocratic man—and such a reverence is already -a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his -distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character -there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand, -imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him—and it is here -exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the -evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from -which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good -one," himself—his very self!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11</p> - -<p>The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic -man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> -away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then -creates for himself a concept of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic -origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred—the -former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter, -on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in -the conception of a slave-morality—these two words "bad" and "evil," -how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they -have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea "good" is -not the same: much rather let the question be asked, "Who is really -evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In -all sternness let it be answered thus:—<i>just</i> the good man of the -other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who -rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, -into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This -particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to -know those "good" ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not -to know them only as "<i>evil enemies</i>" and the same men who <i>inter -pares</i> were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, -custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance -and jealousy <i>inter pares</i>, these men who in their relations with -each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, -self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men -are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign -element, a <i>foreign</i> country, begins), not much better than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> beasts -of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from -all social control, they feel that in the wilderness they can give -vent with impunity to that tension which is produced by enclosure and -imprisonment in the peace of society, they <i>revert</i> to the innocence -of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps -come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with -bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student's -prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an -ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognise -at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the -magnificent <i>blonde brute</i>, avidly rampant for spoil and victory; -this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must -get loose again, must return into the wilderness—the Roman, Arabic, -German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian -Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who -have left the idea "Barbarian" on all the tracks in which they have -marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even -a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilisation -(for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians in that celebrated -funeral oration, "Our audacity has forced a way over every land and -sea, rearing everywhere imperishable memorials of itself for <i>good</i> -and for <i>evil</i>"). This audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, -and spasmodic as may be its expression; the incalculable and fantastic -nature of their enterprises,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>Pericles sets in special relief and -glory the ᾽ραθυμία of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for -safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight -in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty,—all -these features become crystallised, for those who suffered thereby -in the picture of the "barbarian," of the "evil enemy," perhaps of -the "Goth" and of the "Vandal." The profound, icy mistrust which -the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power,—even at the -present time,—is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable -horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath -of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and -ourselves there exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, -relationship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of -Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and endeavoured -to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He could only dispose -of the contradiction, with which he was confronted, by the Homeric -world, an age magnificent indeed, but at the same time so awful and -so violent, by making two ages out of one, which he henceforth placed -one behind each other—first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as -that world had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families, -who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze age, as -that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of the oppressed, -spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as an age of bronze, -as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without -conscience, crushing everything,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> and bespattering everything with -blood. Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that -the very <i>essence of all civilisation</i> is to <i>train</i> out of man, the -beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal, -it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real <i>tools of -civilisation</i> all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the -help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals, -were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come -to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also -<i>represented</i> the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is -not only probable—nay, it is <i>palpable</i> to-day; these bearers of -vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up, these descendants of -all European and non-European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan -population—these people, I say, represent the <i>decline</i> of humanity! -These "tools of civilisation" are a disgrace to humanity, and -constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation, more -of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. One may be perfectly -justified in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at -the core of all aristocratic races, and in being on one's guard: but -who would not a hundred times prefer to be afraid, when one at the -same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of being -perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the -dwarfed, the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What -produces to-day our repulsion towards "man"?—for we <i>suffer</i> from -"man," there is no doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> about it. It is not fear; it is rather that -we have nothing more to fear from men; it is that the worm "man" is in -the foreground and pullulates; it is that the "tame man," the wretched -mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal -and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a "higher -man"; yes, it is that he has a certain right so to consider himself, -in so far as he feels that in contrast to that excess of deformity, -disease, exhaustion, and effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute -present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved a relative success, he -at any rate still says "yes" to life.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last -hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone -cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! bad air! -That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour -of the entrails of a misbegotten soul!—That excepted, what can one -not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, -solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everything, born -as one is to a burrowing and battling existence; one always returns -once again to the light, one always lives again one's golden hour of -victory—and then one stands as one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready -for something more difficult, for something more distant, like a bow -stretched but the tauter by every strain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> But from time to time do ye -grant me—assuming that "beyond good and evil" there are goddesses who -can grant—one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something -perfect, fully realised, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something -that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of a man that justifies -the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that -realises and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to <i>the -belief in man</i>! For the position is this: in the dwarfing and levelling -of the European man lurks <i>our</i> greatest peril, for it is this outlook -which fatigues—we see to-day nothing which wishes to be greater, we -surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards -towards something more attenuated, more inoffensive, more cunning, -more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more -Christian—man, there is no doubt about it, grows always "better" -—the destiny of Europe lies even in this—that in losing the fear of -man, we have also lost the hope in man, yea, the will to be man. The -sight of man now fatigues.—What is present-day Nihilism if it is not -<i>that</i>?—We are tired of <i>man</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>But let us come back to it; the problem of <i>another</i> origin of the -<i>good</i>—of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out—demands -its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge -against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the -great birds of prey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs -say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as -far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, -a lamb,—is he not good?" then there is nothing to cavil at in the -setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey -will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, -"<i>We</i> bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them: -nothing is tastier than a tender lamb." To require of strength that it -should <i>not</i> express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to -overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for -enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require -of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of -force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action—rather it -is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing, -acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of -language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become -petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all -working as conditioned by a worker, by a "subject." And just exactly -as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the -latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called -lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the -expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed -some indifferent neutral <i>substratum</i>, which enjoyed a <i>caprice and -option</i> as to whether or not it should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> express strength. But there -is no such <i>substratum</i>, there is no "being" behind doing, working, -becoming; "the doer" is a mere appanage to the action. The action is -everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they -make the lightning lighten, that is a "doing-doing": they make the same -phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. -The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, "Force moves, -force causes," and so on. Our whole science is still, in spite of all -its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of -language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious -changeling "the subject" (the atom, to give another instance, is such -a changeling, just as the Kantian "Thing-in-itself"). What wonder, -if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and -hatred exploit for their own advantage this belief, and indeed hold no -belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this—"that the strong -has the <i>option</i> of being weak, and the bird of prey of being a lamb." -Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the -birds of prey the <i>responsibility</i> for being birds of prey: when the -oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the -vindictive guile of weakness, "Let us be otherwise than the evil, -namely, good! and good is every one who does not oppress, who hurts -no one, who does not attack, who does not pay back, who hands over -revenge to God, who holds himself, as we do, in hiding; who goes out -of the way of evil, and demands, in short, little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> from life; like -ourselves the patient, the meek, the just,"—yet all this, in its cold -and unprejudiced interpretation, means nothing more than "once for -all, the weak are weak; it is good to do <i>nothing for which we are not -strong enough</i>"; but this dismal state of affairs, this prudence of the -lowest order, which even insects possess (which in a great danger are -fain to sham death so as to avoid doing "too much"), has, thanks to -the counterfeiting and self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade -in the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue, just as though -the <i>very</i> weakness of the weak—that is, forsooth, its <i>being</i>, its -working, its whole unique inevitable inseparable reality—were a -voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed, an act of <i>merit</i>. -This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing "subject" -<i>necessary</i> from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion, -in which every lie is fain to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to -use popular language, the <i>soul</i>) has perhaps proved itself the best -dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde -of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most -sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as -freedom, of being this, or being that, as <i>merit</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>Will any one look a little into—right into—the mystery of how <i>ideals</i> -are <i>manufactured</i> in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come!</p> - -<p>Here we have a vista opened into these grimy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> workshops. Wait just a -moment, dear Mr. Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow -accustomed to this false changing light—Yes! Enough! Now speak! What -is happening below down yonder? Speak out that what you see, man of the -most dangerous curiosity—for now <i>I</i> am the listener.</p> - -<p>"I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a cautious, spiteful, gentle -whispering and muttering together in all the corners and crannies. It -seems to me that they are lying; a sugary softness adheres to every -sound. Weakness is turned to <i>merit</i>, there is no doubt about it—it is -just as you say."</p> - -<p>Further!</p> - -<p>"And the impotence which requites not, is turned to 'goodness,' craven -baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience -(namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this -submission—they call him God). The inoffensive character of the weak, -the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his -forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as 'patience,' -which is also called 'virtue'; not being able to avenge one's self, is -called not wishing to avenge one's self, perhaps even forgiveness (for -<i>they</i> know not what they do—we alone know what <i>they</i> do). They also -talk of the 'love of their enemies' and sweat thereby."</p> - -<p>Further!</p> - -<p>"They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers -and counterfeiters in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> corners, although they try to get warm by -crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is -a favour and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the -dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a -probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which -will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in -gold, nay in happiness. This they call 'Blessedness.'"</p> - -<p>Further!</p> - -<p>"They are now giving me to understand, that not only are they better -men than the mighty, the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have -got to lick (<i>not</i> out of fear, not at all out of fear! But because -God ordains that one should honour all authority)—not only are they -better men, but that they also have a 'better time,' at any rate, -will one day have a 'better time.' But enough! Enough! I can endure -it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops <i>where ideals are -manufactured</i>—verily they reek with the crassest lies."</p> - -<p>Nay. Just one minute! You are saying nothing about the masterpieces -of these virtuosos of black magic, who can produce whiteness, milk, -and innocence out of any black you like: have you not noticed what a -pitch of refinement is attained by their <i>chef d'œuvre</i>, their most -audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick? Take care! These -cellar-beasts, full of revenge and hate—what do they make, forsooth, -out of their revenge and hate? Do you hear these words? Would you -suspect, if you trusted only their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> words, that you are among men of -resentment and nothing else?</p> - -<p>"I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah! ah! ah! and I hold my -nose). Now do I hear for the first time that which they have said so -often: 'We good, <i>we are the righteous</i>'—what they demand they call -not revenge but 'the triumph of <i>righteousness</i>'; what they hate is -not their enemy, no, they hate 'unrighteousness,' 'godlessness'; what -they believe in and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication -of sweet revenge (—"sweeter than honey," did Homer call it?), but the -victory of God, of the <i>righteous God</i> over the 'godless'; what is -left for them to love in this world is not their brothers in hate, -but their 'brothers in love,' as they say, all the good and righteous -on the earth."</p> - -<p>And how do they name that which serves them as a solace against all -the troubles of life—their phantasmagoria of their anticipated future -blessedness?</p> - -<p>"How? Do I hear right? They call it 'the last judgment,' the advent of -<i>their</i> kingdom, 'the kingdom of God'—but <i>in the meanwhile</i> they live -'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'"</p> - -<p>Enough! Enough!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the hope of what? These -weaklings!—they also, forsooth, wish to be the strong some time; there -is no doubt about it, some time <i>their</i> kingdom also must come—"the -kingdom of God" is their name for it, as has been mentioned:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> they are -so meek in everything! Yet in order to experience <i>that</i> kingdom it -is necessary to live long, to live beyond death,—yes, <i>eternal</i> life -is necessary so that one can make up for ever for that earthly life -"in faith," "in love," "in hope." Make up for what? Make up by what? -Dante, as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with awe-inspiring -ingenuity he placed that inscription over the gate of his hell, "Me too -made eternal love": at any rate the following inscription would have -a much better right to stand over the gate of the Christian Paradise -and its "eternal blessedness"—"Me too made eternal hate"—granted -of course that a truth may rightly stand over the gate to a lie! For -what is the blessedness of that Paradise? Possibly we could quickly -surmise it; but it is better that it should be explicitly attested by -an authority who in such matters is not to be disparaged, Thomas of -Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. "<i>Beati in regno celesti</i>" says -he, as gently as a lamb, "<i>videbunt pœnas damnatorum, ut beatitudo -illis magis complaceat</i>." Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word -from the mouth of a triumphant father of the Church, who warned his -disciples against the cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles—But -why? Faith offers us much more,—says he, <i>de Spectac.</i>, c. 29 -ss.,—something much stronger; thanks to the redemption, joys of quite -another kind stand at our disposal; instead of athletes we have our -martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the blood of Christ—but -what then awaits us on the day of his return, of his triumph. And -then does he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> proceed, does this enraptured visionary: "<i>at enim -supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimas et perpetuus judicii dies, ille -nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vetustas et tot -ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quæ tunc spectaculi latitudo! -<span class="gesperrt">Quid admirer! quid rideam! Ubigaudeam! Ubi exultem,</span> spectans tot et -tantos reges, qui in cœlum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis -suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item præsides</i>" (the -provincial governors) "<i>persecutores dominici nominis sævioribus quam -ipsi flammis sævierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes! -Quos præterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una -conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant, -quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora redituras -affirmabant! Etiam poetas non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad -inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragœdi audiendi, -magis scilicet vocales</i>" (with louder tones and more violent shrieks) -"<i>in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores -multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens, -tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi -quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius -conspectum <span class="gesperrt">insatiabilem</span> conferre, qui in dominum scevierunt. Hic est -ille, dicam fabri aut quæstuariæ filius</i>" (as is shown by the whole of -the following, and in particular by this well-known description of the -mother of Jesus from the Talmud, Tertullian is henceforth referring to -the Jews), "<i>sabbati destructor, Samarites et dæmonium habens. Hic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> est -quem a Juda redemistis, hic est ille arundine et colaphis diverberatus, -sputamentis de decoratus, felle et acete potatus. Hic est, quem -clam discentes subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus -detraxit, ne lactucæ suæ frequentia commeantium laderentur. Ut talia -species, <span class="gesperrt">ut talibus exultes</span>, quis tibi prætor aut consul aut sacerdos -de sua liberalitate prastabit? Et tamen hæc jam habemus quodammodo <span class="gesperrt">per -fidem</span> spiritu imaginante repræsentata. Ceterum qualia illa sunt, quæ -nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascenderunt?</i>" (I -Cor. ii. 9.) "<i>Credo circo et utraque cavea</i>" (first and fourth row, -or, according to others, the comic and the tragic stage) "<i>et omni -studio gratiora.</i>" <i><span class="gesperrt">Per fidem</span></i>: so stands it written.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>Let us come to a conclusion. The two <i>opposing values</i>, "good and bad," -"good and evil," have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the -world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time -in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune -of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost be said that in the -meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the -meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more -psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark -of the <i>higher nature</i>, of the more psychological nature, than to be in -that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battleground<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> -for those two opposites. The symbol of this fight, written in a writing -which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history -up to the present time, is called "Rome against Judæa, Judæa against -Rome." Hitherto there has been no greater event than <i>that</i> fight, -the putting of <i>that</i> question, <i>that</i> deadly antagonism. Rome found -in the Jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its -diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was held to -be <i>convicted of hatred</i> of the whole human race: and rightly so, in -so far as it is right to link the well-being and the future of the -human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of -the Roman values. What, conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome? -One can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to -carry one's mind back to the Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene -of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience. -(One should also appraise at its full value the profound logic of the -Christian instinct, when over this very book of hate it wrote the name -of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple to whom it attributed -that impassioned and ecstatic Gospel—therein lurks a portion of -truth, however much literary forging may have been necessary for -this purpose.) The Romans were the strong and aristocratic; a nation -stronger and more aristocratic has never existed in the world, has -never even been dreamed of; every relic of them, every inscription -enraptures, granted that one can divine <i>what</i> it is that writes the -inscription.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> The Jews, conversely, were that priestly nation of -resentment <i>par excellence</i>, possessed by a unique genius for popular -morals: just compare with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts, -such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to realise afterwards what is -first rate, and what is fifth rate.</p> - -<p>Which of them has been provisionally victorious, Rome or Judæa? but -there is not a shadow of doubt; just consider to whom in Rome itself -nowadays you bow down, as though before the quintessence of all the -highest values—and not only in Rome, but almost over half the world, -everywhere where man has been tamed or is about to be tamed—to <i>three -Jews</i>, as we know, and <i>one Jewess</i> (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter -the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the mother of the aforesaid -Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome is undoubtedly -defeated. At any rate there took place in the Renaissance a brilliantly -sinister revival of the classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation -of all things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from a trance, -stirred beneath the burden of the new Judaised Rome that had been built -over her, which presented the appearance of an œcumenical synagogue -and was called the "Church": but immediately Judæa triumphed again, -thanks to that fundamentally popular (German and English) movement -of revenge, which is called the Reformation, and taking also into -account its inevitable corollary, the restoration of the Church—the -restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of classical Rome. -Judæa proved yet once more victorious over the classical ideal in the -French Revolution, and in a sense which was even more crucial and even -more profound: the last political aristocracy that existed in Europe, -that of the <i>French</i> seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, broke into -pieces beneath the instincts of a resentful populace—never had the -world heard a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm: indeed, -there took place in the midst of it the most monstrous and unexpected -phenomenon; the ancient ideal <i>itself</i> swept before the eyes and -conscience of humanity with all its life and with unheard-of splendour, -and in opposition to resentment's lying war-cry of <i>the prerogative -of the most</i>, in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement, and -equalisation, the will to a retrogression and twilight of humanity, -there rang out once again, stronger, simpler, more penetrating than -ever, the terrible and enchanting counter-warcry of <i>the prerogative of -the few</i>! Like a final signpost to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, -the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him -the incarnate problem <i>of the aristocratic ideal in itself</i>—consider -well what a problem it is:—Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and -Superman.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals -thereby relegated <i>ad acta</i> for all time? Or only postponed, postponed -for a long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> time? May there not take place at some time or other a -much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old -conflagration? Further! Should not one wish <i>that</i> consummation with -all one's strength?—will it one's self? demand it one's self? He who -at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, -will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion,—ground enough -for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for -some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly -<i>mean</i> by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my -last book: <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>—at any rate that is not the same as -"Beyond Good and Bad."</p> - - -<p>Note.—I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to -express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only -been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, -that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize -essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the -<i>history of morals</i>—perhaps this book may serve to give forcible -impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this -character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits -quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual -professional philosophers.</p> - -<p>"<i>What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is -afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation?</i>"</p> - -<p>On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to induce -physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems (<i>of the -value</i> of the <i>valuations</i> which have prevailed up to the present): in -this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act -as the spokesmen and intermediaries in these particular instances, -after, of course, they have quite succeeded in transforming the -relationship between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> philosophy and physiology and medicine, which -is originally one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly -and fruitful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values, -all the "thou shalts" known to history and ethnology, need primarily -a <i>physiological</i>, at any rate in preference to a psychological, -elucidation and interpretation; all equally require a critique from -medical science. The question, "What is the <i>value</i> of this or that -table of 'values' and morality?" will be asked from the most varied -standpoints. For instance, the question of "valuable <i>for what</i>" can -never be analysed with sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which -would evidently have value with regard to promoting in a race the -greatest possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing its -adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the preservation -of the greatest number) would have nothing like the same value, if it -were a question of evolving a stronger species. In gauging values, -the good of the majority and the good of the minority are opposed -standpoints: we leave it to the naïveté of English biologists to regard -the former standpoint as <i>intrinsically</i> superior. <i>All</i> the sciences -have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher; this -task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of -<i>value</i>, that he has to fix the <i>hierarchy of values</i>.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> -<h5><a name="SECOND_ESSAY" id="SECOND_ESSAY">SECOND ESSAY.</a></h5> -<h4>"GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE.</h4> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>The breeding of an animal that <i>can promise</i>—is not this just that -very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is -not this the very problem of man? The fact that this problem has been -to a great extent solved, must appear all the more phenomenal to one -who can estimate at its full value that force of <i>forgetfulness</i> which -works in opposition to it. Forgetfulness is no mere <i>vis inertiæ</i>, -as the superficial believe, rather is it a power of obstruction, -active and, in the strictest sense of the word, positive—a power -responsible for the fact that what we have lived, experienced, taken -into ourselves, no more enters into consciousness during the process -of digestion (it might be called psychic absorption) than all the -whole manifold process by which our physical nutrition, the so-called -"incorporation," is carried on. The temporary shutting of the doors -and windows of consciousness, the relief from the clamant alarums and -excursions, with which our subconscious world of servant organs works -in mutual co-operation and antagonism; a little quietude, a little -<i>tabula rasa</i> of the consciousness, so as to make room again for the -new, and above all for the more noble functions and functionaries, room -for government, foresight, predetermination (for our organism is on an -oligarchic model)—this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> is the utility, as I have said, of the active -forgetfulness, which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, -repose, etiquette; and this shows at once why it is that there can -exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real <i>present</i>, -without forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventative apparatus is -damaged and discarded, is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is -something more than a comparison—he can "get rid of" nothing. But -this very animal who finds it necessary to be forgetful, in whom, in -fact, forgetfulness represents a force and a form of <i>robust</i> health, -has reared for himself an opposition-power, a memory, with whose help -forgetfulness is, in certain instances, kept in check—in the cases, -namely, where promises have to be made;—so that it is by no means -a mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented impression, -not merely the indigestion occasioned by a once pledged word, which -one cannot dispose of, but an <i>active</i> refusal to get rid of it, a -continuing and a wish to continue what has once been willed, an actual -<i>memory of the will</i>; so that between the original "I will," "I shall -do," and the actual discharge of the will, its <i>act</i>, we can easily -interpose a world of new strange phenomena, circumstances, veritable -volitions, without the snapping of this long chain of the will. But -what is the underlying hypothesis of all this? How thoroughly, in order -to be able to regulate the future in this way, must man have first -learnt to distinguish between necessitated and accidental phenomena, to -think causally, to see the distant as present and to anticipate it, to -fix with certainty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> what is the end, and what is the means to that end; -above all, to reckon, to have power to calculate—how thoroughly must -man have first become <i>calculable, disciplined, necessitated</i> even for -himself and his own conception of himself, that, like a man entering -into a promise, he could guarantee himself <i>as a future</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>This is simply the long history of the origin of <i>responsibility</i>. -That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as -we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more -immediate task of first <i>making</i> man to a certain extent, necessitated, -uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The -immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> (cp. <i>Dawn -of Day</i>, Aphs. 9, 14, and 16), the actual work of man on himself during -the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, -finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate -hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with -the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, -was <i>made</i> genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at -the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally -matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally -bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as -the ripest fruit on its tree the <i>sovereign individual</i>, that resembles -only himself, that has got loose from the morality of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> custom, the -autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are -mutually-exclusive terms),—in short, the man of the personal, long, -and independent will, <i>competent to promise</i>, and we find in him a -proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of <i>what</i> has been at -last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of -power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this -man who has grown to freedom, who is really <i>competent</i> to promise, -this lord of the <i>free</i> will, this sovereign—how is it possible for -him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable -of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great -is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes—he "deserves" -all three—not to know that with this mastery over himself he is -necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, -over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? -The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this -possession his <i>standard of value</i>: looking out from himself upon -the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he -honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind -themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a -sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his -trusts but confers <i>honour</i> by the very fact of trusting, who gives -his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself -strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the -"teeth of fate,"—so with equal necessity will he have the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> heel of his -foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have -no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, -who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. -The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of <i>responsibility</i>, -the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and -over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become -an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to -this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there -is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his <i>conscience</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>His conscience?—One apprehends at once that the idea "conscience," -which is here seen in its supreme manifestation, supreme in fact to -almost the point of strangeness, should already have behind it a long -history and evolution. The ability to guarantee one's self with all -due pride, and also at the same time to <i>say yes</i> to one's self—that -is, as has been said, a ripe fruit, but also a <i>late</i> fruit:—How long -must needs this fruit hang sour and bitter on the tree! And for an even -longer period there was not a glimpse of such a fruit to to be had—no -one had taken it on himself to promise it, although everything on the -tree was quite ready for it, and everything was maturing for that very -consummation. "How is a memory to be made for the man-animal? How is an -impression to be so deeply fixed upon this ephemeral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> understanding, -half dense, and half silly, upon this incarnate forgetfulness, that -it will be permanently present?" As one may imagine, this primeval -problem was not solved by exactly gentle answers and gentle means; -perhaps there is nothing more awful and more sinister in the early -history of man than his <i>system of mnemonics</i>. "Something is burnt in -so as to remain in his memory: only that which never stops <i>hurting</i> -remains in his memory." This is an axiom of the oldest (unfortunately -also the longest) psychology in the world. It might even be said that -wherever solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and gloomy colours are now -found in the life of the men and of nations of the world, there is some -<i>survival</i> of that horror which was once the universal concomitant of -all promises, pledges, and obligations. The past, the past with all -its length, depth, and hardness, wafts to us its breath, and bubbles -up in us again, when we become "serious." When man thinks it necessary -to make for himself a memory, he never accomplishes it without blood, -tortures, and sacrifice; the most dreadful sacrifices and forfeitures -(among them the sacrifice of the first-born), the most loathsome -mutilation (for instance, castration), the most cruel rituals of all -the religious cults (for all religions are really at bottom systems -of cruelty)—all these things originate from that instinct which -found in pain its most potent mnemonic. In a certain sense the whole -of asceticism is to be ascribed to this: certain ideas have got to -be made inextinguishable, omnipresent, "fixed," with the object of -hypnotising the whole nervous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> and intellectual system through these -"fixed ideas"—and the ascetic methods and modes of life are the means -of freeing those ideas from the competition of all other ideas so as to -make them "unforgettable." The worse memory man had, the ghastlier the -signs presented by his customs; the severity of the penal laws affords -in particular a gauge of the extent of man's difficulty in conquering -forgetfulness, and in keeping a few primal postulates of social -intercourse ever present to the minds of those who were the slaves -of every momentary emotion and every momentary desire. We Germans do -certainly not regard ourselves as an especially cruel and hard-hearted -nation, still less as an especially casual and happy-go-lucky one; -but one has only to look at our old penal ordinances in order to -realise what a lot of trouble it takes in the world to evolve a -"nation of thinkers" (I mean: <i>the</i> European nation which exhibits at -this very day the maximum of reliability, seriousness, bad taste, and -positiveness, which has on the strength of these qualities a right to -train every kind of European mandarin). These Germans employed terrible -means to make for themselves a memory, to enable them to master their -rooted plebeian instincts and the brutal crudity of those instincts: -think of the old German punishments, for instance, stoning (as far back -as the legend, the millstone falls on the head of the guilty man), -breaking on the wheel (the most original invention and speciality of -the German genius in the sphere of punishment), dart-throwing, tearing, -or trampling by horses ("quartering"),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> boiling the criminal in oil or -wine (still prevalent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the -highly popular flaying ("slicing into strips"), cutting the flesh out -of the breast; think also of the evil-doer being besmeared with honey, -and then exposed to the flies in a blazing sun. It was by the help of -such images and precedents that man eventually kept in his memory five -or six "I will nots" with regard to which he had already given his -<i>promise</i>, so as to be able to enjoy the advantages of society—and -verily with the help of this kind of memory man eventually attained -"reason"! Alas! reason, seriousness, mastery over the emotions, all -these gloomy, dismal things which are called reflection, all these -privileges and pageantries of humanity: how dear is the price that they -have exacted! How much blood and cruelty is the foundation of all "good -things"!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>But how is it that that other melancholy object, the consciousness of -sin, the whole "bad conscience," came into the world? And it is here -that we turn back to our genealogists of morals. For the second time -I say—or have I not said it yet?—that they are worth nothing. Just -their own five-spans-long limited modern experience; no knowledge of -the past, and no wish to know it; still less a historic instinct, a -power of "second sight" (which is what is really required in this -case)—and despite this to go in for the history of morals. It stands -to reason that this must needs produce results which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> are removed from -the truth by something more than a respectful distance.</p> - -<p>Have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to -have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral -idea of "ought"<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> originates from the very material idea of "owe"? Or -that punishment developed as a <i>retaliation</i> absolutely independently -of any preliminary hypothesis of the freedom or determination of the -will?—And this to such an extent, that a <i>high</i> degree of civilisation -was always first necessary for the animal man to begin to make those -much more primitive distinctions of "intentional," "negligent," -"accidental," "responsible," and their contraries, and apply them -in the assessing of punishment. That idea—"the wrong-doer deserves -punishment <i>because</i> he might have acted otherwise," in spite of the -fact that it is nowadays so cheap, obvious, natural, and inevitable, -and that it has had to serve as an illustration of the way in which -the sentiment of justice appeared on earth, is in point of fact -an exceedingly late, and even refined form of human judgment and -inference; the placing of this idea back at the beginning of the world -is simply a clumsy violation of the principles of primitive psychology. -Throughout the longest period of human history punishment was <i>never</i> -based on the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action, and was -consequently <i>not</i> based on the hypothesis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> that only the guilty should -be punished;—on the contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days -for the same reason that parents punish their children even nowadays, -out of anger at an injury that they have suffered, an anger which vents -itself mechanically on the author of the injury—but this anger is kept -in bounds and modified through the idea that every injury has somewhere -or other its <i>equivalent</i> price, and can really be paid off, even -though it be by means of pain to the author. Whence is it that this -ancient deep-rooted and now perhaps ineradicable idea has drawn its -strength, this idea of an equivalency between injury and pain? I have -already revealed its origin, in the contractual relationship between -<i>creditor</i> and <i>ower</i>, that is as old as the existence of legal rights -at all, and in its turn points back to the primary forms of purchase, -sale, barter, and trade.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>The realisation of these contractual relations excites, of course (as -would be already expected from our previous observations), a great -deal of suspicion and opposition towards the primitive society which -made or sanctioned them. In this society promises will be made; in -this society the object is to provide the promiser with a memory; -in this society, so may we suspect, there will be full scope for -hardness, cruelty, and pain: the "ower," in order to induce credit -in his promise of repayment, in order to give a guarantee of the -earnestness and sanctity of his promise, in order<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> to drill into his -own conscience the duty, the solemn duty, of repayment, will, by -virtue of a contract with his creditor to meet the contingency of -his not paying, pledge something that he still possesses, something -that he still has in his power, for instance, his life or his wife, -or his freedom or his body (or under certain religious conditions -even his salvation, his soul's welfare, even his peace in the grave; -so in Egypt, where the corpse of the ower found even in the grave no -rest from the creditor—of course, from the Egyptian standpoint, this -peace was a matter of particular importance). But especially has the -creditor the power of inflicting on the body of the ower all kinds of -pain and torture—the power, for instance, of cutting off from it an -amount that appeared proportionate to the greatness of the debt;—this -point of view resulted in the universal prevalence at an early date of -precise schemes of valuation, frequently horrible in the minuteness -and meticulosity of their application, <i>legally</i> sanctioned schemes of -valuation for individual limbs and parts of the body. I consider it as -already a progress, as a proof of a freer, less petty, and more <i>Roman</i> -conception of law, when the Roman Code of the Twelve Tables decreed -that it was immaterial how much or how little the creditors in such a -contingency cut off, "<i>si plus minusve secuerunt, ne fraude esto.</i>" Let -us make the logic of the whole of this equalisation process clear; it -is strange enough. The equivalence consists in this: instead of an -advantage directly compensatory of his injury (that is, instead of an -equalisation in money,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> lands, or some kind of chattel), the creditor -is granted by way of repayment and compensation a certain <i>sensation -of satisfaction</i>—the satisfaction of being able to vent, without any -trouble, his power on one who is powerless, the delight "<i>de faire le -mal pour le plaisir de le faire</i>," the joy in sheer violence: and this -joy will be relished in proportion to the lowness and humbleness of -the creditor in the social scale, and is quite apt to have the effect -of the most delicious dainty, and even seem the foretaste of a higher -social position. Thanks to the punishment of the "ower," the creditor -participates in the rights of the masters. At last he too, for once in -a way, attains the edifying consciousness of being able to despise and -ill-treat a creature—as an "inferior"—or at any rate of <i>seeing</i> him -being despised and ill-treated, in case the actual power of punishment, -the administration of punishment, has already become transferred to the -"authorities." The compensation consequently consists in a claim on -cruelty and a right to draw thereon.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>It is then in <i>this</i> sphere of the law of contract that we find the -cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of "guilt," "conscience," -"duty," the "sacredness of duty,"—their commencement, like the -commencement of all great things in the world, is thoroughly and -continuously saturated with blood. And should we not add that this -world has never really lost a certain savour of blood and torture (not -even in old Kant; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> categorical imperative reeks of cruelty). It was -in this sphere likewise that there first became formed that sinister -and perhaps now indissoluble association of the ideas of "guilt" and -"suffering." To put the question yet again, why can suffering be a -compensation for "owing"?—Because the <i>infliction</i> of suffering -produces the highest degree of happiness, because the injured party -will get in exchange for his loss (including his vexation at his loss) -an extraordinary counter-pleasure: the <i>infliction</i> of suffering—a -real <i>feast</i>, something that, as I have said, was all the more -appreciated the greater the paradox created by the rank and social -status of the creditor. These observations are purely conjectural; for, -apart from the painful nature of the task, it is hard to plumb such -profound depths: the clumsy introduction of the idea of "revenge" as a -connecting-link simply hides and obscures the view instead of rendering -it clearer (revenge itself simply leads back again to the identical -problem—"How can the infliction of suffering be a satisfaction?"). -In my opinion it is repugnant to the delicacy, and still more to the -hypocrisy of tame domestic animals (that is, modern men; that is, -ourselves), to realise with all their energy the extent to which -<i>cruelty</i> constituted the great joy and delight of ancient man, was -an ingredient which seasoned nearly all his pleasures, and conversely -the extent of the naïveté and innocence with which he manifested his -need for cruelty, when he actually made as a matter of principle -"disinterested malice" (or, to use Spinoza's expression, the <i>sympathia -malevolens</i>) into a <i>normal</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> characteristic of man—as consequently -something to which the conscience says a hearty yes. The more profound -observer has perhaps already had sufficient opportunity for noticing -this most ancient and radical joy and delight of mankind; in <i>Beyond -Good and Evil</i>, Aph. 188 (and even earlier, in <i>The Dawn of Day</i>, Aphs. -18, 77, 113), I have cautiously indicated the continually growing -spiritualisation and "deification" of cruelty, which pervades the -whole history of the higher civilisation (and in the larger sense even -constitutes it). At any rate the time is not so long past when it was -impossible to conceive of royal weddings and national festivals on a -grand scale, without executions, tortures, or perhaps an <i>auto-da-fé</i>", -or similarly to conceive of an aristocratic household, without a -creature to serve as a butt for the cruel and malicious baiting of the -inmates. (The reader will perhaps remember Don Quixote at the court of -the Duchess: we read nowadays the whole of <i>Don Quixote</i> with a bitter -taste in the mouth, almost with a sensation of torture, a fact which -would appear very strange and very incomprehensible to the author and -his contemporaries—they read it with the best conscience in the world -as the gayest of books; they almost died with laughing at it.) The -sight of suffering does one good, the infliction of suffering does one -more good—this is a hard maxim, but none the less a fundamental maxim, -old, powerful, and "human, all-too-human"; one, moreover, to which -perhaps even the apes as well would subscribe: for it is said that in -inventing bizarre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> cruelties they are giving abundant proof of their -future humanity, to which, as it were, they are playing the prelude. -Without cruelty, no feast: so teaches the oldest and longest history of -man—and in punishment too is there so much of the <i>festive</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>Entertaining, as I do, these thoughts, I am, let me say in parenthesis, -fundamentally opposed to helping our pessimists to new water for the -discordant and groaning mills of their disgust with life; on the -contrary, it should be shown specifically that, at the time when -mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was -brighter than it is nowadays when there are pessimists. The darkening -of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the -growth of man's shame <i>before man</i>. The tired pessimistic outlook, -the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted -ennui, all those are not the signs of the <i>most evil</i> age of the human -race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the -swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong, -comes into existence—I mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, -thanks to which the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of -all his instincts. On the road to angelhood (not to use in this context -a harder word) man has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated -tongue, which have made not only the joy and innocence of the animal -repulsive to him, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> also life itself:—so that sometimes he stands -with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like Pope Innocent the -Third, makes a black list of his own horrors ("unclean generation, -loathsome nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of the matter -out of which man develops, awful stench, secretion of saliva, urine, -and excrement"). Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out -as the first argument <i>against</i> existence, as its most sinister -query, it is well to remember the times when men judged on converse -principles because they could not dispense with the <i>infliction</i> of -suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first order, a veritable -bait of seduction to life.</p> - -<p>Perhaps in those days (this is to solace -the weaklings) pain did not hurt so much as it does nowadays: any -physician who has treated negroes (granted that these are taken as -representative of the prehistoric man) suffering from severe internal -inflammations which would bring a European, even though he had the -soundest constitution, almost to despair, would be in a position to -come to this conclusion. Pain has <i>not</i> the same effect with negroes. -(The curve of human sensibilities to pain seems indeed to sink in an -extraordinary and almost sudden fashion, as soon as one has passed -the upper ten thousand or ten millions of over-civilised humanity, -and I personally have no doubt that, by comparison with one painful -night passed by one single hysterical chit of a cultured woman, the -suffering of all the animals taken together who have been put to the -question of the knife, so as to give scientific answers, are simply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> -negligible.) We may perhaps be allowed to admit the possibility of -the craving for cruelty not necessarily having become really extinct: -it only requires, in view of the fact that pain hurts more nowadays, -a certain sublimation and subtilisation, it must especially be -translated to the imaginative and psychic plane, and be adorned with -such smug euphemisms, that even the most fastidious and hypocritical -conscience could never grow suspicious of their real nature ("Tragic -pity" is one of these euphemisms: another is "<i>les nostalgies de la -croix</i>"). What really raises one's indignation against suffering is -not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering; such -a <i>senselessness</i>, however, existed neither in Christianity, which -interpreted suffering into a whole mysterious salvation-apparatus, nor -in the beliefs of the naive ancient man, who only knew how to find -a meaning in suffering from the standpoint of the spectator, or the -inflictor of the suffering. In order to get the secret, undiscovered, -and unwitnessed suffering out of the world it was almost compulsory to -invent gods and a hierarchy of intermediate beings, in short, something -which wanders even among secret places, sees even in the dark, and -makes a point of never missing an interesting and painful spectacle. It -was with the help of such inventions that life got to learn the <i>tour -de force</i>, which has become part of its stock-in-trade, the <i>tour de -force</i> of self-justification, of the justification of evil; nowadays -this would perhaps require other auxiliary devices (for instance, -life as a riddle, life as a problem of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> knowledge). "Every evil is -justified in the sight of which a god finds edification," so rang the -logic of primitive sentiment—and, indeed, was it only of primitive? -The gods conceived as friends of spectacles of cruelty—oh how far -does this primeval conception extend even nowadays into our European -civilisation! One would perhaps like in this context to consult Luther -and Calvin. It is at any rate certain that even the Greeks knew no -more piquant seasoning for the happiness of their gods than the joys -of cruelty. What, do you think, was the mood with which Homer makes -his gods look down upon the fates of men? What final meaning have at -bottom the Trojan War and similar tragic horrors? It is impossible to -entertain any doubt on the point: they were intended as festival games -for the gods, and, in so far as the poet is of a more godlike breed -than other men, as festival games also for the poets. It was in just -this spirit and no other, that at a later date the moral philosophers -of Greece conceived the eyes of God as still looking down on the moral -struggle, the heroism, and the self-torture of the virtuous; the -Heracles of duty was on a stage, and was conscious of the fact; virtue -without witnesses was something quite unthinkable for this nation -of actors. Must not that philosophic invention, so audacious and so -fatal, which was then absolutely new to Europe, the invention of "free -will," of the absolute spontaneity of man in good and evil, simply have -been made for the specific purpose of justifying the idea, that the -interest of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> - the gods in humanity and human virtue was <i>inexhaustible</i>?</p> - -<p>There would never on the stage of this free-will world be a dearth of -really new, really novel and exciting situations, plots, catastrophes. -A world thought out on completely deterministic lines would be easily -guessed by the gods, and would consequently soon bore them—sufficient -reason for these <i>friends of the gods</i>, the philosophers, not to -ascribe to their gods such a deterministic world. The whole of ancient -humanity is full of delicate consideration for the spectator, being as -it is a world of thorough publicity and theatricality, which could not -conceive of happiness without spectacles and festivals.—And, as has -already been said, even in great <i>punishment</i> there is so much which is -festive.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>The feeling of "ought," of personal obligation (to take up again -the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the -oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the -relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and ower: here it -was that individual confronted individual, and that individual -<i>matched himself against</i> individual. There has not yet been found -a grade of civilisation so low, as not to manifest some trace of -this relationship. Making prices, assessing values, thinking out -equivalents, exchanging—all this preoccupied the primal thoughts -of man to such an extent that in a certain sense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> it constituted -<i>thinking</i> itself: it was here that was trained the oldest form of -sagacity, it was here in this sphere that we can perhaps trace the -first commencement of man's pride, of his feeling of superiority over -other animals. Perhaps our word "Mensch" (<i>manas</i>) still expresses -just something of <i>this</i> self-pride: man denoted himself as the being -who measures values, who values and measures, as the "assessing" -animal <i>par excellence</i>. Sale and purchase, together with their -psychological concomitants, are older than the origins of any form of -social organisation and union: it is rather from the most rudimentary -form of individual right that the budding consciousness of exchange, -commerce, debt, right, obligation, compensation was first transferred -to the rudest and most elementary of the social complexes (in their -relation to similar complexes), the habit of comparing force with -force, together with that of measuring, of calculating. His eye was -now focussed to this perspective; and with that ponderous consistency -characteristic of ancient thought, which, though set in motion with -difficulty, yet proceeds inflexibly along the line on which it has -started, man soon arrived at the great generalisation, "everything has -its price, <i>all</i> can be paid for," the oldest and most naive moral -canon of <i>justice</i>, the beginning of all "kindness," of all "equity," -of all "goodwill," of all "objectivity" in the world. Justice in this -initial phase is the goodwill among people of about equal power to come -to terms with each other, to come to an understanding again by means of -a settlement, and with regard to the less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> powerful, to <i>compel</i> them -to agree among themselves to a settlement.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, -is present or again possible at all periods), the community stands to -its members in that important and radical relationship of creditor to -his "owers." Man lives in a community, man enjoys the advantages of -a community (and what advantages! we occasionally underestimate them -nowadays), man lives protected, spared, in peace and trust, secure -from certain injuries and enmities, to which the man outside the -community, the "peaceless" man, is exposed,—a German understands the -original meaning of "Elend" (<i>êlend</i>),—secure because he has entered -into pledges and obligations to the community in respect of these very -injuries and enmities. What happens <i>when this is not the case</i>? The -community, the defrauded creditor, will get itself paid, as well as it -can, one can reckon on that. In this case the question of the direct -damage done by the offender is quite subsidiary: quite apart from -this the criminal<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> is above all a breaker, a breaker of word and -covenant <i>to the whole</i>, as regards all the advantages and amenities -of the communal life in which up to that time he had participated. The -criminal is an "ower" who not only fails to repay the advances and -advantages that have been given to him, but even sets out to attack -his creditor:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> consequently he is in the future not only, as is fair, -deprived of all these advantages and amenities—he is in addition -reminded of the <i>importance</i> of those advantages. The wrath of the -injured creditor, of the community, puts him back in the wild and -outlawed status from which he was previously protected: the community -repudiates him—and now every kind of enmity can vent itself on him. -Punishment is in this stage of civilisation simply the copy, the mimic, -of the normal treatment of the hated, disdained, and conquered enemy, -who is not only deprived of every right and protection but of every -mercy; so we have the martial law and triumphant festival of the <i>væ -victis</i>! in all its mercilessness and cruelty. This shows why war -itself (counting the sacrificial cult of war) has produced all the -forms under which punishment has manifested itself in history.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>As it grows more powerful, the community tends to take the offences of -the individual less seriously, because they are now regarded as being -much less revolutionary and dangerous to the corporate existence: the -evil-doer is no more outlawed and put outside the pale, the common -wrath can no longer vent itself upon him with its old licence,—on -the contrary, from this very time it is against this wrath, and -particularly against the wrath of those directly injured, that the -evil-doer is carefully shielded and protected by the community. As, in -fact, the penal law<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> develops, the following characteristics become -more and more clearly marked: compromise with the wrath of those -directly affected by the misdeed; a consequent endeavour to localise -the matter and to prevent a further, or indeed a general spread of -the disturbance; attempts to find equivalents and to settle the whole -matter (<i>compositio</i>); above all, the will, which manifests itself with -increasing definiteness, to treat every offence as in a certain degree -capable of <i>being paid off</i>, and consequently, at any rate up to a -certain point, to <i>isolate</i> the offender from his act. As the power and -the self-consciousness of a community increases, so proportionately -does the penal law become mitigated; conversely every weakening and -jeopardising of the community revives the harshest forms of that law. -The creditor has always grown more humane proportionately as he has -grown more rich; finally the amount of injury he can endure without -really suffering becomes the criterion of his wealth. It is possible -to conceive of a society blessed with so great a <i>consciousness of its -own power</i> as to indulge in the most aristocratic luxury of letting -its wrong-doers go <i>scot-free</i>.—"What do my parasites matter to me?" -might society say. "Let them live and flourish! I am strong enough for -it."—The justice which began with the maxim, "Everything can be paid -off, everything must be paid off," ends with connivance at the escape -of those who cannot pay to escape—it ends, like every good thing on -earth, by <i>destroying itself</i>.—The self-destruction of Justice! we -know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the pretty name it calls itself—<i>Grace!</i> it remains, as is -obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11.</p> - -<p>A deprecatory word here against the attempts, that have lately been -made, to find the origin of justice on quite another basis—namely, -on that of <i>resentment</i>. Let me whisper a word in the ear of the -psychologists, if they would fain study revenge itself at close -quarters: this plant blooms its prettiest at present among Anarchists -and anti-Semites, a hidden flower, as it has ever been, like the -violet, though, forsooth, with another perfume. And as like must -necessarily emanate from like, it will not be a matter for surprise -that it is just in such circles that we see the birth of endeavours (it -is their old birthplace—compare above, First Essay, paragraph 14), -to sanctify <i>revenge</i> under the name of <i>justice</i> (as though Justice -were at bottom merely a development of the consciousness of injury), -and thus with the rehabilitation of revenge to reinstate generally -and collectively all the <i>reactive</i> emotions. I object to this last -point least of all. It even seems <i>meritorious</i> when regarded from the -standpoint of the whole problem of biology (from which standpoint the -value of these emotions has up to the present been underestimated). -And that to which I alone call attention, is the circumstance that -it is the spirit of revenge itself, from which develops this new -nuance of scientific equity (for the benefit of hate, envy, mistrust,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> -jealousy, suspicion, rancour, revenge). This scientific "equity" -stops immediately and makes way for the accents of deadly enmity and -prejudice, so soon as another group of emotions comes on the scene, -which in my opinion are of a much higher biological value than these -reactions, and consequently have a paramount claim to the valuation -and appreciation of science: I mean the really <i>active</i> emotions, such -as personal and material ambition, and so forth. (E. Dühring, <i>Value -of Life; Course of Philosophy</i>, and <i>passim</i>.) So much against this -tendency in general: but as for the particular maxim of Dühring's, -that the home of Justice is to be found in the sphere of the reactive -feelings, our love of truth compels us drastically to invert his own -proposition and to oppose to him this other maxim: the <i>last</i> sphere -conquered by the spirit of justice is the sphere of the feeling of -reaction! When it really comes about that the just man remains just -even as regards his injurer (and not merely cold, moderate, reserved, -indifferent: being just is always a <i>positive</i> state); when, in spite -of the strong provocation of personal insult, contempt, and calumny, -the lofty and clear objectivity of the just and judging eye (whose -glance is as profound as it is gentle) is untroubled, why then we have -a piece of perfection, a past master of the world—something, in fact, -which it would not be wise to expect, and which should not at any -rate be too easily <i>believed</i>. Speaking generally, there is no doubt -but that even the justest individual only requires a little dose of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> -hostility, malice, or innuendo to drive the blood into his brain and -the fairness <i>from</i> it. The active man, the attacking, aggressive man -is always a hundred degrees nearer to justice than the man who merely -reacts; he certainly has no need to adopt the tactics, necessary in the -case of the reacting man, of making false and biassed valuations of his -object. It is, in point of fact, for this reason that the aggressive -man has at all times enjoyed the stronger, bolder, more aristocratic, -and also <i>freer</i> outlook, the <i>better</i> conscience. On the other hand, -we already surmise who it really is that has on his conscience the -invention of the "bad conscience,"—the resentful man! Finally, let man -look at himself in history. In what sphere up to the present has the -whole administration of law, the actual need of law, found its earthly -home? Perchance in the sphere of the reacting man? Not for a minute: -rather in that of the active, strong, spontaneous, aggressive man? I -deliberately defy the above-mentioned agitator (who himself makes this -self-confession, "the creed of revenge has run through all my works -and endeavours like the red thread of Justice"), and say, that judged -historically law in the world represents the very war <i>against</i> the -reactive feelings, the very war waged on those feelings by the powers -of activity and aggression, which devote some of their strength to -damming and keeping within bounds this effervescence of hysterical -reactivity, and to forcing it to some compromise. Everywhere where -justice is practised and justice is maintained, it is to be observed -that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> stronger power, when confronted with the weaker powers which -are inferior to it (whether they be groups, or individuals), searches -for weapons to put an end to the senseless fury of resentment, while -it carries on its object, partly by taking the victim of resentment -out of the clutches of revenge, partly by substituting for revenge a -campaign of its own against the enemies of peace and order, partly -by finding, suggesting, and occasionally enforcing settlements, -partly by standardising certain equivalents for injuries, to which -equivalents the element of resentment is henceforth finally referred. -The most drastic measure, however, taken and effectuated by the supreme -power, to combat the preponderance of the feelings of spite and -vindictiveness—it takes this measure as soon as it is at all strong -enough to do so—is the foundation of <i>law</i>, the imperative declaration -of what in its eyes is to be regarded as just and lawful, and what -unjust and unlawful: and while, after the foundation of law, the -supreme power treats the aggressive and arbitrary acts of individuals, -or of whole groups, as a violation of law, and a revolt against -itself, it distracts the feelings of its subjects from the immediate -injury inflicted by such a violation, and thus eventually attains the -very opposite result to that always desired by revenge, which sees -and recognises nothing but the standpoint of the injured party. From -henceforth the eye becomes trained to a more and more <i>impersonal</i> -valuation of the deed, even the eye of the injured party himself -(though this is in the final stage of all, as has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> previously -remarked)—on this principle "right" and "wrong" first manifest -themselves after the foundation of law (and <i>not</i>, as Dühring maintains, -only after the act of violation). To talk of intrinsic right and -intrinsic wrong is absolutely non-sensical; intrinsically, an injury, -an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, -inasmuch as life is <i>essentially</i> (that is, in its cardinal functions) -something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and -annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character. -It is necessary to make an even more serious confession:—viewed from -the most advanced biological standpoint, conditions of legality can be -only <i>exceptional conditions</i>, in that they are partial restrictions -of the real life-will, which makes for power, and in that they are -subordinated to the life-will's general end as particular means, -that is, as means to create <i>larger</i> units of strength. A legal -organisation, conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a weapon -in a fight of complexes of power, but as a weapon <i>against</i> fighting, -generally something after the style of Dühring's communistic model -of treating every will as equal with every other will, would be a -principle <i>hostile to life</i>, a destroyer and dissolver of man, an -outrage on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a secret cut to -Nothingness.—</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>A word more on the origin and end of punishment—two problems which -are or ought to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually -lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists employed -up to the present in these cases? Their inveterate naïveté. They find -out some "end" in the punishment, for instance, revenge and deterrence, -and then in all their innocence set this end at the beginning, as the -<i>causa fiendi</i> of the punishment, and—they have done the trick. But -the patching up of a history of the origin of law is the last use to -which the "End in Law"<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> ought to be put. Perhaps there is no more -pregnant principle for any kind of history than the following, which, -difficult though it is to master, <i>should</i> none the less be <i>mastered</i> -in every detail.—The origin of the existence of a thing and its final -utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of -ends, are <i>toto cœlo</i> opposed to each other—everything, anything, -which exists and which prevails anywhere, will always be put to new -purposes by a force superior to itself, will be commandeered afresh, -will be turned and transformed to new uses; all "happening" in the -organic world consists of <i>overpowering</i> and dominating, and again all -overpowering and domination is a new interpretation and adjustment, -which must necessarily obscure or absolutely extinguish the subsisting -"meaning" and "end." The most perfect comprehension of the utility -of any physiological organ (or also of a legal institution, social -custom, political<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> habit, form in art or in religious worship) does not -for a minute imply any simultaneous comprehension of its origin: this -may seem uncomfortable and unpalatable to the older men,—for it has -been the immemorial belief that understanding the final cause or the -utility of a thing, a form, an institution, means also understanding -the reason for its origin: to give an example of this logic, the eye -was made to see, the hand was made to grasp. So even punishment was -conceived as invented with a view to punishing. But all ends and all -utilities are only <i>signs</i> that a Will to Power has mastered a less -powerful force, has impressed thereon out of its own self the meaning -of a function; and the whole history of a "Thing," an organ, a custom, -can on the same principle be regarded as a continuous "sign-chain" -of perpetually new interpretations and adjustments, whose causes, so -far from needing to have even a mutual connection, sometimes follow -and alternate with each other absolutely haphazard. Similarly, the -evolution of a "thing," of a custom, is anything but its <i>progressus</i> -to an end, still less a logical and direct <i>progressus</i> attained -with the minimum expenditure of energy and cost: it is rather the -succession of processes of subjugation, more or less profound, more -or less mutually independent, which operate on the thing itself; it -is, further, the resistance which in each case invariably displayed -this subjugation, the Protean wriggles by way of defence and reaction, -and, further, the results of successful counter-efforts. The form is -fluid, but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> meaning is even more so—even inside every individual -organism the case is the same: with every genuine growth of the whole, -the "function" of the individual organs becomes shifted,—in certain -cases a partial perishing of these organs, a diminution of their -numbers (for instance, through annihilation of the connecting members), -can be a symptom of growing strength and perfection. What I mean is -this: even partial <i>loss of utility</i>, decay, and degeneration, loss of -function and purpose, in a word, death, appertain to the conditions -of the genuine <i>progressus</i>; which always appears in the shape of -a will and way to <i>greater</i> power, and is always realised at the -expense of innumerable smaller powers. The magnitude of a "progress" -is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires: humanity -as a mass sacrificed to the prosperity of the one <i>stronger</i> species -of Man—that <i>would be</i> a progress. I emphasise all the more this -cardinal characteristic of the historic method, for the reason that in -its essence it runs counter to predominant instincts and prevailing -taste, which much prefer to put up with absolute casualness, even with -the mechanical senselessness of all phenomena, than with the theory -of a power-will, in exhaustive play throughout all phenomena. The -democratic idiosyncrasy against everything which rules and wishes to -rule, the modern <i>misarchism</i> (to coin a bad word for a bad thing), -has gradually but so thoroughly transformed itself into the guise of -intellectualism, the most abstract intellectualism, that even nowadays -it penetrates and <i>has the right</i> to penetrate step<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> by step into the -most exact and apparently the most objective sciences: this tendency -has, in fact, in my view already dominated the whole of physiology -and biology, and to their detriment, as is obvious, in so far as -it has spirited away a radical idea, the idea of true <i>activity</i>. -The tyranny of this idiosyncrasy, however, results in the theory -of "adaptation" being pushed forward into the van of the argument, -exploited; adaptation—that means to say, a second-class activity, a -mere capacity for "reacting"; in fact, life itself has been defined -(by Herbert Spencer) as an increasingly effective internal adaptation -to external circumstances. This definition, however, fails to realise -the real essence of life, its will to power. It fails to appreciate the -paramount superiority enjoyed by those plastic forces of spontaneity, -aggression, and encroachment with their new interpretations and -tendencies, to the operation of which adaptation is only a natural -corollary: consequently the sovereign office of the highest -functionaries in the organism itself (among which the life-will appears -as an active and formative principle) is repudiated. One remembers -Huxley's reproach to Spencer of his "administrative Nihilism": but it -is a case of something much <i>more</i> than "administration."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>To return to our subject, namely <i>punishment</i>, we must make -consequently a double distinction: first, the relatively permanent -<i>element</i>, the custom,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> the act, the "drama," a certain rigid sequence -of methods of procedure; on the other hand, the fluid element, the -meaning, the end, the expectation which is attached to the operation of -such procedure. At this point we immediately assume, <i>per analogiam</i> -(in accordance with the theory of the historic method, which we have -elaborated above), that the procedure itself is something older and -earlier than its utilisation in punishment, that this utilisation was -<i>introduced</i> and interpreted into the procedure (which had existed -for a long time, but whose employment had another meaning), in short, -that the case is <i>different</i> from that hitherto supposed by our <i>naïf</i> -genealogists of morals and of law, who thought that the procedure was -<i>invented</i> for the purpose of punishment, in the same way that the hand -had been previously thought to have been invented for the purpose of -grasping. With regard to the other element in <i>punishment</i>, its fluid -element, its meaning, the idea of punishment in a very late stage of -civilisation (for instance, contemporary Europe) is not content with -manifesting merely one meaning, but manifests a whole synthesis "of -meanings." The past general history of punishment, the history of its -employment for the most diverse ends, crystallises eventually into -a kind of unity, which is difficult to analyse into its parts, and -which, it is necessary to emphasise, absolutely defies definition. -(It is nowadays impossible to say definitely <i>the precise reason</i> -for punishment: all ideas, in which a whole process is promiscuously -comprehended, elude definition; it is only that which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> has no history, -which can be defined.) At an earlier stage, on the contrary, that -synthesis of meanings appears much less rigid and much more elastic; we -can realise how in each individual case the elements of the synthesis -change their value and their position, so that now one element and -now another stands out and predominates over the others, nay, in -certain cases one element (perhaps the end of deterrence) seems to -eliminate all the rest. At any rate, so as to give some idea of the -uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature of the meaning of -punishment and of the manner in which one identical procedure can -be employed and adapted for the most diametrically opposed objects, -I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to -me, a scheme itself based on comparatively small and accidental -material.—Punishment, as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable -of further injury.—Punishment, as compensation for the injury -sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including -the form of sentimental compensation).—Punishment, as an isolation -of that which disturbs the equilibrium, so as to prevent the further -spreading of the disturbance.—Punishment as a means of inspiring -fear of those who determine and execute the punishment.—Punishment -as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has -up to that time enjoyed (for example, when he is utilised as a -slave in the mines).—Punishment, as the elimination of an element -of decay (sometimes of a whole branch, as according to the Chinese -laws, consequently as a means to the purification<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> of the race, or -the preservation of a social type).—-Punishment as a festival, as -the violent oppression and humiliation of an enemy that has at last -been subdued.—Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers -the punishment—the so-called "correction," or for the witnesses of -its administration. Punishment, as the payment of a fee stipulated -for by the power which protects the evil-doer from the excesses of -revenge.—Punishment, as a compromise with the natural phenomenon -of revenge, in so far as revenge is still maintained and claimed -as a privilege by the stronger races.—Punishment as a declaration -and measure of war against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, -of authority, who is fought by society with the weapons which war -provides, as a spirit dangerous to the community, as a breaker of the -contract on which the community is based, as a rebel, a traitor, and a -breaker of the peace.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment -is overloaded with utilities of all kinds. This makes it all the -more permissible to eliminate one <i>supposed</i> utility, which passes, at -any rate in the popular mind, for its most essential utility, and -which is just what even now provides the strongest support for that -faith in punishment which is nowadays for many reasons tottering. -Punishment is supposed to have the value of exciting in the guilty -the consciousness of guilt; in punishment is sought the proper -<i>instrumentum</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> of that psychic reaction which becomes known as a "bad -conscience," "remorse." But this theory is even, from the point of -view of the present, a violation of reality and psychology: and how -much more so is the case when we have to deal with the longest period -of man's history, his primitive history! Genuine remorse is certainly -extremely rare among wrong-doers and the victims of punishment; prisons -and houses of correction are not <i>the</i> soil on which this worm of -remorse pullulates for choice—this is the unanimous opinion of all -conscientious observers, who in many cases arrive at such a judgment -with enough reluctance and against their own personal wishes. Speaking -generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it -sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of -resistance. When it happens that it breaks the man's energy and brings -about a piteous prostration and abjectness, such a result is certainly -even less salutary than the average effect of punishment, which is -characterised by a harsh and sinister doggedness. The thought of those -<i>prehistoric</i> millennia brings us to the unhesitating conclusion, -that it was simply through punishment that the evolution of the -consciousness of guilt was most forcibly retarded—at any rate in the -victims of the punishing power. In particular, let us not underestimate -the extent to which, by the very sight of the judicial and executive -procedure, the wrong-doer is himself prevented from feeling that his -deed, the character of his act, is <i>intrinsically</i> reprehensible: for -he sees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> clearly the same kind of acts practised in the service of -justice, and then called good, and practised with a good conscience; -acts such as espionage, trickery, bribery, trapping, the whole -intriguing and insidious art of the policeman and the informer—the -whole system, in fact, manifested in the different kinds of punishment -(a system not excused by passion, but based on principle), of robbing, -oppressing, insulting, imprisoning, racking, murdering.—All this -he sees treated by his judges, not as acts meriting censure and -condemnation <i>in themselves</i>, but only in a particular context and -application. It was not on this soil that grew the "bad conscience," -that most sinister and interesting plant of our earthly vegetation— -in point of fact, throughout a most lengthy period, no suggestion of -having to do with a "guilty man" manifested itself in the consciousness -of the man who judged and punished. One had merely to deal with an -author of an injury, an irresponsible piece of fate. And the man -himself, on whom the punishment subsequently fell like a piece of fate, -was occasioned no more of an "inner pain" than would be occasioned by -the sudden approach of some uncalculated event, some terrible natural -catastrophe, a rushing, crushing avalanche against which there is no -resistance.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>This truth came insidiously enough to the consciousness of Spinoza (to -the disgust of his commentators, who (like Kuno Fischer, for instance)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> -give themselves no end of <i>trouble</i> to misunderstand him on this -point), when one afternoon (as he sat raking up who knows what memory) -he indulged in the question of what was really left for him personally -of the celebrated <i>morsus conscientiæ</i>—Spinoza, who had relegated -"good and evil" to the sphere of human imagination, and indignantly -defended the honour of his "free" God against those blasphemers who -affirmed that God did everything <i>sub ratione boni</i> ("but this was -tantamount to subordinating God to fate, and would really be the -greatest of all absurdities"). For Spinoza the world had returned -again to that innocence in which it lay before the discovery of the -bad conscience: what, then, had happened to the <i>morsus conscientiæ</i>? -"The antithesis of <i>gaudium</i>," said he at last to himself,—"A sadness -accompanied by the recollection of a past event which has turned out -contrary to all expectation" (<i>Eth</i>. III., Propos. XVIII. Schol. -i. ii.). Evil-doers have throughout thousands of years felt when -overtaken by punishment <i>exactly like Spinoza</i>, on the subject of -their "offence": "here is something which went wrong contrary to my -anticipation," <i>not</i> "I ought not to have done this."—They submitted -themselves to punishment, just as one submits one's self to a disease, -to a misfortune, or to death, with that stubborn and resigned fatalism -which gives the Russians, for instance, even nowadays, the advantage -over us Westerners, in the handling of life. If at that period there -was a critique of action, the criterion was prudence: the real <i>effect</i> -of punishment is unquestionably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> chiefly to be found in a sharpening -of the sense of prudence, in a lengthening of the memory, in a will -to adopt more of a policy of caution, suspicion, and secrecy; in the -recognition that there are many things which are unquestionably beyond -one's capacity; in a kind of improvement in self-criticism. The broad -effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the -increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery -of the desires: so it is that punishment <i>tames</i> man, but does not make -him "better"—it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert -the contrary ("Injury makes a man cunning," says a popular proverb: so -far as it makes him cunning, it makes him also bad. Fortunately, it -often enough makes him stupid).</p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>At this juncture I cannot avoid trying to give a tentative and -provisional expression to my own hypothesis concerning the origin of -the bad conscience: it is difficult to make it fully appreciated, -and it requires continuous meditation, attention, and digestion. I -regard the bad conscience as the serious illness which man was bound -to contract under the stress of the most radical change which he has -ever experienced—that change, when he found himself finally imprisoned -within the pale of society and of peace.</p> - -<p>Just like the plight of the water-animals, when they were compelled -either to become land-animals or to perish, so was the plight of these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> -half-animals, perfectly adapted as they were to the savage life of war, -prowling, and adventure—suddenly all their instincts were rendered -worthless and "switched off." Henceforward they had to walk on their -feet—"carry themselves," whereas heretofore they had been carried by -the water: a terrible heaviness oppressed them. They found themselves -clumsy in obeying the simplest directions, confronted with this new -and unknown world they had no longer their old guides—the regulative -instincts that had led them unconsciously to safety—they were reduced, -were those unhappy creatures, to thinking, inferring, calculating, -putting together causes and results, reduced to that poorest and most -erratic organ of theirs, their "consciousness." I do not believe -there was ever in the world such a feeling of misery, such a leaden -discomfort—further, those old instincts had not immediately ceased -their demands! Only it was difficult and rarely possible to gratify -them: speaking broadly, they were compelled to satisfy themselves by -new and, as it were, hole-and-corner methods. All instincts which -do not find a vent without, <i>turn inwards</i>—this is what I mean by -the growing "internalisation" of man: consequently we have the first -growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. The whole -inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between -two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionately, and -obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man's external outlet -became <i>obstructed</i>. These terrible bulwarks,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> with which the social -organisation protected itself against the old instincts of freedom -(punishments belong pre-eminently to these bulwarks), brought it -about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man became -turned backwards <i>against man himself</i>. Enmity, cruelty, the delight -in persecution, in surprises, change, destruction—the turning all -these instincts against their own possessors: this is the origin of -the "bad conscience." It was man, who, lacking external enemies and -obstacles, and imprisoned as he was in the oppressive narrowness and -monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted, -gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; it was this animal in the -hands of the tamer, which beat itself against the bars of its cage; it -was this being who, pining and yearning for that desert home of which -it had been deprived, was compelled to create out of its own self, an -adventure, a torture-chamber, a hazardous and perilous desert—it was -this fool, this homesick and desperate prisoner—who invented the "bad -conscience." But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister -illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of -man from the disease called man, as the result of a violent breaking -from his animal past, the result, as it were, of a spasmodic plunge -into a new environment and new conditions of existence, the result of -a declaration of war against the old instincts, which up to that time -had been the staple of his power, his joy, his formidableness. Let -us immediately add that this fact of an animal ego turning against -itself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> taking part against itself, produced in the world so novel, -profound, unheard-of, problematic, inconsistent, and <i>pregnant</i> a -phenomenon, that the aspect of the world was radically altered thereby. -In sooth, only divine spectators could have appreciated the drama -that then began, and whose end baffles conjecture as yet—a drama too -subtle, too wonderful, too paradoxical to warrant its undergoing a -non-sensical and unheeded performance on some random grotesque planet! -Henceforth man is to be counted as one of the most unexpected and -sensational lucky shots in the game of the "big baby" of Heracleitus, -whether he be called Zeus or Chance—he awakens on his behalf the -interest, excitement, hope, almost the confidence, of his being the -harbinger and forerunner of something, of man being no end, but only a -stage, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>It is primarily involved in this hypothesis of the origin of the bad -conscience, that that alteration was no gradual and no voluntary -alteration, and that it did not manifest itself as an organic -adaptation to new conditions, but as a break, a jump, a necessity, an -inevitable fate, against which there was no resistance and never a -spark of resentment. And secondarily, that the fitting of a hitherto -unchecked and amorphous population into a fixed form, starting as -it had done in an act of violence, could only be accomplished by -acts of violence and nothing else—that the oldest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> "State" appeared -consequently as a ghastly tyranny, a grinding ruthless piece of -machinery, which went on working, till this raw material of a -semi-animal populace was not only thoroughly kneaded and elastic, but -also <i>moulded</i>. I used the word "State": my meaning is self-evident, -namely, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and -masters, which with all its warlike organisation and all its organising -power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers -possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. -Such is the origin of the "State." That fantastic theory that makes it -begin with a contract is, I think, disposed of. He who can command, -he who is a master by "nature," he who comes on the scene forceful -in deed and gesture—what has he to do with contracts? Such beings -defy calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason, notice, -excuse, they are there like the lightning is there, too terrible, too -sudden, too convincing, too "different," to be personally even hated. -Their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they -are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are:—their -appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of sovereignty which is -<i>live</i>, in which the functions are partitioned and apportioned, in which -above all no part is received or finds a place, until pregnant with -a "meaning" in regard to the whole. They are ignorant of the meaning -of guilt, responsibility, consideration, are these born organisers; -in them predominates that terrible artist-egoism, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> gleams like -brass, and that knows itself justified to all eternity, in its work, -even as a mother in her child. It is not in <i>them</i> that there grew -the bad conscience, that is elementary—but it would not have grown -<i>without them</i>, repulsive growth as it was, it would be missing, had -not a tremendous quantity of freedom been expelled from the world by -the stress of their hammer-strokes, their artist violence, or been at -any rate made invisible and, as it were, <i>latent</i>. This <i>instinct of -freedom</i> forced into being latent—it is already clear—this instinct -of freedom forced back, trodden back, imprisoned within itself, and -finally only able to find vent and relief in itself; this, only this, -is the beginning of the "bad conscience."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">18.</p> - -<p>Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial -painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at -work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and organisers, -and builds states, which here, internally, on a smaller and pettier -scale and with a retrogressive tendency, makes itself a bad science in -the "labyrinth of the breast," to use Goethe's phrase, and which builds -negative ideals; it is, I repeat, that identical <i>instinct of freedom</i> -(to use my own language, the will to power): only the material, on -which this force with all its constructive and tyrannous nature is -let loose, is here man himself, his whole old animal self—and <i>not</i> as -in the case of that more grandiose and sensational<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> phenomenon, the -<i>other</i> man, <i>other</i> men. This secret self-tyranny, this cruelty of -the artist, this delight in giving a form to one's self as a piece of -difficult, refractory, and suffering material, in burning in a will, a -critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a negation; this sinister and -ghastly labour of love on the part of a soul, whose will is cloven -in two within itself, which makes itself suffer from delight in the -infliction of suffering; this wholly <i>active</i> bad conscience has -finally (as one already anticipates)—true fountainhead as it is of -idealism and imagination—produced an abundance of novel and amazing -beauty and affirmation, and perhaps has really been the first to -give birth to beauty at all. What would beauty be, forsooth, if its -contradiction had not first been presented to consciousness, if the -ugly had not first said to itself, "I am ugly"? At any rate, after this -hint the problem of how far idealism and beauty can be traced in such -opposite ideas as "<i>selflessness</i>," <i>self-denial</i>, <i>self-sacrifice</i>, -becomes less problematical; and indubitably in future we shall -certainly know the real and original character of the <i>delight</i> -experienced by the self-less, the self-denying, the self-sacrificing: -this delight is a phase of cruelty.—So much provisionally for the -origin of "altruism" as a <i>moral</i> value, and the marking out the ground -from which this value has grown: it is only the bad conscience, only -the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the -existence of altruism as a <i>value</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">19.</p> - -<p>Undoubtedly the bad conscience is an illness, but an illness like -pregnancy is an illness. If we search out the conditions under which -this illness reaches its most terrible and sublime zenith, we shall see -what really first brought about its entry into the world. But to do -this we must take a long breath, and we must first of all go back once -again to an earlier point of view. The relation at civil law of the -ower to his creditor (which has already been discussed in detail), has -been interpreted once again (and indeed in a manner which historically -is exceedingly remarkable and suspicious) into a relationship, which -is perhaps more incomprehensible to us moderns than to any other era; -that is, into the relationship of the <i>existing</i> generation to its -<i>ancestors</i>. Within the original tribal association—we are talking of -primitive times—each living generation recognises a legal obligation -towards the earlier generation, and particularly towards the earliest, -which founded the family (and this is something much more than a mere -sentimental obligation, the existence of which, during the longest -period of man's history, is by no means indisputable). There prevails -in them the conviction that it is only thanks to sacrifices and efforts -of their ancestors, that the race <i>persists</i> at all—and that this -has to be <i>paid back</i> to them by sacrifices and services. Thus is -recognised the <i>owing</i> of a debt, which accumulates continually by -reason of these ancestors never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> ceasing in their subsequent life as -potent spirits to secure by their power new privileges and advantages -to the race. Gratis, perchance? But there is no gratis for that raw -and "mean-souled" age. What return can be made?—Sacrifice (at first, -nourishment, in its crudest sense), festivals, temples, tributes of -veneration, above all, obedience—since all customs are, <i>quâ</i> works of -the ancestors, equally their precepts and commands—are the ancestors -ever given enough? This suspicion remains and grows: from time to time -it extorts a great wholesale ransom, something monstrous in the way of -repayment of the creditor (the notorious sacrifice of the first-born, -for example, blood, human blood in any case). The <i>fear</i> of ancestors -and their power, the consciousness of owing debts to them, necessarily -increases, according to this kind of logic, in the exact proportion -that the race itself increases, that the race itself becomes more -victorious, more independent, more honoured, more feared. This, and not -the contrary, is the fact. Each step towards race decay, all disastrous -events, all symptoms of degeneration, of approaching disintegration, -always <i>diminish</i> the fear of the founders' spirit, and whittle away -the idea of his sagacity, providence, and potent presence. Conceive -this crude kind of logic carried to its climax: it follows that the -ancestors of the <i>most powerful</i> races must, through the growing fear -that they exercise on the imaginations, grow themselves into monstrous -dimensions, and become relegated to the gloom of a divine mystery that -transcends imagination—the ancestor becomes at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> last necessarily -transfigured into a <i>god</i>. Perhaps this is the very origin of the gods, -that is, an origin from <i>fear</i>! And those who feel bound to add, "but -from piety also," will have difficulty in maintaining this theory, -with regard to the primeval and longest period of the human race. And -of course this is even more the case as regards the <i>middle</i> period, -the formative period of the aristocratic races—the aristocratic -races which have given back with interest to their founders, the -ancestors (heroes, gods), all those qualities which in the meanwhile -have appeared in themselves, that is, the aristocratic qualities. We -will later on glance again at the ennobling and promotion of the gods -(which of course is totally distinct from their "sanctification"): let -us now provisionally follow to its end the course of the whole of this -development of the consciousness of "owing."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">20.</p> - -<p>According to the teaching of history, the consciousness of owing -debts to the deity by no means came to an end with the decay of the -clan organisation of society; just as mankind has inherited the -ideas of "good" and "bad" from the race-nobility (together with its -fundamental tendency towards establishing social distinctions), so -with the heritage of the racial and tribal gods it has also inherited -the incubus of debts as yet unpaid and the desire to discharge them. -The transition is effected by those large populations of slaves and -bondsmen, who, whether through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> compulsion or through submission and -"<i>mimicry,</i>" have accommodated themselves to the religion of their -masters; through this channel these inherited tendencies inundate -the world. The feeling of owing a debt to the deity has grown -continuously for several centuries, always in the same proportion in -which the idea of God and the consciousness of God have grown and -become exalted among mankind. (The whole history of ethnic fights, -victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, everything, in fact, which -precedes the eventual classing of all the social elements in each great -race-synthesis, are mirrored in the hotch-potch genealogy of their -gods, in the legends of their fights, victories, and reconciliations. -Progress towards universal empires invariably means progress towards -universal deities; despotism, with its subjugation of the independent -nobility, always paves the way for some system or other of monotheism.) -The appearance of the Christian god, as the record god up to this time, -has for that very reason brought equally into the world the record -amount of guilt consciousness. Granted that we have gradually started -on the <i>reverse</i> movement, there is no little probability in the -deduction, based on the continuous decay in the belief in the Christian -god, to the effect that there also already exists a considerable -decay in the human consciousness of owing (ought); in fact, we cannot -shut our eyes to the prospect of the complete and eventual triumph of -atheism freeing mankind from all this feeling of obligation to their -origin, their <i>causa prima</i>. Atheism and a kind of second<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> innocence -complement and supplement each other.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">21.</p> - -<p>So much for my rough and preliminary sketch of the interrelation of -the ideas "ought" (owe) and "duty" with the postulates of religion. I -have intentionally shelved up to the present the actual moralisation -of these ideas (their being pushed back into the conscience, or more -precisely the interweaving of the <i>bad</i> conscience with the idea of -God), and at the end of the last paragraph used language to the effect -that this moralisation did not exist, and that consequently these ideas -had necessarily come to an end, by reason of what had happened to their -hypothesis, the credence in our "creditor," in God. The actual facts -differ terribly from this theory. It is with the moralisation of the -ideas "ought" and "duty," and with their being pushed back into the -<i>bad</i> conscience, that comes the first actual attempt to <i>reverse</i> the -direction of the development we have just described, or at any rate -to arrest its evolution; it is just at this juncture that the very -hope of an eventual redemption <i>has to</i> put itself once for all into -the prison of pessimism, it is at this juncture that the eye <i>has to</i> -recoil and rebound in despair from off an adamantine impossibility, -it is at this juncture that the ideas "guilt" and "duty" have to turn -backwards—turn backwards against <i>whom</i>? There is no doubt about -it; primarily against the "ower," in whom the bad conscience now -establishes itself, eats, extends, and grows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> like a polypus throughout -its length and breadth, all with such virulence, that at last, with -the impossibility of paying the debt, there becomes conceived the -idea of the impossibility of paying the penalty, the thought of its -inexpiability (the idea of "eternal punishment")—finally, too, it -turns against the "creditor," whether found in the <i>causa prima</i> of -man, the origin of the human race, its sire, who henceforth becomes -burdened with a curse ("Adam," "original sin," "determination of the -will"), or in Nature from whose womb man springs, and on whom the -responsibility for the principle of evil is now cast ("Diabolisation of -Nature"), or in existence generally, on this logic an absolute <i>white -elephant</i>, with which mankind is landed (the Nihilistic flight from -life, the demand for Nothingness, or for the opposite of existence, for -some other existence, Buddhism and the like)—till suddenly we stand -before that paradoxical and awful expedient, through which a tortured -humanity has found a temporary alleviation, that stroke of genius -called Christianity:—God personally immolating himself for the debt of -man, God paying himself personally out of a pound of his own flesh, God -as the one being who can deliver man from what man had become unable to -deliver himself—the creditor playing scapegoat for his debtor, from -<i>love</i> (can you believe it?), from love of his debtor!...</p> - - -<p class="parnum">22.</p> - -<p>The reader will already have conjectured what took place on the stage -and <i>behind the scenes</i> of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> this drama. That will for self-torture, that -inverted cruelty of the animal man, who, turned subjective and scared -into introspection (encaged as he was in "the State," as part of his -taming process), invented the bad conscience so as to hurt himself, -after the <i>natural</i> outlet for this will to hurt, became blocked—in -other words, this man of the bad conscience exploited the religious -hypothesis so as to carry his martyrdom to the ghastliest pitch of -agonised intensity. Owing something to <i>God</i>: this thought becomes his -instrument of torture. He apprehends in God the most extreme antitheses -that he can find to his own characteristic and ineradicable animal -instincts, he himself gives a new interpretation to these animal -instincts as being against what he "owes" to God (as enmity, rebellion, -and revolt against the "Lord," the "Father," the "Sire," the "Beginning -of the world"), he places himself between the horns of the dilemma, -"God" and "Devil." Every negation which he is inclined to utter to -himself, to the nature, naturalness, and reality of his being, he -whips into an ejaculation of "yes," uttering it as something existing, -living, efficient, as being God, as the holiness of God, the judgment -of God, as the hangmanship of God, as transcendence, as eternity, as -unending torment, as hell, as infinity of punishment and guilt. This is -a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty -which is absolutely unparalleled:—man's <i>will</i> to find himself guilty -and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, his <i>will</i> to think of -himself as punished, without the punishment ever being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> able to balance -the guilt, his <i>will</i> to infect and to poison the fundamental basis -of the universe with the problem of punishment and guilt, in order to -cut off once and for all any escape out of this labyrinth of "fixed -ideas," his will for rearing an ideal—that of the "holy God"—face to -face with which he can have tangible proof of his own un-worthiness. -Alas for this mad melancholy beast man! What phantasies invade it, -what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and <i>mental -bestiality</i> break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its -being the beast of action. All this is excessively interesting, but -at the same time tainted with a black, gloomy, enervating melancholy, -so that a forcible veto must be invoked against looking too long into -these abysses. Here is <i>disease</i>, undubitably, the most ghastly disease -that has as yet played havoc among men: and he who can still hear (but -man turns now deaf ears to such sounds), how in this night of torment -and nonsense there has rung out the cry of <i>love</i>, the cry of the most -passionate ecstasy, of redemption in <i>love</i>, he turns away gripped by -an invincible horror—in man there is so much that is ghastly—too long -has the world been a mad-house.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">23.</p> - -<p>Let this suffice once for all concerning the origin of the "holy God." -The fact that <i>in itself</i> the conception of gods is not bound to -lead necessarily to this degradation of the imagination (a temporary -representation of whose vagaries we felt bound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> give), the fact that -there exist <i>nobler</i> methods of utilising the invention of gods than in -this self-crucifixion and self-degradation of man, in which the last -two thousand years of Europe have been past masters—these facts can -fortunately be still perceived from every glance that we cast at the -Grecian gods, these mirrors of noble and grandiose men, in which the -<i>animal</i> in man felt itself deified, and did <i>not</i> devour itself in -subjective frenzy. These Greeks long utilised their gods as simple -buffers against the "bad conscience"—so that they could continue -to enjoy their freedom of soul: this, of course, is diametrically -opposed to Christianity's theory of its god. They went <i>very far</i> on -this principle, did these splendid and lion-hearted children; and -there is no lesser authority than that of the Homeric Zeus for making -them realise occasionally that they are taking life too casually. -"Wonderful," says he on one occasion—it has to do with the case of -Ægistheus, a <i>very</i> bad case indeed—</p> - -<p> -"Wonderful how they grumble, the mortals against -the immortals,<br /> -<i>Only from us</i>, they presume, <i>comes evil</i>, but in -their folly,<br /> -Fashion they, spite of fate, the doom of their -own disaster."<br /> -</p> - -<p>Yet the reader will note and observe that this Olympian spectator and -judge is far from being angry with them and thinking evil of them on -this score. "How <i>foolish</i> they are," so thinks he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> of the misdeeds -of mortals—and "folly," "imprudence," "a little brain disturbance," -and nothing more, are what the Greeks, even of the strongest, bravest -period, have admitted to be the ground of much that is evil and -fatal.—Folly, <i>not</i> sin, do you understand?... But even this brain -disturbance was a problem—"Come, how is it even possible? How could it -have really got in brains like ours, the brains of men of aristocratic -ancestry, of men of fortune, of men of good natural endowments, of -men of the best society, of men of nobility and virtue?" This was the -question that for century on century the aristocratic Greek put to -himself when confronted with every (to him incomprehensible) outrage -and sacrilege with which one of his peers had polluted himself. "It -must be that a god had infatuated him," he would say at last, nodding -his head.—This solution is <i>typical</i> of the Greeks, ... accordingly -the gods in those times subserved the functions of justifying man to a -certain extent even in evil—in those days they took upon themselves -not the punishment, but, what is more noble, the guilt.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">24.</p> - -<p>I conclude with three queries, as you will see. "Is an ideal actually -set up here, or is one pulled down?" I am perhaps asked.... But have -ye sufficiently asked yourselves how dear a payment has the setting up -of <i>every</i> ideal in the world exacted? To achieve that consummation how -much truth must always be traduced and misunderstood, how many lies -must be sanctified,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> how much conscience has got to be disturbed, how -many pounds of "God" have got to be sacrificed every time? To enable -a sanctuary to be set up <i>a sanctuary has got to be destroyed</i>: that -is a law—show me an instance where it has not been fulfilled!... -We modern men, we inherit the immemorial tradition of vivisecting -the conscience, and practising cruelty to our animal selves. That is -the sphere of our most protracted training, perhaps of our artistic -prowess, at any rate of our dilettantism and our perverted taste. Man -has for too long regarded his natural proclivities with an "evil eye," -so that eventually they have become in his system affiliated to a -bad conscience. A converse endeavour would be intrinsically feasible—but -who is strong enough to attempt it?—namely, to affiliate to -the "bad conscience" all those <i>unnatural</i> proclivities, all those -transcendental aspirations, contrary to sense, instinct, nature, and -animalism—in short, all past and present ideals, which are all ideals -opposed to life, and traducing the world. To whom is one to turn -nowadays with <i>such</i> hopes and pretensions?—It is just the <i>good</i> -men that we should thus bring about our ears; and in addition, as -stands to reason, the indolent, the hedgers, the vain, the hysterical, -the tired.... What is more offensive or more thoroughly calculated -to alienate, than giving any hint of the exalted severity with which -we treat ourselves? And again how conciliatory, how full of love -does all the world show itself towards us so soon as we do as all -the world docs, and "let ourselves go" like all the world. For such -a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> consummation we need spirits of <i>different</i> calibre than seems -really feasible in this age; spirits rendered potent through wars and -victories, to whom conquest, adventure, danger, even pain, have become -a need; for such a consummation we need habituation to sharp, rare air, -to winter wanderings, to literal and metaphorical ice and mountains; we -even need a kind of sublime malice, a supreme and most self-conscious -insolence of knowledge, which is the appanage of great health; we need -(to summarise the awful truth) just this <i>great health</i>!</p> - -<p>Is this even feasible to-day?... But some day, in a stronger -age than this rotting and introspective present, must he in sooth -come to us, even the <i>redeemer</i> of great love and scorn, the creative -spirit, rebounding by the impetus of his own force back again away -from every transcendental plane and dimension, he whose solitude is -misunderstanded (sic) of the people, as though it were a flight <i>from</i> -reality;—while actually it is only his diving, burrowing, and -penetrating <i>into</i> reality, so that when he comes again to the light -he can at once bring about by these means the <i>redemption</i> of this -reality; its redemption from the curse which the old ideal has laid -upon it. This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from -the old ideal, as he will from that ideal's necessary corollary of -great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon -and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives -back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and -Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness—<i>he must -one day come</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">25.</p> - -<p>But what am I talking of? Enough! Enough? At this juncture I have -only one proper course, silence: otherwise tresspass on a domain open -alone to one who is younger than I, one stronger, more "<i>future</i>" than -I—open alone to <i>Zarathustra, Zarathustra the godless.</i></p> -<hr class="r5" /> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The German is: "<i>Sittlichkeit der Sitte</i>." H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The German world "<i>schuld</i>" means both debt and guilt. -Cp. the English "owe" and "ought," by which I occasionally render the -double meaning.—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> German: "<i>Verbrecher</i>."—H.B.S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> An allusion to <i>Der Zweck im Recht</i>, by the great German -jurist, Professor Ihering.</p></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h5><a name="THIRD_ESSAY" id="THIRD_ESSAY">THIRD ESSAY.</a></h5> - - -<h4>WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS?</h4> - -<blockquote> -<p>"Careless, mocking, forceful—so does wisdom wish us: she is a woman, -and never loves any one but a warrior."<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 40%;"><i>Thus Spake Zarathustra.</i></span></p> -</blockquote> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too -much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of "flair" and instinct for -the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, -at best an <i>additional</i> seductive fascination, a little <i>morbidezza</i> -on a fine piece of flesh, the angelhood of a fat, pretty animal; in -physiological failures and whiners (in the <i>majority</i> of mortals), -an attempt to pose as "too good" for this world, a holy form of -debauchery, their chief weapon in the battle with lingering pain and -ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of -power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally -a pretext for hibernation, their <i>novissima gloriæ cupido</i>, their -peace in nothingness ("God"), their form of madness.</p> - -<p>But in the very fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so much to -man, lies expressed the fundamental feature of man's will, his <i>horror -vacui: he needs a goal</i>—and he will sooner will nothingness than -not will at all.—Am I not understood?—Have I not been -understood?—"Certainly not, sir?"—Well, let us begin at the -beginning.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? Or, to take an individual -case in regard to which I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> often been consulted, what is the -meaning, for example, of an artist like Richard Wagner paying homage -to chastity in his old age? He had always done so, of course, in a -certain sense, but it was not till quite the end, that he did so in -an ascetic sense. What is the meaning of this "change of attitude," -this radical revolution in his attitude—for that was what it was? -Wagner veered thereby straight round into his own opposite. What is -the meaning of an artist veering round into his own opposite? At -this point (granted that we do not mind stopping a little over this -question), we immediately call to mind the best, strongest, gayest, -and boldest period, that there perhaps ever was in Wagner's life: that -was the period, when he was genuinely and deeply occupied with the -idea of "Luther's Wedding." Who knows what chance is responsible for -our now having the <i>Meistersingers</i> instead of this wedding music? -And how much in the latter is perhaps just an echo of the former? But -there is no doubt but that the theme would have dealt with the praise -of chastity. And certainly it would also have dealt with the praise -of sensuality, and even so, it would seem quite in order, and even -so, it would have been equally Wagnerian. For there is no necessary -antithesis between chastity and sensuality: every good marriage, every -authentic heart-felt love transcends this antithesis. Wagner would, it -seems to me, have done well to have brought this <i>pleasing</i> reality -home once again to his Germans, by means of a bold and graceful "Luther -Comedy," for there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> were and are among the Germans many revilers of -sensuality; and perhaps Luther's greatest merit lies just in the fact -of his having had the courage of his <i>sensuality</i> (it used to be -called, prettily enough, "evangelistic freedom "). But even in those -cases where that antithesis between chastity and sensuality does exist, -there has fortunately been for some time no necessity for it to be in -any way a tragic antithesis. This should, at any rate, be the case with -all beings who are sound in mind and body, who are far from reckoning -their delicate balance between "animal" and "angel," as being on the -face of it one of the principles opposed to existence—the most subtle -and brilliant spirits, such as Goethe, such as Hafiz, have even seen -in this a <i>further</i> charm of life. Such "conflicts" actually allure -one to life. On the other hand, it is only too clear that when once -these ruined swine are reduced to worshipping chastity—and there -are such swine—they only see and worship in it the antithesis to -themselves, the antithesis to ruined swine. Oh what a tragic grunting -and eagerness! You can just think of it—they worship that painful -and superfluous contrast, which Richard Wagner in his latter days -undoubtedly wished to set to music, and to place on the stage! "<i>For -what purpose, forsooth?</i>" as we may reasonably ask. What did the swine -matter to him; what do they matter to us?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>At this point it is impossible to beg the further question of what he -really had to do with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> that manly (ah, so unmanly) country bumpkin, -that poor devil and natural, Parsifal, whom he eventually made a -Catholic by such fraudulent devices. What? Was this Parsifal really -meant <i>seriously</i>? One might be tempted to suppose the contrary, even -to wish it—that the Wagnerian Parsifal was meant joyously, like a -concluding play of a trilogy or satyric drama, in which Wagner the -tragedian wished to take farewell of us, of himself, above all of -<i>tragedy</i>, and to do so in a manner that should be quite fitting and -worthy, that is, with an excess of the most extreme and flippant parody -of the tragic itself, of the ghastly earthly seriousness and earthly -woe of old—a parody of that <i>most crude phase</i> in the unnaturalness -of the ascetic ideal, that had at length been overcome. That, as I -have said, would have been quite worthy of a great tragedian; who like -every artist first attains the supreme pinnacle of his greatness when -he can look <i>down</i> into himself and his art, when he can <i>laugh</i> at -himself. Is Wagner's Parsifal his secret laugh of superiority over -himself, the triumph of that supreme artistic freedom and artistic -transcendency which he has at length attained. We might, I repeat, -wish it were so, for what can Parsifal, <i>taken seriously</i>, amount to? -Is it really necessary to see in it (according to an expression once -used against me) the product of an insane hate of knowledge, mind, -and flesh? A curse on flesh and spirit in one breath of hate? An -apostasy and reversion to the morbid Christian and obscurantist ideals? -And finally a self-negation and self-elimination on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> part of an -artist, who till then had devoted all the strength of his will to the -contrary, namely, the <i>highest</i> artistic expression of soul and body. -And not only of his art; of his life as well. Just remember with what -enthusiasm Wagner followed in the footsteps of Feuerbach. Feuerbach's -motto of "healthy sensuality" rang in the ears of Wagner during the -thirties and forties of the century, as it did in the ears of many -Germans (they dubbed themselves "<i>Young</i> Germans"), like the word of -redemption. Did he eventually <i>change his mind</i> on the subject? For it -seems at any rate that he eventually wished to <i>change his teaching</i> -on that subject ... and not only is that the case with the Parsifal -trumpets on the stage: in the melancholy, cramped, and embarrassed -lucubrations of his later years, there are a hundred places in which -there are manifestations of a secret wish and will, a despondent, -uncertain, unavowed will to preach actual retrogression, conversion, -Christianity, mediævalism, and to say to his disciples, "All is vanity! -Seek salvation elsewhere!" Even the "blood of the Redeemer" is once -invoked.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>Let me speak out my mind in a case like this, which has many painful -elements—and it is a typical case: it is certainly best to separate -an artist from his work so completely that he cannot be taken as -seriously as his work. He is after all merely the presupposition of -his work,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> the womb, the soil, in certain cases the dung and manure, -on which and out of which it grows—and consequently, in most cases, -something that must be forgotten if the work itself is to be enjoyed. -The insight into the <i>origin</i> of a work is a matter for psychologists -and vivisectors, but never either in the present or the future for the -æsthetes, the artists. The author and creator of Parsifal was as little -spared the necessity of sinking and living himself into the terrible -depths and foundations of mediæval soul-contrasts, the necessity of a -malignant abstraction from all intellectual elevation, severity, and -discipline, the necessity of a kind of mental <i>perversity</i> (if the reader -will pardon me such a word), as little as a pregnant woman is spared -the horrors and marvels of pregnancy, which, as I have said, must -be forgotten if the child is to be enjoyed. We must guard ourselves -against the confusion, into which an artist himself would fall only -too easily (to employ the English terminology) out of psychological -"contiguity"; as though the artist himself actually <i>were</i> the object -which he is able to represent, imagine, and express. In point of fact, -the position is that even if he conceived he were such an object, he -would certainly not represent, conceive, express it. Homer would not -have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an -Achilles or if Goethe had been a Faust. A complete and perfect artist -is to all eternity separated from the "real," from the actual; on the -other hand, it will be appreciated that he can at times get tired to -the point of despair of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> eternal "unreality" and falseness of his -innermost being—and that he then sometimes attempts to trespass on -to the most forbidden ground, on reality, and attempts to have real -<i>existence</i>. With what success? The success will be guessed—it is the -<i>typical velleity</i> of the artist; the same velleity to which Wagner -fell a victim in his old age, and for which he had to pay so dearly and -so fatally (he lost thereby his most valuable friends). But after all, -quite apart from this velleity, who would not wish emphatically for -Wagner's own sake that he had taken farewell of us and of his art in a -<i>different</i> manner, not with a <i>Parsifal</i>, but in more victorious, more -self-confident, more Wagnerian style—a style less misleading, a style -less ambiguous with regard to his whole meaning, less Schopenhauerian, -less Nihilistic?...</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>What, then, is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In the case of an artist -we are getting to understand their meaning: <i>Nothing at all</i> ... or so -much that it is as good as nothing at all. Indeed, what is the use of -them? Our artists have for a long time past not taken up a sufficiently -independent attitude, either in the world or against it, to warrant -their valuations and the changes in these valuations exciting interest. -At all times they have played the valet of some morality, philosophy, -or religion, quite apart from the fact that unfortunately they -have often enough been the inordinately supple courtiers of their -clients<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> and patrons, and the inquisitive toadies of the powers that -are existing, or even of the new powers to come. To put it at the -lowest, they always need a rampart, a support, an already constituted -authority: artists never stand by themselves, standing alone is opposed -to their deepest instincts. So, for example, did <i>Richard Wagner</i> -take, "when the time had come," the philosopher Schopenhauer for his -covering man in front, for his rampart. Who would consider it even -thinkable, that he would have had the <i>courage</i> for an ascetic ideal, -without the support afforded him by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, -without the authority of Schopenhauer, which <i>dominated</i> Europe in the -seventies? (This is without consideration of the question whether an -artist without the milk<a name="FNanchor_1_5" id="FNanchor_1_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_5" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> of an orthodoxy would have been possible at -all.) This brings us to the more serious question: What is the meaning -of a real <i>philosopher</i> paying homage to the ascetic ideal, a really -self-dependent intellect like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with a -glance of bronze, who has the courage to be himself, who knows how to -stand alone without first waiting for men who cover him in front, and -the nods of his superiors? Let us now consider at once the remarkable -attitude of Schopenhauer towards <i>art</i>, an attitude which has even a -fascination for certain types. For that is obviously the reason why -Richard Wagner <i>all at once</i> went over to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> Schopenhauer (persuaded -thereto, as one knows, by a poet, Herwegh), went over so completely -that there ensued the cleavage of a complete theoretic contradiction -between his earlier and his later æsthetic faiths—the earlier, for -example, being expressed in <i>Opera and Drama</i>, the later in the -writings which he published from 1870 onwards. In particular, Wagner -from that time onwards (and this is the volte-face which alienates us -the most) had no scruples about changing his judgment concerning the -value and position of music itself. What did he care if up to that time -he had made of music a means, a medium, a "woman," that in order to -thrive needed an end, a man—that is, the drama? He suddenly realised -that <i>more</i> could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian -theory in <i>majorem musicæ gloriam</i>—that is to say, by means of the -<i>sovereignty</i> of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music abstracted -from and opposed to all the other arts, music as the independent -art-in-itself, <i>not</i> like the other arts, affording reflections of the -phenomenal world, but rather the language of the will itself, speaking -straight out of the "abyss" as its most personal, original, and direct -manifestation. This extraordinary rise in the value of music (a rise -which seemed to grow out of the Schopenhauerian philosophy) was at -once accompanied by an unprecedented rise in the estimation in which -the <i>musician</i> himself was held: he became now an oracle, a priest, nay, -more than a priest, a kind of mouthpiece for the "intrinsic essence -of things," a telephone from the other world—from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> henceforward -he talked not only music, did this ventriloquist of God, he talked -metaphysic; what wonder that one day he eventually talked <i>ascetic -ideals</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>Schopenhauer has made use of the Kantian treatment of the æsthetic -problem—though he certainly did not regard it with the Kantian eyes. -Kant thought that he showed honour to art when he favoured and placed -in the foreground those of the predicates of the beautiful, which -constitute the honour of knowledge: impersonality and universality. -This is not the place to discuss whether this was not a complete -mistake; all that I wish to emphasise is that Kant, just like other -philosophers, instead of envisaging the æsthetic problem from the -standpoint of the experiences of the artist (the creator), has only -considered art and beauty from the standpoint of the spectator, and -has thereby imperceptibly imported the spectator himself into the idea -of the "beautiful"! But if only the philosophers of the beautiful had -sufficient knowledge of this "spectator"!—Knowledge of him as a great -fact of personality, as a great experience, as a wealth of strong and -most individual events, desires, surprises, and raptures in the sphere -of beauty! But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case. And so -we get from our philosophers, from the very beginning, definitions -on which the lack of a subtler personal experience squats like a fat -worm of crass error, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> -beautiful. "That is beautiful," says Kant, "which pleases without -interesting." Without interesting! Compare this definition with this -other one, made by a real "spectator" and "artist"—by Stendhal, who -once called the beautiful <i>une promesse de bonheur</i>. Here, at any rate, -the one point which Kant makes prominent in the æsthetic position is -repudiated and eliminated—<i>le désintéressement</i>. Who is right, Kant -or Stendhal? When, forsooth, our æsthetes never get tired of throwing -into the scales in Kant's favour the fact that under the magic of -beauty men can look at even naked female statues "without interest," -we can certainly laugh a little at their expense:—in regard to this -ticklish point the experiences of <i>artists</i> are more "interesting," -and at any rate Pygmalion was not necessarily an "unæsthetic man." Let -us think all the better of the innocence of our æsthetes, reflected -as it is in such arguments; let us, for instance, count to Kant's -honour the country-parson naïveté of his doctrine concerning the -peculiar character of the sense of touch! And here we come back to -Schopenhauer, who stood in much closer neighbourhood to the arts -than did Kant, and yet never escaped outside the pale of the Kantian -definition; how was that? The circumstance is marvellous enough: he -interprets the expression, "without interest," in the most personal -fashion, out of an experience which must in his case have been part and -parcel of his regular routine. On few subjects does Schopenhauer speak -with such certainty as on the working of æsthetic contemplation: he -says of it that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> it simply counteracts sexual interest, like lupulin -and camphor; he never gets tired of glorifying this escape from -the "Life-will" as the great advantage and utility of the æsthetic -state. In fact, one is tempted to ask if his fundamental conception -of Will and Idea, the thought that there can only exist freedom from -the "will" by means of "idea," did not originate in a generalisation -from this sexual experience. (In all questions concerning the -Schopenhauerian philosophy, one should, by the bye, never lose sight of -the consideration that it is the conception of a youth of twenty-six, -so that it participates not only in what is peculiar to Schopenhauer's -life, but in what is peculiar to that special period of his life.) -Let us listen, for instance, to one of the most expressive among the -countless passages which he has written in honour of the æsthetic -state (<i>World as Will and Idea</i>, i. 231); let us listen to the tone, -the suffering, the happiness, the gratitude, with which such words -are uttered: "This is the painless state which Epicurus praised as -the highest good and as the state of the gods; we are during that -moment freed from the vile pressure of the will, we celebrate the -Sabbath of the will's hard labour, the wheel of Ixion stands still." -What vehemence of language! What images of anguish and protracted -revulsion! How almost pathological is that temporal antithesis between -"that moment" and everything else, the "wheel of Ixion," "the hard -labour of the will," "the vile pressure of the will." But granted -that Schopenhauer was a hundred times right for himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> personally, -how does that help our insight into the nature of the beautiful? -Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful,—the calming -of the will,—but is this effect really normal? As has been mentioned, -Stendhal, an equally sensual but more happily constituted nature than -Schopenhauer, gives prominence to another effect of the "beautiful." -"The beautiful <i>promises</i> happiness." To him it is just the <i>excitement</i> -of the "will" (the "interest") by the beauty that seems the essential -fact. And does not Schopenhauer ultimately lay himself open to the -objection, that he is quite wrong in regarding himself as a Kantian on -this point, that he has absolutely failed to understand in a Kantian -sense the Kantian definition of the beautiful—;that the beautiful -pleased him as well by means of an interest, by means, in fact, of the -strongest and most personal interest of all, that: of the victim of -torture who escapes from his torture?—And to come back again to our -first question, "What is the <i>meaning</i> of a philosopher paying homage to -ascetic ideals?" We get now, at any rate, a first hint; he wishes to -<i>escape from a torture</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>Let us beware of making dismal faces at the word "torture"—there is -certainly in this case enough to deduct, enough to discount—there is -even something to laugh at. For we must certainly not underestimate -the fact that Schopenhauer, who in practice treated sexuality as -a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> personal enemy (including its tool, woman, that "<i>instrumentum -diaboli</i>"), needed enemies to keep him in a good humour; that he loved -grim, bitter, blackish-green words; that he raged for the sake of -raging, out of passion; that he would have grown ill, would have become -a <i>pessimist</i> (for he was not a pessimist, however much he wished to -be), without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the -whole "will for existence" "keeping on." Without them Schopenhauer -would not have "kept on," that is a safe wager; he would have run away: -but his enemies held him fast, his enemies always enticed him back -again to existence, his wrath was just as theirs' was to the ancient -Cynics, his balm, his recreation, his recompense, his <i>remedium</i> -against disgust, his <i>happiness</i>. So much with regard to what is most -personal in the case of Schopenhauer; on the other hand, there is -still much which is typical in him—and only now we come back to our -problem. It is an accepted and indisputable fact, so long as there -are philosophers in the world and wherever philosophers have existed -(from India to England, to take the opposite poles of philosophic -ability), that there exists a real irritation and rancour on the part -of philosophers towards sensuality. Schopenhauer is merely the most -eloquent, and if one has the ear for it, also the most fascinating -and enchanting outburst. There similarly exists a real philosophic -bias and affection for the whole ascetic ideal; there should be no -illusions on this score. Both these feelings, as has been said, belong -to the type; if a philosopher<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> lacks both of them, then he is—you may -be certain of it—never anything but a "pseudo." What does this mean? -For this state of affairs must first be, interpreted: in itself it -stands there stupid, to all eternity, like any "Thing-in-itself." Every -animal, including la bête philosophe, strives instinctively after an -<i>optimum</i> of favourable conditions, under which he can let his whole -strength have play, and achieves his maximum consciousness of power; -with equal instinctiveness, and with a fine perceptive flair which is -superior to any reason, every animal shudders mortally at every kind -of disturbance and hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his way -to that optimum (it is not his way to happiness of which I am talking, -but his way to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in -point of fact in many cases his way to unhappiness). Similarly, the -philosopher shudders mortally at <i>marriage</i>, together with all -that could persuade him to it—marriage as a fatal hindrance on the -way to the <i>optimum</i>. Up to the present what great philosophers have -been married? Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, -Schopenhauer—they were not married, and, further, one cannot <i>imagine</i> -them as married. A married philosopher belongs to <i>comedy</i>, that is -my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates—the malicious Socrates -married himself, it seems, <i>ironice</i>, just to prove this <i>very</i> rule. -Every philosopher would say, as Buddha said, when the birth of a son -was announced to him: "Râhoula has been born to me, a fetter has been -forged for me" (Râhoula means here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> "a little demon"); there must come -an hour of reflection to every "free spirit" (granted that he has had -previously an hour of thoughtlessness), just as one came once to the -same Buddha: "Narrowly cramped," he reflected, "is life in the house; -it is a place of uncleanness; freedom is found in leaving the house." -Because he thought like this, he left the house. So many bridges to -independence are shown in the ascetic idea], that the philosopher -cannot refrain from exultation and clapping of hands when he hears -the history of all those resolute ones, who on one day uttered a nay -to all servitude and went into some <i>desert</i>; even granting that they -were only strong asses, and the absolute opposite of strong minds. -What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my -answer—it will have been guessed long ago: when he sees this ideal -the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an <i>optimum</i> of the -conditions of the highest and boldest intellectuality; he does not -thereby deny "existence," he rather affirms thereby <i>his</i> existence -and <i>only</i> his existence, and this perhaps to the point of not being -far off the blasphemous wish, <i>pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat -philosophus, fiam!</i></p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>These philosophers, you see, are by no means uncorrupted witnesses and -judges of the <i>value</i> of the ascetic ideal. They think <i>of themselves</i> -—what is the "saint" to them? They think of that which to them -personally is most indispensable; of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> freedom from compulsion, -disturbance, noise: freedom from business, duties, cares; of clear -head; of the dance, spring, and flight of thoughts; of good air—rare, -clear, free, dry, as is the air on the heights, in which every animal -creature becomes more intellectual and gains wings; they think of -peace in every cellar; all the hounds neatly chained; no baying of -enmity and uncouth rancour; no remorse of wounded ambition; quiet -and submissive internal organs, busy as mills, but unnoticed; the -heart alien, transcendent, future, posthumous—to summarise, they -mean by the ascetic ideal the joyous asceticism of a deified and -newly fledged animal, sweeping over life rather than resting. We know -what are the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, -humility, chastity; and now just look closely at the life of all -the great fruitful inventive spirits—you will always find again -and again these three qualities up to a certain extent. <i>Not</i> for a -minute, as is self-evident, as though, perchance, they were part of -their virtues—what has this type of man to do with virtues?—but as -the most essential and natural conditions of their <i>best</i> existence, -their <i>finest</i> fruitfulness. In this connection it is quite possible -that their predominant intellectualism had first to curb an unruly and -irritable pride, or an insolent sensualism, or that it had all its -work cut out to maintain its wish for the "desert" against perhaps -an inclination to luxury and dilettantism, or similarly against an -extravagant liberality of heart and hand. But their intellect did -effect all this, simply because it was the <i>dominant</i> instinct, which -carried through its orders in the case<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> of all the other instincts. -It effects it still; if it ceased to do so, it would simply not be -dominant. But there is not one iota of "virtue" in all this. Further, -the <i>desert</i>, of which I just spoke, in which the strong, independent, -and well-equipped spirits retreat into their hermitage—oh, how -different is it from the cultured classes' dream of a desert! In -certain cases, in fact, the cultured classes themselves are the desert. -And it is certain that all the actors of the intellect would not endure -this desert for a minute. It is nothing like romantic and Syrian enough -for them, nothing like enough of a stage desert! Here as well there -are plenty of asses, but at this point the resemblance ceases. But a -desert nowadays is something like this—perhaps a deliberate obscurity; -a getting-out-of the way of one's self; a fear of noise, admiration, -papers, influence; a little office, a daily task, something that hides -rather than brings to light; sometimes associating with harmless, -cheerful beasts and fowls, the sight of which refreshes; a mountain for -company, but not a dead one, one with <i>eyes</i> (that is, with lakes); -in certain cases even a room in a crowded hotel where one can reckon -on not being recognised, and on being able to talk with impunity to -every one: here is the desert—oh, it is lonely enough, believe me! -I grant that when Heracleitus retreated to the courts and cloisters -of the colossal temple of Artemis, that "wilderness" was worthier; -why do we <i>lack</i> such temples? (perchance we do not lack them: I just -think of my splendid study in the <i>Piazza di San Marco</i>, in spring, of -course, and in the morning, between ten and twelve). But that which -Heracleitus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> shunned is still just what we too avoid nowadays: the -noise and democratic babble of the Ephesians, their politics, their -news from the "empire" (I mean, of course, Persia), their market-trade -in "the things of to-day "—for there is one thing from which we -philosophers especially need a rest—from the things of "to-day." We -honour the silent, the cold, the noble, the far, the past, everything, -in fact, at the sight of which the soul is not bound to brace itself up -and defend itself—something with which one can speak without <i>speaking -aloud</i>. Just listen now to the tone a spirit has when it speaks; every -spirit has its own tone and loves its own tone. That thing yonder, for -instance, is bound to be an agitator, that is, a hollow head, a hollow -mug: whatever may go into him, everything comes back from him dull and -thick, heavy with the echo of the great void. That spirit yonder nearly -always speaks hoarse: has he, perchance, <i>thought</i> himself hoarse? -It may be so—ask the physiologists—but he who thinks in <i>words</i>, -thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not -think of objects or think objectively, but only of his relations -with objects—that, in point of fact, he only thinks of himself and -his audience). This third one speaks aggressively, he comes too near -our body, his breath blows on us—we shut our mouth involuntarily, -although he speaks to us through a book: the tone of his style supplies -the reason—he has no time, he has small faith in himself, he finds -expression now or never. But a spirit who is sure of himself speaks -softly; he seeks secrecy, he lets himself be awaited, A philosopher -is recognised by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> fact that he shuns three brilliant and noisy -things—fame, princes, and women: which is not to say that they do not -come to him. He shuns every glaring light: therefore he shuns his time -and its "daylight." Therein he is as a shadow; the deeper sinks the -sun, the greater grows the shadow. As for his humility, he endures, as -he endures darkness, a certain dependence and obscurity: further, he is -afraid of the shock of lightning, he shudders at the insecurity of a -tree which is too isolated and too exposed, on which every storm vents -its temper, every temper its storm. His "maternal" instinct, his secret -love for that which grows in him, guides him into states where he is -relieved from the necessity of taking care of <i>himself</i>, in the same -way in which the "<i>mother</i>" instinct in woman has thoroughly maintained -up to the present woman's dependent position. After all, they demand -little enough, do these philosophers, their favourite motto is, "He -who possesses is possessed." All this is <i>not</i>, as I must say again -and again, to be attributed to a virtue, to a meritorious wish for -moderation and simplicity; but because their supreme lord so demands -of them, demands wisely and inexorably; their lord who is eager only -for one thing, for which alone he musters, and for which alone he -hoards everything—time, strength, love, interest. This kind of man -likes not to be disturbed by enmity, he likes not to be disturbed by -friendship, it is a type which forgets or despises easily. It strikes -him as bad form to play the martyr, "to <i>suffer</i> for truth"—he leaves -all that to the ambitious and to the stage-heroes of the intellect, -and to all those, in fact, who have time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> enough for such luxuries -(they themselves, the philosophers, have something <i>to do</i> for truth). -They make a sparing use of big words; they are said to be adverse to -the word "truth" itself: it has a "high falutin'" ring. Finally, as -far as the chastity of philosophers is concerned, the fruitfulness -of this type of mind is manifestly in another sphere than that of -children; perchance in some other sphere, too, they have the survival -of their name, their little immortality (philosophers in ancient -India would express themselves with still greater boldness: "Of what -use is posterity to him whose soul is the world?"). In this attitude -there is not a trace of chastity, by reason of any ascetic scruple or -hatred of the flesh, any more than it is chastity for an athlete or a -jockey to abstain from women; it is rather the will of the dominant -instinct, at any rate, during the period of their advanced philosophic -pregnancy. Every artist knows the harm done by sexual intercourse -on occasions of great mental strain and preparation; as far as the -strongest artists and those with the surest instincts are concerned, -this is not necessarily a case of experience—hard experience—but it -is simply their "maternal" instinct which, in order to benefit the -growing work, disposes recklessly (beyond all its normal stocks and -supplies) of the <i>vigour</i> of its <i>animal</i> life; the greater power then -<i>absorbs</i> the lesser. Let us now apply this interpretation to gauge -correctly the case of Schopenhauer, which we have already mentioned: in -his case, the sight of the beautiful acted manifestly like a resolving -irritant on the chief power of his nature (the power of contemplation -and of intense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> penetration); so that this strength exploded and became -suddenly master of his consciousness. But this by no means excludes -the possibility of that particular sweetness and fulness, which is -peculiar to the æsthetic state, springing directly from the ingredient -of sensuality (just as that "idealism" which is peculiar to girls at -puberty originates in the same source)—it may be, consequently, that -sensuality is not removed by the approach of the æsthetic state, as -Schopenhauer believed, but merely becomes transfigured, and ceases to -enter into the consciousness as sexual excitement. (I shall return once -again to this point in connection with the more delicate problems of -the <i>physiology of the æsthetic</i>, a subject which up to the present has -been singularly untouched and unelucidated.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>A certain asceticism, a grimly gay whole-hearted renunciation, is, as -we have seen, one of the most favourable conditions for the highest -intellectualism, and, consequently, for the most natural corollaries -of such intellectualism: we shall therefore be proof against any -surprise at the philosophers in particular always treating the ascetic -ideal with a certain amount of predilection. A serious historical -investigation shows the bond between the ascetic ideal and philosophy -to be still much tighter and still much stronger. It may be said that -it was only in the <i>leading strings</i> of this ideal that philosophy -really learnt to make its first steps and baby paces—alas how -clumsily, alas how crossly, alas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> how ready to tumble down and lie on -its stomach was this shy little darling of a brat with its bandy legs! -The early history of philosophy is like that of all good things;—for a -long time they had not the courage to be themselves, they kept always -looking round to see if no one would come to their help; further, they -were afraid of all who looked at them. Just enumerate in order the -particular tendencies and virtues of the philosopher—his tendency to -doubt, his tendency to deny, his tendency to wait (to be "ephectic"), -his tendency to analyse, search, explore, dare, his tendency to compare -and to equalise, his will to be neutral and objective, his will for -everything which is "<i>sine ira et studio</i>":—has it yet been realised -that for quite a lengthy period these tendencies went counter to the -first claims of morality and conscience? (To say nothing at all of -<i>Reason</i>, which even Luther chose to call <i>Frau Klüglin</i>,<a name="FNanchor_2_6" id="FNanchor_2_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_6" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> the sly -whore.) Has it been yet appreciated that a philosopher, in the event -of his <i>arriving</i> at self-consciousness, must needs feel himself an -incarnate "<i>nitimur in vetitum</i>"—and consequently guard himself against -"his own sensations," against self-consciousness? It is, I repeat, just -the same with all good things, on which we now pride ourselves; even -judged by the standard of the ancient Greeks, our whole modern life, -in so far as it is not weakness, but power and the consciousness of -power, appears pure "Hybris" and godlessness: for the things which are -the very reverse of those which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> we honour to-day, have had for a long -time conscience on their side, and God as their guardian. "Hybris" -is our whole attitude to nature nowadays, our violation of nature -with the help of machinery, and all the unscrupulous ingenuity of our -scientists and engineers. "Hybris" is our attitude to God, that is, to -some alleged teleological and ethical spider behind the meshes of the -great trap of the causal web. Like Charles the Bold in his war with -Louis the Eleventh, we may say, "<i>je combats l'universelle araignée</i>"; -"Hybris" is our attitude to ourselves—for we experiment with ourselves -in a way that we would not allow with any animal, and with pleasure -and curiosity open our soul in our living body: what matters now to -us the "salvation" of the soul? We heal ourselves afterwards: being -ill is instructive, we doubt it not, even more instructive than being -well—inoculators of disease seem to us to-day even more necessary -than any medicine-men and "saviours." There is no doubt we do violence -to ourselves nowadays, we crackers of the soul's kernel, we incarnate -riddles, who are ever asking riddles, as though life were naught else -than the cracking of a nut; and even thereby must we necessarily become -day by day more and more worthy to be asked questions and <i>worthy</i> to ask -them, even thereby do we perchance also become worthier to—live?</p> - -<p>... All good things were once bad things; from every original sin has -grown an original virtue. Marriage, for example, seemed for a long time -a sin against the rights of the community; a man formerly paid a fine -for the insolence of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> claiming one woman to himself (to this phase -belongs, for instance, the <i>jus primæ noctis</i>, to-day still in Cambodia -the privilege of the priest, that guardian of the "good old customs").</p> - -<p>The soft, benevolent, yielding, sympathetic feelings—eventually valued -so highly that they almost became "intrinsic values," were for a very -long time actually despised by their possessors: gentleness was then -a subject for shame, just as hardness is now (compare <i>Beyond Good -and Evil</i>, Aph. 260). The submission to law: oh, with what qualms of -conscience was it that the noble races throughout the world renounced -the <i>vendetta</i> and gave the law power over themselves! Law was long a -<i>vetitum</i>, a blasphemy, an innovation; it was introduced with force, -<i>like</i> a force, to which men only submitted with a sense of personal -shame. Every tiny step forward in the world was formerly made at -the cost of mental and physical torture. Nowadays the whole of this -point of view—"that not only stepping forward, nay, stepping at all, -movement, change, all needed their countless martyrs," rings in our -ears quite strangely. I have put it forward in the <i>Dawn of Day</i>, Aph. -18. "Nothing is purchased more dearly," says the same book a little -later, "than the modicum of human reason and freedom which is now our -pride. But that pride is the reason why it is now almost impossible -for us to feel in sympathy with those immense periods of the 'Morality -of Custom,' which lie at the beginning of the 'world's history,' -constituting as they do the real decisive historical principle which -has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> fixed the character of humanity; those periods, I repeat, when -throughout the world suffering passed for virtue, cruelty for virtue, -deceit for virtue, revenge for virtue, repudiation of the reason for -virtue; and when, conversely, well-being passed current for danger, the -desire for knowledge for danger, pity for danger, peace for danger, -being pitied for shame, work for shame, madness for divinity, and -<i>change</i> for immorality and incarnate corruption!"</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>There is in the same book, Aph. 12, an explanation of the <i>burden</i> -of unpopularity under which the earliest race of contemplative men -had to live—despised almost as widely as they were first feared! -Contemplation first appeared on earth in a disguised shape, in an -ambiguous form, with an evil heart and often with an uneasy head: -there is no doubt about it. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike element -in the instincts of contemplative men long invested them with a cloud -of suspicion: the only way to combat this was to excite a definite -<i>fear</i>. And the old Brahmans, for example, knew to a nicety how to do -this! The oldest philosophers were well versed in giving to their very -existence and appearance, meaning, firmness, background, by reason -whereof men learnt to <i>fear</i> them; considered more precisely, they -did this from an even more fundamental need, the need of inspiring -in themselves fear and self-reverence. For they found even in their -own souls all the valuations turned <i>against</i> themselves; they had -to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> fight down every kind of suspicion and antagonism against "the -philosophic element in themselves." Being men of a terrible age, -they did this with terrible means: cruelty to themselves, ingenious -self-mortification—this was the chief method of these ambitious -hermits and intellectual revolutionaries, who were obliged to force -down the gods and the traditions of their own soul, so as to enable -themselves to <i>believe</i> in their own revolution. I remember the famous -story of the King Vicvamitra, who, as the result of a thousand years -of self-martyrdom, reached such a consciousness of power and such a -confidence in himself that he undertook to build a <i>new heaven</i>: the -sinister symbol of the oldest and newest history of philosophy in the -whole world. Every one who has ever built anywhere a "<i>new heaven</i>" -first found the power thereto in his <i>own hell</i>.... Let us compress -the facts into a short formula. The philosophic spirit had, in order -to be <i>possible</i> to any extent at all, to masquerade and disguise -itself as one of the <i>previously fixed</i> types of the contemplative -man, to disguise itself as priest, wizard, soothsayer, as a religious -man generally: the <i>ascetic ideal</i> has for a long time served the -philosopher as a superficial form, as a condition which enabled him -to exist.... To be able to be a philosopher he had to exemplify the -ideal; to exemplify it, he was bound to <i>believe</i> in it. The peculiarly -etherealised abstraction of philosophers, with their negation of the -world, their enmity to life, their disbelief in the senses, which has -been maintained up to the most recent time, and has almost thereby come -to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> accepted as the ideal <i>philosophic attitude</i>—this abstraction -is the result of those enforced conditions under which philosophy -came into existence, and continued to exist; inasmuch as for quite -a very long time philosophy would have been <i>absolutely impossible</i> -in the world without an ascetic cloak and dress, without an ascetic -self-misunderstanding. Expressed plainly and palpably, the <i>ascetic -priest</i> has taken the repulsive and sinister form of the caterpillar, -beneath which and behind which alone philosophy could live and slink -about....</p> - -<p>Has all that really changed? Has that flamboyant and dangerous winged -creature, that "spirit" which that caterpillar concealed within itself, -has it, I say, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, lighter world, really -and finally flung off its hood and escaped into the light? Can we -to-day point to enough pride, enough daring, enough courage, enough -self-confidence, enough mental will, enough will for responsibility, -enough freedom of the will, to enable the philosopher to be now in the -world really—<i>possible</i>?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11.</p> - -<p>And now, after we have caught sight of the <i>ascetic priest</i>, let us -tackle our problem. What is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? It now -first becomes serious—vitally serious. We are now confronted with the -<i>real representatives of the serious</i>. "What is the meaning of all -seriousness?" This even more radical question is perchance already -on the tip of our tongue: a question, fairly, for physiologists, but -which we for the time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> being skip. In that ideal the ascetic priest -finds not only his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest. -His <i>right</i> to existence stands and falls with that ideal. What wonder -that we here run up against a terrible opponent (on the supposition, -of course, that we are the opponents of that ideal), an opponent -fighting for his life against those who repudiate that ideal!. .. On -the other hand, it is from the outset improbable that such a biased -attitude towards our problem will do him any particular good; the -ascetic priest himself will scarcely prove the happiest champion of -his own ideal (on the same principle on which a woman usually fails -when she wishes to champion "woman")—let alone proving the most -objective critic and judge of the controversy now raised. We shall -therefore—so much is already obvious—rather have actually to help -him to defend himself properly against ourselves, than we shall have -to fear being too well beaten by him. The idea, which is the subject -of this dispute, is the <i>value</i> of our life from the standpoint of the -ascetic priests: this life, then (together with the whole of which it -is a part, "Nature," "the world," the whole sphere of becoming and -passing away), is placed by them in relation to an existence of quite -another character, which it excludes and to which it is opposed, unless -it <i>deny</i> its own self: in this case, the case of an ascetic life, -life is taken as a bridge to another existence. The ascetic treats -life as a maze, in which one must walk backwards till one comes to the -place where it starts; or he treats it as an error which one may,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> nay -<i>must</i>, refute by action: for he <i>demands</i> that he should be followed; -he enforces, where he can, <i>his</i> valuation of existence. What does this -mean? Such a monstrous valuation is not an exceptional case, or a -curiosity recorded in human history: it is one of the most general -and persistent facts that there are. The reading from the vantage -of a distant star of the capital letters of our earthly life, would -perchance lead to the conclusion that the earth was the especially -<i>ascetic planet</i>, a den of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive -creatures, who never got rid of a deep disgust of themselves, of the -world, of all life, and did themselves as much hurt as possible out -of pleasure in hurting—presumably their one and only pleasure. Let -us consider how regularly, how universally, how practically at every -single period the ascetic priest puts in his appearance: he belongs to -no particular race; he thrives everywhere; he grows out of all classes. -Not that he perhaps bred this valuation by heredity and propagated -it—the contrary is the case. It must be a necessity of the first order -which makes this species, <i>hostile</i>, as it is, to <i>life</i>, always grow -again and always thrive again.—<i>Life</i> itself must certainly <i>have an -interest</i> in the continuance of such a type of self-contradiction. For -an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules resentment without -parallel, the resentment of an insatiate instinct and ambition, that -would be master, not over some element in life, but over life itself, -over life's deepest, strongest, innermost conditions; here is an -attempt made to utilise power to dam the sources of power; here does<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> -the green eye of jealousy turn even against physiological well-being, -especially against the expression of such well-being, beauty, joy; -while a sense of pleasure is experienced and <i>sought</i> in abortion, in -decay, in pain, in misfortune, in ugliness, in voluntary punishment, -in the exercising, flagellation, and sacrifice of the self. All this -is in the highest degree paradoxical: we are here confronted with a -rift that <i>wills</i> itself to be a rift, which <i>enjoys</i> itself in this -very <i>suffering</i>, and even becomes more and more certain of itself, -more and more triumphant, in proportion as its own presupposition, -physiological vitality, <i>decreases</i>. "The triumph just in the supreme -agony:" under this extravagant emblem did the ascetic ideal fight from -of old; in this mystery of seduction, in this picture of rapture and -torture, it recognised its brightest light, its salvation, its final -victory. <i>Crux, nux, lux</i>—it has all these three in one.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness -is induced to <i>philosophise</i>; on what will it vent its pet caprice? -On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, -to be real; it will look for <i>error</i> in those very places where the -life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for -instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, -reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multiplicity, -the whole logical contrast of "<i>Subject</i>" and "<i>Object</i>"—errors, -nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> but errors! To renounce the belief in one's own ego, to -deny to one's self one's own "reality"—what a triumph! and here -already we have a much higher kind of triumph, which is not merely -a triumph over the senses, over the palpable, but an infliction of -violence and cruelty on <i>reason</i>; and this ecstasy culminates in the -ascetic self-contempt, the ascetic scorn of one's own reason making -this decree: <i>there is</i> a domain of truth and of life, but reason is -specially <i>excluded</i> therefrom.. .. By the bye, even in the Kantian -idea of "the intellegible character of things" there remains a trace -of that schism, so dear to the heart of the ascetic, that schism -which likes to turn reason against reason; in fact, "intelligible -character" means in Kant a kind of quality in things of which the -intellect comprehends this much, that for it, the intellect, it is -<i>absolutely incomprehensible</i>. After all, let us, in our character -of knowers, not be ungrateful towards such determined reversals of -the ordinary perspectives and values, with which the mind had for -too long raged against itself with an apparently futile sacrilege! -In the same way the very seeing of another vista, the very <i>wishing</i> -to see another vista, is no little training and preparation of the -intellect for its eternal "<i>Objectivity</i>"—objectivity being understood -not as "contemplation without interest" (for that is inconceivable -and non-sensical), but as the ability to have the pros and cons <i>in -one's power</i> and to switch them on and off, so as to get to know how -to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the <i>difference</i> in -the perspective and in the emotional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> interpretations. But let us, -forsooth, my philosophic colleagues, henceforward guard ourselves more -carefully against this mythology of dangerous ancient ideas, which has -set up a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge"; -let us guard ourselves from the tentacles of such contradictory ideas -as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge-in-itself":—in -these theories an eye that cannot be thought of is required to think, -an eye which <i>ex hypothesi</i> has no direction at all, an eye in which -the active and interpreting functions are cramped, are absent; those -functions, I say, by means of which "abstract" seeing first became -seeing something; in these theories consequently the absurd and the -non-sensical is always demanded of the eye. There is only a seeing -from a perspective, only a "knowing" from a perspective, and the <i>more</i> -emotions we express over a thing, the <i>more</i> eyes, different eyes, we -train on the same thing, the more complete will be our "idea" of that -thing, our "objectivity." But the elimination of the will altogether, -the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could -do so, what! would not that be called intellectual <i>castration</i>?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>But let us turn back. Such a self-contradiction, as apparently -manifests itself among the ascetics, "Life turned against Life," -is—this much is absolutely obvious—from the physiological and not now -from the psychological standpoint, simply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> nonsense. It can only be an -<i>apparent</i> contradiction; it must be a kind of provisional expression, an -explanation, a formula, an adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding -of something, whose real nature could not be understood for a long -time, and whose <i>real essence</i> could not be described; a mere word -jammed into an old <i>gap</i> of human knowledge. To put briefly the -facts against its being real: <i>the ascetic ideal springs from the -prophylactic and self-preservative instincts which mark a decadent -life</i>, which seeks by every means in its power to maintain its position -and fight for its existence; it points to a partial physiological -depression and exhaustion, against which the most profound and intact -life-instincts fight ceaselessly with new weapons and discoveries. The -ascetic ideal is such a weapon: its position is consequently exactly -the reverse of that which the worshippers of the ideal imagine—life -struggles in it and through it with death and against death; the -ascetic ideal is a dodge for the <i>preservation</i> of life. An important -fact is brought out in the extent to which, as history teaches, this -ideal could rule and exercise power over man, especially in all those -places where the civilisation and taming of man was completed: that -fact is, the diseased state of man up to the present, at any rate, of -the man who has been tamed, the physiological struggle of man with -death (more precisely, with the disgust with life, with exhaustion, -with the wish for the "end"). The ascetic priest is the incarnate wish -for an existence of another kind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> an existence on another plane,—he -is, in fact, the highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and -passion: but it is the very <i>power</i> of this wish which is the fetter -that binds him here; it is just that which makes him into a tool that -must labour to create more favourable conditions for earthly existence, -for existence on the human plane—it is with this very <i>power</i> that he -keeps the whole herd of failures, distortions, abortions, unfortunates, -<i>sufferers from themselves</i> of every kind, fast to existence, while -he as the herdsman goes instinctively on in front. You understand -me already: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this -denier—he actually belongs to the really great <i>conservative</i> and -<i>affirmative</i> forces of life.... What does it come from, this diseased -state? For man is more diseased, more uncertain, more changeable, -more unstable than any other animal, there is no doubt of it—he is -<i>the</i> diseased animal: what does it spring from? Certainly he has also -dared, innovated, braved more, challenged fate more than all the other -animals put together; he, the great experimenter with himself, the -unsatisfied, the insatiate, who struggles for the supreme mastery with -beast, Nature, and gods, he, the as yet ever uncompelled, the ever -future, who finds no more any rest from his own aggressive strength, -goaded inexorably on by the spur of the future dug into the flesh of -the present:—how should not so brave and rich an animal also be the -most endangered, the animal with the longest and deepest sickness -among all sick animals?... Man is sick of it, oft<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> enough there are -whole epidemics of this satiety (as about 1348, the time of the Dance -of Death): but even this very nausea, this tiredness, this disgust -with himself, all this is discharged from him with such force that -it is immediately made into a new fetter. His "nay," which he utters -to life, brings to light as though by magic an abundance of graceful -"yeas"; even when he <i>wounds</i> himself, this master of destruction, of -self-destruction, it is subsequently the wound itself that forces him -to live.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>The more normal is this sickliness in man—and we cannot dispute -this normality—the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases -of psychical and physical powerfulness, the <i>windfalls</i> of humanity, -and the more strictly should the sound be guarded from that worst of -air, the air of the sick-room. Is that done? The sick are the greatest -danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to -the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? Broadly considered, -it is not for a minute the fear of man, whose diminution should be -wished for; for this fear forces the strong to be strong, to be at -times terrible—it preserves in its integrity the sound type of man. -What is to be feared, what does work with a fatality found in no other -fate, is not the great fear of, but the great <i>nausea</i> with, man; and -equally so the great pity for man. Supposing that both these things -were one day to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> espouse each other, then inevitably the maximum of -monstrousness would immediately come into the world—the "last will" -of man, his will for nothingness, Nihilism. And, in sooth, the way is -well paved thereto. He who not only has his nose to smell with, but -also has eyes and ears, he sniffs almost wherever he goes to-day an -air something like that of a mad-house, the air of a hospital—I am -speaking, as stands to reason, of the cultured areas of mankind, of -every kind of "Europe" that there is in fact in the world. The <i>sick</i> -are the great danger of man, <i>not</i> the evil, <i>not</i> the "beasts of -prey." They who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken, those -are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the -feet of man, who instil the most dangerous venom and scepticism into -our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where shall we escape from -it, from that covert look (from which we carry away a deep sadness), -from that averted look of him who is misborn from the beginning, that -look which betrays what such a man says to himself—that look which is -a groan?" Would that I were something else," so groans this look, "but -there is no hope. I am what I am: how could I get away from myself? -And, verily—<i>I am sick of myself!</i>" On such a soil of self-contempt, -a veritable swamp soil, grows that weed, that poisonous growth, and -all so tiny, so hidden, so ignoble, so sugary. Here teem the worms -of revenge and vindictiveness; here the air reeks of things secret -and unmentionable; here is ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> spun the net of the most malignant -conspiracy—the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the -victorious; here is the sight of the victorious <i>hated</i>. And what -lying so as not to acknowledge this hate as hate! What a show of big -words and attitudes, what an art of "righteous" calumniation! These -abortions! what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips! What an -amount of sugary, slimy, humble submission oozes in their eyes! What do -they really want? At any rate to <i>represent</i> righteousness ness, love, -wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these "lowest ones," these -sick ones! And how clever does such an ambition make them! You cannot, -in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp -of virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue, is here imitated. -They have taken a lease of virtue absolutely for themselves, have these -weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it; "We alone are -the good, the righteous," so do they speak, "we alone are the <i>homines -bonæ voluntatis</i>." They stalk about in our midst as living reproaches, -as warnings to us—as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the -sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for -which one would have some day to do penance, bitter penance. Oh, how -they themselves are ready in their hearts to <i>exact</i> penance, how they -thirst after being <i>hangmen</i>!</p> - -<p>Among them is an abundance of revengeful ones disguised as judges, -who ever mouth the word righteousness like a venomous spittle—with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> -mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit at everything, -which does not wear a discontented look, but is of good cheer as it -goes on its way. Among them, again, is that most loathsome species -of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point of representing -"beautiful souls," and perchance of bringing to the market as "purity -of heart" their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and other -bandages; the species of "self-comforters" and masturbators of their -own souls. The sick man's will to represent <i>some</i> form or other of -superiority, his instinct for crooked paths, which lead to a tyranny -over the healthy—where can it not be found, this will to power of -the very weakest? The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her -in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising. The sick woman, -moreover, spares nothing living, nothing dead; she grubs up again the -most buried things (the Bogos say, "Woman is a hyena"). Look into -the background of every family, of every body, of every community: -everywhere the fight of the sick against the healthy—a silent fight -for the most part with minute poisoned powders, with pin-pricks, with -spiteful grimaces of patience, but also at times with that diseased -pharisaism of <i>pure</i> pantomime, which plays for choice the rôle of -"righteous indignation." Right into the hallowed chambers of knowledge -can it make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick hounds, this -rabid lying and frenzy of such "noble" Pharisees (I remind readers, who -have ears, once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen Dühring, -who makes the most disreputable and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> revolting use in all present-day -Germany of moral refuse; Dühring, the paramount moral blusterer that -there is to-day, even among his own kidney, the Anti-Semites). They -are all men of resentment, are these physiological distortions and -worm-riddled objects, a whole quivering kingdom of burrowing revenge, -indefatigable and insatiable in its outbursts against the happy, and -equally so in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge: when -will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of -revenge? At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their -own misery, in fact, all misery, <i>into the consciousness</i> of the happy; -so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, -and perchance say to themselves when they meet, "It is a shame to be -happy! <i>there is too much misery!</i>" ... But there could not possibly -be a greater and more fatal misunderstanding than that of the happy, -the fit, the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way to doubt -their right to happiness. Away with this "perverse world"! Away with -this shameful soddenness of sentiment! Preventing the sick making the -healthy sick—for that is what such a soddenness comes to—this ought -to be our supreme object in the world—but for this it is above all -essential that the healthy should remain <i>separated</i> from the sick, -that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that -they should not even associate with the sick. Or may it, perchance, -be their mission to be nurses or doctors? But they could not mistake -and disown <i>their</i> mission more grossly—the higher <b>must</b> not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> degrade -itself to be the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance must to all -eternity keep their missions also separate. The right of the happy to -existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant -cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater: they alone are the -<i>sureties</i> of the future, they alone are <i>bound</i> to man's future. What -they can, what they must do, that can the sick never do, should never -do! but if <i>they are to</i> be enabled to do what <i>only</i> they must do, -how can they possibly be free to play the doctor, the comforter, the -"Saviour" of the sick?... And therefore good air! good air! and away, -at any rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses and hospitals -of civilisation! And therefore good company, <i>our own</i> company, or -solitude, if it must be so! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes -of internal corruption and the secret worm-eaten state of the sick! -that, forsooth, my friends, we may defend ourselves, at any rate for -still a time, against the two worst plagues that could have been -reserved for us—against the <i>great nausea with man</i>! against the<i> -great pity for man</i>!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>If you have understood in all their depths—and I demand that you -should <i>grasp them profoundly</i> and understand them profoundly—the -reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the healthy -to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, it follows that you have -grasped this further necessity—the necessity of doctors and nurses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> -<i>who themselves are sick</i>. And now we have and hold with both our hands -the essence of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted -by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick -herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The -<i>lordship over sufferers</i> is his kingdom, to that points his instinct, -in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of -happiness. He must himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the -sick and the abortions so as to understand them, so as to arrive at an -understanding with them; but he must also be strong, even more master -of himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his will for -power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he -can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god. -He has to protect them, protect his herds—<i>against</i> whom? Against -the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He -must be the natural adversary and <i>scorner</i> of every rough, stormy, -reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is -the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily -than it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war with the beasts -of prey, a war of guile (of "spirit") rather than of force, as is -self-evident—he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up -out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of -the beast of prey—a new animal monstrosity in which the polar bear, -the supple, cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox, -are joined together in a trinity as fascinating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> as it is fearsome. -If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish -seriousness, venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority, as -the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among -even the other kind of beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on -their soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction, -and only too sure of his art, always to be lord of <i>sufferers</i> at all -times. He brings with him, doubtless, salve and balsam; but before he -can play the physician he must first wound; so, while he soothes the -pain which the wound makes, <i>he at the same time poisons the wound</i>. -Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild -beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become -ill, and everything ill must needs become tame. He protects, in sooth, -his sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman; he protects -them also against themselves, against the sparks (even in the centre -of the herd) of wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills -that the plaguey and the sick are heir to; he fights with cunning, -hardness, and stealth against anarchy and against the ever imminent -break-up inside the herd, where <i>resentment</i>, that most dangerous -blasting-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and accumulates. Getting -rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the -herd and the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme utility; -if you wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the -priestly life, it would be correct to say the priest is the <i>diverter -of the course of resentment</i>. Every sufferer, in fact, searches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> -instinctively for a cause of his suffering; to put it more exactly, -a doer,—to put it still more precisely, a sentient <i>responsible</i> -doer,—in brief, something living, on which, either actually or in -<i>effigie</i>, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting -of emotions is the sufferer's greatest attempt at alleviation, that -is to say, <i>stupefaction</i>, his mechanically desired narcotic against -pain of any kind. It is in this phenomenon alone that is found, -according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment, -revenge, and their family is to be found—that is, in a demand for the -<i>deadening of pain through emotion</i>: this cause is generally, but in -my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare -protective principle of reaction, of a "reflex movement" in the case -of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner that a decapitated -frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the -difference is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being -hurt any more; in the other case the object is to <i>deaden</i> a racking, -insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any -kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of -the consciousness—for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an -emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other -is needed. "It must be somebody's fault that I feel bad"—this kind of -reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and is but the more pronounced, -the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, -the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> disease of the <i>nervus -sympathicus</i>, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of -sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure in the -bowels which stops the circulation of the blood, or in degeneration of -the ovaries, and so forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness -and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions; they even -enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent -injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present -in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty -to wallow in a torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom of their -own malice—they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves -bleed from the scars which have long been healed, they make evil-doers -out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them. -"I suffer: it must be somebody's fault"—so thinks every sick sheep. -But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says to him, "Quite so, my sheep, -it must be the fault of some one; but thou thyself art that some one, -it is all the fault of thyself alone—<i>it is the fault of thyself alone -against thyself</i>": that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is -at least attained; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment -is—<i>diverted</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least <i>tried</i> -to effect, according to my conception, through the ascetic priest, -and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> purpose for which he had to employ a temporary tyranny of -such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as "guilt," "sin," "sinfulness," -"corruption," "damnation." What was done was to make the sick -<i>harmless</i> up to a certain point, to destroy the incurable by means of -themselves, to turn the milder cases severely on to themselves, to give -their resentment a backward direction ("man needs but one thing"), and -to <i>exploit</i> similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view -to self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that -there can be no question at all in the case of a "medication" of this -kind, a mere emotional medication, of any real <i>healing</i> of the sick in -the physiological sense; it cannot even for a moment be asserted that -in this connection the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal -and purpose. On the one hand, a kind of congestion and organisation of -the sick (the word "Church" is the most popular name for it): on the -other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy, -the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a <i>rift</i> between healthy -and sick—for a long time that was all! and it was much! it was <i>very</i> -much!</p> - -<p>I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which, -as far as such readers as I want are concerned, does not require to be -proved; the hypothesis that "sinfulness" in man is not an actual fact, -but rather merely the interpretation of a fact, of a physiological -discomfort,—a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective -which is no longer binding upon us.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> The fact, therefore, that any one -feels "guilty," "sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he is -right in feeling so, any more than any one is healthy simply because -he feels healthy. Remember the celebrated witch-ordeals: in those days -the most acute and humane judges had no doubt but that in these cases -they were confronted with guilt,—the "witches"<i> themselves had no -doubt on the point</i>,—and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate -this hypothesis: I do not for a minute accept the very "pain in the -soul" as a real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual explanation) -of facts that could not hitherto be precisely formulated; I regard -it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid of -scientific cogency—just a nice fat word in the place of a lean note -of interrogation. When any one fails to get rid of his "pain in the -soul," the cause is, speaking crudely, to be found <i>not</i> in his "soul" -but more probably in his stomach (speaking crudely, I repeat, but by -no means wishing thereby that you should listen to me or understand -me in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his -experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his -meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to -"relieve himself" of an experience, this kind of indigestion is quite -as much physiological as the other indigestion—and indeed, in more -ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. You can adopt -such a theory, and yet <i>entre nous</i> be nevertheless the strongest -opponent of all materialism.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>But is he really a <i>physician</i>, this ascetic priest? We already -understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however -much he likes to feel a "saviour" and let himself be worshipped as a -saviour.<a name="FNanchor_3_7" id="FNanchor_3_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_7" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> It is only the actual suffering, the discomfort of the -sufferer, which he combats, <i>not</i> its cause, not the actual state of -sickness—this needs must constitute our most radical objection to -priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of -view, of which the priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to -exhaust your amazement, at what from that standpoint he has completely -seen, sought, and found. The <i>mitigation</i> of suffering, every kind of -"consoling"—all this manifests itself as his very genius: with what -ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb -and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christianity -in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious -consolations,—such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs -has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and -daring expedients has it hazarded; with such subtlety, refinement, -Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can -conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep depression, the leaden -fatigue, the black melancholy of physiological cripples—for, speaking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> -generally, all religions are mainly concerned with fighting a certain -fatigue and heaviness that has infected everything. You can regard it -as <i>prima facie</i> probable that in certain places in the world there -was almost bound to prevail from time to time among large masses of -the population a <i>sense of physiological depression</i>, which, however, -owing to their lack of physiological knowledge, did not appear to their -consciousness as such, so that consequently its "cause" and its <i>cure</i> -can only be sought and essayed in the science of moral psychology -(this, in fact, is my most general formula for what is generally called -a "<i>religion</i>"). Such a feeling of depression can have the most diverse -origins; it may be the result of the crossing of too heterogeneous -races (or of classes—genealogical and racial differences are also -brought out in the classes: the European "Weltschmerz," the "Pessimism" -of the nineteenth century, is really the result of an absurd and sudden -class-mixture); it may be brought about by a mistaken emigration—a -race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is -insufficient (the case of the Indians in India); it may be the effect -of old age and fatigue (the Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it -may be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the nonsense -of vegetarianism—which, however, have in their favour the authority -of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare); it may be blood-deterioration, -malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty -Years' War, which infected half Germany with evil diseases,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> and -thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity). -In such a case there is invariably recourse to a <i>war</i> on a grand scale -with the feeling of depression; let us inform ourselves briefly on its -most important practices and phases (I leave on one side, as stands to -reason, the actual <i>philosophic</i> war against the feeling of depression -which is usually simultaneous—it is interesting enough, but too -absurd, too practically negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a -hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake, -on the <i>naïf</i> hypothesis that pain must needs <i>vanish</i> when the mistake -underlying it is recognised—but behold! it does anything but vanish -...). That dominant depression is <i>primarily fought</i> by weapons which -reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever -possible, no more wishes, no more wants; shun everything which produces -emotion, which produces "blood" (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene); -no love; no hate; equanimity; no revenge; no getting rich; no work; -begging; as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible; -as far as the intellect is concerned, Pascal's principle, "<i>il faut -s'abêtir.</i>" To put the result in ethical and psychological language, -"self-annihilation," "sanctification"; to put it in physiological -language, "hypnotism"—the attempt to find some approximate human -equivalent for what <i>hibernation</i> is for certain animals, for what -<i>æstivation</i> is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation -and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really -coming into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> consciousness. An amazing amount of human energy -has been devoted to this object—perhaps uselessly? There cannot be -the slightest doubt but that such <i>sportsmen</i> of "saintliness," in -whom at times nearly every nation has abounded, have really found a -genuine relief from that which they have combated with such a rigorous -<i>training</i>—in countless cases they really escaped by the help of their -system of hypnotism <i>away</i> from deep physiological depression; their -method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological -facts. Similarly it is improper to consider such a plan for starving -the physical element and the desires, as in itself a symptom of -insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating "freethinkers" and -Sir Christophers are fain to do); all the more certain is it that their -method can and does pave the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, -for instance, "inner lights" (as far as the case of the Hesychasts of -Mount Athos), auditory and visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies -and effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The -explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of -fanatical falsehood; this is self-evident. Note well, however, the tone -of implicit gratitude that rings in the very <i>will</i> for an explanation -of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that final -goal of universal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as -the mystery of mysteries, which even the most supreme symbols are -inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry and homecoming to the -essence of things, as a liberation from all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> illusions, as "knowledge," -as "truth," as "being" as an escape from every end, every wish, every -action, as something even beyond Good and Evil.</p> - -<p>"Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, "both are fetters. The perfect -man is master of them both."</p> - -<p>"The done and the undone," quoth the -disciple of the Vedânta, "do him no hurt; the good and the evil he -shakes from off him, sage that he is; his kingdom suffers no more from -any act; good and evil, he goes beyond them both."—An absolutely -Indian conception, as much Brahmanist as Buddhist. Neither in the -Indian nor in the Christian doctrine is this "Redemption" regarded -as attainable by means of virtue and moral improvement, however high -they may place the value of the hypnotic efficiency of virtue: keep -clear on this point—indeed it simply corresponds with the facts. -The fact that they remained <i>true</i> on this point is perhaps to be -regarded as the best specimen of realism in the three great religions, -absolutely soaked as they are with morality, with this one exception. -"For those who know, there is no duty." "Redemption is not attained by -the acquisition of virtues; for redemption consists in being one with -Brahman, who is incapable of acquiring any perfection; and equally -little does it consist in the <i>giving up of faults</i>, for the Brahman, -unity with whom is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure" -(these passages are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted -from the first real European <i>expert</i> of the Indian philosophy, my -friend Paul Deussen). We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of -"redemption"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> in the great religions, but it is somewhat hard to remain -serious in view of the appreciation meted out to the <i>deep sleep</i> by -these exhausted pessimists who are too tired even to dream—to the deep -sleep considered, that is, as already a fusing into Brahman, as the -attainment of the <i>unio mystica</i> with God. "When he has completely gone -to sleep," says on this point the oldest and most venerable "script," -"and come to perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then, -oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has entered into his own -self—encircled by the Self with its absolute knowledge, he has no -more any consciousness of that which is without or of that which is -within. Day and night cross not these bridges, nor age, nor death, -nor suffering, nor good deeds, nor evil deeds." "In deep sleep," say -similarly the believers in this deepest of the three great religions, -"does the soul lift itself from out this body of ours, enters the -supreme light and stands out therein in its true shape: therein is it -the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while it jests and -plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends; -there do its thoughts turn no more back to this appanage of a body, -to which the 'prana' (the vital breath) is harnessed like a beast of -burden to the cart." None the less we will take care to realise (as -we did when discussing "redemption") that in spite of all its pomps -of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on -life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus. -The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> of deepest sleep, -anæsthesia in short––that is what passes with the sufferers and the -absolutely depressed for, forsooth, their supreme good, their value -of values; that is what <b>must</b> be treasured by them as something -positive, be felt by them as the essence of <i>the</i> Positive (according -to the same logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessimistic -religions called God).</p> - - -<p class="parnum">18.</p> - -<p>Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and susceptibility to pain, -which presupposes somewhat rare powers, especially courage, contempt -of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another -and certainly easier <i>training</i> which is tried against states of -depression. I mean <i>mechanical activity</i>. It is indisputable that a -suffering existence can be thereby considerably alleviated. This fact -is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the "Blessing of -work." The alleviation consists in the attention of the sufferer being -absolutely diverted from suffering, in the incessant monopoly of the -consciousness by action, so that consequently there is little room left -for suffering––for <i>narrow</i> is it, this chamber of human consciousness! -Mechanical activity and its corollaries, such as absolute regularity, -punctilious unreasoning obedience, the chronic routine of life, the -complete occupation of time, a certain liberty to be impersonal, nay, a -training in "impersonality," self-forgetfulness, "<i>incuria sui</i>"––with -what thoroughness and expert subtlety have all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> these methods been -exploited by the ascetic priest in his war with pain!</p> - -<p>When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower orders, slaves, or -prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of -labour-slave and prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little -with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make them see henceforth -a benefit, a comparative happiness, in objects which they hated—the -slave's discontent with his lot was at any rate <i>not</i> invented by the -priests. An even more popular means of fighting depression is the -ordaining of a <i>little joy</i>, which is easily accessible and can be made -into a rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with -the former ones. The most frequent form in which joy is prescribed -as a cure is the joy in <i>producing</i> joy (such as doing good, giving -presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting, praising, -treating with distinction); together with the prescription of "love -your neighbour." The ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most -cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation of the strongest -and most life-assertive impulse—the Will for Power. The happiness -involved in the "smallest superiority" which is the concomitant of all -benefiting, helping, extolling, making one's self useful, is the most -ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological -distortions avail themselves: in other cases they hurt each other, and -naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation -of the origin of Christianity in the Roman world shows that -co-operative unions for poverty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> sickness, and burial sprang up in the -lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote -against depression, the little joy experienced in mutual benefits, -was deliberately fostered. Perchance this was then a novelty, a real -discovery? This conjuring up of the will for co-operation, for family -organisation, for communal life, for "<i>Cœnacula</i>" necessarily brought -the Will for Power, which had been already infinitesimally stimulated, -to a new and much fuller manifestation. The herd organisation is a -genuine advance and triumph in the fight with depression. With the -growth of the community there matures even to individuals a new -interest, which often enough takes him out of the more personal -element in his discontent, his aversion to himself, the "<i>despectus -sui</i>" of Geulincx. All sick and diseased people strive instinctively -after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of -oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this -instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct -of weakness which has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the -priests which has organised it, for, mark this: by an equally natural -necessity the strong strive as much for <i>isolation</i> as the weak for -<i>union</i>: when the former bind themselves it is only with a view to an -aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their Will for Power, -much against the wishes of their individual consciences; the latter, -on the contrary, range themselves together with positive <i>delight</i> in -such a muster—their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the -instincts of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> "born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey -species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the quick by organisation. -There is always lurking beneath every oligarchy—such is the -universal lesson of history—the desire for tyranny. Every oligarchy -is continually quivering with the tension of the effort required by -each individual to keep mastering this desire. (Such, <i>e.g.</i>, was -the Greek; Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who knew his -contemporaries—and <i>himself</i>.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">19.</p> - -<p>The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already -learnt to know—stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the -little joy, and especially the method of "love your neighbour" -herd-organisation, the awaking of the communal consciousness of power, -to such a pitch that the individual's disgust with himself becomes -eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the community—these are, -according to modern standards, the "innocent" methods employed in -the fight with depression; let us turn now to the more interesting -topic of the "guilty" methods. The guilty methods spell one thing: -to produce <i>emotional excess</i>—which is used as the most efficacious -anæsthetic against their depressing state of protracted pain; this -is why priestly ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in thinking -out this one question: "<i>By what means</i> can you produce an emotional -excess?" This sounds harsh: it is manifest that it would sound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> nicer -and would grate on one's ears less, if I were to say, forsooth: "The -ascetic priest made use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in all -strong emotions." But what is the good of still soothing the delicate -ears of our modern effeminates? What is the good <i>on our side</i> of -budging one single inch before their verbal Pecksniffianism. For us -psychologists to do that would be at once <i>practical Pecksniffianism</i>, -apart from the fact of its nauseating us. The <i>good taste</i> (others -might say, the righteousness) of a psychologist nowadays consists, if -at all, in combating the shamefully moralised language with which all -modern judgments on men and things are smeared. For, do not deceive -yourself: what constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and -of modern books is not the lying, but the <i>innocence</i> which is part -and parcel of their intellectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up -against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes the most distasteful -feature of the somewhat dangerous business which a modern psychologist -has to undertake: it is a part of <i>our</i> great danger—it is a road which -perhaps leads us straight to the great nausea—I know quite well the -purpose which all modern books will and can serve (granted that they -last, which I am not afraid of, and granted equally that there is to -be at some future day a generation with a more rigid, more severe, -and <i>healthier</i> taste)—the <i>function</i> which all modernity generally -will serve with posterity: that of an emetic,—and this by reason of -its moral sugariness and falsity, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> ingrained feminism, which it is -pleased to call "Idealism," and at any rate believes to be idealism. -Our cultured men of to-day, our "good" men, do not lie—that is true; -but it does <i>not</i> redound to their honour! The real lie, the genuine, -determined, "honest" lie (on whose value you can listen to Plato) would -prove too tough and strong an article for them by a long way; it would -be asking them to do what people have been forbidden to ask them to do, -to open their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to distinguish -between "true" and "false" in their own selves. The dishonest lie alone -suits them: everything which feels a good man is perfectly incapable of -any other attitude to anything than that of a dishonourable liar, an -absolute liar, but none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar, a -virtuous liar. These "good men," they are all now tainted with morality -through and through, and as far as honour is concerned they are -disgraced and corrupted for all eternity. Which of them <i>could stand</i> a -further truth "about man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them could -put up with a true biography? One or two instances: Lord Byron composed -a most personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was "too good" for it; -he burnt his friend's papers. Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is -said to have done the same; for Schopenhauer as well wrote much about -himself, and perhaps also against himself: (εἰς ἑαντόν). The virtuous -American Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly stopped his work: he -had come to a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> point in that honourable and simple life, and -could stand it no longer. Moral: What sensible man nowadays writes one -honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order of Holy -Foolhardiness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner; who -doubts but that it would be a <i>clever</i> autobiography? Think, forsooth, -of the grotesque horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in -Germany with his inconceivably square and harmless pictures of the -German Reformation; what wouldn't people do if some real psychologist -were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us, not with the moralist -simplicity of a country priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a -Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness of a Taine, that -springs from force of character and not from a prudent toleration of -force. (The Germans, by the bye, have already produced the classic -specimen of this toleration—they may well be allowed to reckon him as -one of their own, in Leopold Ranke, that born classical advocate of -every <i>causa fortior</i>, that cleverest of all the clever opportunists.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">20.</p> - -<p>But you will soon understand me.—Putting it shortly, there is reason -enough, is there not, for us psychologists nowadays never getting from -a certain mistrust of out <i>own selves</i>? Probably even we ourselves are -still "too good" for our work, probably, whatever contempt we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> feel -for this popular craze for morality, we ourselves are perhaps none -the less its victims, prey, and slaves; probably it infects even us. -Of what was that diplomat warning us, when he said to his colleagues: -"Let us especially mistrust our first impulses, gentlemen! <i>they are -almost always good</i>"? So should nowadays every psychologist talk to -his colleagues. And thus we get back to our problem, which in point -of fact does require from us a certain severity, a certain mistrust -especially against "first impulses." <i>The ascetic ideal in the service -of projected emotional excess</i>:—he who remembers the previous essay -will already partially anticipate the essential meaning compressed -into these above ten words. The thorough unswitching of the human -soul, the plunging of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture, so as -to free it, as through some lightning shock, from all the smallness -and pettiness of unhappiness, depression, and discomfort: what ways -lead to <i>this</i> goal? And which of these ways does so most safely?... -At bottom all great emotions have this power, provided that they find -a sudden outlet—emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge, hope, -triumph, despair, cruelty; and, in sooth, the ascetic priest has had -no scruples in taking into his service the whole pack of hounds that -rage in the human kennel, unleashing now these and now those, with the -same constant object of waking man out of his protracted melancholy, -of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull pain, his shrinking -misery, but always under the sanction of a religious interpretation -and justification.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> This emotional excess has subsequently to be <i>paid -for</i>, this is self-evident—it makes the ill more ill—and therefore -this kind of remedy for pain is according to modern standards a -"guilty" kind.</p> - -<p>The dictates of fairness, however, require that we should all the -more emphasise the fact that this remedy is applied with <i>a good -conscience</i>, that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the most -implicit belief in its utility and indispensability;—often enough -almost collapsing in the presence of the pain which he created;—that -we should similarly emphasise the fact that the violent physiological -revenges of such excesses, even perhaps the mental disturbances, are -not absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of this kind of -remedy; this remedy, which, as we have shown previously, is <i>not</i> for -the purpose of healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness of -that depression, the alleviation and deadening of which was its object. -The object was consequently achieved. The keynote by which the ascetic -priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music -to play on the fibres of the human soul—was, as every one knows, the -exploitation of the feeling of "<i>guilt</i>." I have already indicated in -the previous essay the origin of this feeling—as a piece of animal -psychology and nothing else: we were thus confronted with the -feeling of "guilt," in its crude state, as it were. It was first in -the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of -guilt, that it took shape—oh, what a shape!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> "Sin"—for that is the -name of the new priestly version of the animal "bad-conscience" (the -inverted cruelty)—has up to the present been the greatest event in the -history of the diseased soul: in "sin" we find the most perilous and -fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering -from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically, -perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and -the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons—reasons bring -relief—in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting -one, who knows even the occult—and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint -from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his <i>first</i> hint on the "cause" of -his trouble: he must search for it <i>in himself</i>, in his guiltiness, in -a piece of the past, he must understand his very suffering as a <i>state -of punishment</i>. He has heard, he has understood, has the unfortunate: -he is now in the plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn. He -never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned -into "the sinner"—and now for a few thousand years we never get away -from the sight of this new invalid, of "a sinner"—shall we ever get -away from it?—wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of -the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt, -the <i>only</i> cause of suffering); everywhere the evil conscience, this -"<i>greuliche thier</i>,"<a name="FNanchor_4_8" id="FNanchor_4_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_8" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> to use Luther's language; everywhere rumination -over the past, a distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> -monster" turned on all action; everywhere the wilful misunderstanding -of suffering, its transvaluation into feelings of guilt, fear of -retribution; everywhere the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving -body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the ghastly -wheel of a restless and morbidly eager conscience; everywhere mute -pain, extreme fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of an -unknown happiness, the shriek for "redemption." In point of fact, -thanks to this system of procedure, the old depression, dullness, -and fatigue were absolutely conquered, life itself became <i>very</i> -interesting again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, burnt -away, exhausted and yet not tired—such was the figure cut by man, -"the sinner," who was initiated into these mysteries. This grand old -wizard of an ascetic priest fighting with depression—he had clearly -triumphed, <i>his</i> kingdom had come: men no longer grumbled at pain, men -<i>panted</i> after pain: "<i>More pain!</i> More pain!" So for centuries on end -shrieked the demand of his acolytes and initiates. Every emotional -excess which hurt; everything which broke, overthrew, crushed, -transported, ravished; the mystery of torture-chambers, the ingenuity -of hell itself—all this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all -this was at the service of the wizard, all this served to promote the -triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. "<i>My kingdom is not of this -world</i>," quoth he, both at the beginning and at the end: had he still -the right to talk like that?—Goethe has maintained that there are only -thirty-six tragic situations: we would infer from that, did we not know -otherwise,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He—knows more.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">21.</p> - -<p>So far as all <i>this</i> kind of priestly medicine-mongering, the "guilty" -kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the -suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which in these cases -the ascetic priest is fain to order to his sick patients (under the -most sacred euphemism, as is obvious, and equally impregnated with -the sanctity of his purpose), has ever really been of use to any sick -man, who, forsooth, would feel inclined to maintain a proposition of -that character? At any rate, some understanding should be come to as -to the expression "be of use." If you only wish to express that such a -system of treatment has <i>reformed</i> man, I do not gainsay it: I merely -add that "reformed" conveys to my mind as much as "tamed," "weakened," -"discouraged," "refined," "daintified," "emasculated" (and thus it -means almost as much as injured). But when you have to deal principally -with sick, depressed, and oppressed creatures, such a system, even -granted that it makes the ill "better," under any circumstances also -makes them more <i>ill</i>: ask the mad-doctors the invariable result of a -methodical application of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation -ecstasies. Similarly ask history. In every body politic where the -ascetic priest has established this treatment of the sick, disease has -on every occasion spread with sinister speed throughout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> its length -and breadth. What was always the "result"? A shattered nervous system, -in addition to the existing malady, and this in the greatest as in the -smallest, in the individuals as in masses. We find, in consequence of -the penance and redemption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the -greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and St. John dances -of the Middle Ages; we find, as another phase of its after-effect, -frightful mutilations and chronic depressions, by means of which the -temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva, Bale) is turned once for -all into its opposite;—this <i>training</i>, again, is responsible for -the witch-hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambulism (eight -great epidemic outbursts of this only between 1564 and 1605);—we -find similarly in its train those delirious death-cravings of large -masses, whose awful "shriek," "<i>evviva la morte!</i>" was heard over the -whole of Europe, now interrupted by voluptuous variations and anon by -a rage for destruction, just as the same emotional sequence with the -same intermittencies and sudden changes is now universally observed -in every case where the ascetic doctrine of sin scores once more a -great success (religious neurosis <i>appears</i> as a manifestation of the -devil, there is no doubt of it. What is it? <i>Quæritur</i>). Speaking -generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-moral cult, this most -ingenious, reckless, and perilous systematisation of all methods of -emotional excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable fashion -on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on history. -I was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> <i>health</i> and race efficiency of Europeans with more destructive -power than did this ideal; it can be dubbed,without exaggeration, -<i>the real fatality</i> in the history of the health of the European man. -At the most you can merely draw a comparison with the specifically -German influence: I mean the alcohol poisoning of Europe, which up -to the present has kept pace exactly with the political and racial -pre–dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated their blood, -there too did they inoculate their vice). Third in the series comes -syphilis—<i>magno sed proximo intervallo</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">22.</p> - -<p>The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained the mastery, corrupted -the health of the soul, he has consequently also corrupted <i>taste in -artibus et litteris</i>—he corrupts it still. "Consequently?" I hope I -shall be granted this "consequently "; at any rate, I am not going to -prove it first. One solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of -Christian literature, their real model, their "book-in-itself." In the -very midst of the Græco-Roman splendour, which was also a splendour -of books, face to face with an ancient world of writings which had -not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a time when certain books were -still to be read, to possess which we would give nowadays half our -literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity and vanity of -Christian agitators (they are generally called Fathers of the Church) -dared to declare: "We too have our classical literature, we <i>do not -need that of the Greeks</i>"—and meanwhile they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> proudly pointed to their -books of legends, their letters of apostles, and their apologetic -tractlets, just in the same way that to-day the English "Salvation -Army" wages its fight against Shakespeare and other "heathens" with -an analogous literature. You already guess it, I do not like the "New -Testament"; it almost upsets me that I stand so isolated in my taste -so far as concerns this valued, this over-valued Scripture; the taste -of two thousand years is <i>against</i> me; but what boots it! "Here I -stand! I cannot help myself"<a name="FNanchor_5_9" id="FNanchor_5_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_9" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>—I have the courage of my bad taste. -The <i>Old</i> Testament—yes, that is something quite different, all honour -to the Old Testament! I find therein great men, an heroic landscape, -and one of the rarest phenomena in the world, the incomparable naïveté -<i>of the strong heart</i>; further still, I find a people. In the New, on -the contrary, just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the soul, -twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but conventicle air, not to -forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the -epoch (<i>and</i> the Roman province) and is less Jewish than Hellenistic. -Meekness and braggadocio cheek by jowl; an emotional garrulousness -that almost deafens; passionate hysteria, but no passion; painful -pantomime; here manifestly every one lacked good breeding. How dare any -one make so much fuss about their little failings as do these pious -little fellows! No one cares a straw about it—let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> alone God. Finally -they actually wish to have "the crown of eternal life," do all these -little provincials! In return for what, in sooth? For what end? It is -impossible to carry insolence any further. An immortal Peter! who could -stand <i>him</i>! They have an ambition which makes one laugh: the <i>thing</i> -dishes up cut and dried his most personal life, his melancholies, and -common-or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself were under -an obligation to bother itself about them, for it never gets tired of -wrapping up God Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles are -involved. And how about the atrocious form of this chronic hobnobbing -with God? This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing -importunacy towards God!—There exist little despised "heathen nations" -in East Asia, from whom these first Christians could have learnt -something worth learning, a little tact in worshiping; these nations -do not allow themselves to say aloud the name of their God. This seems -to me delicate enough, it is certain that it is <i>too</i> delicate, and -not only for primitive Christians; to take a contrast, just recollect -Luther, the most "eloquent" and insolent peasant whom Germany has had, -think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite the most in his -element during his <i>tête-à-têtes</i> with God. Luther's opposition to the -mediæval saints of the Church (in particular, against "that devil's -hog, the Pope"), was, there is no doubt, at bottom the opposition of -a boor, who was offended at the <i>good etiquette</i> of the Church, that -worship-etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> to the -holy of holies the initiated and the silent, and shuts the door against -the boors. These definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this -planet—but Luther the peasant simply wished it otherwise; as it was, -it was not German enough for him. He personally wished himself to talk -direct, to talk personally, to talk "straight from the shoulder" with -his God. Well, he's done it. The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at -no time and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of good -manners—at the best it was a school for sacerdotal manners: that is, -it contains in itself something which was a deadly enemy to all good -manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure, it is itself a "<i>non -plus ultra</i>."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">23.</p> - -<p>The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are -also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted—I -shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should I get to -the end?). I have here to expose not what this ideal effected; but -rather only what it <i>means</i>, on what it is based, what lies lurking -behind it and under it, that of which it is the provisional expression, -an obscure expression bristling with queries and misunderstandings. -And with <i>this</i> object only in view I presumed "not to spare" my -readers a glance at the awfulness of its results, a glance at its -fatal results; I did this to prepare them for the final and most -awful aspect presented to me by the question of the significance of -that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> ideal. What is the significance of the <i>power</i> of that ideal, -the monstrousness of its <i>power</i>? Why is it given such an amount of -scope? Why is not a better resistance offered against it? The ascetic -ideal expresses one will: where is the opposition will, in which an -<i>opposition ideal</i> expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim— -this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of -human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; -it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it -forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it repudiates, denies, -affirms, confirms, only in the sense of its own interpretation (and was -there ever a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation?); -it subjects itself to no power, rather does it believe in its own -precedence over every power—it believes that nothing powerful exists -in the world that has not first got to receive from "it" a meaning, -a right to exist, a value, as being an instrument in its work, a -way and means to its end, to one end. Where is the <i>counterpart</i> of -this complete system of will, end, and interpretation? Why is the -counterpart lacking? Where is the other "one aim"? But I am told it -is not lacking, that not only has it fought a long and fortunate fight -with that ideal, but that further it has already won the mastery over -that ideal in all essentials: let our whole modern <i>science</i> attest -this—that modern science, which, like the genuine reality-philosophy -which it is, manifestly believes in itself alone, manifestly has the -courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has got on well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> -enough without God, another world, and negative virtues.</p> - -<p>With all their noisy agitator-babble, however, they effect nothing with -me; these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices do -not come from the deeps with sufficient audibility, they are not the -mouthpiece for the abyss of scientific knowledge—for to-day scientific -knowledge is an abyss—the word "science," in such trumpeter-mouths, -is a prostitution, an abuse, an impertinence. The truth is just the -opposite from what is maintained in the ascetic theory. Science has -to-day absolutely <i>no</i> belief in itself, let alone in an ideal superior -to itself, and wherever science still consists of passion, love, -ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to that ascetic ideal, but -rather the <i>incarnation of its latest and noblest form</i>. Does that ring -strange? There are enough brave and decent working people, even among -the learned men of to-day, who like their little corner, and who, just -because they are pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud with -their demand, that people to-day should be quite content, especially -in science—for in science there is so much useful work to do. I do -not deny it—there is nothing I should like less than to spoil the -delight of these honest workers in their handiwork; for I rejoice in -their work. But the fact of science requiring hard work, the fact of -its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science as a -whole having to-day one end, one will, one ideal, one passion for a -great faith; the contrary, as I have said, is the case. When science -is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal—but these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> are -cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisiteness, as to preclude the -general judgment being affected thereby—science is a <i>hiding-place</i> -for every kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, <i>despectio sui</i>, bad -conscience—it is the very <i>anxiety</i> that springs from having no ideal, -the suffering from the <i>lack</i> of a great love, the discontent with an -enforced moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover to-day? How -much, at any rate, does it not try to cover? The diligence of our best -scholars, their senseless industry, their burning the candle of their -brain at both ends—their very mastery in their handiwork—how often is -the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves continuing to see a -certain thing? Science as a self-anæsthetic: <i>do you know that</i>? You -wound them—every one who consorts with scholars experiences this—you -wound them sometimes to the quick through just a harmless word; when -you think you are paying them a compliment you embitter them beyond all -bounds, simply because you didn't have the <i>finesse</i> to infer the real -kind of customers you had to tackle, the <i>sufferer</i> kind (who won't own -up even to themselves what they really are), the dazed and unconscious -kind who have only one fear—<i>coming to consciousness</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">24.</p> - -<p>And now look at the other side, at those rare cases, of which I spoke, -the most supreme idealists to be found nowadays among philosophers and -scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the sought-for <i>opponents</i> -of the ascetic ideal, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> <i>anti-idealists</i>? In fact, they <i>believe</i> -themselves to be such, these "unbelievers" (for they are all of them -that): it seems that this idea is their last remnant of faith, the idea -of being opponents of this ideal, so earnest are they on this subject, -so passionate in word and gesture;—but does it follow that what -they believe must necessarily be <i>true</i>? We "knowers" have grown by -degrees suspicious of all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by -step habituated us to draw just the opposite conclusions to what people -have drawn before; that is to say, wherever the strength of a belief -is particularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the difficulty of -proving what is believed, the conclusion of its actual <i>improbability</i>. -We do not again deny that "faith produces salvation": <i>for that very -reason</i> we do deny that faith <i>proves</i> anything,—a strong faith, which -produces happiness, causes suspicion of the object of that faith, it -does not establish its "truth," it does establish a certain probability -of—<i>illusion</i>. What is now the position in these cases? These -solitaries and deniers of to-day; these fanatics in one thing, in their -claim to intellectual cleanness; these hard, stern, continent, heroic -spirits, who constitute the glory of our time; all these pale atheists, -anti-Christians, immoralists, Nihilists; these sceptics, "ephectics," -and "hectics" of the intellect (in a certain sense they are the -latter, both collectively and individually); these supreme idealists -of knowledge, in whom alone nowadays the intellectual conscience -dwells and is alive—in point of fact they believe themselves as far -away as possible from the ascetic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> ideal, do these "free, very free -spirits": and yet, if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see—for -they stand too near themselves: this ideal is simply <i>their</i> ideal, -they represent it nowadays and perhaps no one else, they themselves -are its most spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of -skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate and elusive form -of seduction.—If I am in any way a reader of riddles, then I will -be one with this sentence: for some time past there have been no -free spirits; <i>for they still believe in truth</i>. When the Christian -Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order -of assassins, that order of free spirits <i>par excellence</i>, whose -lowest grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order of monks -has ever attained, then in some way or other they managed to get an -inkling of that symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the -highest grade alone as their <i>secretum</i>, "Nothing is true, everything -is allowed,"—in sooth, <i>that</i> was <i>freedom</i> of thought, thereby was -<i>taking leave</i> of the very belief in truth. Has indeed any European, -any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into this proposition -and its labyrinthine <i>consequences</i>? Does he know <i>from experience</i> the -Minotauros of this den.—I doubt it—nay, I know otherwise. Nothing -is more really alien to these "mono-fanatics," these <i>so-called</i> -"free spirits," than freedom and unfettering in that sense; in no -respect are they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of their -belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this perhaps too much from -experience at close quarters—that dignified philosophic abstinence -to which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> a belief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism of -the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation as rigidly as it does -affirmation, that wish for standing still in front of the actual, -the <i>factum brutum</i>, that fatalism in "<i>petits faits</i>" (<i>ce petit -faitalism</i>, as I call it), in which French Science now attempts a kind -of moral superiority over German, this renunciation of interpretation -generally (that is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, -suppressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other <i>essential</i> -attributes of interpretation)—all this, considered broadly, expresses -the asceticism of virtue, quite as efficiently as does any repudiation -of the senses (it is at bottom only a <i>modus</i> of that repudiation.) -But what forces it into that unqualified will for truth is the faith -<i>in the ascetic ideal itself</i>, even though it take the form of its -unconscious imperatives,—make no mistake about it, it is the faith, -I repeat, in a <i>metaphysical</i> value, an <i>intrinsic</i> value of truth, -of a character which is only warranted and guaranteed in this ideal -(it stands and falls with that ideal). Judged strictly, there does -not exist a science without its "hypotheses," the thought of such a -science is inconceivable, illogical: a philosophy, a faith, must always -exist first to enable science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, -a limit and method, a <i>right</i> to existence. (He who holds a contrary -opinion on the subject—he, for example, who takes it upon himself to -establish philosophy "upon a strictly scientific basis"—has first got -to "turn up-side-down" not only philosophy but also truth itself—the -gravest insult which could possibly be offered to two such respectable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> -females!) Yes, there is no doubt about it—and here I quote my <i>Joyful -Wisdom</i>, cp. Book V. Aph. 344: "The man who is truthful in that -daring and extreme fashion, which is the presupposition of the faith -in science, <i>asserts thereby a different world</i> from that of life, -nature, and history; and in so far as he asserts the existence of that -different world, come, must he not similarly repudiate its counterpart, -this world, <i>our</i> world? The belief on which our faith in science is -based has remained to this day a metaphysical belief—even we knowers -of to-day, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too take our fire from -that conflagration which was kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, -from that Christian belief, which was also Plato's belief, the belief -that God is truth, that truth is <i>divine</i>.... But what if this belief -becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself to -be divine, unless it be error, blindness, lies—what if God, Himself -proved Himself to be our <i>oldest lie</i>?"—It is necessary to stop at -this point and to consider the situation carefully. Science itself now -<i>needs</i> a justification (which is not for a minute to say that there -is such a justification). Turn in this context to the most ancient and -the most modern philosophers: they all fail to realise the extent of -the need of a justification on the part of the Will for Truth—here -is a gap in every philosophy—what is it caused by? Because up to the -present the ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because Truth was -fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme Court of Appeal, because Truth -was not allowed to be a problem. Do you understand this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> "allowed"? -From the minute that the belief in the God of the ascetic ideal is -repudiated, there exists <i>a new problem</i>: the problem of the value of -truth. The Will for Truth needed a critique—let us define by these -words our own task—-the value of truth is tentatively <i>to be called -in question</i>.... (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recommend -the reader to peruse again that passage from the <i>Joyful Wisdom</i> which -bears the title, "How far we also are still pious," Aph. 344, and best -of all the whole fifth book of that work, as well as the Preface to -<i>The Dawn of Day</i>.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">25.</p> - -<p>No! You can't get round me with science, when I search for the natural -antagonists of the ascetic ideal, when I put the question: "<i>Where</i> -is the opposed will in which the <i>opponent ideal</i> expresses itself?" -Science is not, by a long way, independent enough to fulfil this -function; in every department science needs an ideal value, a power -which creates values, and in whose <i>service</i> it <i>can believe</i> in itself -—science itself never creates values. Its relation to the ascetic -ideal is not in itself antagonistic; speaking roughly, it rather -represents the progressive force in the inner evolution of that ideal. -Tested more exactly, its opposition and antagonism are concerned not -with the ideal itself, but only with that ideal's outworks, its outer -garb, its masquerade, with its temporary hardening, stiffening, and -dogmatising—it makes the life in the ideal free once more, while it -repudiates its superficial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> elements. These two phenomena, science and -the ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis––I have already made -this clear––the basis, I say, oft the same over-appreciation of truth -(more accurately the same belief in the <i>impossibility</i> of valuing and -of criticising truth), and consequently they are <i>necessarily</i> allies, -so that, in the event of their being attacked, they must always be -attacked and called into question together. A valuation of the ascetic -ideal inevitably entails a valuation of science as well; lose no time -in seeing this clearly, and be sharp to catch it! (<i>Art</i>, I am speaking -provisionally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in greater -detail,––art, I repeat, in which lying is sanctified and the <i>will for -deception</i> has good conscience on its side, is much more fundamentally -opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science: Plato's instinct felt -this––Plato, the greatest enemy of art which Europe has produced up -to the present. Plato <i>versus</i> Homer, that is the complete, the true -antagonism––on the one side, the whole–hearted "transcendental," the -great defamer of life; on the other, its involuntary panegyrist, the -<i>golden</i> nature. An artistic subservience to the service of the ascetic -ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic <i>corruption</i> that -there can be, though unfortunately it is one of the most frequent -phases, for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Considered -physiologically, moreover, science rests on the same, basis as -does the ascetic ideal: a certain <i>impoverishment of life</i> is the -presupposition of the latter as of the former––add, frigidity of the -emotions, slackening of the <i>tempo</i>, the substitution of dialectic for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> -instinct, <i>seriousness</i> impressed on mien and gesture (seriousness, -that most unmistakable sign of strenuous metabolism, of struggling, -toiling life). Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned -man comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often -of sunset, of decay—the effervescing strength, the confidence in -life, the confidence in the future are no more. The preponderance of -the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent -of democracy, or arbitration instead of war, equal rights for women, -the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. -(Science handled as a problem! what is the meaning of science?—upon -this point the Preface to the <i>Birth of Tragedy</i>.) No! this "modern -science"—mark you this well—is at times the <i>best</i> ally for the -ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the ally which is -most unconscious, most automatic, most secret, and most subterranean! -They have been playing into each other's hands up to the present, have -these "poor in spirit" and the scientific opponents of that ideal (take -care, by the bye, not to think that these opponents are the antithesis -of this ideal, that they are the <i>rich</i> in spirit—that they are <i>not</i>; -I have called them the <i>hectic</i> in spirit). As for these celebrated -victories of science; there is no doubt that they are <i>victories</i>—but -victories over what? There was not for a single minute any victory -among their list over the ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, -that is to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious, from -the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> built on to the main -fortress and disfigured its appearance, should from time to time be -ruthlessly destroyed and broken down by science. Does any one seriously -suggest that the downfall of the theological astronomy signified the -downfall of that ideal?—Has, perchance, man grown <i>less in need</i> of a -transcendental solution of his riddle of existence, because since that -time this existence has become more random, casual, and superfluous in -the <i>visible</i> order of the universe? Has there not been since the time -of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the self-belittling of man and -his <i>will</i> for belittling himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his -uniquenesses irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence, is gone—he -has become animal, literal, unqualified, and unmitigated animal, he -who in his earlier belief was almost God ("child of God," "demi-God"). -Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to a steep plane—he rolls -faster and faster away from the centre—whither? into nothingness? -<i>into the "thrilling sensation of his own nothingness"</i>—Well! this -would be the straight way—to the <i>old</i> ideal?—<i>All</i> science (and by no -means only astronomy, with regard to the humiliating and deteriorating -effect of which Kant has made a remarkable confession, "it annihilates -my own importance"), all science, natural as much as <i>unnatural</i>—by -unnatural I mean the self-critique of reason—nowadays sets out to -talk man out of his present opinion of himself, as though that opinion -had been nothing but a bizarre piece of conceit; you might go so far -as to say that science finds its peculiar pride, its peculiar bitter -form of stoical ataraxia, in preserving man's <i>contempt of himself</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>, -that state which it took so much trouble to bring about, as man's final -and most serious claim to self-appreciation (rightly so, in point -of fact, for he who despises is always "one who has not forgotten -how to appreciate"). But does all this involve any real effort to -<i>counteract</i> the ascetic ideal? Is it really seriously suggested that -Kant's <i>victory</i> over the theological dogmatism about "God," "Soul," -"Freedom," "Immortality," has damaged that ideal in any way (as the -theologians have imagined to be the case for a long time past)?–– -And in this connection it does not concern us for a single minute, -if Kant himself intended any such consummation. It is certain that -from the time of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a -winning game––they are emancipated from the theologians; what luck!––he -has revealed to them that secret art, by which they can now pursue -their "heart's desire" on their own responsibility, and with all the -respectability of science. Similarly, who can grumble at the agnostics, -reverers, as they are, of the unknown and the absolute mystery, if they -now worship <i>their very query</i> as God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere -of the <i>ravages</i> which <i>l'habitude d'admirer l'inintelligible au lieu -de rester tout simplement dans l'inconnu</i> has produced––the ancients, -he thinks, must have been exempt from those ravages.) Supposing that -everything, "known" to man, fails to satisfy his desires, and on the -contrary contradicts and horrifies them, what a divine way out of all -this to be able to look for the responsibility, not in the "desiring" -but in "knowing"!––"There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> is no knowledge. <i>Consequently</i>––there is -a God"; what a novel <i>elegantia syllogism</i>i! what a triumph for the -ascetic ideal!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">26.</p> - -<p>Or, perchance, does the whole of modern history show in its demeanour -greater confidence in life, greater confidence in its ideals? Its -loftiest pretension is now to be a <i>mirror</i>; it repudiates all -teleology; it will have no more "proving"; it disdains to play the -judge, and thereby shows its good taste––it asserts as little as it -denies, it fixes, it "describes." All this is to a high degree ascetic, -but at the same time it is to a much greater degree <i>nihilistic</i>; make -no mistake about this! You see in the historian a gloomy, hard, but -determined gaze,––an eye that <i>looks out</i> as an isolated North Pole -explorer looks out (perhaps so as not to look within, so as not to look -back?)––there is snow––here is life silenced, the last crows which -caw here are called "whither?" "Vanity," "Nada"––here nothing more -flourishes and grows, at the most the metapolitics of St. Petersburg -and the "pity" of Tolstoi. But as for that other school of historians, -a perhaps still more "modern" school, a voluptuous and lascivious -school which ogles life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, -which uses the word "artist" as a glove, and has nowadays established -a "corner" for itself, in all the praise given to contemplation; oh, -what a thirst do these sweet intellectuals excite even for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> ascetics -and winter landscapes! Nay! The devil take these "contemplative" folk! -How much liefer would I wander with those historical Nihilists through -the gloomiest, grey, cold mist!––nay, I shall not mind listening -(supposing I have to choose) to one who is completely unhistorical -and anti-historical (a man, like Dühring for instance, over whose -periods a hitherto shy and unavowed species of "beautiful souls" has -grown intoxicated in contemporary Germany, <i>the species anarchistica</i> -within the educated proletariate). The "contemplative" are a hundred -times worse––I never knew anything which produced such intense -nausea as one of those "objective" <i>chairs</i>,<a name="FNanchor_6_10" id="FNanchor_6_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_10" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> one of those scented -mannikins-about-town of history, a thing half-priest, half-satyr (Renan -<i>parfum</i>), which betrays by the high, shrill falsetto of his applause -what he lacks and where he lacks it, who betrays where in this case -the Fates have plied their ghastly shears, alas! in too surgeon-like -a fashion! This is distasteful to me, and irritates my patience; let -him keep patient at such sights who has nothing to lose thereby,––such -a sight enrages me, such spectators embitter me against the "play," -even more than does the play itself (history itself, you understand); -Anacreontic moods imperceptibly come over me. This Nature, who gave -to the steer its horn, to the lion its χάσμ' ὀδοντων, for what purpose -did Nature give me my foot?––To kick, by St. Anacreon, and not merely -to run away! To trample on all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> worm-eaten "chairs," the cowardly -contemplators, the lascivious eunuchs of history, the flirters with -ascetic ideals, the righteous hypocrites of impotence! All reverence -on my part to the ascetic ideal, <i>in so far as it is honourable</i>! So -long as it believes in itself and plays no pranks on us! But I like -not all these coquettish bugs who have an insatiate ambition to smell -of the infinite, until eventually the infinite smells of bugs; I like -not the whited sepulchres with their stagey reproduction of life; -I like not the tired and the used up who wrap themselves in wisdom -and look "objective"; I like not the agitators dressed up as heroes, -who hide their dummy-heads behind the stalking-horse of an ideal; I -like not the ambitious artists who would fain play the ascetic and -the priest, and are at bottom nothing but tragic clowns; I like not, -again, these newest speculators in idealism, the Anti-Semites, who -nowadays roll their eyes in the patent Christian-Aryan-man-of-honour -fashion, and by an abuse of moralist attitudes and agitation dodges, so -cheap as to exhaust any patience, strive to excite all the blockhead -elements in the populace (the invariable success of <i>every</i> kind of -intellectual charlatanism in present-day Germany hangs together with -the almost indisputable and already quite palpable desolation of the -German mind, whose cause I look for in a too exclusive diet, of papers, -politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, not forgetting the condition -precedent of this diet, the national exclusiveness and vanity, the -strong but narrow principle, "Germany, Germany above everything,"<a name="FNanchor_7_11" id="FNanchor_7_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_11" class="fnanchor">[7]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> -and finally the <i>paralysis agitans</i> of "modern ideas"). Europe -nowadays is, above all, wealthy and ingenious in means of excitement; -it apparently has no more crying necessity than <i>stimulantia</i> and -alcohol. Hence the enormous counterfeiting of ideals, those most fiery -spirits of the mind; hence too the repulsive, evil-smelling, perjured, -pseudo–alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many cargoes -of imitation idealism, of hero-costumes and high falutin' clap-trap, -how many casks of sweetened pity liqueur (Firm: <i>la religion de la -souffrance</i>), how many crutches of righteous indignation for the help -of these flat-footed intellects, how many <i>comedians</i> of the Christian -moral ideal would need to-day to be exported from Europe, to enable -its air to smell pure again. It is obvious that, in regard to this -over-production, a new <i>trade</i> possibility lies open; it is obvious -that there is a new business to be done in little ideal idols and -obedient "idealists"—don't pass over this tip! Who has sufficient -courage? We have <i>in our hands</i> the possibility of idealising the whole -earth. But what am I talking about courage? we only need one thing -here—a hand, a free, a very free hand.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">27.</p> - -<p>Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of -the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. <i>Our</i> -problem can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> certainly do without them, the problem of <i>meaning</i> of -the ascetic ideal—what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day? -those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely in -another connection (under the title "A Contribution to the History of -European Nihilism," I refer for this to a work which I am preparing: -<i>The Will to Power, an Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values</i>). -The only reason why I come to allude to it here is this: the ascetic -ideal has at times, even in the most intellectual sphere, only one -real kind of enemies and <i>damagers</i>: these are the comedians of this -ideal—for they awake mistrust. Everywhere otherwise, where the mind -is at work seriously, powerfully, and without counterfeiting, it -dispenses altogether now with an ideal (the popular expression for this -abstinence is "Atheism")—<i>with the exception of the will for truth</i>. -But this will, this <i>remnant</i> of an ideal, is, if you will believe me, -that ideal itself in its severest and cleverest formulation, esoteric -through and through, stripped of all outworks, and consequently not so -much its remnant as its <i>kernel</i>. Unqualified honest atheism (and its -air only do we breathe, we, the most intellectual men of this age) is -<i>not</i> opposed to that ideal, to the extent that it appears to be; it is -rather one of the final phases of its evolution, one of its syllogisms -and pieces of inherent logic—it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of -a two-thousand-year training in truth, which finally forbids itself -<i>the lie of the belief in God</i>. (The same course of development in -India—quite independently, and consequently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> of some demonstrative -value—the same ideal driving to the same conclusion the decisive point -reached five hundred years before the European era, or more precisely -at the time of Buddha—it started in the Sankhyam philosophy, and then -this was popularised through Buddha, and made into a religion.)</p> - -<p><i>What</i>, I put the question with all strictness, has really <i>triumphed</i> -over the Christian God? The answer stands in my <i>Joyful Wisdom</i>, Aph. -357: "the Christian morality itself, the idea of truth, taken as it was -with increasing seriousness, the confessor-subtlety of the Christian -conscience translated and sublimated into the scientific conscience -into intellectual cleanness at any price. Regarding Nature as though -it were a proof of the goodness and guardianship of God; interpreting -history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant proof of a moral -order of the world and a moral teleology; explaining our own personal -experiences, as pious men have for long enough explained them, as -though every arrangement, every nod, every single thing were invented -and sent out of love for the salvation of the soul; all this is now -done away with, all this has the conscience <i>against</i> it, and is -regarded by every subtler conscience as disreputable, dishonourable, -as lying, feminism, weakness, cowardice—by means of this severity, -if by means of anything at all, are we, in sooth, <i>good Europeans</i> -and heirs of Europe's longest and bravest self-mastery."... All -great things go to ruin by reason of themselves, by reason of an act -of self-dissolution: so wills the law of life,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> the law of <i>necessary</i> -"self-mastery" even in the essence of life—ever is the law-giver -finally exposed to the cry, "<i>patere legem quam ipse tulisti</i>"; in -thus wise did Christianity <i>go to ruin as a dogma</i>, through its own -morality; in thus wise must Christianity go again to ruin to-day as -a morality—we are standing on the threshold of this event. After -Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after the other, it -finally draws its <i>strongest conclusion</i>, its conclusion against -itself; this, however, happens, when it puts the question, "<i>what is -the meaning of every will for truth?</i>" And here again do I touch on my -problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for as yet <i>I know</i> of no -friends): what sense has our whole being, if it does not mean that in -our own selves that will for truth has come to its own consciousness -<i>as a problem</i>?—--By reason of this attainment of self-consciousness -on the part of the will for truth, morality from henceforward—there -is no doubt about it—goes <i>to pieces</i>: this is that great hundred-act -play that is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe, the most -terrible, the most mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all -plays.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">28.</p> - -<p>If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. -His existence on earth contained no end; "What is the purpose of man -at all?" was a question without an answer; the <i>will</i> for man and the -world was lacking; behind every great human destiny rang as a refrain -a still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> greater "Vanity!" The ascetic ideal simply means this: that -something <i>was lacking</i>, that a tremendous <i>void</i> encircled man—he did -not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm himself, -he <i>suffered</i> from the problem of his own meaning. He suffered also in -other ways, he was in the main a <i>diseased</i> animal; but his problem -was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to that crying -question, "<i>To what purpose</i> do we suffer?" Man, the bravest animal -and the one most inured to suffering, does <i>not</i> repudiate suffering in -itself: he <i>wills</i> it, he even seeks it out, provided that he is shown -a meaning for it, a <i>purpose</i> of suffering. <i>Not</i> suffering, but the -senselessness of suffering was the curse which till then lay spread -over humanity—<i>and the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning!</i> It was up -till then the only meaning; but any meaning is better than no meaning; -the ascetic ideal was in that connection the <i>"faute de mieux" par -excellence</i> that existed at that time. In that ideal suffering <i>found -an explanation</i>; the tremendous gap seemed filled; the door to all -suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation—there is no doubt about -it—brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more -venomous, gnawing more brutally into life: it brought all suffering -under the perspective of <i>guilt</i>; but in spite of all that—man was -<i>saved</i> thereby, he had a <i>meaning</i>, and from henceforth was no more -like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-cock of chance, of nonsense, he -could now "will" something—absolutely immaterial to what end, to what -purpose, with what means he wished:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> <i>the will itself was saved</i>. It -is absolutely impossible to disguise <i>what</i> in point of fact is made -clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the -ascetic ideal: this hate of the human, and even more of the animal, -and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason -itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get right -away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even -desiring—all this means—let us have the courage to grasp it—a will -for Nothingness, a will opposed to life, a repudiation of the most -fundamental conditions of life, but it is and remains <i>a will</i>!—and -to say at the end that which I said at the beginning—man will wish -<i>Nothingness</i> rather than not wish <i>at all</i>.</p> -<hr class="R5" /> - - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_5" id="Footnote_1_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_5"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> An allusion to the celebrated monologue in William Tell.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_6" id="Footnote_2_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_6"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Mistress Sly.—Tr.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_7" id="Footnote_3_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_7"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In the German text "Heiland." This has the double meaning -of "healer" and "saviour."—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4_8" id="Footnote_4_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_8"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> "Horrible beast."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5_9" id="Footnote_5_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_9"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> "Here I stand! I cannot help myself. God help me! -Amen"—were Luther's words before the Reichstag at Worms.—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6_10" id="Footnote_6_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_10"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> E.g. Lectureships.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7_11" id="Footnote_7_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_11"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> An allusion to the well-known patriotic song.—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="PEOPLES_AND_COUNTRIES" id="PEOPLES_AND_COUNTRIES">PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.</a></h4> -<h5>Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.</h5> - -<blockquote> -<p>[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by Nietzsche to -form a supplement to Chapter VIII. of <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>, dealing -with Peoples and Countries.]</p></blockquote> - -<hr class="r5" /> -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>The Europeans now imagine themselves as representing, in the main, the -highest types of men on earth.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>A characteristic of Europeans: inconsistency between word and deed; -the Oriental is true to himself in daily life. How the European has -established colonies is explained by his nature, which resembles that -of a beast of prey.</p> - -<p>This inconsistency is explained by the fact that Christianity has -abandoned the class from which it sprang.</p> - -<p>This is the difference between us and the Hellenes: their morals grew -up among the governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the same as those -that exploded everywhere with Plato.</p> - -<p>Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance, for example: always for -the benefit of the arts. Michael Angelo's conception of God as the -"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael, because, through all the -Christian clouds and prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a -culture <i>nobler</i> than the Christo-Raphaelian: whilst Raphael truly -and modestly glorified only the values handed down to him, and did -not carry within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts. Michael -Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt the problem of the law-giver of -new values: the problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first had -to subdue the "hero within himself," the man exalted to his highest -pedestal, master even of his pity, who mercilessly shatters and -annihilates everything that does not bear his own stamp, shining in -Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo was naturally only at certain moments -so high and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe: for the most -part he adopted a condescending attitude towards the eternal feminine -in Christianity; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he broke down -before her, and gave up the ideal of his most inspired hours. It was -an ideal which only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of life -could bear; but not a man advanced in years! Indeed, he would have had -to demolish Christianity with his ideal! But he was not thinker and -philosopher enough for that Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci alone of those -artists had a really super-Christian outlook. He knows the East, the -"land of dawn," within himself as well as without himself. There is -something super-European<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> and silent in him: a characteristic of every -one who has seen too wide a circle of things good and bad.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>How much we have learnt and learnt anew in fifty years! The whole -Romantic School with its belief in "the people" is refuted! No Homeric -poetry as "popular" poetry! No deification of the great powers of -Nature! No deduction from language-relationship to race-relationship! -No "intellectual contemplations" of the supernatural! No truth -enshrouded in religion!</p> - -<p>The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one. I am astonished. From -this standpoint we regard such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of -carelessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of modesty; we would -condemn Plato for his <i>pia fraus</i>, Kant for the derivation of his -Categorical Imperative, his own belief certainly not having come to him -from this source.</p> - -<p>Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt in doubt. And the -question as to the <i>value</i> of truthfulness and its extent lies <i>there</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>What I observe with pleasure in the German is his Mephistophelian -nature; but, to tell the truth, one must have a higher conception of -Mephistopheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary to <i>diminish</i> -his Mephistopheles in order to magnify his "inner Faust." The true -German Mephistopheles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> is much more dangerous, bold, wicked, and -cunning, and <i>consequently</i> more open-hearted: remember the nature -of Frederick the Great, or of that much greater Frederick, the -Hohenstaufen, Frederick II.</p> - -<p>The real German Mephistopheles crosses the Alps, and believes that -everything there belongs to him. Then he recovers himself, like -Winckelmann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and Hamlet as -caricatures, invented to be laughed at, and upon Luther also. Goethe -had his good <i>German</i> moments, when he laughed inwardly at all these -things. But then he fell back again into his cloudy moods.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a wrong climate! There is -something in them that might be Hellenic!—something that is awakened -when they are brought into touch with the South—Winckelmann, Goethe, -Mozart. We should not forget, however, that we are still young. Luther -is still our last event; our last book is still the Bible. The Germans -have never yet "moralised." Also, the very food of the Germans was -their doom: its consequence, Philistinism.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>The Germans are a dangerous people: they are experts at inventing -intoxicants. Gothic, rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense -and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner—Leibniz,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> too (dangerous at the -present day)—(they even idealised the serving soul as the virtue of -scholars and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The Germans may well -be the most composite people on earth.</p> - -<p>"The people of the Middle," the inventors of porcelain, and of a kind -of Chinese breed of Privy Councillor.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>The smallness and baseness of the German soul were not and are not -consequences of the system of small states; for it is well known that -the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud and independent: -and it is not a large state <i>per se</i> that makes souls freer and more -manly. The man whose soul obeys the slavish command: "Thou shalt and -must kneel!" in whose body there is an involuntary bowing and scraping -to titles, orders, gracious glances from above—well, such a man -in an "Empire" will only bow all the more deeply and lick the dust -more fervently in the presence of the greater sovereign than in the -presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted. We can still see in the -lower classes of Italians that aristocratic self-sufficiency; manly -discipline and self-confidence still form a part of the long history -of their country: these are virtues which once manifested themselves -before their eyes. A poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure -than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even a better man in the -end—any one can see this. Just ask the women.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>Most artists, even some of the greatest (including the historians) have -up to the present belonged to the serving classes (whether they serve -people of high position or princes or women or "the masses"), not to -speak of their dependence upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus -Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but only according to <i>their</i> -vague conception of taste, not according to his own measure of beauty -on the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van Dyck was nobler in -this respect: who in all those whom he painted added a certain amount -of what he himself most highly valued: he did not descend from himself, -but rather lifted up others to himself when he "rendered."</p> - -<p>The slavish humility of the artist to his public (as Sebastian Bach has -testified in undying and outrageous words in the dedication of his High -Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in music; but it is all the -more deeply engrained. A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured -to impart my views on this subject. Chopin possesses distinction, like -Van Dyck. The disposition of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant; -of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn, too, possesses -distinction—like Goethe, in the most natural way in the world.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>We could at any time have counted on the fingers of one hand those -German learned men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> who possessed wit: the remainder have understanding, -and a few of them, happily, that famous "childlike character" -which divines.... It is our privilege: with this "divination" German -science has discovered some things which we can hardly conceive of, and -which, after all, do not exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the -Germans who do not "divine" like them.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11.</p> - -<p>As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and <i>esprit</i> of French society, -so do Germans reflect something of the deep, pensive earnestness of -their mystics and musicians, and also of their silly childishness. The -Italian exhibits a great deal of republican distinction and art, and -can show himself to be noble and proud without vanity.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>A larger number of the higher and better-endowed men will, I hope, have -in the end so much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their bad -taste for affectation and sentimental darkness, and to turn against -Richard Wagner as much as against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are -leading us to ruin; they flatter our dangerous qualities. A stronger -future is prepared for us in Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in -these racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers yet.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse, for he is dependent upon -himself most of all. Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany -—for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck.</p> - -<p>Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the face of Germans. Everything -that had manly, exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the smug -populace remaining, the slave-souled people, there came an improvement -from abroad, especially by a mixture of Slavonic blood.</p> - -<p>The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian nobility in general (and the -peasant of certain North German districts), comprise at present the -most manly natures in Germany.</p> - -<p>That the manliest men shall rule: this is only the natural order of -things.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>The future of German culture rests with the sons of the Prussian -officers.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>There has always been a want of wit in Germany, and mediocre heads -attain there to the highest honours, because even they are rare. What -is most highly prized is diligence and perseverance and a certain -cold-blooded, critical outlook, and, for the sake of such qualities, -German scholarship and the German military system have become paramount -in Europe.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>Parliaments may be very useful to a strong and versatile statesman: -he has something there to rely upon (every such thing must, however, -be able to resist!)—upon which he can throw a great deal of -responsibility. On the whole, however, I could wish that the counting -mania and the superstitious belief in majorities were not established -in Germany, as with the Latin races, and that one could finally invent -something new even in politics! It is senseless and dangerous to let -the custom of universal suffrage—which is still but a short time under -cultivation, and could easily be uprooted—take a deeper root: whilst, -of course, its introduction was merely an expedient to steer clear of -temporary difficulties.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>Can any one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new -thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it -does not know its own mind. Peace and <i>laisser aller</i> are not types of -politics for which I have any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest -thoughts to victory—the only things that can make me interested in -Germany. England's small-mindedness is the great danger now on earth. -I observe more inclination towards greatness in the feelings of the -Russian Nihilists than in those of the English Utilitarians. We require -an intergrowth of the German and Slav races, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> we require, too, the -cleverest financiers, the Jews, for us to become masters of the world.</p> - -<p>(a) The sense of reality.</p> - -<p>(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the people's right of -representation. We require the representation of the great interests.</p> - -<p>(c) We require an unconditional union with Russia, together with a -mutual plan of action which shall not permit any English schemata to -obtain the mastery in Russia. No American future!</p> - -<p>(d) A national system of politics is untenable, and embarrassment by -Christian views is a very great evil. In Europe all sensible people are -sceptics, whether they say so or not.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">18.</p> - -<p>I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and -whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with—for I -see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly—is the United Europe. -It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the -broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century—this preparation -of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future -of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew -old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the -"Fatherlanders"—then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking -of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, -Schopenhauer. Perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, -concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can -be said without some such "perhaps."</p> - -<p>But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there -comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe—I -refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires"—will in a short time -become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle -for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even -now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In -order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery -of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive -against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to -an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for -this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new rôle of -broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. -For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to -continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility -of shutting out <i>homines novi</i> from the government will ruin her, and -her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the -carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long -period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that -he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, -as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in -the footsteps of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> Napoleon—the first man, and the man of greatest -initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the -next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are -the most inappropriate imaginable.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">19.</p> - -<p>The condition of Europe in the next century will once again lead to the -breeding of manly virtues, because men will live in continual danger. -Universal military service is already the curious antidote which we -possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas, and it has grown up out -of the struggle of the nations. (Nation—men who speak one language -and read the same newspapers. These men now call themselves "nations," -and would far too readily trace their descent from the same source and -through the same history; which, however, even with the assistance of -the most malignant lying in the past, they have not succeeded in -doing.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">20.</p> - -<p>What quagmires and mendacity must there be about if it is possible, -in the modern European hotch-potch, to raise questions of "race"! (It -being premised that the origin of such writers is not in Horneo and -Borneo.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">21.</p> - -<p>Maxim: To associate with no man who takes any part in the mendacious -race swindle.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">22.</p> - -<p>With the freedom of travel now existing, groups of men of the same -kindred can join together and establish communal habits and customs. -The overcoming of "nations."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">23.</p> - -<p>To make Europe a centre of culture, national stupidities should not -make us blind to the fact that in the higher regions there is already a -continuous reciprocal dependence. France and German philosophy. Richard -Wagner and Paris (1830-50). Goethe and Greece. All things are impelled -towards, a synthesis of the European past in the highest types of mind.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">24.</p> - -<p>Mankind has still much before it—how, generally speaking, could -the ideal be taken from the past? Perhaps merely in relation to the -present, which latter is possibly a lower region.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">25.</p> - -<p>This is our distrust, which recurs again and again; our care, which -never lets us sleep; our question, which no one listens to or wishes -to listen to; our Sphinx, near which there is more than one precipice: -we believe that the men of present-day Europe are deceived in regard -to the things which we love best, and a pitiless demon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> (no, not -pitiless, only indifferent and puerile)—plays with our hearts and -their enthusiasm, as it may perhaps have already played with everything -that lived and loved; I believe that everything which we Europeans -of to-day are in the habit of admiring as the values of all these -respected things called "humanity," "mankind," "sympathy," "pity," may -be of some value as the debilitation and moderating of certain powerful -and dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless, in the long run all -these things are nothing else than the belittlement of the entire type -"man," his mediocrisation, if in such a desperate situation I may make -use of such a desperate expression. I think that the <i>commedia umana</i> for -an epicurean spectator-god must consist in this: that the Europeans, by -virtue of their growing morality, believe in all their innocence and -vanity that they are rising higher and higher, whereas the truth is -that they are sinking lower and lower—<i>i.e.</i> through the cultivation of -all the virtues which are useful to a herd, and through the repression -of the other and contrary virtues which give rise to a new, higher, -stronger, masterful race of men—the first-named virtues merely develop -the herd-animal in man and stabilitate the animal "man," for until now -man has been "the animal as yet unstabilitated."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">26.</p> - -<p>Genius and Epoch.—Heroism is no form of selfishness, for one is -shipwrecked by it.... The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> direction of power is often conditioned by -the state of the period in which the great man happens to be born; and -this fact brings about the superstition that he is the expression of -his time. But this same power could be applied in several different -ways; and between him and his time there is always this difference: -that public opinion always worships the herd instinct,—<i>i.e.</i> the -instinct of the weak,—while he, the strong man, rights for strong -ideals.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">27.</p> - -<p>The fate now overhanging Europe is simply this: that it is exactly -her strongest sons that come rarely and late to the spring-time of -their existence; that, as a rule, when they are already in their early -youth they perish, saddened, disgusted, darkened in mind, just because -they have already, with the entire passion of their strength, drained -to the dregs the cup of disillusionment, which in our days means the -cup of knowledge, and they would not have been the strongest had -they not also been the most disillusionised. For that is the test of -their power—they must first of all rise out of the illness of their -epoch to reach their own health. A late spring-time is their mark of -distinction; also, let us add, late merriment, late folly, the late -exuberance of joy! For this is the danger of to-day: everything that we -loved when we were young has betrayed us. Our last love—the love which -makes us acknowledge her, our love for Truth—let us take care that -she, too, does not betray us!</p> - - - - - - - - -<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52319 ***</div> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/52319-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/52319-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 2979bb7..0000000 --- a/old/52319-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/52319-h/images/ill_niet.jpg b/old/52319-h/images/ill_niet.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index d035085..0000000 --- a/old/52319-h/images/ill_niet.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/52319-0.txt b/old/old/52319-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 199a1c6..0000000 --- a/old/old/52319-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5880 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Genealogy of Morals, by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Genealogy of Morals - The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. - -Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - -Editor: Oscar Levy - -Translator: Horace B. Samuel - J. M. Kennedy - -Release Date: June 13, 2016 [EBook #52319] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust.) - - - - - -THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS - -A POLEMIC - -BY - -FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE - -TRANSLATED BY - -HORACE B. SAMUEL, M.A. - -PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES (FRAGMENT) - - -T. N. FOULIS - -13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET - -EDINBURGH: AND LONDON - -1913 - - - - -EDITOR'S NOTE. - - -In 1887, with the view of amplifying and completing certain new -doctrines which he had merely sketched in _Beyond Good and Evil_ -(see especially aphorism 260), Nietzsche published _The Genealogy of -Morals_. This work is perhaps the least aphoristic, in form, of all -Nietzsche's productions. For analytical power, more especially in those -parts where Nietzsche examines the ascetic ideal, _The Genealogy of -Morals_ is unequalled by any other of his works; and, in the light -which it throws upon the attitude of the ecclesiast to the man of -resentment and misfortune, it is one of the most valuable contributions -to sacerdotal psychology. - - - - -CONTENTS. - -FIRST ESSAY. "GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD" - -SECOND ESSAY. "GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE - -THIRD ESSAY. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? - -PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. Kennedy - - - - -PREFACE. - - -1. - -We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own -good reason. We have never searched for ourselves--how should it then -come to pass, that we should ever _find_ ourselves? Rightly has it been -said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." _Our_ -treasure is there, where stand the hives of our knowledge. It is to -those hives that we are always striving; as born creatures of flight, -and as the honey-gatherers of the spirit, we care really in our hearts -only for one thing--to bring something "home to the hive!" - -As far as the rest of life with its so-called "experiences" is -concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or -sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are, I -fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is not -there, and certainly not our ear. Rather like one who, delighting -in a divine distraction, or sunken in the seas of his own soul, in -whose ear the clock has just thundered with all its force its twelve -strokes of noon, suddenly wakes up, and asks himself, "What has in -point of fact just struck?" so do we at times rub afterwards, as it -were, our puzzled ears, and ask in complete astonishment and complete -embarrassment, "Through what have we in point of fact just lived?" -further, "Who are we in point of fact?" and count, _after they have -struck_, as I have explained, all the twelve throbbing beats of the -clock of our experience, of our life, of our being--ah!--and count -wrong in the endeavour. Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, -we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, -for of us holds good to all eternity the motto, "Each one is the -farthest away from himself"--as far as ourselves are concerned we are -not "knowers." - - -2. - -My thoughts concerning the _genealogy_ of our moral prejudices--for -they constitute the issue in this polemic--have their first, bald, -and provisional expression in that collection of aphorisms entitled -_Human, all-too-Human, a Book for Free Minds_, the writing of which -was begun in Sorrento, during a winter which allowed me to gaze over -the broad and dangerous territory through which my mind had up to that -time wandered. This took place in the winter of 1876-77; the thoughts -themselves are older. They were in their substance already the same -thoughts which I take up again in the following treatises:--we hope -that they have derived benefit from the long interval, that they have -grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete. The fact, however, -that I still cling to them even now, that in the meanwhile they have -always held faster by each other, have, in fact, grown out of their -original shape and into each other, all this strengthens in my mind the -joyous confidence that they must have been originally neither separate -disconnected capricious nor sporadic phenomena, but have sprung from -a common root, from a fundamental "_fiat_" of knowledge, whose empire -reached to the soul's depth, and that ever grew more definite in its -voice, and more definite in its demands. That is the only state of -affairs that is proper in the case of a philosopher. - -We have no right to be "_disconnected_"; we must neither err -"disconnectedly" nor strike the truth "disconnectedly." Rather with -the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our thoughts, -our values, our Yes's and No's and If's and Whether's, grow connected -and interrelated, mutual witnesses of _one_ will, _one_ health, _one_ -kingdom, _one_ sun--as to whether they are to _your_ taste, these -fruits of ours?--But what matters that to the trees? What matters that -to us, us the philosophers? - - -3. - -Owing to a scrupulosity peculiar to myself, which I confess -reluctantly,--it concerns indeed _morality_,--a scrupulosity, which -manifests itself in my life at such an early period, with so much -spontaneity, with so chronic a persistence and so keen an opposition -to environment, epoch, precedent, and ancestry that I should have -been almost entitled to style it my "_â priori_"--my curiosity and my -suspicion felt themselves betimes bound to halt at the question, of -what in point of actual fact was the _origin_ of our "Good" and of -our "Evil." Indeed, at the boyish age of thirteen the problem of the -origin of Evil already haunted me: at an age "when games and God divide -one's heart," I devoted to that problem my first childish attempt -at the literary game, my first philosophic essay--and as regards my -infantile solution of the problem, well, I gave quite properly the -honour to God, and made him the _father_ of evil. Did my own "_â -priori_" demand that precise solution from me? that new, immoral, or -at least "amoral" "_â priori_" and that "categorical imperative" which -was its voice (but oh! how hostile to the Kantian article, and how -pregnant with problems!), to which since then I have given more and -more attention, and indeed what is more than attention. Fortunately -I soon learned to separate theological from moral prejudices, and -I gave up looking for a _supernatural_ origin of evil. A certain -amount of historical and philological education, to say nothing of -an innate faculty of psychological discrimination _par excellence_ -succeeded in transforming almost immediately my original problem into -the following one:--Under what conditions did Man invent for himself -those judgments of values, "Good" and "Evil"? _And what intrinsic value -do they possess in themselves?_ Have they up to the present hindered -or advanced human well-being? Are they a symptom of the distress, -impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is -it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the -will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? On this -point I found and hazarded in my mind the most diverse answers, I -established distinctions in periods, peoples, and castes, I became a -specialist in my problem, and from my answers grew new questions, new -investigations, new conjectures, new probabilities; until at last I had -a land of my own and a soil of my own, a whole secret world growing and -flowering, like hidden gardens of whose existence no one could have an -inkling--oh, how happy are we, we finders of knowledge, provided that -we know how to keep silent sufficiently long. - - -4. - -My first impulse to publish some of my hypotheses concerning the origin -of morality I owe to a clear, well-written, and even precocious little -book, in which a perverse and vicious kind of moral philosophy (your -real English kind) was definitely presented to me for the first time; -and this attracted me--with that magnetic attraction, inherent in that -which is diametrically opposed and antithetical to one's own ideas. -The title of the book was _The Origin of the Moral Emotions_; its -author, Dr. Paul Rée; the year of its appearance, 1877. I may almost -say that I have never read anything in which every single dogma and -conclusion has called forth from me so emphatic a negation as did that -book; albeit a negation tainted by either pique or intolerance. I -referred accordingly both in season and out of season in the previous -works, at which I was then working, to the arguments of that book, not -to refute them--for what have I got to do with mere refutations but -substituting, as is natural to a positive mind, for an improbable -theory one which is more probable, and occasionally no doubt, for one -philosophic error, another. In that early period I gave, as I have -said, the first public expression to those theories of origin to which -these essays are devoted, but with a clumsiness which I was the last -to conceal from myself, for I was as yet cramped, being still without -a special language for these special subjects, still frequently liable -to relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, compare what I say -in _Human, all-too-Human_, part i., about the parallel early history -of Good and Evil, Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from the castes of the -aristocrats and the slaves); similarly, Aph. 136 et seq., concerning -the birth and value of ascetic morality; similarly, Aphs. 96, 99, -vol. ii., Aph. 89, concerning the Morality of Custom, that far older -and more original kind of morality which is _toto cœlo_ different -from the altruistic ethics (in which Dr. Rée, like all the English -moral philosophers, sees the ethical "Thing-in-itself"); finally, -Aph. 92. Similarly, Aph. 26 in _Human, all-too-Human_, part ii., and -Aph. 112, the _Dawn of Day_, concerning the origin of Justice as a -balance between persons of approximately equal power (equilibrium as -the hypothesis of all contract, consequently of all law); similarly, -concerning the origin of Punishment, _Human, all-too-Human_, part -ii., Aphs. 22, 23, in regard to which the deterrent object is neither -essential nor original (as Dr. Rée thinks:--rather is it that this -object is only imported, under certain definite conditions, and always -as something extra and additional). - - -5. - -In reality I had set my heart at that time on something much more -important than the nature of the theories of myself or others -concerning the origin of morality (or, more precisely, the real -function from my view of these theories was to point an end to which -they were one among many means). The issue for me was the value -of morality, and on that subject I had to place myself in a state -of abstraction, in which I was almost alone with my great teacher -Schopenhauer, to whom that book, with all its passion and inherent -contradiction (for that book also was a polemic), turned for present -help as though he were still alive. The issue was, strangely enough, -the value of the "un-egoistic" instincts, the instincts of pity, -self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently -painted in golden colours, deified and etherealised, that eventually -they appeared to him, as it were, high and dry, as "intrinsic values -in themselves," on the strength of which he uttered both to Life -and to himself his own negation. But against _these very_ instincts -there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a -scepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct -I saw the _great_ danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and -seduction--seduction to what? to nothingness?--in these very instincts -I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes -backwards, the will turning _against_ Life, the last illness announcing -itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality -of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even -philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our -modern European civilisation; I realised that it was the route along -which that civilisation slid on its way to--a new Buddhism?--a European -Buddhism?--_Nihilism_? This exaggerated estimation in which modern -philosophers have held pity, is quite a new phenomenon: up to that time -philosophers were absolutely unanimous as to the worthlessness of pity. -I need only mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant--four -minds as mutually different as is possible, but united on one point; -their contempt of pity. - - -6. - -This problem of the value of pity and of the pity-morality (I am an -opponent of the modern infamous emasculation of our emotions) seems at -the first blush a mere isolated problem, a note of interrogation for -itself; he, however, who once halts at this problem, and learns how to -put questions, will experience what I experienced:--a new and immense -vista unfolds itself before him, a sense of potentiality seizes him -like a vertigo, every species of doubt, mistrust, and fear springs -up, the belief in morality, nay, in all morality, totters,--finally a -new demand voices itself. Let us speak out this _new demand_: we need -a _critique_ of moral values, _the value of these values_ is for the -first time to be called into question--and for this purpose a knowledge -is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these -values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and -their distortion (morality as a result, as a symptom, as a mask, as -Tartuffism, as disease, as a misunderstanding; but also morality as a -cause, as a remedy, as a stimulant, as a fetter, as a drug), especially -as such a knowledge has neither existed up to the present time nor is -even now generally desired. The value of these "values" was taken for -granted as an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one -has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in -judging the "good man" to be of a higher value than the "evil man," of -a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, -and prosperity generally, not forgetting the future. What? Suppose the -converse were the truth! What? Suppose there lurked in the "good man" -a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, -a _narcotic_, by means of which the present _battened on the future_! -More comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also -pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the -guilt, if the _maximum potentiality of the power and splendour_ of the -human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would -be the danger of dangers? - - -7. - -Enough, that after this vista had disclosed itself to me, I myself had -reason to search for learned, bold, and industrious colleagues (I am -doing it even to this very day). It means traversing with new clamorous -questions, and at the same time with new eyes, the immense, distant, -and completely unexplored land of morality--of a morality which has -actually existed and been actually lived! and is this not practically -equivalent to first _discovering_ that land? If, in this context, I -thought, amongst others, of the aforesaid Dr. Rée, I did so because I -had no doubt that from the very nature of his questions he would be -compelled to have recourse to a truer method, in order to obtain his -answers. Have I deceived myself on that score? I wished at all events -to give a better direction of vision to an eye of such keenness, and -such impartiality. I wished to direct him to the real _history of -morality_, and to warn him, while there was yet time, against a world -of English theories that culminated in _the blue vacuum of heaven_. -Other colours, of course, rise immediately to one's mind as being a -hundred times more potent than blue for a genealogy of morals:--for -instance, grey, by which I mean authentic facts capable of definite -proof and having actually existed, or, to put it shortly, the whole -of that long hieroglyphic script (which is so hard to decipher) about -the past history of human morals. This script was unknown to Dr. Rée; -but he had read Darwin:--and so in his philosophy the Darwinian beast -and that pink of modernity, the demure weakling and dilettante, who -"bites no longer," shake hands politely in a fashion that is at least -instructive, the latter exhibiting a certain facial expression of -refined and good-humoured indolence, tinged with a touch of pessimism -and exhaustion; as if it really did not pay to take all these things--I -mean moral problems--so seriously. I, on the other hand, think that -there are no subjects which pay better for being taken seriously; part -of this payment is, that perhaps eventually they admit of being taken -gaily. This gaiety indeed, or, to use my own language, this joyful -wisdom, is a payment; a payment for a protracted, brave, laborious, and -burrowing seriousness, which, it goes without saying, is the attribute -of but a few. But on that day on which we say from the fullness of our -hearts, "Forward! our old morality too is fit material for Comedy," -we shall have discovered a new plot, and a new possibility for the -Dionysian drama entitled The Soul's Fate--and he will speedily utilise -it, one can wager safely, he, the great ancient eternal dramatist of -the comedy of our existence. - - -8. - -If this writing be obscure to any individual, and jar on his ears, I -do not think that it is necessarily I who am to blame. It is clear -enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose, namely, that the reader -has first read my previous writings and has not grudged them a certain -amount of trouble: it is not, indeed, a simple matter to get really at -their essence. Take, for instance, my _Zarathustra_; I allow no one -to pass muster as knowing that book, unless every single word therein -has at some time wrought in him a profound wound, and at some time -exercised on him a profound enchantment: then and not till then can he -enjoy the privilege of participating reverently in the halcyon element, -from which that work is born, in its sunny brilliance, its distance, -its spaciousness, its certainty. In other cases the aphoristic form -produces difficulty, but this is only because this form is treated -_too casually_. An aphorism properly coined and cast into its final -mould is far from being "deciphered" as soon as it has been read; on -the contrary, it is then that it first requires _to be expounded_--of -course for that purpose an art of exposition is necessary. The third -essay in this book provides an example of what is offered, of what in -such cases I call exposition: an aphorism is prefixed to that essay, -the essay itself is its commentary. Certainly one _quality_ which -nowadays has been best forgotten--and that is why it will take some -time yet for my writings to become readable--is essential in order -to practise reading as an art--a quality for the exercise of which it -is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a modern man!-- -rumination. - -Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine, July 1887. - - - - -FIRST ESSAY. "GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD." - - -1. - -Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only -philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far -as a history of the origin of morality--these men, I say, offer us -in their own personalities no paltry problem;--they even have, if I -am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, -an advantage over their books--_they themselves are interesting!_ -These English psychologists--what do they really mean? We always -find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing -to the front the _partie honteuse_ of our inner world, and looking -for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise -quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be -the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the _vis inertiæ_ of -habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism -and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, -reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)--what is the real motive -power which always impels these psychologists in precisely _this_ -direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, -vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or -perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned -idealists who have become gloomy, poisoned, and bitter? or a petty -subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that -has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a -vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully -paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a -dash of each of these motives--a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, -a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy? - -But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs -crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as -thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a _swamp_. - -I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and if, in -the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish -from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that -these analysts with their psychological microscopes should be, at -bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle -both their hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained -themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, any truth -in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and -immoral truths--for there are truths of that description. - - -2. - -All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these -historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the -_historical sense_ itself, that they themselves are quite deserted -by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their -thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on -thoroughly unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The -crass ineptitude of their genealogy of morals is immediately apparent -when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and -judgment of "good." "Man had originally," so speaks their decree, -"praised and called 'good' altruistic acts from the standpoint of -those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were -_useful_; subsequently the origin of this praise was _forgotten_, and -altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were -praised as good, came also to be felt as good--as though they contained -in themselves some intrinsic goodness." The thing is obvious:--this -initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic -traits of the English psychologists--we have "utility," "forgetting," -"habit," and finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis -of a system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present -prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. -This pride _must_ be brought low, this system of values _must_ lose its -values: is that attained? - -Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real -homestead of the concept "good" is sought and located in the wrong -place: the judgment "good" did not originate among those to whom -goodness was shown. Much rather has it been the good themselves, -that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the -high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that -their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in -contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and -the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first -arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to -coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The -standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could -possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of -supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within -themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation -of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition -on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of -practical expediency is always based--and not for one occasional, not -for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility -and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic _esprit de -corps_ and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into -association with a meaner race, an "under race," this is the origin of -the antithesis of good and bad. - -(The masters' right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible -to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the -masters: they say "this _is_ that, and that," they seal finally every -object and every event with a sound, and thereby at the same time take -possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word "good" -is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, in -accordance with the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. -On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the _decay_ of aristocratic -values, that the antitheses between "egoistic" and "altruistic" -presses more and more heavily on the human conscience--it is, to use -my own language, the _herd instinct_ which finds in this antithesis an -expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time -for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation -to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in -contemporary Europe); for to-day that prejudice is predominant, which, -acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain -disease, holds that "moral," "altruistic," and "_désintéressé_" are -concepts of equal value. - - -3. - -In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as -to the genesis of the value "good" cannot be historically upheld, it -suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of -altruistic conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised, -and this origin has become _forgotten_:--But in what conceivable way is -this forgetting _possible_! Has perchance the utility of such conduct -ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has -rather been experienced every day at all times, and is consequently -a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh -day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so -far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed -on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much -more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) -which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places -the concept "good" as essentially similar to the concept "useful," -"purposive," so that in the judgments "good" and "bad" mankind is -simply summarising and investing with a sanction its _unforgotten_ and -_unforgettable_ experiences concerning the "useful-purposive" and the -"mischievous-non-purposive." According to this theory, "good" is the -attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so -is able to claim to be considered "valuable in the highest degree," -"valuable in itself." This method of explanation is also, as I have -said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and -psychologically tenable. - - -4. - -The guide-post which first put me on the right track was this -question--what is the true etymological significance of the various -symbols for the idea "good" which have been coined in the various -languages? I then found that they all led back to _the same evolution -of the same idea_--that everywhere "aristocrat," "noble" (in the -social sense), is the root idea, out of which have necessarily -developed "good" in the sense of "with aristocratic soul," "noble," -in the sense of "with a soul of high calibre," "with a privileged -soul"--a development which invariably runs parallel with that other -evolution by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low," are made to change -finally into "bad." The most eloquent proof of this last contention -is the German word "_schlecht_" itself: this word is identical with -"_schlicht_"--(compare "_schlechtweg_" and "_schlechterdings_")--which, -originally and as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply denoted -the plebeian man in contrast to the aristocratic man. It is at the -sufficiently late period of the Thirty Years' War that this sense -becomes changed to the sense now current. From the standpoint of -the Genealogy of Morals this discovery seems to be substantial: the -lateness of it is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised -in the modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all -questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown, even to -the province of natural science and physiology, which, _prima facie_ -is the most objective. The extent of the mischief which is caused by -this prejudice (once it is free of all trammels except those of its own -malice), particularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the notorious -case of Buckle: it was in Buckle that that _plebeianism_ of the modern -spirit, which is of English origin, broke out once again from its -malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that -salted, rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present time -all volcanoes have spoken. - - -5. - -With regard to our problem, which can justly be called an intimate -problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears: -it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and roots -which denote "good" we catch glimpses of that arch-trait, on the -strength of which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings of -a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they call themselves in -perhaps the most frequent instances simply after their superiority -in power (_e.g._ "the powerful," "the lords," "the commanders"), or -after the most obvious sign of their superiority, as for example -"the rich," "the possessors" (that is the meaning of _arya_; and the -Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But they also call themselves -after some _characteristic idiosyncrasy_; and this is the case which -now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, "the truthful": -this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouthpiece is found in -Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word ἐσθλος, which is coined for the -purpose, signifies etymologically "one who _is_," who has reality, who -is real, who is true; and then with a subjective twist, the "true," -as the "truthful": at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it -becomes the motto and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes -the transition to the meaning "noble," so as to place outside the pale -the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him--till -finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to delineate -psychological _noblesse_, and becomes as it were ripe and mellow. In -the word κακός as in δειλός (the plebeian in contrast to the ἀγαθός) -the cowardice is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling on what -lines the etymological origin of the very ambiguous ἀγαθός is to be -investigated. In the Latin _malus_ (which I place side by side with -μέλας) the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and -above all as the black-haired ("_hic niger est_"), as the pre-Aryan -inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest -feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan -conquering race:--at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact -analogue--_Fin_ (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal), the distinctive -word of the nobility, finally--good, noble, clean, but originally the -blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The -Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a blonde -race; and it is wrong to connect, as Virchow still connects, those -traces of an essentially dark-haired population which are to be seen -on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany with any Celtic -ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is -rather the _pre-Aryan_ population of Germany which surges up to these -districts. (The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in -point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper -hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in -the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern -democracy, still more modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the -"Commune," the most primitive form of society, which is now common to -all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a -monstrous reversion--and that the conquering and _master_ race--the -Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe -that I can explain the Latin _bonus_ as the "warrior": my hypothesis -is that I am right in deriving _bonus_ from an older _duonus_ (compare -_bellum_ = _duellum_ = _duen-lum_, in which the word _duonus_ appears -to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of -variance, "entzweiung" (_duo_), as the warrior: one sees what in -ancient Rome "the good" meant for a man. Must not our actual German -word _gut_ mean "_the godlike_, the man of godlike race"? and be -identical with the national name (originally the nobles' name) of the -_Goths_? - -The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this work. - - -6. - -Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for -exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority -always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, in -those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the _priestly_ -caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers on -itself the privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its -priestly function. It is in these cases, for instance, that "clean" and -"unclean" confront each other for the first time as badges of class -distinction; here again there develops a "good" and a "bad," in a sense -which has ceased to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken -not to take these ideas of "clean" and "unclean" too seriously, too -broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have, on -the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in a sense -which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude, coarse, physical, -and narrow, and above all essentially unsymbolical. The "clean man" is -originally only a man who washes himself, who abstains from certain -foods which are conducive to skin diseases, who does not sleep with -the unclean women of the lower classes, who has a horror of blood--not -more, not much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestly -aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such an early juncture -there should ensue a really dangerous sharpening and intensification -of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed values that -gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable Achilles of -free thought would shudder to cross. There is from the outset a -certain _diseased taint_ in such sacerdotal aristocracies, and in the -habits which prevail in such societies--habits which, _averse_ as they -are to action, constitute a compound of introspection and explosive -emotionalism, as a result of which there appears that introspective -morbidity and neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to all -priests at all times: with regard, however, to the remedy which they -themselves have invented for this disease--the philosopher has no -option but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred -times more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have been -the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects of -the naïvetés of this priestly cure. Take, for instance, certain kinds -of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight -into the wilderness (a kind of Weir-Mitchell isolation, though of -course without that system of excessive feeding and fattening which -is the most efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic -ideal); consider too the whole metaphysic of the priests, with its -war on the senses, its enervation, its hair-splitting; consider its -self-hypnotism on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as -a glass disc and obsession), and that climax which we can understand -only too well of an unusual satiety with its panacea of _nothingness_ -(or God:--the demand for a _unio mystica_ with God is the demand of the -Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana--and nothing else!). In sacerdotal -societies _every_ element is on a more dangerous scale, not merely -cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love, -ambition, virtue, morbidity:--further, it can fairly be stated that it -is on the soil of this _essentially dangerous_ form of human society, -the sacerdotal form, that man really becomes for the first time an -_interesting animal_, that it is in this form that the soul of man has -in a higher sense attained _depths_ and become _evil_--and those are -the two fundamental forms of the superiority which up to the present -man has exhibited over every other animal. - - -7. - -The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode -of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and -then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus -is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the -priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and -cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic "values" are -based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and -even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what -is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, -the dance, the tourney--on everything, in fact, which is contained -in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode -of valuation is--we have seen--based on other hypotheses: it is bad -enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests -are, as is notorious, _the worst enemies_--why? Because they are the -weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous -and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. -The really great haters in the history of the world have always been -priests, who are also the cleverest haters--in comparison with the -cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is -practically negligible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything -were it not for the cleverness imported into it by the weak--take at -once the most important instance. All the world's efforts against the -"aristocrats," the "mighty," the "masters," the "holders of power," -are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against -those classes by _the Jews_--the Jews, that priestly nation which -eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on -its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of -values, which was at the same time an act of the _cleverest revenge_. -Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation -of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews -who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic -= beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying -logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with -the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this -contrary equation, namely, "the wretched are alone the good; the poor, -the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the -sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones -who are blessed, for them alone is salvation--but you, on the other -hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the -evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally -also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!" We know who -it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the -context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which -the Jews have exhibited in connection with this most fundamental of -all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen -on another occasion (_Beyond Good and Evil_, Aph. 195)--that it was, -in fact, with the Jews that the _revolt of the slaves_ begins in the -sphere _of morals_; that revolt which has behind it a history of two -millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our -sight, because it--has achieved victory. - - -8. - -But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which -has taken two thousand years to achieve victory?--There is nothing -wonderful in this: all _lengthy_ processes are hard to see and to -realise. But _this_ is what took place: from the trunk of that tree -of revenge and hate, Jewish hate,--that most profound and sublime -hate, which creates ideals and changes old values to new creations, -the like of which has never been on earth,--there grew a phenomenon -which was equally incomparable, _a new love_, the most profound and -sublime of all kinds of love;--and from what other trunk could it have -grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on its upward -growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as -an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the contrary is the truth! This -love grew out of that hate, as its crown, as its triumphant crown, -circling wider and wider amid the clarity and fulness of the sun, and -pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height its goal of hatred, -its victory, its spoil, its strategy, with the same intensity with -which the roots of that tree of hate sank into everything which was -deep and evil with increasing stability and increasing desire. This -Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this "Redeemer" -bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful--was -he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, -temptation to take the tortuous path to those very _Jewish_ values and -those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel really obtained the final goal -of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this "Redeemer," for -all that he might pose as Israel's adversary and Israel's destroyer? Is -it not due to the black magic of a really _great_ policy of revenge, -of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with -slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the -actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so -that all the world--that is, all the enemies of Israel--could nibble -without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human mind -with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly -_dangerous_? Anything that was even equivalent in the power of its -seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and corrupting influence to that -symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox of a "god on the -cross," to that mystery of the unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror -of the self-crucifixion of a god for the _salvation of man_? It is -at least certain that _sub hoc signo_ Israel, with its revenge and -transvaluation of all values, has up to the present always triumphed -again over all other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals. - - -9. - -"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; -that the people have triumphed--or the slaves, or the populace, or the -herd, or whatever name you care to give them--if this has happened -through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater -mission in the world's history. The 'masters' have been done away -with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may -also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)--I -do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication -has succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from the -masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming -Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the -words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning -through the whole body politic of mankind--but its _tempo_ and pace -may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more -discreet--there is time enough. In view of this context has the Church -nowadays any necessary purpose? has it, in fact, a right to live? Or -could man get on without it? _Quæritur_. It seems that it fetters and -retards this tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that -might be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish -institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at -delicacy, to a really modern taste. Should it not at any rate learn to -be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays, more than it allures. -Which of us would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no Church? -It is the Church which repels us, not its poison--apart from the Church -we like the poison." This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my -discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof), -and a democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and -could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard to this -topic there is much on which to be silent. - - -10. - -The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of -_resentment_ becoming creative and giving birth to values--a resentment -experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet -of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary -revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant -affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the -very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and -"not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of -the valuing standpoint--this _inevitable_ gravitation to the objective -instead of back to the subjective--is typical of "resentment": the -slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external -and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires -objective stimuli to be capable of action at all--its action is -fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to -the aristocrat's system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously, -it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful -and exultant "yes" to its own self;--its negative conception, "low," -"vulgar," "bad," is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its -positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and -passion), of "we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy -ones." - -When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits sacrilege on -reality, this is limited to that particular sphere with which it -is _not_ sufficiently acquainted--a sphere, in fact, from the real -knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself. It misjudges, in -some cases, the sphere which it despises, the sphere of the common -vulgar man and the low people: on the other hand, due weight should be -given to the consideration that in any case the mood of contempt, of -disdain, of superciliousness, even on the supposition that it _falsely_ -portrays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed from -that degree of falsity which will always characterise the attacks--in -effigy, of course--of the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of -the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In point of fact, there is -in contempt too strong an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, -of boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation, for it to be -capable of distorting its victim into a real caricature or a real -monstrosity. Attention again should be paid to the almost benevolent -_nuances_ which, for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all -the words by which it distinguishes the common people from itself; -note how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration imparts -its honeyed _flavour_, until at last almost all the words which are -applied to the vulgar man survive finally as expressions for "unhappy," -"worthy of pity" (compare δειλο, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός]; the -latter two names really denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave -and beast of burden)--and how, conversely, "bad," "low," "unhappy" -have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which -"unhappy" is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble -aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in contempt -(let philologists remember the sense in which ὀιζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, -δυστυχεῑν, ξυμφορά used to be employed). The "well-born" simply -_felt_ themselves the "happy"; they did not have to manufacture their -happiness artificially through looking at their enemies, or in cases -to talk and _lie themselves_ into happiness (as is the custom with all -resentful men); and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant -with strength, and consequently _necessarily_ energetic, they were too -wise to dissociate happiness from action--activity becomes in their -minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is the etymology of εὖ -πρἆττειν)--all in sharp contrast to the "happiness" of the weak and -the oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity, among whom -happiness appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, -a peace, a "Sabbath," an enervation of the mind and relaxation -of the limbs,--in short, a purely _passive_ phenomenon. While the -aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself -(gennaios, "noble-born," emphasises the nuance "sincere," and perhaps -also "naïf"), the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere -nor naïf, nor honest and candid with himself. His soul _squints_; his -mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and back-doors, everything -secret appeals to him as _his_ world, _his_ safety, _his_ balm; he is -past master in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional -self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race of such _resentful_ men -will of necessity eventually prove more _prudent_ than any aristocratic -race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a -paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men -is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement; -so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete -certainty of function of the governing _unconscious_ instincts, or -as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant -charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic -bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times -noble souls have recognised each other. When the resentment of the -aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in -an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no _venom_: on the -other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless instances, -when in the case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable. An -inability to take seriously for any length of time their enemies, -their disasters, their _misdeeds_--that is the sign of the full strong -natures who possess a superfluity of moulding plastic force, that -heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in -the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and -meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable -of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a -shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is -only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing, -of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real -"_love_ of one's enemies." What respect for his enemies is found, -forsooth, in an aristocratic man--and such a reverence is already -a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his -distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character -there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand, -imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him--and it is here -exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the -evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from -which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good -one," himself--his very self! - - -11 - -The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic -man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight -away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then -creates for himself a concept of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic -origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred--the -former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter, -on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in -the conception of a slave-morality--these two words "bad" and "evil," -how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they -have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea "good" is -not the same: much rather let the question be asked, "Who is really -evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In -all sternness let it be answered thus:--_just_ the good man of the -other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who -rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, -into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This -particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to -know those "good" ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not -to know them only as "_evil enemies_" and the same men who _inter -pares_ were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, -custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance -and jealousy _inter pares_, these men who in their relations with -each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, -self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men -are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign -element, a _foreign_ country, begins), not much better than beasts -of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from -all social control, they feel that in the wilderness they can give -vent with impunity to that tension which is produced by enclosure and -imprisonment in the peace of society, they _revert_ to the innocence -of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps -come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with -bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student's -prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an -ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognise -at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the -magnificent _blonde brute_, avidly rampant for spoil and victory; -this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must -get loose again, must return into the wilderness--the Roman, Arabic, -German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian -Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who -have left the idea "Barbarian" on all the tracks in which they have -marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even -a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilisation -(for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians in that celebrated -funeral oration, "Our audacity has forced a way over every land and -sea, rearing everywhere imperishable memorials of itself for _good_ -and for _evil_"). This audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, -and spasmodic as may be its expression; the incalculable and fantastic -nature of their enterprises,Pericles sets in special relief and -glory the ᾽ραθυμία of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for -safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight -in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty,--all -these features become crystallised, for those who suffered thereby -in the picture of the "barbarian," of the "evil enemy," perhaps of -the "Goth" and of the "Vandal." The profound, icy mistrust which -the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power,--even at the -present time,--is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable -horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath -of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and -ourselves there exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, -relationship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of -Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and endeavoured -to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He could only dispose -of the contradiction, with which he was confronted, by the Homeric -world, an age magnificent indeed, but at the same time so awful and -so violent, by making two ages out of one, which he henceforth placed -one behind each other--first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as -that world had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families, -who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze age, as -that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of the oppressed, -spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as an age of bronze, -as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without -conscience, crushing everything, and bespattering everything with -blood. Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that -the very _essence of all civilisation_ is to _train_ out of man, the -beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal, -it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real _tools of -civilisation_ all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the -help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals, -were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come -to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also -_represented_ the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is -not only probable--nay, it is _palpable_ to-day; these bearers of -vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up, these descendants of -all European and non-European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan -population--these people, I say, represent the _decline_ of humanity! -These "tools of civilisation" are a disgrace to humanity, and -constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation, more -of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. One may be perfectly -justified in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at -the core of all aristocratic races, and in being on one's guard: but -who would not a hundred times prefer to be afraid, when one at the -same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of being -perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the -dwarfed, the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What -produces to-day our repulsion towards "man"?--for we _suffer_ from -"man," there is no doubt about it. It is not fear; it is rather that -we have nothing more to fear from men; it is that the worm "man" is in -the foreground and pullulates; it is that the "tame man," the wretched -mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal -and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a "higher -man"; yes, it is that he has a certain right so to consider himself, -in so far as he feels that in contrast to that excess of deformity, -disease, exhaustion, and effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute -present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved a relative success, he -at any rate still says "yes" to life. - - -12. - -I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last -hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone -cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! bad air! -That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour -of the entrails of a misbegotten soul!--That excepted, what can one -not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, -solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everything, born -as one is to a burrowing and battling existence; one always returns -once again to the light, one always lives again one's golden hour of -victory--and then one stands as one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready -for something more difficult, for something more distant, like a bow -stretched but the tauter by every strain. But from time to time do ye -grant me--assuming that "beyond good and evil" there are goddesses who -can grant--one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something -perfect, fully realised, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something -that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of a man that justifies -the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that -realises and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to _the -belief in man_! For the position is this: in the dwarfing and levelling -of the European man lurks _our_ greatest peril, for it is this outlook -which fatigues--we see to-day nothing which wishes to be greater, we -surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards -towards something more attenuated, more inoffensive, more cunning, -more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more -Christian--man, there is no doubt about it, grows always "better" ---the destiny of Europe lies even in this--that in losing the fear of -man, we have also lost the hope in man, yea, the will to be man. The -sight of man now fatigues.--What is present-day Nihilism if it is not -_that_?--We are tired of _man_. - - -13. - -But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the -_good_--of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out--demands -its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge -against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the -great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs -say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as -far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, -a lamb,--is he not good?" then there is nothing to cavil at in the -setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey -will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, -"_We_ bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them: -nothing is tastier than a tender lamb." To require of strength that it -should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to -overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for -enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require -of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of -force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action--rather it -is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing, -acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of -language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become -petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all -working as conditioned by a worker, by a "subject." And just exactly -as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the -latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called -lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the -expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed -some indifferent neutral _substratum_, which enjoyed a _caprice and -option_ as to whether or not it should express strength. But there -is no such _substratum_, there is no "being" behind doing, working, -becoming; "the doer" is a mere appanage to the action. The action is -everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they -make the lightning lighten, that is a "doing-doing": they make the same -phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. -The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, "Force moves, -force causes," and so on. Our whole science is still, in spite of all -its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of -language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious -changeling "the subject" (the atom, to give another instance, is such -a changeling, just as the Kantian "Thing-in-itself"). What wonder, -if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and -hatred exploit for their own advantage this belief, and indeed hold no -belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this--"that the strong -has the _option_ of being weak, and the bird of prey of being a lamb." -Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the -birds of prey the _responsibility_ for being birds of prey: when the -oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the -vindictive guile of weakness, "Let us be otherwise than the evil, -namely, good! and good is every one who does not oppress, who hurts -no one, who does not attack, who does not pay back, who hands over -revenge to God, who holds himself, as we do, in hiding; who goes out -of the way of evil, and demands, in short, little from life; like -ourselves the patient, the meek, the just,"--yet all this, in its cold -and unprejudiced interpretation, means nothing more than "once for -all, the weak are weak; it is good to do _nothing for which we are not -strong enough_"; but this dismal state of affairs, this prudence of the -lowest order, which even insects possess (which in a great danger are -fain to sham death so as to avoid doing "too much"), has, thanks to -the counterfeiting and self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade -in the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue, just as though -the _very_ weakness of the weak--that is, forsooth, its _being_, its -working, its whole unique inevitable inseparable reality--were a -voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed, an act of _merit_. -This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing "subject" -_necessary_ from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion, -in which every lie is fain to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to -use popular language, the _soul_) has perhaps proved itself the best -dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde -of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most -sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as -freedom, of being this, or being that, as _merit_. - - -14. - -Will any one look a little into--right into--the mystery of how _ideals -are manufactured_ in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come! - -Here we have a vista opened into these grimy workshops. Wait just a -moment, dear Mr. Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow -accustomed to this false changing light--Yes! Enough! Now speak! What -is happening below down yonder? Speak out that what you see, man of the -most dangerous curiosity--for now _I_ am the listener. - -"I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a cautious, spiteful, gentle -whispering and muttering together in all the corners and crannies. It -seems to me that they are lying; a sugary softness adheres to every -sound. Weakness is turned to _merit_, there is no doubt about it--it is -just as you say." - -Further! - -"And the impotence which requites not, is turned to 'goodness,' craven -baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience -(namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this -submission--they call him God). The inoffensive character of the weak, -the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his -forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as 'patience,' -which is also called 'virtue'; not being able to avenge one's self, is -called not wishing to avenge one's self, perhaps even forgiveness (for -_they_ know not what they do--we alone know what _they_ do). They also -talk of the 'love of their enemies' and sweat thereby." - -Further! - -"They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers -and counterfeiters in the corners, although they try to get warm by -crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is -a favour and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the -dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a -probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which -will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in -gold, nay in happiness. This they call 'Blessedness.'" - -Further! - -"They are now giving me to understand, that not only are they better -men than the mighty, the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have -got to lick (not out of fear, not at all out of fear! But because -God ordains that one should honour all authority)--not only are they -better men, but that they also have a 'better time,' at any rate, -will one day have a 'better time.' But enough! Enough! I can endure -it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops _where ideals are -manufactured_--verily they reek with the crassest lies." - -Nay. Just one minute! You are saying nothing about the masterpieces -of these virtuosos of black magic, who can produce whiteness, milk, -and innocence out of any black you like: have you not noticed what a -pitch of refinement is attained by their _chef d'œuvre_, their most -audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick? Take care! These -cellar-beasts, full of revenge and hate--what do they make, forsooth, -out of their revenge and hate? Do you hear these words? Would you -suspect, if you trusted only their words, that you are among men of -resentment and nothing else? - -"I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah! ah! ah! and I hold my -nose). Now do I hear for the first time that which they have said so -often: 'We good, _we are the righteous_'--what they demand they call -not revenge but 'the triumph of _righteousness_'; what they hate is -not their enemy, no, they hate 'unrighteousness,' 'godlessness'; what -they believe in and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication -of sweet revenge (--"sweeter than honey," did Homer call it?), but the -victory of God, of the _righteous_ _God_ over the 'godless'; what is -left for them to love in this world is not _their_ brothers in hate, -but their 'brothers in love,' as they say, all the good and righteous -on the earth." - -And how do they name that which serves them as a solace against all -the troubles of life--their phantasmagoria of their anticipated future -blessedness? - -"How? Do I hear right? They call it 'the last judgment,' the advent of -their kingdom, 'the kingdom of God'--but _in the meanwhile_ they live -'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'" - -Enough! Enough! - - -15. - -In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the hope of what? These -weaklings!--they also, forsooth, wish to be the strong some time; there -is no doubt about it, some time _their_ kingdom also must come--"the -kingdom of God" is their name for it, as has been mentioned: they are -so meek in everything! Yet in order to experience _that_ kingdom it -is necessary to live long, to live beyond death,--yes, _eternal_ life -is necessary so that one can make up for ever for that earthly life -"in faith," "in love," "in hope." Make up for what? Make up by what? -Dante, as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with awe-inspiring -ingenuity he placed that inscription over the gate of his hell, "Me too -made eternal love": at any rate the following inscription would have -a much better right to stand over the gate of the Christian Paradise -and its "eternal blessedness"--"Me too made eternal hate"--granted -of course that a truth may rightly stand over the gate to a lie! For -what is the blessedness of that Paradise? Possibly we could quickly -surmise it; but it is better that it should be explicitly attested by -an authority who in such matters is not to be disparaged, Thomas of -Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. "_Beati in regno celesti_" says -he, as gently as a lamb, "_videbunt pœnas damnatorum, ut beatitudo -illis magis complaceat_." Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word -from the mouth of a triumphant father of the Church, who warned his -disciples against the cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles--But -why? Faith offers us much more,--says he, _de Spectac._, c. 29 -ss.,--something much stronger; thanks to the redemption, joys of quite -another kind stand at our disposal; instead of athletes we have our -martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the blood of Christ--but -what then awaits us on the day of his return, of his triumph. And -then does he proceed, does this enraptured visionary: "_at enim -supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimas et perpetuus judicii dies, ille -nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vetustas et tot -ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quæ tunc spectaculi latitudo! -Quid admirer! quid rideam! Ubigaudeam! Ubi exultem, spectans tot et -tantos reges, qui in cœlum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis -suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item præsides_" (the -provincial governors) "_persecutores dominici nominis sævioribus quam -ipsi flammis sævierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes! -Quos præterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una -conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant, -quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora redituras -affirmabant! Etiam poetas non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad -inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragœdi audiendi, -magis scilicet vocales_" (with louder tones and more violent shrieks) -"_in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores -multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens, -tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi -quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius -conspectum insatiabilem conferre, qui in dominum scevierunt. Hic est -ille, dicam fabri aut quæstuariæ filius_" (as is shown by the whole of -the following, and in particular by this well-known description of the -mother of Jesus from the Talmud, Tertullian is henceforth referring to -the Jews), "_sabbati destructor, Samarites et dæmonium habens. Hic est -quem a Juda redemistis, hic est ille arundine et colaphis diverberatus, -sputamentis de decoratus, felle et acete potatus. Hic est, quem -clam discentes subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus -detraxit, ne lactucæ suæ frequentia commeantium laderentur. Ut talia -species, ut talibus exultes, quis tibi prætor aut consul aut sacerdos -de sua liberalitate prastabit? Et tamen hæc jam habemus quodammodo per -fidem spiritu imaginante repræsentata. Ceterum qualia illa sunt, quæ -nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascenderunt?_" (I -Cor. ii. 9.) "_Credo circo et utraque cavea_" (first and fourth row, -or, according to others, the comic and the tragic stage) "_et omni -studio gratiora._" _Per fidem_: so stands it written. - - -16. - -Let us come to a conclusion. The two _opposing values_, "good and bad," -"good and evil," have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the -world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time -in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune -of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost be said that in the -meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the -meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more -psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark -of the _higher nature_, of the more psychological nature, than to be in -that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battleground -for those two opposites. The symbol of this fight, written in a writing -which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history -up to the present time, is called "Rome against Judæa, Judæa against -Rome." Hitherto there has been no greater event than _that_ fight, -the putting of _that_ question, _that_ deadly antagonism. Rome found -in the Jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its -diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was held to -be _convicted of hatred_ of the whole human race: and rightly so, in -so far as it is right to link the well-being and the future of the -human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of -the Roman values. What, conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome? -One can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to -carry one's mind back to the Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene -of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience. -(One should also appraise at its full value the profound logic of the -Christian instinct, when over this very book of hate it wrote the name -of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple to whom it attributed -that impassioned and ecstatic Gospel--therein lurks a portion of -truth, however much literary forging may have been necessary for -this purpose.) The Romans were the strong and aristocratic; a nation -stronger and more aristocratic has never existed in the world, has -never even been dreamed of; every relic of them, every inscription -enraptures, granted that one can divine _what_ it is that writes the -inscription. The Jews, conversely, were that priestly nation of -resentment par excellence, possessed by a unique genius for popular -morals: just compare with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts, -such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to realise afterwards what is -first rate, and what is fifth rate. - -Which of them has been provisionally victorious, Rome or Judæa? but -there is not a shadow of doubt; just consider to whom in Rome itself -nowadays you bow down, as though before the quintessence of all the -highest values--and not only in Rome, but almost over half the world, -everywhere where man has been tamed or is about to be tamed--to _three -Jews_, as we know, and _one Jewess_ (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter -the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the mother of the aforesaid -Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome is undoubtedly -defeated. At any rate there took place in the Renaissance a brilliantly -sinister revival of the classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation -of all things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from a trance, -stirred beneath the burden of the new Judaised Rome that had been built -over her, which presented the appearance of an œcumenical synagogue -and was called the "Church": but immediately Judæa triumphed again, -thanks to that fundamentally popular (German and English) movement -of revenge, which is called the Reformation, and taking also into -account its inevitable corollary, the restoration of the Church--the -restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace of classical Rome. -Judæa proved yet once more victorious over the classical ideal in the -French Revolution, and in a sense which was even more crucial and even -more profound: the last political aristocracy that existed in Europe, -that of the _French_ seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, broke into -pieces beneath the instincts of a resentful populace--never had the -world heard a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm: indeed, -there took place in the midst of it the most monstrous and unexpected -phenomenon; the ancient ideal _itself_ swept before the eyes and -conscience of humanity with all its life and with unheard-of splendour, -and in opposition to resentment's lying war-cry of _the prerogative -of the most_, in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement, and -equalisation, the will to a retrogression and twilight of humanity, -there rang out once again, stronger, simpler, more penetrating than -ever, the terrible and enchanting counter-warcry of _the prerogative of -the few_! Like a final signpost to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, -the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him -the incarnate problem _of the aristocratic ideal in itself_--consider -well what a problem it is:--Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and -Superman. - - -17. - -Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals -thereby relegated _ad acta_ for all time? Or only postponed, postponed -for a long time? May there not take place at some time or other a -much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old -conflagration? Further! Should not one wish _that_ consummation with -all one's strength?--will it one's self? demand it one's self? He who -at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, -will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion,--ground enough -for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for -some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly -_mean_ by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my -last book: _Beyond Good and Evil_--at any rate that is not the same as -"Beyond Good and Bad." - - -Note.--I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to -express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only -been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, -that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize -essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the -_history of morals_--perhaps this book may serve to give forcible -impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this -character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits -quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual -professional philosophers. - -"_What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is -afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation?_" - -On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to induce -physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems (_of the -value of the valuations_ which have prevailed up to the present): in -this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act -as the spokesmen and intermediaries in these particular instances, -after, of course, they have quite succeeded in transforming the -relationship between philosophy and physiology and medicine, which -is originally one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly -and fruitful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values, -all the "thou shalts" known to history and ethnology, need primarily -a _physiological_, at any rate in preference to a psychological, -elucidation and interpretation; all equally require a critique from -medical science. The question, "What is the _value_ of this or that -table of 'values' and morality?" will be asked from the most varied -standpoints. For instance, the question of "valuable _for what_" can -never be analysed with sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which -would evidently have value with regard to promoting in a race the -greatest possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing its -adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the preservation -of the greatest number) would have nothing like the same value, if it -were a question of evolving a stronger species. In gauging values, -the good of the majority and the good of the minority are opposed -standpoints: we leave it to the naïveté of English biologists to regard -the former standpoint as _intrinsically_ superior. _All_ the sciences -have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher; this -task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of -_value_, that he has to fix the _hierarchy of values_. - - - - -SECOND ESSAY. "GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE. - - -1. - -The breeding of an animal that _can promise_--is not this just that -very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is -not this the very problem of man? The fact that this problem has been -to a great extent solved, must appear all the more phenomenal to one -who can estimate at its full value that force of _forgetfulness_ which -works in opposition to it. Forgetfulness is no mere _vis inertiæ_, -as the superficial believe, rather is it a power of obstruction, -active and, in the strictest sense of the word, positive--a power -responsible for the fact that what we have lived, experienced, taken -into ourselves, no more enters into consciousness during the process -of digestion (it might be called psychic absorption) than all the -whole manifold process by which our physical nutrition, the so-called -"incorporation," is carried on. The temporary shutting of the doors -and windows of consciousness, the relief from the clamant alarums and -excursions, with which our subconscious world of servant organs works -in mutual co-operation and antagonism; a little quietude, a little -_tabula rasa_ of the consciousness, so as to make room again for the -new, and above all for the more noble functions and functionaries, room -for government, foresight, predetermination (for our organism is on an -oligarchic model)--this is the utility, as I have said, of the active -forgetfulness, which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, -repose, etiquette; and this shows at once why it is that there can -exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real _present_, -without forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventative apparatus is -damaged and discarded, is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is -something more than a comparison--he can "get rid of" nothing. But -this very animal who finds it necessary to be forgetful, in whom, in -fact, forgetfulness represents a force and a form of _robust_ health, -has reared for himself an opposition-power, a memory, with whose help -forgetfulness is, in certain instances, kept in check--in the cases, -namely, where promises have to be made;--so that it is by no means -a mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented impression, -not merely the indigestion occasioned by a once pledged word, which -one cannot dispose of, but an _active_ refusal to get rid of it, a -continuing and a wish to continue what has once been willed, an actual -_memory of the will_; so that between the original "I will," "I shall -do," and the actual discharge of the will, its act, we can easily -interpose a world of new strange phenomena, circumstances, veritable -volitions, without the snapping of this long chain of the will. But -what is the underlying hypothesis of all this? How thoroughly, in order -to be able to regulate the future in this way, must man have first -learnt to distinguish between necessitated and accidental phenomena, to -think causally, to see the distant as present and to anticipate it, to -fix with certainty what is the end, and what is the means to that end; -above all, to reckon, to have power to calculate--how thoroughly must -man have first become _calculable, disciplined, necessitated_ even for -himself and his own conception of himself, that, like a man entering -into a promise, he could guarantee himself _as a future_. - - -2. - -This is simply the long history of the origin of _responsibility_. -That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as -we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more -immediate task of first _making_ man to a certain extent, necessitated, -uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The -immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom"[1] (cp. _Dawn -of Day_, Aphs. 9, 14, and 16), the actual work of man on himself during -the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, -finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate -hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with -the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, -was _made_ genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at -the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally -matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally -bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as -the ripest fruit on its tree the _sovereign individual_, that resembles -only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the -autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are -mutually-exclusive terms),--in short, the man of the personal, long, -and independent will, _competent to promise_, and we find in him a -proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of _what_ has been at -last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of -power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this -man who has grown to freedom, who is really _competent_ to promise, -this lord of the _free_ will, this sovereign--how is it possible for -him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable -of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great -is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes--he "deserves" -all three--not to know that with this mastery over himself he is -necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, -over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? -The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this -possession his _standard of value_: looking out from himself upon -the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he -honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind -themselves by promises),--that is, every one who promises like a -sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his -trusts but confers _honour_ by the very fact of trusting, who gives -his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself -strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the -"teeth of fate,"--so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his -foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have -no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, -who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. -The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of _responsibility_, -the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and -over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become -an instinct, a dominating instinct--what name will he give to it, to -this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there -is no doubt about it--the sovereign man calls it his _conscience_. - - -3. - -His conscience?--One apprehends at once that the idea "conscience," -which is here seen in its supreme manifestation, supreme in fact to -almost the point of strangeness, should already have behind it a long -history and evolution. The ability to guarantee one's self with all -due pride, and also at the same time to _say yes_ to one's self--that -is, as has been said, a ripe fruit, but also a _late_ fruit:--How long -must needs this fruit hang sour and bitter on the tree! And for an even -longer period there was not a glimpse of such a fruit to to be had--no -one had taken it on himself to promise it, although everything on the -tree was quite ready for it, and everything was maturing for that very -consummation. "How is a memory to be made for the man-animal? How is an -impression to be so deeply fixed upon this ephemeral understanding, -half dense, and half silly, upon this incarnate forgetfulness, that -it will be permanently present?" As one may imagine, this primeval -problem was not solved by exactly gentle answers and gentle means; -perhaps there is nothing more awful and more sinister in the early -history of man than his _system of mnemonics_. "Something is burnt in -so as to remain in his memory: only that which never stops _hurting_ -remains in his memory." This is an axiom of the oldest (unfortunately -also the longest) psychology in the world. It might even be said that -wherever solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and gloomy colours are now -found in the life of the men and of nations of the world, there is some -_survival_ of that horror which was once the universal concomitant of -all promises, pledges, and obligations. The past, the past with all -its length, depth, and hardness, wafts to us its breath, and bubbles -up in us again, when we become "serious." When man thinks it necessary -to make for himself a memory, he never accomplishes it without blood, -tortures, and sacrifice; the most dreadful sacrifices and forfeitures -(among them the sacrifice of the first-born), the most loathsome -mutilation (for instance, castration), the most cruel rituals of all -the religious cults (for all religions are really at bottom systems -of cruelty)--all these things originate from that instinct which -found in pain its most potent mnemonic. In a certain sense the whole -of asceticism is to be ascribed to this: certain ideas have got to -be made inextinguishable, omnipresent, "fixed," with the object of -hypnotising the whole nervous and intellectual system through these -"fixed ideas"--and the ascetic methods and modes of life are the means -of freeing those ideas from the competition of all other ideas so as to -make them "unforgettable." The worse memory man had, the ghastlier the -signs presented by his customs; the severity of the penal laws affords -in particular a gauge of the extent of man's difficulty in conquering -forgetfulness, and in keeping a few primal postulates of social -intercourse ever present to the minds of those who were the slaves -of every momentary emotion and every momentary desire. We Germans do -certainly not regard ourselves as an especially cruel and hard-hearted -nation, still less as an especially casual and happy-go-lucky one; -but one has only to look at our old penal ordinances in order to -realise what a lot of trouble it takes in the world to evolve a -"nation of thinkers" (I mean: _the_ European nation which exhibits at -this very day the maximum of reliability, seriousness, bad taste, and -positiveness, which has on the strength of these qualities a right to -train every kind of European mandarin). These Germans employed terrible -means to make for themselves a memory, to enable them to master their -rooted plebeian instincts and the brutal crudity of those instincts: -think of the old German punishments, for instance, stoning (as far back -as the legend, the millstone falls on the head of the guilty man), -breaking on the wheel (the most original invention and speciality of -the German genius in the sphere of punishment), dart-throwing, tearing, -or trampling by horses ("quartering"), boiling the criminal in oil or -wine (still prevalent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the -highly popular flaying ("slicing into strips"), cutting the flesh out -of the breast; think also of the evil-doer being besmeared with honey, -and then exposed to the flies in a blazing sun. It was by the help of -such images and precedents that man eventually kept in his memory five -or six "I will nots" with regard to which he had already given his -_promise_, so as to be able to enjoy the advantages of society--and -verily with the help of this kind of memory man eventually attained -"reason"! Alas! reason, seriousness, mastery over the emotions, all -these gloomy, dismal things which are called reflection, all these -privileges and pageantries of humanity: how dear is the price that they -have exacted! How much blood and cruelty is the foundation of all "good -things"! - - -4. - -But how is it that that other melancholy object, the consciousness of -sin, the whole "bad conscience," came into the world? And it is here -that we turn back to our genealogists of morals. For the second time -I say--or have I not said it yet?--that they are worth nothing. Just -their own five-spans-long limited modern experience; no knowledge of -the past, and no wish to know it; still less a historic instinct, a -power of "second sight" (which is what is really required in this -case)--and despite this to go in for the history of morals. It stands -to reason that this must needs produce results which are removed from -the truth by something more than a respectful distance. - -Have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to -have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral -idea of "ought"[2] originates from the very material idea of "owe"? Or -that punishment developed as a retaliation absolutely independently -of any preliminary hypothesis of the freedom or determination of the -will?--And this to such an extent, that a high degree of civilisation -was always first necessary for the animal man to begin to make those -much more primitive distinctions of "intentional," "negligent," -"accidental," "responsible," and their contraries, and apply them -in the assessing of punishment. That idea--"the wrong-doer deserves -punishment _because_ he might have acted otherwise," in spite of the -fact that it is nowadays so cheap, obvious, natural, and inevitable, -and that it has had to serve as an illustration of the way in which -the sentiment of justice appeared on earth, is in point of fact -an exceedingly late, and even refined form of human judgment and -inference; the placing of this idea back at the beginning of the world -is simply a clumsy violation of the principles of primitive psychology. -Throughout the longest period of human history punishment was _never_ -based on the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action, and was -consequently not based on the hypothesis that only the guilty should -be punished;--on the contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days -for the same reason that parents punish their children even nowadays, -out of anger at an injury that they have suffered, an anger which vents -itself mechanically on the author of the injury--but this anger is kept -in bounds and modified through the idea that every injury has somewhere -or other its _equivalent_ price, and can really be paid off, even -though it be by means of pain to the author. Whence is it that this -ancient deep-rooted and now perhaps ineradicable idea has drawn its -strength, this idea of an equivalency between injury and pain? I have -already revealed its origin, in the contractual relationship between -_creditor_ and _ower_, that is as old as the existence of legal rights -at all, and in its turn points back to the primary forms of purchase, -sale, barter, and trade. - - -5. - -The realisation of these contractual relations excites, of course (as -would be already expected from our previous observations), a great -deal of suspicion and opposition towards the primitive society which -made or sanctioned them. In this society promises will be made; in -this society the object is to provide the promiser with a memory; -in this society, so may we suspect, there will be full scope for -hardness, cruelty, and pain: the "ower," in order to induce credit -in his promise of repayment, in order to give a guarantee of the -earnestness and sanctity of his promise, in order to drill into his -own conscience the duty, the solemn duty, of repayment, will, by -virtue of a contract with his creditor to meet the contingency of -his not paying, pledge something that he still possesses, something -that he still has in his power, for instance, his life or his wife, -or his freedom or his body (or under certain religious conditions -even his salvation, his soul's welfare, even his peace in the grave; -so in Egypt, where the corpse of the ower found even in the grave no -rest from the creditor--of course, from the Egyptian standpoint, this -peace was a matter of particular importance). But especially has the -creditor the power of inflicting on the body of the ower all kinds of -pain and torture--the power, for instance, of cutting off from it an -amount that appeared proportionate to the greatness of the debt;--this -point of view resulted in the universal prevalence at an early date of -precise schemes of valuation, frequently horrible in the minuteness -and meticulosity of their application, _legally_ sanctioned schemes of -valuation for individual limbs and parts of the body. I consider it as -already a progress, as a proof of a freer, less petty, and more Roman -conception of law, when the Roman Code of the Twelve Tables decreed -that it was immaterial how much or how little the creditors in such a -contingency cut off, "si plus minusve secuerunt, ne fraude esto." Let -us make the logic of the whole of this equalisation process clear; it -is strange enough. The equivalence consists in this: instead of an -advantage directly compensatory of his injury (that is, instead of an -equalisation in money, lands, or some kind of chattel), the creditor -is granted by way of repayment and compensation a certain _sensation -of satisfaction_--the satisfaction of being able to vent, without any -trouble, his power on one who is powerless, the delight "_de faire le -mal pour le plaisir de le faire_," the joy in sheer violence: and this -joy will be relished in proportion to the lowness and humbleness of -the creditor in the social scale, and is quite apt to have the effect -of the most delicious dainty, and even seem the foretaste of a higher -social position. Thanks to the punishment of the "ower," the creditor -participates in the rights of the masters. At last he too, for once in -a way, attains the edifying consciousness of being able to despise and -ill-treat a creature--as an "inferior"--or at any rate of _seeing_ him -being despised and ill-treated, in case the actual power of punishment, -the administration of punishment, has already become transferred to the -"authorities." The compensation consequently consists in a claim on -cruelty and a right to draw thereon. - - -6. - -It is then in _this_ sphere of the law of contract that we find the -cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of "guilt," "conscience," -"duty," the "sacredness of duty,"--their commencement, like the -commencement of all great things in the world, is thoroughly and -continuously saturated with blood. And should we not add that this -world has never really lost a certain savour of blood and torture (not -even in old Kant; the categorical imperative reeks of cruelty). It was -in this sphere likewise that there first became formed that sinister -and perhaps now indissoluble association of the ideas of "guilt" and -"suffering." To put the question yet again, why can suffering be a -compensation for "owing"?--Because the _infliction_ of suffering -produces the highest degree of happiness, because the injured party -will get in exchange for his loss (including his vexation at his loss) -an extraordinary counter-pleasure: the _infliction_ of suffering--a -real _feast_, something that, as I have said, was all the more -appreciated the greater the paradox created by the rank and social -status of the creditor. These observations are purely conjectural; for, -apart from the painful nature of the task, it is hard to plumb such -profound depths: the clumsy introduction of the idea of "revenge" as a -connecting-link simply hides and obscures the view instead of rendering -it clearer (revenge itself simply leads back again to the identical -problem--"How can the infliction of suffering be a satisfaction?"). -In my opinion it is repugnant to the delicacy, and still more to the -hypocrisy of tame domestic animals (that is, modern men; that is, -ourselves), to realise with all their energy the extent to which -_cruelty_ constituted the great joy and delight of ancient man, was -an ingredient which seasoned nearly all his pleasures, and conversely -the extent of the naïveté and innocence with which he manifested his -need for cruelty, when he actually made as a matter of principle -"disinterested malice" (or, to use Spinoza's expression, the _sympathia -malevolens_) into a _normal_ characteristic of man--as consequently -something to which the conscience says a hearty yes. The more profound -observer has perhaps already had sufficient opportunity for noticing -this most ancient and radical joy and delight of mankind; in _Beyond -Good and Evil_, Aph. 188 (and even earlier, in _The Dawn of Day_, Aphs. -18, 77, 113), I have cautiously indicated the continually growing -spiritualisation and "deification" of cruelty, which pervades the -whole history of the higher civilisation (and in the larger sense even -constitutes it). At any rate the time is not so long past when it was -impossible to conceive of royal weddings and national festivals on a -grand scale, without executions, tortures, or perhaps an _auto-da-fé_", -or similarly to conceive of an aristocratic household, without a -creature to serve as a butt for the cruel and malicious baiting of the -inmates. (The reader will perhaps remember Don Quixote at the court of -the Duchess: we read nowadays the whole of _Don Quixote_ with a bitter -taste in the mouth, almost with a sensation of torture, a fact which -would appear very strange and very incomprehensible to the author and -his contemporaries--they read it with the best conscience in the world -as the gayest of books; they almost died with laughing at it.) The -sight of suffering does one good, the infliction of suffering does one -more good--this is a hard maxim, but none the less a fundamental maxim, -old, powerful, and "human, all-too-human"; one, moreover, to which -perhaps even the apes as well would subscribe: for it is said that in -inventing bizarre cruelties they are giving abundant proof of their -future humanity, to which, as it were, they are playing the prelude. -Without cruelty, no feast: so teaches the oldest and longest history of -man--and in punishment too is there so much of the festive. - - -7. - -Entertaining, as I do, these thoughts, I am, let me say in parenthesis, -fundamentally opposed to helping our pessimists to new water for the -discordant and groaning mills of their disgust with life; on the -contrary, it should be shown specifically that, at the time when -mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was -brighter than it is nowadays when there are pessimists. The darkening -of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the -growth of man's shame _before man_. The tired pessimistic outlook, -the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted -ennui, all those are not the signs of the _most evil_ age of the human -race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the -swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong, -comes into existence--I mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, -thanks to which the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of -all his instincts. On the road to angelhood (not to use in this context -a harder word) man has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated -tongue, which have made not only the joy and innocence of the animal -repulsive to him, but also life itself:--so that sometimes he stands -with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like Pope Innocent the -Third, makes a black list of his own horrors ("unclean generation, -loathsome nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of the matter -out of which man develops, awful stench, secretion of saliva, urine, -and excrement"). Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out -as the first argument _against_ existence, as its most sinister -query, it is well to remember the times when men judged on converse -principles because they could not dispense with the _infliction_ of -suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first order, a veritable -bait of seduction to life. - -Perhaps in those days (this is to solace the weaklings) pain did not -hurt so much as it does nowadays: any physician who has treated negroes -(granted that these are taken as representative of the prehistoric -man) suffering from severe internal inflammations which would bring -a European, even though he had the soundest constitution, almost to -despair, would be in a position to come to this conclusion. Pain has -_not_ the same effect with negroes. (The curve of human sensibilities -to pain seems indeed to sink in an extraordinary and almost sudden -fashion, as soon as one has passed the upper ten thousand or ten -millions of over-civilised humanity, and I personally have no doubt -that, by comparison with one painful night passed by one single -hysterical chit of a cultured woman, the suffering of all the animals -taken together who have been put to the question of the knife, so as -to give scientific answers, are simply negligible.) We may perhaps -be allowed to admit the possibility of the craving for cruelty not -necessarily having become really extinct: it only requires, in view -of the fact that pain hurts more nowadays, a certain sublimation and -subtilisation, it must especially be translated to the imaginative and -psychic plane, and be adorned with such smug euphemisms, that even the -most fastidious and hypocritical conscience could never grow suspicious -of their real nature ("Tragic pity" is one of these euphemisms: -another is "_les nostalgies de la croix_"). What really raises one's -indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but -the senselessness of suffering; such a _senselessness_, however, -existed neither in Christianity, which interpreted suffering into a -whole mysterious salvation-apparatus, nor in the beliefs of the naive -ancient man, who only knew how to find a meaning in suffering from -the standpoint of the spectator, or the inflictor of the suffering. -In order to get the secret, undiscovered, and unwitnessed suffering -out of the world it was almost compulsory to invent gods and a -hierarchy of intermediate beings, in short, something which wanders -even among secret places, sees even in the dark, and makes a point -of never missing an interesting and painful spectacle. It was with -the help of such inventions that life got to learn the _tour de -force_, which has become part of its stock-in-trade, the _tour de -force_ of self-justification, of the justification of evil; nowadays -this would perhaps require other auxiliary devices (for instance, -life as a riddle, life as a problem of knowledge). "Every evil is -justified in the sight of which a god finds edification," so rang the -logic of primitive sentiment--and, indeed, was it only of primitive? -The gods conceived as friends of spectacles of cruelty--oh how far -does this primeval conception extend even nowadays into our European -civilisation! One would perhaps like in this context to consult Luther -and Calvin. It is at any rate certain that even the Greeks knew no -more piquant seasoning for the happiness of their gods than the joys -of cruelty. What, do you think, was the mood with which Homer makes -his gods look down upon the fates of men? What final meaning have at -bottom the Trojan War and similar tragic horrors? It is impossible to -entertain any doubt on the point: they were intended as festival games -for the gods, and, in so far as the poet is of a more godlike breed -than other men, as festival games also for the poets. It was in just -this spirit and no other, that at a later date the moral philosophers -of Greece conceived the eyes of God as still looking down on the moral -struggle, the heroism, and the self-torture of the virtuous; the -Heracles of duty was on a stage, and was conscious of the fact; virtue -without witnesses was something quite unthinkable for this nation of -actors. Must not that philosophic invention, so audacious and so fatal, -which was then absolutely new to Europe, the invention of "free will," -of the absolute spontaneity of man in good and evil, simply have been -made for the specific purpose of justifying the idea, that the interest -of the gods in humanity and human virtue was _inexhaustible_? - -There would never on the stage of this free-will world be a dearth of -really new, really novel and exciting situations, plots, catastrophes. -A world thought out on completely deterministic lines would be easily -guessed by the gods, and would consequently soon bore them--sufficient -reason for these _friends of the gods_, the philosophers, not to -ascribe to their gods such a deterministic world. The whole of ancient -humanity is full of delicate consideration for the spectator, being as -it is a world of thorough publicity and theatricality, which could not -conceive of happiness without spectacles and festivals.--And, as has -already been said, even in great punishment there is so much which is -festive. - - -8. - -The feeling of "ought," of personal obligation (to take up again -the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the -oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the -relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and ower: here it -was that individual confronted individual, and that individual -_matched himself against_ individual. There has not yet been found -a grade of civilisation so low, as not to manifest some trace of -this relationship. Making prices, assessing values, thinking out -equivalents, exchanging--all this preoccupied the primal thoughts -of man to such an extent that in a certain sense it constituted -_thinking_ itself: it was here that was trained the oldest form of -sagacity, it was here in this sphere that we can perhaps trace the -first commencement of man's pride, of his feeling of superiority over -other animals. Perhaps our word "Mensch" (_manas_) still expresses -just something of _this_ self-pride: man denoted himself as the being -who measures values, who values and measures, as the "assessing" -animal _par excellence_. Sale and purchase, together with their -psychological concomitants, are older than the origins of any form of -social organisation and union: it is rather from the most rudimentary -form of individual right that the budding consciousness of exchange, -commerce, debt, right, obligation, compensation was first transferred -to the rudest and most elementary of the social complexes (in their -relation to similar complexes), the habit of comparing force with -force, together with that of measuring, of calculating. His eye was -now focussed to this perspective; and with that ponderous consistency -characteristic of ancient thought, which, though set in motion with -difficulty, yet proceeds inflexibly along the line on which it has -started, man soon arrived at the great generalisation, "everything has -its price, _all_ can be paid for," the oldest and most naive moral -canon of _justice_, the beginning of all "kindness," of all "equity," -of all "goodwill," of all "objectivity" in the world. Justice in this -initial phase is the goodwill among people of about equal power to come -to terms with each other, to come to an understanding again by means of -a settlement, and with regard to the less powerful, to _compel_ them -to agree among themselves to a settlement. - - -9. - -Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, -is present or again possible at all periods), the community stands to -its members in that important and radical relationship of creditor to -his "owers." Man lives in a community, man enjoys the advantages of -a community (and what advantages! we occasionally underestimate them -nowadays), man lives protected, spared, in peace and trust, secure -from certain injuries and enmities, to which the man outside the -community, the "peaceless" man, is exposed,--a German understands the -original meaning of "Elend" (_êlend_),--secure because he has entered -into pledges and obligations to the community in respect of these very -injuries and enmities. What happens _when this is not the case_? The -community, the defrauded creditor, will get itself paid, as well as it -can, one can reckon on that. In this case the question of the direct -damage done by the offender is quite subsidiary: quite apart from -this the criminal[3] is above all a breaker, a breaker of word and -covenant _to the whole_, as regards all the advantages and amenities -of the communal life in which up to that time he had participated. The -criminal is an "ower" who not only fails to repay the advances and -advantages that have been given to him, but even sets out to attack -his creditor: consequently he is in the future not only, as is fair, -deprived of all these advantages and amenities--he is in addition -reminded of the _importance_ of those advantages. The wrath of the -injured creditor, of the community, puts him back in the wild and -outlawed status from which he was previously protected: the community -repudiates him--and now every kind of enmity can vent itself on him. -Punishment is in this stage of civilisation simply the copy, the mimic, -of the normal treatment of the hated, disdained, and conquered enemy, -who is not only deprived of every right and protection but of every -mercy; so we have the martial law and triumphant festival of the _væ -victis_! in all its mercilessness and cruelty. This shows why war -itself (counting the sacrificial cult of war) has produced all the -forms under which punishment has manifested itself in history. - - -10. - -As it grows more powerful, the community tends to take the offences of -the individual less seriously, because they are now regarded as being -much less revolutionary and dangerous to the corporate existence: the -evil-doer is no more outlawed and put outside the pale, the common -wrath can no longer vent itself upon him with its old licence,--on -the contrary, from this very time it is against this wrath, and -particularly against the wrath of those directly injured, that the -evil-doer is carefully shielded and protected by the community. As, in -fact, the penal law develops, the following characteristics become -more and more clearly marked: compromise with the wrath of those -directly affected by the misdeed; a consequent endeavour to localise -the matter and to prevent a further, or indeed a general spread of -the disturbance; attempts to find equivalents and to settle the whole -matter (compositio); above all, the will, which manifests itself with -increasing definiteness, to treat every offence as in a certain degree -capable of _being paid off_, and consequently, at any rate up to a -certain point, to _isolate_ the offender from his act. As the power and -the self-consciousness of a community increases, so proportionately -does the penal law become mitigated; conversely every weakening and -jeopardising of the community revives the harshest forms of that law. -The creditor has always grown more humane proportionately as he has -grown more rich; finally the amount of injury he can endure without -really suffering becomes the criterion of his wealth. It is possible -to conceive of a society blessed with so great a _consciousness of its -own power_ as to indulge in the most aristocratic luxury of letting -its wrong-doers go _scot-free_.--"What do my parasites matter to me?" -might society say. "Let them live and flourish! I am strong enough for -it."--The justice which began with the maxim, "Everything can be paid -off, everything must be paid off," ends with connivance at the escape -of those who cannot pay to escape--it ends, like every good thing on -earth, by _destroying itself_.--The self-destruction of Justice! we -know the pretty name it calls itself--_Grace!_ it remains, as is -obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law. - - -11. - -A deprecatory word here against the attempts, that have lately been -made, to find the origin of justice on quite another basis--namely, -on that of _resentment_. Let me whisper a word in the ear of the -psychologists, if they would fain study revenge itself at close -quarters: this plant blooms its prettiest at present among Anarchists -and anti-Semites, a hidden flower, as it has ever been, like the -violet, though, forsooth, with another perfume. And as like must -necessarily emanate from like, it will not be a matter for surprise -that it is just in such circles that we see the birth of endeavours (it -is their old birthplace--compare above, First Essay, paragraph 14), -to sanctify _revenge_ under the name of _justice_ (as though Justice -were at bottom merely a _development_ of the consciousness of injury), -and thus with the rehabilitation of revenge to reinstate generally -and collectively all the _reactive_ emotions. I object to this last -point least of all. It even seems _meritorious_ when regarded from the -standpoint of the whole problem of biology (from which standpoint the -value of these emotions has up to the present been underestimated). -And that to which I alone call attention, is the circumstance that -it is the spirit of revenge itself, from which develops this new -nuance of scientific equity (for the benefit of hate, envy, mistrust, -jealousy, suspicion, rancour, revenge). This scientific "equity" -stops immediately and makes way for the accents of deadly enmity and -prejudice, so soon as another group of emotions comes on the scene, -which in my opinion are of a much higher biological value than these -reactions, and consequently have a paramount claim to the valuation -and appreciation of science: I mean the really _active_ emotions, such -as personal and material ambition, and so forth. (E. Dühring, _Value -of Life; Course of Philosophy_, and _passim_.) So much against this -tendency in general: but as for the particular maxim of Dühring's, -that the home of Justice is to be found in the sphere of the reactive -feelings, our love of truth compels us drastically to invert his own -proposition and to oppose to him this other maxim: the _last_ sphere -conquered by the spirit of justice is the sphere of the feeling of -reaction! When it really comes about that the just man remains just -even as regards his injurer (and not merely cold, moderate, reserved, -indifferent: being just is always a _positive_ state); when, in spite -of the strong provocation of personal insult, contempt, and calumny, -the lofty and clear objectivity of the just and judging eye (whose -glance is as profound as it is gentle) is untroubled, why then we have -a piece of perfection, a past master of the world--something, in fact, -which it would not be wise to expect, and which should not at any -rate be too easily _believed_. Speaking generally, there is no doubt -but that even the justest individual only requires a little dose of -hostility, malice, or innuendo to drive the blood into his brain and -the fairness _from_ it. The active man, the attacking, aggressive man -is always a hundred degrees nearer to justice than the man who merely -reacts; he certainly has no need to adopt the tactics, necessary in the -case of the reacting man, of making false and biassed valuations of his -object. It is, in point of fact, for this reason that the aggressive -man has at all times enjoyed the stronger, bolder, more aristocratic, -and also _freer_ outlook, the _better_ conscience. On the other hand, -we already surmise who it really is that has on his conscience the -invention of the "bad conscience,"--the resentful man! Finally, let man -look at himself in history. In what sphere up to the present has the -whole administration of law, the actual need of law, found its earthly -home? Perchance in the sphere of the reacting man? Not for a minute: -rather in that of the active, strong, spontaneous, aggressive man? I -deliberately defy the above-mentioned agitator (who himself makes this -self-confession, "the creed of revenge has run through all my works -and endeavours like the red thread of Justice"), and say, that judged -historically law in the world represents the very war _against_ the -reactive feelings, the very war waged on those feelings by the powers -of activity and aggression, which devote some of their strength to -damming and keeping within bounds this effervescence of hysterical -reactivity, and to forcing it to some compromise. Everywhere where -justice is practised and justice is maintained, it is to be observed -that the stronger power, when confronted with the weaker powers which -are inferior to it (whether they be groups, or individuals), searches -for weapons to put an end to the senseless fury of resentment, while -it carries on its object, partly by taking the victim of resentment -out of the clutches of revenge, partly by substituting for revenge a -campaign of its own against the enemies of peace and order, partly -by finding, suggesting, and occasionally enforcing settlements, -partly by standardising certain equivalents for injuries, to which -equivalents the element of resentment is henceforth finally referred. -The most drastic measure, however, taken and effectuated by the supreme -power, to combat the preponderance of the feelings of spite and -vindictiveness--it takes this measure as soon as it is at all strong -enough to do so--is the foundation of _law_, the imperative declaration -of what in its eyes is to be regarded as just and lawful, and what -unjust and unlawful: and while, after the foundation of law, the -supreme power treats the aggressive and arbitrary acts of individuals, -or of whole groups, as a violation of law, and a revolt against -itself, it distracts the feelings of its subjects from the immediate -injury inflicted by such a violation, and thus eventually attains the -very opposite result to that always desired by revenge, which sees -and recognises nothing but the standpoint of the injured party. From -henceforth the eye becomes trained to a more and more _impersonal_ -valuation of the deed, even the eye of the injured party himself -(though this is in the final stage of all, as has been previously -remarked)--on this principle "right" and "wrong" first manifest -themselves after the foundation of law (and not, as Dühring maintains, -only after the act of violation). To talk of intrinsic right and -intrinsic wrong is absolutely non-sensical; intrinsically, an injury, -an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, -inasmuch as life is _essentially_ (that is, in its cardinal functions) -something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and -annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character. -It is necessary to make an even more serious confession:--viewed from -the most advanced biological standpoint, conditions of legality can be -only _exceptional conditions_, in that they are partial restrictions -of the real life-will, which makes for power, and in that they are -subordinated to the life-will's general end as particular means, -that is, as means to create _larger_ units of strength. A legal -organisation, conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a weapon -in a fight of complexes of power, but as a weapon _against_ fighting, -generally something after the style of Dühring's communistic model -of treating every will as equal with every other will, would be a -principle _hostile to life_, a destroyer and dissolver of man, an -outrage on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a secret cut to -Nothingness.-- - - -12. - -A word more on the origin and end of punishment--two problems which -are or ought to be kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually -lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists employed -up to the present in these cases? Their inveterate naïveté. They find -out some "end" in the punishment, for instance, revenge and deterrence, -and then in all their innocence set this end at the beginning, as the -_causa fiendi_ of the punishment, and--they have done the trick. But -the patching up of a history of the origin of law is the last use to -which the "End in Law"[4] ought to be put. Perhaps there is no more -pregnant principle for any kind of history than the following, which, -difficult though it is to master, _should_ none the less be _mastered_ -in every detail.--The origin of the existence of a thing and its final -utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of -ends, are _toto cœlo_ opposed to each other--everything, anything, -which exists and which prevails anywhere, will always be put to new -purposes by a force superior to itself, will be commandeered afresh, -will be turned and transformed to new uses; all "happening" in the -organic world consists of _overpowering_ and dominating, and again all -overpowering and domination is a new interpretation and adjustment, -which must necessarily obscure or absolutely extinguish the subsisting -"meaning" and "end." The most perfect comprehension of the utility -of any physiological organ (or also of a legal institution, social -custom, political habit, form in art or in religious worship) does not -for a minute imply any simultaneous comprehension of its origin: this -may seem uncomfortable and unpalatable to the older men,--for it has -been the immemorial belief that understanding the final cause or the -utility of a thing, a form, an institution, means also understanding -the reason for its origin: to give an example of this logic, the eye -was made to see, the hand was made to grasp. So even punishment was -conceived as invented with a view to punishing. But all ends and all -utilities are only _signs_ that a Will to Power has mastered a less -powerful force, has impressed thereon out of its own self the meaning -of a function; and the whole history of a "Thing," an organ, a custom, -can on the same principle be regarded as a continuous "sign-chain" -of perpetually new interpretations and adjustments, whose causes, so -far from needing to have even a mutual connection, sometimes follow -and alternate with each other absolutely haphazard. Similarly, the -evolution of a "thing," of a custom, is anything but its _progressus_ -to an end, still less a logical and direct _progressus_ attained -with the minimum expenditure of energy and cost: it is rather the -succession of processes of subjugation, more or less profound, more -or less mutually independent, which operate on the thing itself; it -is, further, the resistance which in each case invariably displayed -this subjugation, the Protean wriggles by way of defence and reaction, -and, further, the results of successful counter-efforts. The form is -fluid, but the meaning is even more so--even inside every individual -organism the case is the same: with every genuine growth of the whole, -the "function" of the individual organs becomes shifted,--in certain -cases a partial perishing of these organs, a diminution of their -numbers (for instance, through annihilation of the connecting members), -can be a symptom of growing strength and perfection. What I mean is -this: even partial _loss of utility_, decay, and degeneration, loss of -function and purpose, in a word, death, appertain to the conditions -of the genuine _progressus_; which always appears in the shape of -a will and way to _greater_ power, and is always realised at the -expense of innumerable smaller powers. The magnitude of a "progress" -is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires: humanity -as a mass sacrificed to the prosperity of the one _stronger_ species -of Man--that _would be_ a progress. I emphasise all the more this -cardinal characteristic of the historic method, for the reason that in -its essence it runs counter to predominant instincts and prevailing -taste, which much prefer to put up with absolute casualness, even with -the mechanical senselessness of all phenomena, than with the theory -of a power-will, in exhaustive play throughout all phenomena. The -democratic idiosyncrasy against everything which rules and wishes to -rule, the modern _misarchism_ (to coin a bad word for a bad thing), -has gradually but so thoroughly transformed itself into the guise of -intellectualism, the most abstract intellectualism, that even nowadays -it penetrates and _has the right_ to penetrate step by step into the -most exact and apparently the most objective sciences: this tendency -has, in fact, in my view already dominated the whole of physiology -and biology, and to their detriment, as is obvious, in so far as -it has spirited away a radical idea, the idea of true _activity_. -The tyranny of this idiosyncrasy, however, results in the theory -of "adaptation" being pushed forward into the van of the argument, -exploited; adaptation--that means to say, a second-class activity, a -mere capacity for "reacting"; in fact, life itself has been defined -(by Herbert Spencer) as an increasingly effective internal adaptation -to external circumstances. This definition, however, fails to realise -the real essence of life, its will to power. It fails to appreciate the -paramount superiority enjoyed by those plastic forces of spontaneity, -aggression, and encroachment with their new interpretations and -tendencies, to the operation of which adaptation is only a natural -corollary: consequently the sovereign office of the highest -functionaries in the organism itself (among which the life-will appears -as an active and formative principle) is repudiated. One remembers -Huxley's reproach to Spencer of his "administrative Nihilism": but it -is a case of something much _more_ than "administration." - - -13. - -To return to our subject, namely _punishment_, we must make -consequently a double distinction: first, the relatively permanent -_element_, the custom, the act, the "drama," a certain rigid sequence -of methods of procedure; on the other hand, the fluid element, the -meaning, the end, the expectation which is attached to the operation of -such procedure. At this point we immediately assume, _per analogiam_ -(in accordance with the theory of the historic method, which we have -elaborated above), that the procedure itself is something older and -earlier than its utilisation in punishment, that this utilisation was -_introduced_ and interpreted into the procedure (which had existed -for a long time, but whose employment had another meaning), in short, -that the case is _different_ from that hitherto supposed by our _naïf_ -genealogists of morals and of law, who thought that the procedure was -_invented_ for the purpose of punishment, in the same way that the hand -had been previously thought to have been invented for the purpose of -grasping. With regard to the other element in _punishment_, its fluid -element, its meaning, the idea of punishment in a very late stage of -civilisation (for instance, contemporary Europe) is not content with -manifesting merely one meaning, but manifests a whole synthesis "of -meanings." The past general history of punishment, the history of its -employment for the most diverse ends, crystallises eventually into -a kind of unity, which is difficult to analyse into its parts, and -which, it is necessary to emphasise, absolutely defies definition. -(It is nowadays impossible to say definitely _the precise reason_ -for punishment: all ideas, in which a whole process is promiscuously -comprehended, elude definition; it is only that which has no history, -which can be defined.) At an earlier stage, on the contrary, that -synthesis of meanings appears much less rigid and much more elastic; we -can realise how in each individual case the elements of the synthesis -change their value and their position, so that now one element and -now another stands out and predominates over the others, nay, in -certain cases one element (perhaps the end of deterrence) seems to -eliminate all the rest. At any rate, so as to give some idea of the -uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature of the meaning of -punishment and of the manner in which one identical procedure can -be employed and adapted for the most diametrically opposed objects, -I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to -me, a scheme itself based on comparatively small and accidental -material.--Punishment, as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable -of further injury.--Punishment, as compensation for the injury -sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including -the form of sentimental compensation).--Punishment, as an isolation -of that which disturbs the equilibrium, so as to prevent the further -spreading of the disturbance.--Punishment as a means of inspiring -fear of those who determine and execute the punishment.--Punishment -as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has -up to that time enjoyed (for example, when he is utilised as a -slave in the mines).--Punishment, as the elimination of an element -of decay (sometimes of a whole branch, as according to the Chinese -laws, consequently as a means to the purification of the race, or -the preservation of a social type).---Punishment as a festival, as -the violent oppression and humiliation of an enemy that has at last -been subdued.--Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers -the punishment--the so-called "correction," or for the witnesses of -its administration. Punishment, as the payment of a fee stipulated -for by the power which protects the evil-doer from the excesses of -revenge.--Punishment, as a compromise with the natural phenomenon -of revenge, in so far as revenge is still maintained and claimed -as a privilege by the stronger races.--Punishment as a declaration -and measure of war against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, -of authority, who is fought by society with the weapons which war -provides, as a spirit dangerous to the community, as a breaker of the -contract on which the community is based, as a rebel, a traitor, and a -breaker of the peace. - - -14. - -This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment -is overloaded with utilities of all kinds. This makes it all the -more permissible to eliminate one supposed utility, which passes, at -any rate in the popular mind, for its most essential utility, and -which is just what even now provides the strongest support for that -faith in punishment which is nowadays for many reasons tottering. -Punishment is supposed to have the value of exciting in the guilty -the consciousness of guilt; in punishment is sought the proper -instrumentum of that psychic reaction which becomes known as a "bad -conscience," "remorse." But this theory is even, from the point of -view of the present, a violation of reality and psychology: and how -much more so is the case when we have to deal with the longest period -of man's history, his primitive history! Genuine remorse is certainly -extremely rare among wrong-doers and the victims of punishment; prisons -and houses of correction are not _the_ soil on which this worm of -remorse pullulates for choice--this is the unanimous opinion of all -conscientious observers, who in many cases arrive at such a judgment -with enough reluctance and against their own personal wishes. Speaking -generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it -sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of -resistance. When it happens that it breaks the man's energy and brings -about a piteous prostration and abjectness, such a result is certainly -even less salutary than the average effect of punishment, which is -characterised by a harsh and sinister doggedness. The thought of those -_prehistoric_ millennia brings us to the unhesitating conclusion, -that it was simply through punishment that the evolution of the -consciousness of guilt was most forcibly retarded--at any rate in the -victims of the punishing power. In particular, let us not underestimate -the extent to which, by the very sight of the judicial and executive -procedure, the wrong-doer is himself prevented from feeling that his -deed, the character of his act, is _intrinsically_ reprehensible: for -he sees clearly the same kind of acts practised in the service of -justice, and then called good, and practised with a good conscience; -acts such as espionage, trickery, bribery, trapping, the whole -intriguing and insidious art of the policeman and the informer--the -whole system, in fact, manifested in the different kinds of punishment -(a system not excused by passion, but based on principle), of robbing, -oppressing, insulting, imprisoning, racking, murdering.--All this -he sees treated by his judges, not as acts meriting censure and -condemnation _in themselves_, but only in a particular context and -application. It was not on this soil that grew the "bad conscience," -that most sinister and interesting plant of our earthly vegetation-- -in point of fact, throughout a most lengthy period, no suggestion of -having to do with a "guilty man" manifested itself in the consciousness -of the man who judged and punished. One had merely to deal with an -author of an injury, an irresponsible piece of fate. And the man -himself, on whom the punishment subsequently fell like a piece of fate, -was occasioned no more of an "inner pain" than would be occasioned by -the sudden approach of some uncalculated event, some terrible natural -catastrophe, a rushing, crushing avalanche against which there is no -resistance. - - -15. - -This truth came insidiously enough to the consciousness of Spinoza (to -the disgust of his commentators, who (like Kuno Fischer, for instance) -give themselves no end of _trouble_ to misunderstand him on this -point), when one afternoon (as he sat raking up who knows what memory) -he indulged in the question of what was really left for him personally -of the celebrated _morsus conscientiæ_--Spinoza, who had relegated -"good and evil" to the sphere of human imagination, and indignantly -defended the honour of his "free" God against those blasphemers who -affirmed that God did everything _sub ratione boni_ ("but this was -tantamount to subordinating God to fate, and would really be the -greatest of all absurdities"). For Spinoza the world had returned -again to that innocence in which it lay before the discovery of the -bad conscience: what, then, had happened to the _morsus conscientiæ_? -"The antithesis of _gaudium_," said he at last to himself,--"A sadness -accompanied by the recollection of a past event which has turned out -contrary to all expectation" (_Eth_. III., Propos. XVIII. Schol. -i. ii.). Evil-doers have throughout thousands of years felt when -overtaken by punishment _exactly like Spinoza_, on the subject of -their "offence": "here is something which went wrong contrary to my -anticipation," not "I ought not to have done this."--They submitted -themselves to punishment, just as one submits one's self to a disease, -to a misfortune, or to death, with that stubborn and resigned fatalism -which gives the Russians, for instance, even nowadays, the advantage -over us Westerners, in the handling of life. If at that period there -was a critique of action, the criterion was prudence: the real _effect_ -of punishment is unquestionably chiefly to be found in a sharpening -of the sense of prudence, in a lengthening of the memory, in a will -to adopt more of a policy of caution, suspicion, and secrecy; in the -recognition that there are many things which are unquestionably beyond -one's capacity; in a kind of improvement in self-criticism. The broad -effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the -increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery -of the desires: so it is that punishment _tames_ man, but does not make -him "better"--it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert -the contrary ("Injury makes a man cunning," says a popular proverb: so -far as it makes him cunning, it makes him also bad. Fortunately, it -often enough makes him stupid). - - -16. - -At this juncture I cannot avoid trying to give a tentative and -provisional expression to my own hypothesis concerning the origin of -the bad conscience: it is difficult to make it fully appreciated, -and it requires continuous meditation, attention, and digestion. I -regard the bad conscience as the serious illness which man was bound -to contract under the stress of the most radical change which he has -ever experienced--that change, when he found himself finally imprisoned -within the pale of society and of peace. - -Just like the plight of the water-animals, when they were compelled -either to become land-animals or to perish, so was the plight of these -half-animals, perfectly adapted as they were to the savage life of war, -prowling, and adventure--suddenly all their instincts were rendered -worthless and "switched off." Henceforward they had to walk on their -feet--"carry themselves," whereas heretofore they had been carried by -the water: a terrible heaviness oppressed them. They found themselves -clumsy in obeying the simplest directions, confronted with this new -and unknown world they had no longer their old guides--the regulative -instincts that had led them unconsciously to safety--they were reduced, -were those unhappy creatures, to thinking, inferring, calculating, -putting together causes and results, reduced to that poorest and most -erratic organ of theirs, their "consciousness." I do not believe -there was ever in the world such a feeling of misery, such a leaden -discomfort--further, those old instincts had not immediately ceased -their demands! Only it was difficult and rarely possible to gratify -them: speaking broadly, they were compelled to satisfy themselves by -new and, as it were, hole-and-corner methods. All instincts which -do not find a vent without, _turn inwards_--this is what I mean by -the growing "internalisation" of man: consequently we have the first -growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. The whole -inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between -two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionately, and -obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man's external outlet -became _obstructed_. These terrible bulwarks, with which the social -organisation protected itself against the old instincts of freedom -(punishments belong pre-eminently to these bulwarks), brought it -about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man became -turned backwards against man himself. Enmity, cruelty, the delight -in persecution, in surprises, change, destruction--the turning all -these instincts against their own possessors: this is the origin of -the "bad conscience." It was man, who, lacking external enemies and -obstacles, and imprisoned as he was in the oppressive narrowness and -monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted, -gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; it was this animal in the -hands of the tamer, which beat itself against the bars of its cage; it -was this being who, pining and yearning for that desert home of which -it had been deprived, was compelled to create out of its own self, an -adventure, a torture-chamber, a hazardous and perilous desert--it was -this fool, this homesick and desperate prisoner--who invented the "bad -conscience." But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister -illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of -man from the disease called man, as the result of a violent breaking -from his animal past, the result, as it were, of a spasmodic plunge -into a new environment and new conditions of existence, the result of -a declaration of war against the old instincts, which up to that time -had been the staple of his power, his joy, his formidableness. Let -us immediately add that this fact of an animal ego turning against -itself, taking part against itself, produced in the world so novel, -profound, unheard-of, problematic, inconsistent, and _pregnant_ a -phenomenon, that the aspect of the world was radically altered thereby. -In sooth, only divine spectators could have appreciated the drama -that then began, and whose end baffles conjecture as yet--a drama too -subtle, too wonderful, too paradoxical to warrant its undergoing a -non-sensical and unheeded performance on some random grotesque planet! -Henceforth man is to be counted as one of the most unexpected and -sensational lucky shots in the game of the "big baby" of Heracleitus, -whether he be called Zeus or Chance--he awakens on his behalf the -interest, excitement, hope, almost the confidence, of his being the -harbinger and forerunner of something, of man being no end, but only a -stage, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise. - - -17. - -It is primarily involved in this hypothesis of the origin of the bad -conscience, that that alteration was no gradual and no voluntary -alteration, and that it did not manifest itself as an organic -adaptation to new conditions, but as a break, a jump, a necessity, an -inevitable fate, against which there was no resistance and never a -spark of resentment. And secondarily, that the fitting of a hitherto -unchecked and amorphous population into a fixed form, starting as -it had done in an act of violence, could only be accomplished by -acts of violence and nothing else--that the oldest "State" appeared -consequently as a ghastly tyranny, a grinding ruthless piece of -machinery, which went on working, till this raw material of a -semi-animal populace was not only thoroughly kneaded and elastic, but -also _moulded_. I used the word "State": my meaning is self-evident, -namely, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and -masters, which with all its warlike organisation and all its organising -power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers -possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. -Such is the origin of the "State." That fantastic theory that makes it -begin with a contract is, I think, disposed of. He who can command, -he who is a master by "nature," he who comes on the scene forceful -in deed and gesture--what has he to do with contracts? Such beings -defy calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason, notice, -excuse, they are there like the lightning is there, too terrible, too -sudden, too convincing, too "different," to be personally even hated. -Their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they -are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are:--their -appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of sovereignty which is -live, in which the functions are partitioned and apportioned, in which -above all no part is received or finds a place, until pregnant with -a "meaning" in regard to the whole. They are ignorant of the meaning -of guilt, responsibility, consideration, are these born organisers; -in them predominates that terrible artist-egoism, that gleams like -brass, and that knows itself justified to all eternity, in its work, -even as a mother in her child. It is not in _them_ that there grew -the bad conscience, that is elementary--but it would not have grown -_without_ them, repulsive growth as it was, it would be missing, had -not a tremendous quantity of freedom been expelled from the world by -the stress of their hammer-strokes, their artist violence, or been at -any rate made invisible and, as it were, _latent_. This _instinct of -freedom_ forced into being latent--it is already clear--this instinct -of freedom forced back, trodden back, imprisoned within itself, and -finally only able to find vent and relief in itself; this, only this, -is the beginning of the "bad conscience." - - -18. - -Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial -painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at -work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and organisers, -and builds states, which here, internally, on a smaller and pettier -scale and with a retrogressive tendency, makes itself a bad science in -the "labyrinth of the breast," to use Goethe's phrase, and which builds -negative ideals; it is, I repeat, that identical _instinct of freedom_ -(to use my own language, the will to power): only the material, on -which this force with all its constructive and tyrannous nature is -let loose, is here man himself, his whole old animal self--and not as -in the case of that more grandiose and sensational phenomenon, the -_other_ man, _other_ men. This secret self-tyranny, this cruelty of -the artist, this delight in giving a form to one's self as a piece of -difficult, refractory, and suffering material, in burning in a will, a -critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a negation; this sinister and -ghastly labour of love on the part of a soul, whose will is cloven -in two within itself, which makes itself suffer from delight in the -infliction of suffering; this wholly _active_ bad conscience has -finally (as one already anticipates)--true fountainhead as it is of -idealism and imagination--produced an abundance of novel and amazing -beauty and affirmation, and perhaps has really been the first to -give birth to beauty at all. What would beauty be, forsooth, if its -contradiction had not first been presented to consciousness, if the -ugly had not first said to itself, "I am ugly"? At any rate, after this -hint the problem of how far idealism and beauty can be traced in such -opposite ideas as "_selflessness_," _self-denial_, _self-sacrifice_, -becomes less problematical; and indubitably in future we shall -certainly know the real and original character of the _delight_ -experienced by the self-less, the self-denying, the self-sacrificing: -this delight is a phase of cruelty.--So much provisionally for the -origin of "altruism" as a _moral_ value, and the marking out the ground -from which this value has grown: it is only the bad conscience, only -the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the -existence of altruism as a _value_. - - -19. - -Undoubtedly the bad conscience is an illness, but an illness like -pregnancy is an illness. If we search out the conditions under which -this illness reaches its most terrible and sublime zenith, we shall see -what really first brought about its entry into the world. But to do -this we must take a long breath, and we must first of all go back once -again to an earlier point of view. The relation at civil law of the -ower to his creditor (which has already been discussed in detail), has -been interpreted once again (and indeed in a manner which historically -is exceedingly remarkable and suspicious) into a relationship, which -is perhaps more incomprehensible to us moderns than to any other era; -that is, into the relationship of the _existing_ generation to its -_ancestors_. Within the original tribal association--we are talking of -primitive times--each living generation recognises a legal obligation -towards the earlier generation, and particularly towards the earliest, -which founded the family (and this is something much more than a mere -sentimental obligation, the existence of which, during the longest -period of man's history, is by no means indisputable). There prevails -in them the conviction that it is only thanks to sacrifices and efforts -of their ancestors, that the race _persists_ at all--and that this -has to be _paid back_ to them by sacrifices and services. Thus is -recognised the _owing_ of a debt, which accumulates continually by -reason of these ancestors never ceasing in their subsequent life as -potent spirits to secure by their power new privileges and advantages -to the race. Gratis, perchance? But there is no gratis for that raw -and "mean-souled" age. What return can be made?--Sacrifice (at first, -nourishment, in its crudest sense), festivals, temples, tributes of -veneration, above all, obedience--since all customs are, _quâ_ works of -the ancestors, equally their precepts and commands--are the ancestors -ever given enough? This suspicion remains and grows: from time to time -it extorts a great wholesale ransom, something monstrous in the way of -repayment of the creditor (the notorious sacrifice of the first-born, -for example, blood, human blood in any case). The _fear_ of ancestors -and their power, the consciousness of owing debts to them, necessarily -increases, according to this kind of logic, in the exact proportion -that the race itself increases, that the race itself becomes more -victorious, more independent, more honoured, more feared. This, and not -the contrary, is the fact. Each step towards race decay, all disastrous -events, all symptoms of degeneration, of approaching disintegration, -always _diminish_ the fear of the founders' spirit, and whittle away -the idea of his sagacity, providence, and potent presence. Conceive -this crude kind of logic carried to its climax: it follows that the -ancestors of the _most powerful_ races must, through the growing fear -that they exercise on the imaginations, grow themselves into monstrous -dimensions, and become relegated to the gloom of a divine mystery that -transcends imagination--the ancestor becomes at last necessarily -transfigured into a _god_. Perhaps this is the very origin of the gods, -that is, an origin from _fear_! And those who feel bound to add, "but -from piety also," will have difficulty in maintaining this theory, -with regard to the primeval and longest period of the human race. And -of course this is even more the case as regards the _middle_ period, -the formative period of the aristocratic races--the aristocratic -races which have given back with interest to their founders, the -ancestors (heroes, gods), all those qualities which in the meanwhile -have appeared in themselves, that is, the aristocratic qualities. We -will later on glance again at the ennobling and promotion of the gods -(which of course is totally distinct from their "sanctification"): let -us now provisionally follow to its end the course of the whole of this -development of the consciousness of "owing." - - -20. - -According to the teaching of history, the consciousness of owing -debts to the deity by no means came to an end with the decay of the -clan organisation of society; just as mankind has inherited the -ideas of "good" and "bad" from the race-nobility (together with its -fundamental tendency towards establishing social distinctions), so -with the heritage of the racial and tribal gods it has also inherited -the incubus of debts as yet unpaid and the desire to discharge them. -The transition is effected by those large populations of slaves and -bondsmen, who, whether through compulsion or through submission and -"_mimicry,_" have accommodated themselves to the religion of their -masters; through this channel these inherited tendencies inundate -the world. The feeling of owing a debt to the deity has grown -continuously for several centuries, always in the same proportion in -which the idea of God and the consciousness of God have grown and -become exalted among mankind. (The whole history of ethnic fights, -victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, everything, in fact, which -precedes the eventual classing of all the social elements in each great -race-synthesis, are mirrored in the hotch-potch genealogy of their -gods, in the legends of their fights, victories, and reconciliations. -Progress towards universal empires invariably means progress towards -universal deities; despotism, with its subjugation of the independent -nobility, always paves the way for some system or other of monotheism.) -The appearance of the Christian god, as the record god up to this time, -has for that very reason brought equally into the world the record -amount of guilt consciousness. Granted that we have gradually started -on the _reverse_ movement, there is no little probability in the -deduction, based on the continuous decay in the belief in the Christian -god, to the effect that there also already exists a considerable -decay in the human consciousness of owing (ought); in fact, we cannot -shut our eyes to the prospect of the complete and eventual triumph of -atheism freeing mankind from all this feeling of obligation to their -origin, their _causa prima_. Atheism and a kind of second innocence -complement and supplement each other. - - -21. - -So much for my rough and preliminary sketch of the interrelation of -the ideas "ought" (owe) and "duty" with the postulates of religion. I -have intentionally shelved up to the present the actual moralisation -of these ideas (their being pushed back into the conscience, or more -precisely the interweaving of the _bad_ conscience with the idea of -God), and at the end of the last paragraph used language to the effect -that this moralisation did not exist, and that consequently these ideas -had necessarily come to an end, by reason of what had happened to their -hypothesis, the credence in our "creditor," in God. The actual facts -differ terribly from this theory. It is with the moralisation of the -ideas "ought" and "duty," and with their being pushed back into the -_bad_ conscience, that comes the first actual attempt to _reverse_ the -direction of the development we have just described, or at any rate -to arrest its evolution; it is just at this juncture that the very -hope of an eventual redemption _has to_ put itself once for all into -the prison of pessimism, it is at this juncture that the eye _has to_ -recoil and rebound in despair from off an adamantine impossibility, -it is at this juncture that the ideas "guilt" and "duty" have to turn -backwards--turn backwards against _whom_? There is no doubt about -it; primarily against the "ower," in whom the bad conscience now -establishes itself, eats, extends, and grows like a polypus throughout -its length and breadth, all with such virulence, that at last, with -the impossibility of paying the debt, there becomes conceived the -idea of the impossibility of paying the penalty, the thought of its -inexpiability (the idea of "eternal punishment")--finally, too, it -turns against the "creditor," whether found in the _causa prima_ of -man, the origin of the human race, its sire, who henceforth becomes -burdened with a curse ("Adam," "original sin," "determination of the -will"), or in Nature from whose womb man springs, and on whom the -responsibility for the principle of evil is now cast ("Diabolisation of -Nature"), or in existence generally, on this logic an absolute _white -elephant_, with which mankind is landed (the Nihilistic flight from -life, the demand for Nothingness, or for the opposite of existence, for -some other existence, Buddhism and the like)--till suddenly we stand -before that paradoxical and awful expedient, through which a tortured -humanity has found a temporary alleviation, that stroke of genius -called Christianity:--God personally immolating himself for the debt of -man, God paying himself personally out of a pound of his own flesh, God -as the one being who can deliver man from what man had become unable to -deliver himself--the creditor playing scapegoat for his debtor, from -_love_ (can you believe it?), from love of his debtor!... - - -22. - -The reader will already have conjectured what took place on the stage -and behind the scenes of this drama. That will for self-torture, that -inverted cruelty of the animal man, who, turned subjective and scared -into introspection (encaged as he was in "the State," as part of his -taming process), invented the bad conscience so as to hurt himself, -after the _natural_ outlet for this will to hurt, became blocked--in -other words, this man of the bad conscience exploited the religious -hypothesis so as to carry his martyrdom to the ghastliest pitch of -agonised intensity. Owing something to _God_: this thought becomes his -instrument of torture. He apprehends in God the most extreme antitheses -that he can find to his own characteristic and ineradicable animal -instincts, he himself gives a new interpretation to these animal -instincts as being against what he "owes" to God (as enmity, rebellion, -and revolt against the "Lord," the "Father," the "Sire," the "Beginning -of the world"), he places himself between the horns of the dilemma, -"God" and "Devil." Every negation which he is inclined to utter to -himself, to the nature, naturalness, and reality of his being, he -whips into an ejaculation of "yes," uttering it as something existing, -living, efficient, as being God, as the holiness of God, the judgment -of God, as the hangmanship of God, as transcendence, as eternity, as -unending torment, as hell, as infinity of punishment and guilt. This is -a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty -which is absolutely unparalleled:--man's _will_ to find himself guilty -and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, his _will_ to think of -himself as punished, without the punishment ever being able to balance -the guilt, his _will_ to infect and to poison the fundamental basis -of the universe with the problem of punishment and guilt, in order to -cut off once and for all any escape out of this labyrinth of "fixed -ideas," his will for rearing an ideal--that of the "holy God"--face to -face with which he can have tangible proof of his own un-worthiness. -Alas for this mad melancholy beast man! What phantasies invade it, -what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and _mental -bestiality_ break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its -being the beast of action. All this is excessively interesting, but -at the same time tainted with a black, gloomy, enervating melancholy, -so that a forcible veto must be invoked against looking too long into -these abysses. Here is _disease_, undubitably, the most ghastly disease -that has as yet played havoc among men: and he who can still hear (but -man turns now deaf ears to such sounds), how in this night of torment -and nonsense there has rung out the cry of _love_, the cry of the most -passionate ecstasy, of redemption in _love_, he turns away gripped by -an invincible horror--in man there is so much that is ghastly--too long -has the world been a mad-house. - - -23. - -Let this suffice once for all concerning the origin of the "holy God." -The fact that _in itself_ the conception of gods is not bound to -lead necessarily to this degradation of the imagination (a temporary -representation of whose vagaries we felt bound give), the fact that -there exist nobler methods of utilising the invention of gods than in -this self-crucifixion and self-degradation of man, in which the last -two thousand years of Europe have been past masters--these facts can -fortunately be still perceived from every glance that we cast at the -Grecian gods, these mirrors of noble and grandiose men, in which the -_animal_ in man felt itself deified, and did _not_ devour itself in -subjective frenzy. These Greeks long utilised their gods as simple -buffers against the "bad conscience"--so that they could continue -to enjoy their freedom of soul: this, of course, is diametrically -opposed to Christianity's theory of its god. They went _very far_ on -this principle, did these splendid and lion-hearted children; and -there is no lesser authority than that of the Homeric Zeus for making -them realise occasionally that they are taking life too casually. -"Wonderful," says he on one occasion--it has to do with the case of -Ægistheus, a _very_ bad case indeed-- - - "Wonderful how they grumble, the mortals against the immortals, - _Only from us_, they presume, _comes evil_, but in their folly, - Fashion they, spite of fate, the doom of their own disaster." - -Yet the reader will note and observe that this Olympian spectator and -judge is far from being angry with them and thinking evil of them on -this score. "How _foolish_ they are," so thinks he of the misdeeds -of mortals--and "folly," "imprudence," "a little brain disturbance," -and nothing more, are what the Greeks, even of the strongest, bravest -period, have admitted to be the ground of much that is evil and -fatal.--Folly, _not_ sin, do you understand?... But even this brain -disturbance was a problem--"Come, how is it even possible? How could it -have really got in brains like ours, the brains of men of aristocratic -ancestry, of men of fortune, of men of good natural endowments, of -men of the best society, of men of nobility and virtue?" This was the -question that for century on century the aristocratic Greek put to -himself when confronted with every (to him incomprehensible) outrage -and sacrilege with which one of his peers had polluted himself. "It -must be that a god had infatuated him," he would say at last, nodding -his head.--This solution is _typical_ of the Greeks, ... accordingly -the gods in those times subserved the functions of justifying man to a -certain extent even in evil--in those days they took upon themselves -not the punishment, but, what is more noble, the guilt. - - -24. - -I conclude with three queries, as you will see. "Is an ideal actually -set up here, or is one pulled down?" I am perhaps asked.... But have -ye sufficiently asked yourselves how dear a payment has the setting up -of every ideal in the world exacted? To achieve that consummation how -much truth must always be traduced and misunderstood, how many lies -must be sanctified, how much conscience has got to be disturbed, how -many pounds of "God" have got to be sacrificed every time? To enable -a sanctuary to be set up _a sanctuary has got to be destroyed_: that -is a law--show me an instance where it has not been fulfilled!... -We modern men, we inherit the immemorial tradition of vivisecting -the conscience, and practising cruelty to our animal selves. That is -the sphere of our most protracted training, perhaps of our artistic -prowess, at any rate of our dilettantism and our perverted taste. Man -has for too long regarded his natural proclivities with an "evil eye," -so that eventually they have become in his system affiliated to a -bad conscience. A converse endeavour would be intrinsically feasible ---but who is strong enough to attempt it?--namely, to affiliate to -the "bad conscience" all those _unnatural_ proclivities, all those -transcendental aspirations, contrary to sense, instinct, nature, and -animalism--in short, all past and present ideals, which are all ideals -opposed to life, and traducing the world. To whom is one to turn -nowadays with _such_ hopes and pretensions?--It is just the _good_ -men that we should thus bring about our ears; and in addition, as -stands to reason, the indolent, the hedgers, the vain, the hysterical, -the tired.... What is more offensive or more thoroughly calculated -to alienate, than giving any hint of the exalted severity with which -we treat ourselves? And again how conciliatory, how full of love -does all the world show itself towards us so soon as we do as all -the world docs, and "let ourselves go" like all the world. For such -a consummation we need spirits of _different_ calibre than seems -really feasible in this age; spirits rendered potent through wars and -victories, to whom conquest, adventure, danger, even pain, have become -a need; for such a consummation we need habituation to sharp, rare air, -to winter wanderings, to literal and metaphorical ice and mountains; we -even need a kind of sublime malice, a supreme and most self-conscious -insolence of knowledge, which is the appanage of great health; we need -(to summarise the awful truth) just this _great health_! - -Is this even feasible to-day?... But some day, in a stronger age -than this rotting and introspective present, must he in sooth come -to us, even the _redeemer_ of great love and scorn, the creative -spirit, rebounding by the impetus of his own force back again away -from every transcendental plane and dimension, he whose solitude -is misunderstanded (sic) of the people, as though it were a flight -_from_ reality;--while actually it is only his diving, burrowing, and -penetrating _into_ reality, so that when he comes again to the light -he can at once bring about by these means the _redemption_ of this -reality; its redemption from the curse which the old ideal has laid -upon it. This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from -the old ideal, as he will from that ideal's necessary corollary of -great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon -and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives -back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and -Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness--_he must one -day come_. - - -25. - -But what am I talking of? Enough! Enough? At this juncture I have -only one proper course, silence: otherwise tresspass on a domain open -alone to one who is younger than I, one stronger, more "_future_" than -I--open alone to _Zarathustra, Zarathustra the godless._ - - -[1] The German is: "_Sittlichkeit der Sitte_." H. B. S. - -[2] The German world "_schuld_" means both debt and guilt. Cp. the -English "owe" and "ought," by which I occasionally render the double -meaning.--H. B. S. - -[3] German: "_Verbrecher_."--H.B.S. - -[4] An allusion to _Der Zweck im Recht_, by the great German jurist, -Professor Ihering. - - - - -THIRD ESSAY. - - -WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? - - -"Careless, mocking, forceful--so does wisdom wish us: she is a woman, -and never loves any one but a warrior." Thus Spake Zarathustra. - - -1. - -What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too -much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of "flair" and instinct for -the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, -at best an _additional_ seductive fascination, a little _morbidezza_ -on a fine piece of flesh, the angelhood of a fat, pretty animal; in -physiological failures and whiners (in the _majority_ of mortals), -an attempt to pose as "too good" for this world, a holy form of -debauchery, their chief weapon in the battle with lingering pain and -ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of -power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally -a pretext for hibernation, their _novissima gloriæ cupido_, their -peace in nothingness ("God"), their form of madness. - -But in the very fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so much to -man, lies expressed the fundamental feature of man's will, his -_horror vacui: he needs a goal_--and he will sooner will nothingness -than not will at all.--Am I not understood?--Have I not been -understood?--"Certainly not, sir?"--Well, let us begin at the beginning. - - -2. - -What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? Or, to take an individual -case in regard to which I have often been consulted, what is the -meaning, for example, of an artist like Richard Wagner paying homage -to chastity in his old age? He had always done so, of course, in a -certain sense, but it was not till quite the end, that he did so in -an ascetic sense. What is the meaning of this "change of attitude," -this radical revolution in his attitude--for that was what it was? -Wagner veered thereby straight round into his own opposite. What is -the meaning of an artist veering round into his own opposite? At -this point (granted that we do not mind stopping a little over this -question), we immediately call to mind the best, strongest, gayest, -and boldest period, that there perhaps ever was in Wagner's life: that -was the period, when he was genuinely and deeply occupied with the -idea of "Luther's Wedding." Who knows what chance is responsible for -our now having the _Meistersingers_ instead of this wedding music? -And how much in the latter is perhaps just an echo of the former? But -there is no doubt but that the theme would have dealt with the praise -of chastity. And certainly it would also have dealt with the praise -of sensuality, and even so, it would seem quite in order, and even -so, it would have been equally Wagnerian. For there is no necessary -antithesis between chastity and sensuality: every good marriage, every -authentic heart-felt love transcends this antithesis. Wagner would, it -seems to me, have done well to have brought this _pleasing_ reality -home once again to his Germans, by means of a bold and graceful "Luther -Comedy," for there were and are among the Germans many revilers of -sensuality; and perhaps Luther's greatest merit lies just in the fact -of his having had the courage of his _sensuality_ (it used to be -called, prettily enough, "evangelistic freedom "). But even in those -cases where that antithesis between chastity and sensuality does exist, -there has fortunately been for some time no necessity for it to be in -any way a tragic antithesis. This should, at any rate, be the case with -all beings who are sound in mind and body, who are far from reckoning -their delicate balance between "animal" and "angel," as being on the -face of it one of the principles opposed to existence--the most subtle -and brilliant spirits, such as Goethe, such as Hafiz,> have even seen -in this a _further_ charm of life. Such "conflicts" actually allure -one to life. On the other hand, it is only too clear that when once -these ruined swine are reduced to worshipping chastity--and there -are such swine--they only see and worship in it the antithesis to -themselves, the antithesis to ruined swine. Oh what a tragic grunting -and eagerness! You can just think of it--they worship that painful -and superfluous contrast, which Richard Wagner in his latter days -undoubtedly wished to set to music, and to place on the stage! "_For -what purpose, forsooth?_" as we may reasonably ask. What did the swine -matter to him; what do they matter to us? - - -3. - -At this point it is impossible to beg the further question of what he -really had to do with that manly (ah, so unmanly) country bumpkin, -that poor devil and natural, Parsifal, whom he eventually made a -Catholic by such fraudulent devices. What? Was this Parsifal really -meant _seriously_? One might be tempted to suppose the contrary, even -to wish it--that the Wagnerian Parsifal was meant joyously, like a -concluding play of a trilogy or satyric drama, in which Wagner the -tragedian wished to take farewell of us, of himself, above all of -tragedy, and to do so in a manner that should be quite fitting and -worthy, that is, with an excess of the most extreme and flippant parody -of the tragic itself, of the ghastly earthly seriousness and earthly -woe of old--a parody of that _most crude phase_ in the unnaturalness -of the ascetic ideal, that had at length been overcome. That, as I -have said, would have been quite worthy of a great tragedian; who like -every artist first attains the supreme pinnacle of his greatness when -he can look _down_ into himself and his art, when he can _laugh_ at -himself. Is Wagner's Parsifal his secret laugh of superiority over -himself, the triumph of that supreme artistic freedom and artistic -transcendency which he has at length attained. We might, I repeat, -wish it were so, for what can Parsifal, _taken seriously_, amount to? -Is it really necessary to see in it (according to an expression once -used against me) the product of an insane hate of knowledge, mind, -and flesh? A curse on flesh and spirit in one breath of hate? An -apostasy and reversion to the morbid Christian and obscurantist ideals? -And finally a self-negation and self-elimination on the part of an -artist, who till then had devoted all the strength of his will to the -contrary, namely, the _highest_ artistic expression of soul and body. -And not only of his art; of his life as well. Just remember with what -enthusiasm Wagner followed in the footsteps of Feuerbach. Feuerbach's -motto of "healthy sensuality" rang in the ears of Wagner during the -thirties and forties of the century, as it did in the ears of many -Germans (they dubbed themselves "_Young_ Germans"), like the word of -redemption. Did he eventually _change his mind_ on the subject? For it -seems at any rate that he eventually wished to _change his teaching_ -on that subject ... and not only is that the case with the Parsifal -trumpets on the stage: in the melancholy, cramped, and embarrassed -lucubrations of his later years, there are a hundred places in which -there are manifestations of a secret wish and will, a despondent, -uncertain, unavowed will to preach actual retrogression, conversion, -Christianity, mediævalism, and to say to his disciples, "All is vanity! -Seek salvation elsewhere!" Even the "blood of the Redeemer" is once -invoked. - - -4. - -Let me speak out my mind in a case like this, which has many painful -elements--and it is a typical case: it is certainly best to separate -an artist from his work so completely that he cannot be taken as -seriously as his work. He is after all merely the presupposition of -his work, the womb, the soil, in certain cases the dung and manure, -on which and out of which it grows--and consequently, in most cases, -something that must be forgotten if the work itself is to be enjoyed. -The insight into the _origin_ of a work is a matter for psychologists -and vivisectors, but never either in the present or the future for the -æsthetes, the artists. The author and creator of Parsifal was as little -spared the necessity of sinking and living himself into the terrible -depths and foundations of mediæval soul-contrasts, the necessity of a -malignant abstraction from all intellectual elevation, severity, and -discipline, the necessity of a kind of mental perversity (if the reader -will pardon me such a word), as little as a pregnant woman is spared -the horrors and marvels of pregnancy, which, as I have said, must -be forgotten if the child is to be enjoyed. We must guard ourselves -against the confusion, into which an artist himself would fall only -too easily (to employ the English terminology) out of psychological -"contiguity"; as though the artist himself actually were the object -which he is able to represent, imagine, and express. In point of fact, -the position is that even if he conceived he were such an object, he -would certainly not represent, conceive, express it. Homer would not -have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an -Achilles or if Goethe had been a Faust. A complete and perfect artist -is to all eternity separated from the "real," from the actual; on the -other hand, it will be appreciated that he can at times get tired to -the point of despair of this eternal "unreality" and falseness of his -innermost being--and that he then sometimes attempts to trespass on -to the most forbidden ground, on reality, and attempts to have real -_existence_. With what success? The success will be guessed--it is the -_typical velleity_ of the artist; the same velleity to which Wagner -fell a victim in his old age, and for which he had to pay so dearly and -so fatally (he lost thereby his most valuable friends). But after all, -quite apart from this velleity, who would not wish emphatically for -Wagner's own sake that he had taken farewell of us and of his art in a -_different_ manner, not with a _Parsifal_, but in more victorious, more -self-confident, more Wagnerian style--a style less misleading, a style -less ambiguous with regard to his whole meaning, less Schopenhauerian, -less Nihilistic?... - - -5. - -What, then, is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In the case of an artist -we are getting to understand their meaning: _Nothing at all_ ... or so -much that it is as good as nothing at all. Indeed, what is the use of -them? Our artists have for a long time past not taken up a sufficiently -independent attitude, either in the world or against it, to warrant -their valuations and the changes in these valuations exciting interest. -At all times they have played the valet of some morality, philosophy, -or religion, quite apart from the fact that unfortunately they -have often enough been the inordinately supple courtiers of their -clients and patrons, and the inquisitive toadies of the powers that -are existing, or even of the new powers to come. To put it at the -lowest, they always need a rampart, a support, an already constituted -authority: artists never stand by themselves, standing alone is opposed -to their deepest instincts. So, for example, did _Richard Wagner_ -take, "when the time had come," the philosopher Schopenhauer for his -covering man in front, for his rampart. Who would consider it even -thinkable, that he would have had the _courage_ for an ascetic ideal, -without the support afforded him by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, -without the authority of Schopenhauer, which _dominated_ Europe in the -seventies? (This is without consideration of the question whether an -artist without the milk[1] of an orthodoxy would have been possible at -all.) This brings us to the more serious question: What is the meaning -of a real _philosopher_ paying homage to the ascetic ideal, a really -self-dependent intellect like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with a -glance of bronze, who has the courage to be himself, who knows how to -stand alone without first waiting for men who cover him in front, and -the nods of his superiors? Let us now consider at once the remarkable -attitude of Schopenhauer towards _art_, an attitude which has even a -fascination for certain types. For that is obviously the reason why -Richard Wagner _all at once_ went over to Schopenhauer (persuaded -thereto, as one knows, by a poet, Herwegh), went over so completely -that there ensued the cleavage of a complete theoretic contradiction -between his earlier and his later æsthetic faiths--the earlier, for -example, being expressed in _Opera and Drama_, the later in the -writings which he published from 1870 onwards. In particular, Wagner -from that time onwards (and this is the volte-face which alienates us -the most) had no scruples about changing his judgment concerning the -value and position of music itself. What did he care if up to that time -he had made of music a means, a medium, a "woman," that in order to -thrive needed an end, a man--that is, the drama? He suddenly realised -that _more_ could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian -theory in _majorem musicæ gloriam_--that is to say, by means of the -_sovereignty_ of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music abstracted -from and opposed to all the other arts, music as the independent -art-in-itself, _not_ like the other arts, affording reflections of the -phenomenal world, but rather the language of the will itself, speaking -straight out of the "abyss" as its most personal, original, and direct -manifestation. This extraordinary rise in the value of music (a rise -which seemed to grow out of the Schopenhauerian philosophy) was at -once accompanied by an unprecedented rise in the estimation in which -the musician himself was held: he became now an oracle, a priest, nay, -more than a priest, a kind of mouthpiece for the "intrinsic essence -of things," a telephone from the other world--from henceforward -he talked not only music, did this ventriloquist of God, he talked -metaphysic; what wonder that one day he eventually talked _ascetic -ideals_. - - -6. - -Schopenhauer has made use of the Kantian treatment of the æsthetic -problem--though he certainly did not regard it with the Kantian eyes. -Kant thought that he showed honour to art when he favoured and placed -in the foreground those of the predicates of the beautiful, which -constitute the honour of knowledge: impersonality and universality. -This is not the place to discuss whether this was not a complete -mistake; all that I wish to emphasise is that Kant, just like other -philosophers, instead of envisaging the æsthetic problem from the -standpoint of the experiences of the artist (the creator), has only -considered art and beauty from the standpoint of the spectator, and -has thereby imperceptibly imported the spectator himself into the idea -of the "beautiful"! But if only the philosophers of the beautiful had -sufficient knowledge of this "spectator"!--Knowledge of him as a great -fact of personality, as a great experience, as a wealth of strong and -most individual events, desires, surprises, and raptures in the sphere -of beauty! But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case. And so -we get from our philosophers, from the very beginning, definitions -on which the lack of a subtler personal experience squats like a fat -worm of crass error, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the -beautiful. "That is beautiful," says Kant, "which pleases without -interesting." Without interesting! Compare this definition with this -other one, made by a real "spectator" and "artist"--by Stendhal, who -once called the beautiful _une promesse de bonheur_. Here, at any rate, -the one point which Kant makes prominent in the æsthetic position is -repudiated and eliminated--_le désintéressement_. Who is right, Kant -or Stendhal? When, forsooth, our æsthetes never get tired of throwing -into the scales in Kant's favour the fact that under the magic of -beauty men can look at even naked female statues "without interest," -we can certainly laugh a little at their expense:--in regard to this -ticklish point the experiences of _artists_ are more "interesting," -and at any rate Pygmalion was not necessarily an "unæsthetic man." Let -us think all the better of the innocence of our æsthetes, reflected -as it is in such arguments; let us, for instance, count to Kant's -honour the country-parson naïveté of his doctrine concerning the -peculiar character of the sense of touch! And here we come back to -Schopenhauer, who stood in much closer neighbourhood to the arts -than did Kant, and yet never escaped outside the pale of the Kantian -definition; how was that? The circumstance is marvellous enough: he -interprets the expression, "without interest," in the most personal -fashion, out of an experience which must in his case have been part and -parcel of his regular routine. On few subjects does Schopenhauer speak -with such certainty as on the working of æsthetic contemplation: he -says of it that it simply counteracts sexual interest, like lupulin -and camphor; he never gets tired of glorifying this escape from -the "Life-will" as the great advantage and utility of the æsthetic -state. In fact, one is tempted to ask if his fundamental conception -of Will and Idea, the thought that there can only exist freedom from -the "will" by means of "idea," did not originate in a generalisation -from this sexual experience. (In all questions concerning the -Schopenhauerian philosophy, one should, by the bye, never lose sight of -the consideration that it is the conception of a youth of twenty-six, -so that it participates not only in what is peculiar to Schopenhauer's -life, but in what is peculiar to that special period of his life.) -Let us listen, for instance, to one of the most expressive among the -countless passages which he has written in honour of the æsthetic -state (_World as Will and Idea_, i. 231); let us listen to the tone, -the suffering, the happiness, the gratitude, with which such words -are uttered: "This is the painless state which Epicurus praised as -the highest good and as the state of the gods; we are during that -moment freed from the vile pressure of the will, we celebrate the -Sabbath of the will's hard labour, the wheel of Ixion stands still." -What vehemence of language! What images of anguish and protracted -revulsion! How almost pathological is that temporal antithesis between -"that moment" and everything else, the "wheel of Ixion," "the hard -labour of the will," "the vile pressure of the will." But granted -that Schopenhauer was a hundred times right for himself personally, -how does that help our insight into the nature of the beautiful? -Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful,--the calming -of the will,--but is this effect really normal? As has been mentioned, -Stendhal, an equally sensual but more happily constituted nature than -Schopenhauer, gives prominence to another effect of the "beautiful." -"The beautiful promises happiness." To him it is just the excitement -of the "will"(the "interest") by the beauty that seems the essential -fact. And does not Schopenhauer ultimately lay himself open to the -objection, that he is quite wrong in regarding himself as a Kantian on -this point, that he has absolutely failed to understand in a Kantian -sense the Kantian definition of the beautiful--;that the beautiful -pleased him as well by means of an interest, by means, in fact, of the -strongest and most personal interest of all, that: of the victim of -torture who escapes from his torture?--And to come back again to our -first question, "What is the meaning of a philosopher paying homage to -ascetic ideals?" We get now, at any rate, a first hint; he wishes to -escape _from a torture_. - - -7. - -Let us beware of making dismal faces at the word "torture"--there is -certainly in this case enough to deduct, enough to discount--there is -even something to laugh at. For we must certainly not underestimate -the fact that Schopenhauer, who in practice treated sexuality as -a personal enemy (including its tool, woman, that "_instrumentum -diaboli_"), needed enemies to keep him in a good humour; that he loved -grim, bitter, blackish-green words; that he raged for the sake of -raging, out of passion; that he would have grown ill, would have become -a _pessimist_ (for he was not a pessimist, however much he wished to -be), without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the -whole "will for existence" "keeping on." Without them Schopenhauer -would not have "kept on," that is a safe wager; he would have run away: -but his enemies held him fast, his enemies always enticed him back -again to existence, his wrath was just as theirs' was to the ancient -Cynics, his balm, his recreation, his recompense, his _remedium_ -against disgust, his _happiness_. So much with regard to what is most -personal in the case of Schopenhauer; on the other hand, there is -still much which is typical in him--and only now we come back to our -problem. It is an accepted and indisputable fact, so long as there -are philosophers in the world and wherever philosophers have existed -(from India to England, to take the opposite poles of philosophic -ability), that there exists a real irritation and rancour on the part -of philosophers towards sensuality. Schopenhauer is merely the most -eloquent, and if one has the ear for it, also the most fascinating -and enchanting outburst. There similarly exists a real philosophic -bias and affection for the whole ascetic ideal; there should be no -illusions on this score. Both these feelings, as has been said, belong -to the type; if a philosopher lacks both of them, then he is--you may -be certain of it--never anything but a "pseudo." What does this mean? -For this state of affairs must first be, interpreted: in itself it -stands there stupid, to all eternity, like any "Thing-in-itself." Every -animal, including la bête philosophe, strives instinctively after an -_optimum_ of favourable conditions, under which he can let his whole -strength have play, and achieves his maximum consciousness of power; -with equal instinctiveness, and with a fine perceptive flair which is -superior to any reason, every animal shudders mortally at every kind -of disturbance and hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his way -to that optimum (it is not his way to happiness of which I am talking, -but his way to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in -point of fact in many cases his way to unhappiness). Similarly, the -philosopher shudders mortally at <b>marriage</b>, together with all -that could persuade him to it--marriage as a fatal hindrance on the -way to the _optimum_. Up to the present what great philosophers have -been married? Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, -Schopenhauer--they were not married, and, further, one cannot _imagine_ -them as married. A married philosopher belongs to _comedy_, that is -my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates--the malicious Socrates -married himself, it seems, _ironice_, just to prove this _very_ rule. -Every philosopher would say, as Buddha said, when the birth of a son -was announced to him: "Râhoula has been born to me, a fetter has been -forged for me" (Râhoula means here "a little demon"); there must come -an hour of reflection to every "free spirit" (granted that he has had -previously an hour of thoughtlessness), just as one came once to the -same Buddha: "Narrowly cramped," he reflected, "is life in the house; -it is a place of uncleanness; freedom is found in leaving the house." -Because he thought like this, he left the house. So many bridges to -independence are shown in the ascetic idea], that the philosopher -cannot refrain from exultation and clapping of hands when he hears -the history of all those resolute ones, who on one day uttered a nay -to all servitude and went into some _desert_; even granting that they -were only strong asses, and the absolute opposite of strong minds. -What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my -answer--it will have been guessed long ago: when he sees this ideal -the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an _optimum_ of the -conditions of the highest and boldest intellectuality; he does not -thereby deny "existence," he rather affirms thereby _his_ existence -and _only_ his existence, and this perhaps to the point of not being -far off the blasphemous wish, _pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat -philosophus, fiam!_ - - -8. - -These philosophers, you see, are by no means uncorrupted witnesses and -judges of the _value_ of the ascetic ideal. They think _of themselves_ ---what is the "saint" to them? They think of that which to them -personally is most indispensable; of freedom from compulsion, -disturbance, noise: freedom from business, duties, cares; of clear -head; of the dance, spring, and flight of thoughts; of good air--rare, -clear, free, dry, as is the air on the heights, in which every animal -creature becomes more intellectual and gains wings; they think of -peace in every cellar; all the hounds neatly chained; no baying of -enmity and uncouth rancour; no remorse of wounded ambition; quiet -and submissive internal organs, busy as mills, but unnoticed; the -heart alien, transcendent, future, posthumous--to summarise, they -mean by the ascetic ideal the joyous asceticism of a deified and -newly fledged animal, sweeping over life rather than resting. We know -what are the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, -humility, chastity; and now just look closely at the life of all -the great fruitful inventive spirits--you will always find again -and again these three qualities up to a certain extent. _Not_ for a -minute, as is self-evident, as though, perchance, they were part of -their virtues--what has this type of man to do with virtues?--but as -the most essential and natural conditions of their _best_ existence, -their _finest_ fruitfulness. In this connection it is quite possible -that their predominant intellectualism had first to curb an unruly and -irritable pride, or an insolent sensualism, or that it had all its -work cut out to maintain its wish for the "desert" against perhaps -an inclination to luxury and dilettantism, or similarly against an -extravagant liberality of heart and hand. But their intellect did -effect all this, simply because it was the _dominant_ instinct, which -carried through its orders in the case of all the other instincts. -It effects it still; if it ceased to do so, it would simply not be -dominant. But there is not one iota of "virtue" in all this. Further, -the _desert_, of which I just spoke, in which the strong, independent, -and well-equipped spirits retreat into their hermitage--oh, how -different is it from the cultured classes' dream of a desert! In -certain cases, in fact, the cultured classes themselves are the desert. -And it is certain that all the actors of the intellect would not endure -this desert for a minute. It is nothing like romantic and Syrian enough -for them, nothing like enough of a stage desert! Here as well there -are plenty of asses, but at this point the resemblance ceases. But a -desert nowadays is something like this--perhaps a deliberate obscurity; -a getting-out-of the way of one's self; a fear of noise, admiration, -papers, influence; a little office, a daily task, something that hides -rather than brings to light; sometimes associating with harmless, -cheerful beasts and fowls, the sight of which refreshes; a mountain for -company, but not a dead one, one with _eyes_ (that is, with lakes); -in certain cases even a room in a crowded hotel where one can reckon -on not being recognised, and on being able to talk with impunity to -every one: here is the desert--oh, it is lonely enough, believe me! -I grant that when Heracleitus retreated to the courts and cloisters -of the colossal temple of Artemis, that "wilderness" was worthier; -why do we _lack_ such temples? (perchance we do not lack them: I just -think of my splendid study in the _Piazza di San Marco_, in spring, of -course, and in the morning, between ten and twelve). But that which -Heracleitus shunned is still just what we too avoid nowadays: the -noise and democratic babble of the Ephesians, their politics, their -news from the "empire" (I mean, of course, Persia), their market-trade -in "the things of to-day "--for there is one thing from which we -philosophers especially need a rest--from the things of "to-day." We -honour the silent, the cold, the noble, the far, the past, everything, -in fact, at the sight of which the soul is not bound to brace itself up -and defend itself--something with which one can speak without _speaking -aloud_. Just listen now to the tone a spirit has when it speaks; every -spirit has its own tone and loves its own tone. That thing yonder, for -instance, is bound to be an agitator, that is, a hollow head, a hollow -mug: whatever may go into him, everything comes back from him dull and -thick, heavy with the echo of the great void. That spirit yonder nearly -always speaks hoarse: has he, perchance, _thought_ himself hoarse? -It may be so--ask the physiologists--but he who thinks in _words_, -thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not -think of objects or think objectively, but only of his relations -with objects--that, in point of fact, he only thinks of himself and -his audience). This third one speaks aggressively, he comes too near -our body, his breath blows on us--we shut our mouth involuntarily, -although he speaks to us through a book: the tone of his style supplies -the reason--he has no time, he has small faith in himself, he finds -expression now or never. But a spirit who is sure of himself speaks -softly; he seeks secrecy, he lets himself be awaited, A philosopher -is recognised by the fact that he shuns three brilliant and noisy -things--fame, princes, and women: which is not to say that they do not -come to him. He shuns every glaring light: therefore he shuns his time -and its "daylight." Therein he is as a shadow; the deeper sinks the -sun, the greater grows the shadow. As for his humility, he endures, as -he endures darkness, a certain dependence and obscurity: further, he is -afraid of the shock of lightning, he shudders at the insecurity of a -tree which is too isolated and too exposed, on which every storm vents -its temper, every temper its storm. His "maternal" instinct, his secret -love for that which grows in him, guides him into states where he is -relieved from the necessity of taking care of _himself_, in the same -way in which the "_mother_" instinct in woman has thoroughly maintained -up to the present woman's dependent position. After all, they demand -little enough, do these philosophers, their favourite motto is, "He -who possesses is possessed." All this is _not_, as I must say again -and again, to be attributed to a virtue, to a meritorious wish for -moderation and simplicity; but because their supreme lord so demands -of them, demands wisely and inexorably; their lord who is eager only -for one thing, for which alone he musters, and for which alone he -hoards everything--time, strength, love, interest. This kind of man -likes not to be disturbed by enmity, he likes not to be disturbed by -friendship, it is a type which forgets or despises easily. It strikes -him as bad form to play the martyr, "to _suffer_ for truth"--he leaves -all that to the ambitious and to the stage-heroes of the intellect, -and to all those, in fact, who have time enough for such luxuries -(they themselves, the philosophers, have something _to do_ for truth). -They make a sparing use of big words; they are said to be adverse to -the word "truth" itself: it has a "high falutin'" ring. Finally, as -far as the chastity of philosophers is concerned, the fruitfulness -of this type of mind is manifestly in another sphere than that of -children; perchance in some other sphere, too, they have the survival -of their name, their little immortality (philosophers in ancient -India would express themselves with still greater boldness: "Of what -use is posterity to him whose soul is the world?"). In this attitude -there is not a trace of chastity, by reason of any ascetic scruple or -hatred of the flesh, any more than it is chastity for an athlete or a -jockey to abstain from women; it is rather the will of the dominant -instinct, at any rate, during the period of their advanced philosophic -pregnancy. Every artist knows the harm done by sexual intercourse -on occasions of great mental strain and preparation; as far as the -strongest artists and those with the surest instincts are concerned, -this is not necessarily a case of experience--hard experience--but it -is simply their "maternal" instinct which, in order to benefit the -growing work, disposes recklessly (beyond all its normal stocks and -supplies) of the _vigour_ of its _animal_ life; the greater power then -_absorbs_ the lesser. Let us now apply this interpretation to gauge -correctly the case of Schopenhauer, which we have already mentioned: in -his case, the sight of the beautiful acted manifestly like a resolving -irritant on the chief power of his nature (the power of contemplation -and of intense penetration); so that this strength exploded and became -suddenly master of his consciousness. But this by no means excludes -the possibility of that particular sweetness and fulness, which is -peculiar to the æsthetic state, springing directly from the ingredient -of sensuality (just as that "idealism" which is peculiar to girls at -puberty originates in the same source)--it may be, consequently, that -sensuality is not removed by the approach of the æsthetic state, as -Schopenhauer believed, but merely becomes transfigured, and ceases to -enter into the consciousness as sexual excitement. (I shall return once -again to this point in connection with the more delicate problems of -the _physiology of the æsthetic_, a subject which up to the present has -been singularly untouched and unelucidated.) - - -9. - -A certain asceticism, a grimly gay whole-hearted renunciation, is, as -we have seen, one of the most favourable conditions for the highest -intellectualism, and, consequently, for the most natural corollaries -of such intellectualism: we shall therefore be proof against any -surprise at the philosophers in particular always treating the ascetic -ideal with a certain amount of predilection. A serious historical -investigation shows the bond between the ascetic ideal and philosophy -to be still much tighter and still much stronger. It may be said that -it was only in the _leading strings_ of this ideal that philosophy -really learnt to make its first steps and baby paces--alas how -clumsily, alas how crossly, alas how ready to tumble down and lie on -its stomach was this shy little darling of a brat with its bandy legs! -The early history of philosophy is like that of all good things;--for a -long time they had not the courage to be themselves, they kept always -looking round to see if no one would come to their help; further, they -were afraid of all who looked at them. Just enumerate in order the -particular tendencies and virtues of the philosopher--his tendency to -doubt, his tendency to deny, his tendency to wait (to be "ephectic"), -his tendency to analyse, search, explore, dare, his tendency to compare -and to equalise, his will to be neutral and objective, his will for -everything which is "_sine ira et studio_":--has it yet been realised -that for quite a lengthy period these tendencies went counter to the -first claims of morality and conscience? (To say nothing at all of -_Reason_, which even Luther chose to call _Frau Klüglin_,[2] the sly -whore.) Has it been yet appreciated that a philosopher, in the event -of his _arriving_ at self-consciousness, must needs feel himself an -incarnate "nitimur in vetitum"--and consequently guard himself against -"his own sensations," against self-consciousness? It is, I repeat, just -the same with all good things, on which we now pride ourselves; even -judged by the standard of the ancient Greeks, our whole modern life, -in so far as it is not weakness, but power and the consciousness of -power, appears pure "Hybris" and godlessness: for the things which are -the very reverse of those which we honour to-day, have had for a long -time conscience on their side, and God as their guardian. "Hybris" -is our whole attitude to nature nowadays, our violation of nature -with the help of machinery, and all the unscrupulous ingenuity of our -scientists and engineers. "Hybris" is our attitude to God, that is, to -some alleged teleological and ethical spider behind the meshes of the -great trap of the causal web. Like Charles the Bold in his war with -Louis the Eleventh, we may say, "je combats l'universelle araignée"; -"Hybris" is our attitude to ourselves--for we experiment with ourselves -in a way that we would not allow with any animal, and with pleasure -and curiosity open our soul in our living body: what matters now to -us the "salvation" of the soul? We heal ourselves afterwards: being -ill is instructive, we doubt it not, even more instructive than being -well--inoculators of disease seem to us to-day even more necessary -than any medicine-men and "saviours." There is no doubt we do violence -to ourselves nowadays, we crackers of the soul's kernel, we incarnate -riddles, who are ever asking riddles, as though life were naught else -than the cracking of a nut; and even thereby must we necessarily become -day by day more and more worthy to be asked questions and worthy to ask -them, even thereby do we perchance also become worthier to--live? - -... All good things were once bad things; from every original sin has -grown an original virtue. Marriage, for example, seemed for a long time -a sin against the rights of the community; a man formerly paid a fine -for the insolence of claiming one woman to himself (to this phase -belongs, for instance, the _jus primæ noctis_, to-day still in Cambodia -the privilege of the priest, that guardian of the "good old customs"). - -The soft, benevolent, yielding, sympathetic feelings--eventually valued -so highly that they almost became "intrinsic values," were for a very -long time actually despised by their possessors: gentleness was then -a subject for shame, just as hardness is now (compare _Beyond Good -and Evil_, Aph. 260). The submission to law: oh, with what qualms of -conscience was it that the noble races throughout the world renounced -the _vendetta_ and gave the law power over themselves! Law was long a -_vetitum_, a blasphemy, an innovation; it was introduced with force, -like a force, to which men only submitted with a sense of personal -shame. Every tiny step forward in the world was formerly made at -the cost of mental and physical torture. Nowadays the whole of this -point of view--"that not only stepping forward, nay, stepping at all, -movement, change, all needed their countless martyrs," rings in our -ears quite strangely. I have put it forward in the _Dawn of Day_, Aph. -18. "Nothing is purchased more dearly," says the same book a little -later, "than the modicum of human reason and freedom which is now our -pride. But that pride is the reason why it is now almost impossible -for us to feel in sympathy with those immense periods of the 'Morality -of Custom,' which lie at the beginning of the 'world's history,' -constituting as they do the real decisive historical principle which -has fixed the character of humanity; those periods, I repeat, when -throughout the world suffering passed for virtue, cruelty for virtue, -deceit for virtue, revenge for virtue, repudiation of the reason for -virtue; and when, conversely, well-being passed current for danger, the -desire for knowledge for danger, pity for danger, peace for danger, -being pitied for shame, work for shame, madness for divinity, and -_change_ for immorality and incarnate corruption!" - - -10. - -There is in the same book, Aph. 12, an explanation of the _burden_ -of unpopularity under which the earliest race of contemplative men -had to live--despised almost as widely as they were first feared! -Contemplation first appeared on earth in a disguised shape, in an -ambiguous form, with an evil heart and often with an uneasy head: -there is no doubt about it. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike element -in the instincts of contemplative men long invested them with a cloud -of suspicion: the only way to combat this was to excite a definite -_fear_. And the old Brahmans, for example, knew to a nicety how to do -this! The oldest philosophers were well versed in giving to their very -existence and appearance, meaning, firmness, background, by reason -whereof men learnt to _fear_ them; considered more precisely, they -did this from an even more fundamental need, the need of inspiring -in themselves fear and self-reverence. For they found even in their -own souls all the valuations turned _against_ themselves; they had -to fight down every kind of suspicion and antagonism against "the -philosophic element in themselves." Being men of a terrible age, -they did this with terrible means: cruelty to themselves, ingenious -self-mortification--this was the chief method of these ambitious -hermits and intellectual revolutionaries, who were obliged to force -down the gods and the traditions of their own soul, so as to enable -themselves to _believe_ in their own revolution. I remember the famous -story of the King Vicvamitra, who, as the result of a thousand years -of self-martyrdom, reached such a consciousness of power and such a -confidence in himself that he undertook to build a _new heaven_: the -sinister symbol of the oldest and newest history of philosophy in the -whole world. Every one who has ever built anywhere a "_new heaven_" -first found the power thereto in his _own hell_.. .. Let us compress -the facts into a short formula. The philosophic spirit had, in order -to be _possible_ to any extent at all, to masquerade and disguise -itself as one of the _previously fixed_ types of the contemplative -man, to disguise itself as priest, wizard, soothsayer, as a religious -man generally: the _ascetic ideal_ has for a long time served the -philosopher as a superficial form, as a condition which enabled him -to exist. .. . To be able to be a philosopher he had to exemplify the -ideal; to exemplify it, he was bound to _believe_ in it. The peculiarly -etherealised abstraction of philosophers, with their negation of the -world, their enmity to life, their disbelief in the senses, which has -been maintained up to the most recent time, and has almost thereby come -to be accepted as the ideal _philosophic attitude_--this abstraction -is the result of those enforced conditions under which philosophy -came into existence, and continued to exist; inasmuch as for quite -a very long time philosophy would have been _absolutely impossible_ -in the world without an ascetic cloak and dress, without an ascetic -self-misunderstanding. Expressed plainly and palpably, the _ascetic -priest_ has taken the repulsive and sinister form of the caterpillar, -beneath which and behind which alone philosophy could live and slink -about.. .. - -Has all that really changed? Has that flamboyant and dangerous winged -creature, that "spirit" which that caterpillar concealed within itself, -has it, I say, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, lighter world, really -and finally flung off its hood and escaped into the light? Can we -to-day point to enough pride, enough daring, enough courage, enough -self-confidence, enough mental will, enough will for responsibility, -enough freedom of the will, to enable the philosopher to be now in the -world really--_possible_? - - -11. - -And now, after we have caught sight of the _ascetic priest_, let us -tackle our problem. What is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? It now -first becomes serious--vitally serious. We are now confronted with the -_real representatives of the serious_. "What is the meaning of all -seriousness?" This even more radical question is perchance already -on the tip of our tongue: a question, fairly, for physiologists, but -which we for the time being skip. In that ideal the ascetic priest -finds not only his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest. -His _right_ to existence stands and falls with that ideal. What wonder -that we here run up against a terrible opponent (on the supposition, -of course, that we are the opponents of that ideal), an opponent -fighting for his life against those who repudiate that ideal!. .. On -the other hand, it is from the outset improbable that such a biased -attitude towards our problem will do him any particular good; the -ascetic priest himself will scarcely prove the happiest champion of -his own ideal (on the same principle on which a woman usually fails -when she wishes to champion "woman")--let alone proving the most -objective critic and judge of the controversy now raised. We shall -therefore--so much is already obvious--rather have actually to help -him to defend himself properly against ourselves, than we shall have -to fear being too well beaten by him. The idea, which is the subject -of this dispute, is the value of our life from the standpoint of the -ascetic priests: this life, then (together with the whole of which it -is a part, "Nature," "the world," the whole sphere of becoming and -passing away), is placed by them in relation to an existence of quite -another character, which it excludes and to which it is opposed, unless -it _deny_ its own self: in this case, the case of an ascetic life, -life is taken as a bridge to another existence. The ascetic treats -life as a maze, in which one must walk backwards till one comes to the -place where it starts; or he treats it as an error which one may, nay -_must_, refute by action: for he demands that he should be followed; -he enforces, where he can, his valuation of existence. What does this -mean? Such a monstrous valuation is not an exceptional case, or a -curiosity recorded in human history: it is one of the most general -and persistent facts that there are. The reading from the vantage -of a distant star of the capital letters of our earthly life, would -perchance lead to the conclusion that the earth was the especially -_ascetic planet_, a den of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive -creatures, who never got rid of a deep disgust of themselves, of the -world, of all life, and did themselves as much hurt as possible out -of pleasure in hurting--presumably their one and only pleasure. Let -us consider how regularly, how universally, how practically at every -single period the ascetic priest puts in his appearance: he belongs to -no particular race; he thrives everywhere; he grows out of all classes. -Not that he perhaps bred this valuation by heredity and propagated -it--the contrary is the case. It must be a necessity of the first order -which makes this species, hostile, as it is, to _life_, always grow -again and always thrive again.--_Life_ itself must certainly _have an -interest_ in the continuance of such a type of self-contradiction. For -an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules resentment without -parallel, the resentment of an insatiate instinct and ambition, that -would be master, not over some element in life, but over life itself, -over life's deepest, strongest, innermost conditions; here is an -attempt made to utilise power to dam the sources of power; here does -the green eye of jealousy turn even against physiological well-being, -especially against the expression of such well-being, beauty, joy; -while a sense of pleasure is experienced and _sought_ in abortion, in -decay, in pain, in misfortune, in ugliness, in voluntary punishment, -in the exercising, flagellation, and sacrifice of the self. All this -is in the highest degree paradoxical: we are here confronted with a -rift that _wills_ itself to be a rift, which _enjoys_ itself in this -very _suffering_, and even becomes more and more certain of itself, -more and more triumphant, in proportion as its own presupposition, -physiological vitality, _decreases_. "The triumph just in the supreme -agony ": under this extravagant emblem did the ascetic ideal fight from -of old; in this mystery of seduction, in this picture of rapture and -torture, it recognised its brightest light, its salvation, its final -victory. _Crux, nux, lux_--it has all these three in one. - - -12. - -Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness -is induced to _philosophise_; on what will it vent its pet caprice? -On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, -to be real; it will look for _error_ in those very places where the -life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for -instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, -reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multiplicity, -the whole logical contrast of "_Subject_" and "_Object_"--errors, -nothing but errors! To renounce the belief in one's own ego, to -deny to one's self one's own "reality"--what a triumph! and here -already we have a much higher kind of triumph, which is not merely -a triumph over the senses, over the palpable, but an infliction of -violence and cruelty on _reason_; and this ecstasy culminates in the -ascetic self-contempt, the ascetic scorn of one's own reason making -this decree: _there is_ a domain of truth and of life, but reason is -specially _excluded_ therefrom.. .. By the bye, even in the Kantian -idea of "the intellegible character of things" there remains a trace -of that schism, so dear to the heart of the ascetic, that schism -which likes to turn reason against reason; in fact, "intelligible -character" means in Kant a kind of quality in things of which the -intellect comprehends this much, that for it, the intellect, it is -_absolutely incomprehensible_. After all, let us, in our character -of knowers, not be ungrateful towards such determined reversals of -the ordinary perspectives and values, with which the mind had for -too long raged against itself with an apparently futile sacrilege! -In the same way the very seeing of another vista, the very _wishing_ -to see another vista, is no little training and preparation of the -intellect for its eternal "_Objectivity_"--objectivity being understood -not as "contemplation without interest" (for that is inconceivable -and non-sensical), but as the ability to have the pros and cons _in -one's power_ and to switch them on and off, so as to get to know how -to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the _difference_ in -the perspective and in the emotional interpretations. But let us, -forsooth, my philosophic colleagues, henceforward guard ourselves more -carefully against this mythology of dangerous ancient ideas, which has -set up a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge"; -let us guard ourselves from the tentacles of such contradictory ideas -as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge-in-itself":--in -these theories an eye that cannot be thought of is required to think, -an eye which ex hypothesi has no direction at all, an eye in which -the active and interpreting functions are cramped, are absent; those -functions, I say, by means of which "abstract" seeing first became -seeing something; in these theories consequently the absurd and the -non-sensical is always demanded of the eye. There is only a seeing -from a perspective, only a "knowing" from a perspective, and the more -emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we -train on the same thing, the more complete will be our "idea" of that -thing, our "objectivity." But the elimination of the will altogether, -the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could -do so, what! would not that be called intellectual castration? - - -13. - -But let us turn back. Such a self-contradiction, as apparently -manifests itself among the ascetics, "Life turned against Life," -is--this much is absolutely obvious--from the physiological and not now -from the psychological standpoint, simply nonsense. It can only be an -apparent contradiction; it must be a kind of provisional expression, an -explanation, a formula, an adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding -of something, whose real nature could not be understood for a long -time, and whose _real essence_ could not be described; a mere word -jammed into an old _gap_ of human knowledge. To put briefly the -facts against its being real: _the ascetic ideal springs from the -prophylactic and self-preservative instincts which mark a decadent -life_, which seeks by every means in its power to maintain its position -and fight for its existence; it points to a partial physiological -depression and exhaustion, against which the most profound and intact -life-instincts fight ceaselessly with new weapons and discoveries. The -ascetic ideal is such a weapon: its position is consequently exactly -the reverse of that which the worshippers of the ideal imagine--life -struggles in it and through it with death and against death; the -ascetic ideal is a dodge for the _preservation_ of life. An important -fact is brought out in the extent to which, as history teaches, this -ideal could rule and exercise power over man, especially in all those -places where the civilisation and taming of man was completed: that -fact is, the diseased state of man up to the present, at any rate, of -the man who has been tamed, the physiological struggle of man with -death (more precisely, with the disgust with life, with exhaustion, -with the wish for the "end"). The ascetic priest is the incarnate wish -for an existence of another kind, an existence on another plane,--he -is, in fact, the highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and -passion: but it is the very _power_ of this wish which is the fetter -that binds him here; it is just that which makes him into a tool that -must labour to create more favourable conditions for earthly existence, -for existence on the human plane--it is with this very power that he -keeps the whole herd of failures, distortions, abortions, unfortunates, -_sufferers from themselves_ of every kind, fast to existence, while -he as the herdsman goes instinctively on in front. You understand -me already: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this -denier--he actually belongs to the really great _conservative_ and -_affirmative_ forces of life.... What does it come from, this diseased -state? For man is more diseased, more uncertain, more changeable, -more unstable than any other animal, there is no doubt of it--he is -the diseased animal: what does it spring from? Certainly he has also -dared, innovated, braved more, challenged fate more than all the other -animals put together; he, the great experimenter with himself, the -unsatisfied, the insatiate, who struggles for the supreme mastery with -beast, Nature, and gods, he, the as yet ever uncompelled, the ever -future, who finds no more any rest from his own aggressive strength, -goaded inexorably on by the spur of the future dug into the flesh of -the present:--how should not so brave and rich an animal also be the -most endangered, the animal with the longest and deepest sickness -among all sick animals?... Man is sick of it, oft enough there are -whole epidemics of this satiety (as about 1348, the time of the Dance -of Death): but even this very nausea, this tiredness, this disgust -with himself, all this is discharged from him with such force that -it is immediately made into a new fetter. His "nay," which he utters -to life, brings to light as though by magic an abundance of graceful -"yeas"; even when he _wounds_ himself, this master of destruction, of -self-destruction, it is subsequently the wound itself that forces him -to live. - - -14. - -The more normal is this sickliness in man--and we cannot dispute -this normality--the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases -of psychical and physical powerfulness, the _windfalls_ of humanity, -and the more strictly should the sound be guarded from that worst of -air, the air of the sick-room. Is that done? The sick are the greatest -danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to -the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? Broadly considered, -it is not for a minute the fear of man, whose diminution should be -wished for; for this fear forces the strong to be strong, to be at -times terrible--it preserves in its integrity the sound type of man. -What is to be feared, what does work with a fatality found in no other -fate, is not the great fear of, but the great _nausea_ with, man; and -equally so the great pity for man. Supposing that both these things -were one day to espouse each other, then inevitably the maximum of -monstrousness would immediately come into the world--the "last will" -of man, his will for nothingness, Nihilism. And, in sooth, the way is -well paved thereto. He who not only has his nose to smell with, but -also has eyes and ears, he sniffs almost wherever he goes to-day an -air something like that of a mad-house, the air of a hospital--I am -speaking, as stands to reason, of the cultured areas of mankind, of -every kind of "Europe" that there is in fact in the world. The _sick_ -are the great danger of man, _not_ the evil, _not_ the "beasts of -prey." They who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken, those -are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the -feet of man, who instil the most dangerous venom and scepticism into -our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where shall we escape from -it, from that covert look (from which we carry away a deep sadness), -from that averted look of him who is misborn from the beginning, that -look which betrays what such a man says to himself--that look which is -a groan?" Would that I were something else," so groans this look, "but -there is no hope. I am what I am: how could I get away from myself? -And, verily--_I am sick of myself!_" On such a soil of self-contempt, -a veritable swamp soil, grows that weed, that poisonous growth, and -all so tiny, so hidden, so ignoble, so sugary. Here teem the worms -of revenge and vindictiveness; here the air reeks of things secret -and unmentionable; here is ever spun the net of the most malignant -conspiracy--the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the -victorious; here is the sight of the victorious _hated_. And what -lying so as not to acknowledge this hate as hate! What a show of big -words and attitudes, what an art of "righteous" calumniation! These -abortions! what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips! What an -amount of sugary, slimy, humble submission oozes in their eyes! What do -they really want? At any rate to _represent_ righteousness ness, love, -wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these "lowest ones," these -sick ones! And how clever does such an ambition make them! You cannot, -in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp -of virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue, is here imitated. -They have taken a lease of virtue absolutely for themselves, have these -weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it; "We alone are -the good, the righteous," so do they speak, "we alone are the _homines -bonæ voluntatis_." They stalk about in our midst as living reproaches, -as warnings to us--as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the -sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for -which one would have some day to do penance, bitter penance. Oh, how -they themselves are ready in their hearts to exact penance, how they -thirst after being _hangmen_! - -Among them is an abundance of revengeful ones disguised as judges, -who ever mouth the word righteousness like a venomous spittle--with -mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit at everything, -which does not wear a discontented look, but is of good cheer as it -goes on its way. Among them, again, is that most loathsome species -of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point of representing -"beautiful souls," and perchance of bringing to the market as "purity -of heart" their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and other -bandages; the species of "self-comforters" and masturbators of their -own souls. The sick man's will to represent _some_ form or other of -superiority, his instinct for crooked paths, which lead to a tyranny -over the healthy--where can it not be found, this will to power of -the very weakest? The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her -in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising. The sick woman, -moreover, spares nothing living, nothing dead; she grubs up again the -most buried things (the Bogos say, "Woman is a hyena"). Look into -the background of every family, of every body, of every community: -everywhere the fight of the sick against the healthy--a silent fight -for the most part with minute poisoned powders, with pin-pricks, with -spiteful grimaces of patience, but also at times with that diseased -pharisaism of _pure_ pantomime, which plays for choice the rôle of -"righteous indignation." Right into the hallowed chambers of knowledge -can it make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick hounds, this -rabid lying and frenzy of such "noble" Pharisees (I remind readers, who -have ears, once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen Dühring, -who makes the most disreputable and revolting use in all present-day -Germany of moral refuse; Dühring, the paramount moral blusterer that -there is to-day, even among his own kidney, the Anti-Semites). They -are all men of resentment, are these physiological distortions and -worm-riddled objects, a whole quivering kingdom of burrowing revenge, -indefatigable and insatiable in its outbursts against the happy, and -equally so in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge: when -will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of -revenge? At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their -own misery, in fact, all misery, _into the consciousness_ of the happy; -so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, -and perchance say to themselves when they meet, "It is a shame to be -happy! _there is too much misery!_" ... But there could not possibly -be a greater and more fatal misunderstanding than that of the happy, -the fit, the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way to doubt -their right to happiness. Away with this "perverse world"! Away with -this shameful soddenness of sentiment! Preventing the sick making the -healthy sick--for that is what such a soddenness comes to--this ought -to be our supreme object in the world--but for this it is above all -essential that the healthy should remain _separated_ from the sick, -that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that -they should not even associate with the sick. Or may it, perchance, -be their mission to be nurses or doctors? But they could not mistake -and disown their mission more grossly--the higher must not degrade -itself to be the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance must to all -eternity keep their missions also separate. The right of the happy to -existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant -cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater: they alone are the -_sureties_ of the future, they alone are _bound_ to man's future. What -they can, what they must do, that can the sick never do, should never -do! but if _they are to_ be enabled to do what _only_ they must do, -how can they possibly be free to play the doctor, the comforter, the -"Saviour" of the sick?... And therefore good air! good air! and away, -at any rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses and hospitals -of civilisation! And therefore good company, _our own_ company, or -solitude, if it must be so! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes -of internal corruption and the secret worm-eaten state of the sick! -that, forsooth, my friends, we may defend ourselves, at any rate for -still a time, against the two worst plagues that could have been -reserved for us--against the _great nausea with man_! against the_ -great pity for man_! - - -15. - -If you have understood in all their depths--and I demand that you -should _grasp them profoundly_ and understand them profoundly--the -reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the healthy -to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, it follows that you have -grasped this further necessity--the necessity of doctors and nurses -_who themselves are sick_. And now we have and hold with both our hands -the essence of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted -by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick -herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The -_lordship over sufferers_ is his kingdom, to that points his instinct, -in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of -happiness. He must himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the -sick and the abortions so as to understand them, so as to arrive at an -understanding with them; but he must also be strong, even more master -of himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his will for -power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he -can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god. -He has to protect them, protect his herds--_against_ whom? Against -the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He -must be the natural adversary and _scorner_ of every rough, stormy, -reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is -the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily -than it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war with the beasts -of prey, a war of guile (of "spirit") rather than of force, as is -self-evident--he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up -out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of -the beast of prey--a new animal monstrosity in which the polar bear, -the supple, cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox, -are joined together in a trinity as fascinating as it is fearsome. -If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish -seriousness, venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority, as -the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among -even the other kind of beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on -their soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction, -and only too sure of his art, always to be lord of _sufferers_ at all -times. He brings with him, doubtless, salve and balsam; but before he -can play the physician he must first wound; so, while he soothes the -pain which the wound makes, _he at the same time poisons the wound_. -Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild -beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become -ill, and everything ill must needs become tame. He protects, in sooth, -his sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman; he protects -them also against themselves, against the sparks (even in the centre -of the herd) of wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills -that the plaguey and the sick are heir to; he fights with cunning, -hardness, and stealth against anarchy and against the ever imminent -break-up inside the herd, where _resentment_, that most dangerous -blasting-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and accumulates. Getting -rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the -herd and the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme utility; -if you wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the -priestly life, it would be correct to say the priest is the _diverter -of the course of resentment_. Every sufferer, in fact, searches -instinctively for a cause of his suffering; to put it more exactly, -a doer,--to put it still more precisely, a sentient _responsible_ -doer,--in brief, something living, on which, either actually or in -_effigie_, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting -of emotions is the sufferer's greatest attempt at alleviation, that -is to say, _stupefaction_, his mechanically desired narcotic against -pain of any kind. It is in this phenomenon alone that is found, -according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment, -revenge, and their family is to be found--that is, in a demand for the -_deadening of pain through emotion_: this cause is generally, but in -my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare -protective principle of reaction, of a "reflex movement" in the case -of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner that a decapitated -frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the -difference is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being -hurt any more; in the other case the object is to _deaden_ a racking, -insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any -kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of -the consciousness--for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an -emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other -is needed. "It must be somebody's fault that I feel bad"--this kind of -reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and is but the more pronounced, -the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, -the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a disease of the _nervus -sympathicus_, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of -sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure in the -bowels which stops the circulation of the blood, or in degeneration of -the ovaries, and so forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness -and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions; they even -enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent -injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present -in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty -to wallow in a torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom of their -own malice--they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves -bleed from the scars which have long been healed, they make evil-doers -out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them. -"I suffer: it must be somebody's fault"--so thinks every sick sheep. -But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says to him, "Quite so, my sheep, -it must be the fault of some one; but thou thyself art that some one, -it is all the fault of thyself alone--_it is the fault of thyself alone -against thyself_": that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is -at least attained; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment -is--_diverted_. - - -16. - -You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least _tried_ -to effect, according to my conception, through the ascetic priest, -and the purpose for which he had to employ a temporary tyranny of -such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as "guilt," "sin," "sinfulness," -"corruption," "damnation." What was done was to make the sick -_harmless_ up to a certain point, to destroy the incurable by means of -themselves, to turn the milder cases severely on to themselves, to give -their resentment a backward direction ("man needs but one thing"), and -to _exploit_ similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view -to self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that -there can be no question at all in the case of a "medication" of this -kind, a mere emotional medication, of any real _healing_ of the sick in -the physiological sense; it cannot even for a moment be asserted that -in this connection the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal -and purpose. On the one hand, a kind of congestion and organisation of -the sick (the word "Church" is the most popular name for it): on the -other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy, -the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a _rift_ between healthy -and sick--for a long time that was all! and it was much! it was very -much! - -I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which, -as far as such readers as I want are concerned, does not require to be -proved; the hypothesis that "sinfulness" in man is not an actual fact, -but rather merely the interpretation of a fact, of a physiological -discomfort,--a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective -which is no longer binding upon us. The fact, therefore, that any one -feels "guilty," "sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he is -right in feeling so, any more than any one is healthy simply because -he feels healthy. Remember the celebrated witch-ordeals: in those days -the most acute and humane judges had no doubt but that in these cases -they were confronted with guilt,--the "witches"_ themselves had no -doubt on the point_,--and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate -this hypothesis: I do not for a minute accept the very "pain in the -soul" as a real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual explanation) -of facts that could not hitherto be precisely formulated; I regard -it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid of -scientific cogency--just a nice fat word in the place of a lean note -of interrogation. When any one fails to get rid of his "pain in the -soul," the cause is, speaking crudely, to be found _not_ in his "soul" -but more probably in his stomach (speaking crudely, I repeat, but by -no means wishing thereby that you should listen to me or understand -me in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his -experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his -meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to -"relieve himself" of an experience, this kind of indigestion is quite -as much physiological as the other indigestion--and indeed, in more -ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. You can adopt -such a theory, and yet _entre nous_ be nevertheless the strongest -opponent of all materialism. - - -17. - -But is he really a _physician_, this ascetic priest? We already -understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however -much he likes to feel a "saviour" and let himself be worshipped as a -saviour.[3] It is only the actual suffering, the discomfort of the -sufferer, which he combats, _not_ its cause, not the actual state of -sickness--this needs must constitute our most radical objection to -priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of -view, of which the priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to -exhaust your amazement, at what from that standpoint he has completely -seen, sought, and found. The _mitigation_ of suffering, every kind of -"consoling"--all this manifests itself as his very genius: with what -ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb -and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christianity -in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious -consolations,--such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs -has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and -daring expedients has it hazarded; with such subtlety, refinement, -Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can -conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep depression, the leaden -fatigue, the black melancholy of physiological cripples--for, speaking -generally, all religions are mainly concerned with fighting a certain -fatigue and heaviness that has infected everything. You can regard it -as _prima facie_ probable that in certain places in the world there -was almost bound to prevail from time to time among large masses of -the population a _sense of physiological depression_, which, however, -owing to their lack of physiological knowledge, did not appear to their -consciousness as such, so that consequently its "cause" and its _cure_ -can only be sought and essayed in the science of moral psychology -(this, in fact, is my most general formula for what is generally called -a "_religion_"). Such a feeling of depression can have the most diverse -origins; it may be the result of the crossing of too heterogeneous -races (or of classes--genealogical and racial differences are also -brought out in the classes: the European "Weltschmerz," the "Pessimism" -of the nineteenth century, is really the result of an absurd and sudden -class-mixture); it may be brought about by a mistaken emigration--a -race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is -insufficient (the case of the Indians in India); it may be the effect -of old age and fatigue (the Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it -may be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the nonsense -of vegetarianism--which, however, have in their favour the authority -of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare); it may be blood-deterioration, -malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty -Years' War, which infected half Germany with evil diseases, and -thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity). -In such a case there is invariably recourse to a _war_ on a grand scale -with the feeling of depression; let us inform ourselves briefly on its -most important practices and phases (I leave on one side, as stands to -reason, the actual _philosophic_ war against the feeling of depression -which is usually simultaneous--it is interesting enough, but too -absurd, too practically negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a -hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake, -on the _naïf_ hypothesis that pain must needs _vanish_ when the mistake -underlying it is recognised--but behold! it does anything but vanish -...). That dominant depression is _primarily fought_ by weapons which -reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever -possible, no more wishes, no more wants; shun everything which produces -emotion, which produces "blood" (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene); -no love; no hate; equanimity; no revenge; no getting rich; no work; -begging; as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible; -as far as the intellect is concerned, Pascal's principle, "_il faut -s'abêtir._" To put the result in ethical and psychological language, -"self-annihilation," "sanctification"; to put it in physiological -language, "hypnotism"--the attempt to find some approximate human -equivalent for what _hibernation_ is for certain animals, for what -_æstivation_ is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation -and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really -coming into the consciousness. An amazing amount of human energy -has been devoted to this object--perhaps uselessly? There cannot be -the slightest doubt but that such _sportsmen_ of "saintliness," in -whom at times nearly every nation has abounded, have really found a -genuine relief from that which they have combated with such a rigorous -_training_--in countless cases they really escaped by the help of their -system of hypnotism _away_ from deep physiological depression; their -method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological -facts. Similarly it is improper to consider such a plan for starving -the physical element and the desires, as in itself a symptom of -insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating "freethinkers" and -Sir Christophers are fain to do); all the more certain is it that their -method can and does pave the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, -for instance, "inner lights" (as far as the case of the Hesychasts of -Mount Athos), auditory and visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies -and effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The -explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of -fanatical falsehood; this is self-evident. Note well, however, the tone -of implicit gratitude that rings in the very _will_ for an explanation -of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that final -goal of universal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as -the mystery of mysteries, which even the most supreme symbols are -inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry and homecoming to the -essence of things, as a liberation from all illusions, as "knowledge," -as "truth," as "being" as an escape from every end, every wish, every -action, as something even beyond Good and Evil. - -"Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, "both are fetters. The perfect -man is master of them both." - -"The done and the undone," quoth the disciple of the Vedanta, "do -him no hurt; the good and the evil he shakes from off him, sage that -he is; his kingdom suffers no more from any act; good and evil, he -goes beyond them both."--An absolutely Indian conception, as much -Brahmanist as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian -doctrine is this "Redemption" regarded as attainable by means of -virtue and moral improvement, however high they may place the value of -the hypnotic efficiency of virtue: keep clear on this point--indeed -it simply corresponds with the facts. The fact that they remained -_true_ on this point is perhaps to be regarded as the best specimen -of realism in the three great religions, absolutely soaked as they -are with morality, with this one exception. "For those who know, -there is no duty." "Redemption is not attained by the acquisition of -virtues; for redemption consists in being one with Brahman, who is -incapable of acquiring any perfection; and equally little does it -consist in the _giving up of faults_, for the Brahman, unity with whom -is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure" (these passages -are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted from the first real -European _expert_ of the Indian philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen). -We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of "redemption" in -the great religions, but it is somewhat hard to remain serious in -view of the appreciation meted out to the _deep sleep_ by these -exhausted pessimists who are too tired even to dream--to the deep -sleep considered, that is, as already a fusing into Brahman, as the -attainment of the _unio mystica_ with God. "When he has completely gone -to sleep," says on this point the oldest and most venerable "script," -"and come to perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then, -oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has entered into his own -self--encircled by the Self with its absolute knowledge, he has no -more any consciousness of that which is without or of that which is -within. Day and night cross not these bridges, nor age, nor death, -nor suffering, nor good deeds, nor evil deeds." "In deep sleep," say -similarly the believers in this deepest of the three great religions, -"does the soul lift itself from out this body of ours, enters the -supreme light and stands out therein in its true shape: therein is it -the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while it jests and -plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends; -there do its thoughts turn no more back to this appanage of a body, -to which the 'prana' (the vital breath) is harnessed like a beast of -burden to the cart." None the less we will take care to realise (as -we did when discussing "redemption") that in spite of all its pomps -of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on -life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus. -The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace of deepest sleep, -anæsthesia in short––that is what passes with the sufferers and the -absolutely depressed for, forsooth, their supreme good, their value -of values; that is what <b>must</b> be treasured by them as something -positive, be felt by them as the essence of _the_ Positive (according -to the same logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessimistic -religions called God). - - -18. - -Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and susceptibility to pain, -which presupposes somewhat rare powers, especially courage, contempt -of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another -and certainly easier _training_ which is tried against states of -depression. I mean _mechanical activity_. It is indisputable that a -suffering existence can be thereby considerably alleviated. This fact -is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the "Blessing of -work." The alleviation consists in the attention of the sufferer being -absolutely diverted from suffering, in the incessant monopoly of the -consciousness by action, so that consequently there is little room left -for suffering––for _narrow_ is it, this chamber of human consciousness! -Mechanical activity and its corollaries, such as absolute regularity, -punctilious unreasoning obedience, the chronic routine of life, the -complete occupation of time, a certain liberty to be impersonal, nay, a -training in "impersonality," self-forgetfulness, "_incuria sui_"––with -what thoroughness and expert subtlety have all these methods been -exploited by the ascetic priest in his war with pain! - -When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower orders, slaves, or -prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of -labour-slave and prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little -with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make them see henceforth -a benefit, a comparative happiness, in objects which they hated--the -slave's discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented by the -priests. An even more popular means of fighting depression is the -ordaining of a _little joy_, which is easily accessible and can be made -into a rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with -the former ones. The most frequent form in which joy is prescribed -as a cure is the joy in _producing_ joy (such as doing good, giving -presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting, praising, -treating with distinction); together with the prescription of "love -your neighbour." The ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most -cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation of the strongest -and most life-assertive impulse--the Will for Power. The happiness -involved in the "smallest superiority" which is the concomitant of all -benefiting, helping, extolling, making one's self useful, is the most -ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological -distortions avail themselves: in other cases they hurt each other, and -naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation -of the origin of Christianity in the Roman world shows that -co-operative unions for poverty, sickness, and burial sprang up in the -lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote -against depression, the little joy experienced in mutual benefits, -was deliberately fostered. Perchance this was then a novelty, a real -discovery? This conjuring up of the will for co-operation, for family -organisation, for communal life, for "_Cœnacula_" necessarily brought -the Will for Power, which had been already infinitesimally stimulated, -to a new and much fuller manifestation. The herd organisation is a -genuine advance and triumph in the fight with depression. With the -growth of the community there matures even to individuals a new -interest, which often enough takes him out of the more personal -element in his discontent, his aversion to himself, the "_despectus -sui_" of Geulincx. All sick and diseased people strive instinctively -after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of -oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this -instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct -of weakness which has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the -priests which has organised it, for, mark this: by an equally natural -necessity the strong strive as much for _isolation_ as the weak for -_union_: when the former bind themselves it is only with a view to an -aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their Will for Power, -much against the wishes of their individual consciences; the latter, -on the contrary, range themselves together with positive _delight_ in -such a muster--their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the -instincts of the "born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey -species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the quick by organisation. -There is always lurking beneath every oligarchy--such is the -universal lesson of history--the desire for tyranny. Every oligarchy -is continually quivering with the tension of the effort required by -each individual to keep mastering this desire. (Such, _e.g._, was -the Greek; Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who knew his -contemporaries--and _himself_.) - - -19. - -The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already -learnt to know--stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the -little joy, and especially the method of "love your neighbour" -herd-organisation, the awaking of the communal consciousness of power, -to such a pitch that the individual's disgust with himself becomes -eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the community--these are, -according to modern standards, the "innocent" methods employed in -the fight with depression; let us turn now to the more interesting -topic of the "guilty" methods. The guilty methods spell one thing: -to produce _emotional excess_--which is used as the most efficacious -anæsthetic against their depressing state of protracted pain; this -is why priestly ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in thinking -out this one question: "_By what means_ can you produce an emotional -excess?" This sounds harsh: it is manifest that it would sound nicer -and would grate on one's ears less, if I were to say, forsooth: "The -ascetic priest made use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in all -strong emotions." But what is the good of still soothing the delicate -ears of our modern effeminates? What is the good _on our side_ of -budging one single inch before their verbal Pecksniffianism. For us -psychologists to do that would be at once _practical Pecksniffianism_, -apart from the fact of its nauseating us. The _good taste_ (others -might say, the righteousness) of a psychologist nowadays consists, if -at all, in combating the shamefully moralised language with which all -modern judgments on men and things are smeared. For, do not deceive -yourself: what constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and -of modern books is not the lying, but the _innocence_ which is part -and parcel of their intellectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up -against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes the most distasteful -feature of the somewhat dangerous business which a modern psychologist -has to undertake: it is a part of our great danger--it is a road which -perhaps leads us straight to the great nausea--I know quite well the -purpose which all modern books will and can serve (granted that they -last, which I am not afraid of, and granted equally that there is to -be at some future day a generation with a more rigid, more severe, -and _healthier_ taste)--the _function_ which all modernity generally -will serve with posterity: that of an emetic,--and this by reason of -its moral sugariness and falsity, its ingrained feminism, which it is -pleased to call "Idealism," and at any rate believes to be idealism. -Our cultured men of to-day, our "good" men, do not lie--that is true; -but it does _not_ redound to their honour! The real lie, the genuine, -determined, "honest" lie (on whose value you can listen to Plato) would -prove too tough and strong an article for them by a long way; it would -be asking them to do what people have been forbidden to ask them to do, -to open their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to distinguish -between "true" and "false" in their own selves. The dishonest lie alone -suits them: everything which feels a good man is perfectly incapable of -any other attitude to anything than that of a dishonourable liar, an -absolute liar, but none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar, a -virtuous liar. These "good men," they are all now tainted with morality -through and through, and as far as honour is concerned they are -disgraced and corrupted for all eternity. Which of them _could stand_ a -further truth "about man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them could -put up with a true biography? One or two instances: Lord Byron composed -a most personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was "too good" for it; -he burnt his friend's papers. Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is -said to have done the same; for Schopenhauer as well wrote much about -himself, and perhaps also against himself: (εἰς ἑαντόν). The virtuous -American Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly stopped his work: he -had come to a certain point in that honourable and simple life, and -could stand it no longer. Moral: What sensible man nowadays writes one -honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order of Holy -Foolhardiness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner; who -doubts but that it would be a _clever_ autobiography? Think, forsooth, -of the grotesque horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in -Germany with his inconceivably square and harmless pictures of the -German Reformation; what wouldn't people do if some real psychologist -were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us, not with the moralist -simplicity of a country priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a -Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness of a Taine, that -springs from force of character and not from a prudent toleration of -force. (The Germans, by the bye, have already produced the classic -specimen of this toleration--they may well be allowed to reckon him as -one of their own, in Leopold Ranke, that born classical advocate of -every _causa fortior_, that cleverest of all the clever opportunists.) - - -20. - -But you will soon understand me.--Putting it shortly, there is reason -enough, is there not, for us psychologists nowadays never getting from -a certain mistrust of out _own selves_? Probably even we ourselves are -still "too good" for our work, probably, whatever contempt we feel -for this popular craze for morality, we ourselves are perhaps none -the less its victims, prey, and slaves; probably it infects even us. -Of what was that diplomat warning us, when he said to his colleagues: -"Let us especially mistrust our first impulses, gentlemen! _they are -almost always good_"? So should nowadays every psychologist talk to -his colleagues. And thus we get back to our problem, which in point -of fact does require from us a certain severity, a certain mistrust -especially against "first impulses." The ascetic ideal in the service -of projected emotional excess:--he who remembers the previous essay -will already partially anticipate the essential meaning compressed -into these above ten words. The thorough unswitching of the human -soul, the plunging of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture, so as -to free it, as through some lightning shock, from all the smallness -and pettiness of unhappiness, depression, and discomfort: what ways -lead to _this_ goal? And which of these ways does so most safely?... -At bottom all great emotions have this power, provided that they find -a sudden outlet--emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge, hope, -triumph, despair, cruelty; and, in sooth, the ascetic priest has had -no scruples in taking into his service the whole pack of hounds that -rage in the human kennel, unleashing now these and now those, with the -same constant object of waking man out of his protracted melancholy, -of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull pain, his shrinking -misery, but always under the sanction of a religious interpretation -and justification. This emotional excess has subsequently to be _paid -for_, this is self-evident--it makes the ill more ill--and therefore -this kind of remedy for pain is according to modern standards a -"guilty" kind. - -The dictates of fairness, however, require that we should all the -more emphasise the fact that this remedy is applied with _a good -conscience_, that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the most -implicit belief in its utility and indispensability;--often enough -almost collapsing in the presence of the pain which he created;--that -we should similarly emphasise the fact that the violent physiological -revenges of such excesses, even perhaps the mental disturbances, are -not absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of this kind of -remedy; this remedy, which, as we have shown previously, is _not_ for -the purpose of healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness of -that depression, the alleviation and deadening of which was its object. -The object was consequently achieved. The keynote by which the ascetic -priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music -to play on the fibres of the human soul--was, as every one knows, the -exploitation of the feeling of "_guilt_." I have already indicated in -the previous essay the origin of this feeling--as a piece of animal -psychology and nothing else: we were thus confronted with the -feeling of "guilt," in its crude state, as it were. It was first in -the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of -guilt, that it took shape--oh, what a shape! "Sin"--for that is the -name of the new priestly version of the animal "bad-conscience" (the -inverted cruelty)--has up to the present been the greatest event in the -history of the diseased soul: in "sin" we find the most perilous and -fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering -from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically, -perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and -the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons--reasons bring -relief--in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting -one, who knows even the occult--and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint -from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his _first_ hint on the "cause" of -his trouble: he must search for it in _himself_, in his guiltiness, in -a piece of the past, he must understand his very suffering as a _state -of punishment_. He has heard, he has understood, has the unfortunate: -he is now in the plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn. He -never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned -into "the sinner"--and now for a few thousand years we never get away -from the sight of this new invalid, of "a sinner"--shall we ever get -away from it?--wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of -the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt, -the _only_ cause of suffering); everywhere the evil conscience, this -"_greuliche thier_,"[4] to use Luther's language; everywhere rumination -over the past, a distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed -monster" turned on all action; everywhere the wilful misunderstanding -of suffering, its transvaluation into feelings of guilt, fear of -retribution; everywhere the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving -body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the ghastly -wheel of a restless and morbidly eager conscience; everywhere mute -pain, extreme fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of an -unknown happiness, the shriek for "redemption." In point of fact, -thanks to this system of procedure, the old depression, dullness, -and fatigue were absolutely conquered, life itself became _very_ -interesting again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, burnt -away, exhausted and yet not tired--such was the figure cut by man, -"the sinner," who was initiated into these mysteries. This grand old -wizard of an ascetic priest fighting with depression--he had clearly -triumphed, _his_ kingdom had come: men no longer grumbled at pain, men -_panted_ after pain: "_More pain!_ More pain!" So for centuries on end -shrieked the demand of his acolytes and initiates. Every emotional -excess which hurt; everything which broke, overthrew, crushed, -transported, ravished; the mystery of torture-chambers, the ingenuity -of hell itself--all this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all -this was at the service of the wizard, all this served to promote the -triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. "_My kingdom is not of this -world_," quoth he, both at the beginning and at the end: had he still -the right to talk like that?--Goethe has maintained that there are only -thirty-six tragic situations: we would infer from that, did we not know -otherwise, that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He--knows more. - - -21. - -So far as all _this_ kind of priestly medicine-mongering, the "guilty" -kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the -suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which in these cases -the ascetic priest is fain to order to his sick patients (under the -most sacred euphemism, as is obvious, and equally impregnated with -the sanctity of his purpose), has ever really been of use to any sick -man, who, forsooth, would feel inclined to maintain a proposition of -that character? At any rate, some understanding should be come to as -to the expression "be of use." If you only wish to express that such a -system of treatment has _reformed_ man, I do not gainsay it: I merely -add that "reformed" conveys to my mind as much as "tamed," "weakened," -"discouraged," "refined," "daintified," "emasculated" (and thus it -means almost as much as injured). But when you have to deal principally -with sick, depressed, and oppressed creatures, such a system, even -granted that it makes the ill "better," under any circumstances also -makes them more _ill_: ask the mad-doctors the invariable result of a -methodical application of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation -ecstasies. Similarly ask history. In every body politic where the -ascetic priest has established this treatment of the sick, disease has -on every occasion spread with sinister speed throughout its length -and breadth. What was always the "result"? A shattered nervous system, -in addition to the existing malady, and this in the greatest as in the -smallest, in the individuals as in masses. We find, in consequence of -the penance and redemption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the -greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and St. John dances -of the Middle Ages; we find, as another phase of its after-effect, -frightful mutilations and chronic depressions, by means of which the -temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva, Bale) is turned once for -all into its opposite;--this _training_, again, is responsible for -the witch-hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambulism (eight -great epidemic outbursts of this only between 1564 and 1605);--we -find similarly in its train those delirious death-cravings of large -masses, whose awful "shriek," "_evviva la morte!_" was heard over the -whole of Europe, now interrupted by voluptuous variations and anon by -a rage for destruction, just as the same emotional sequence with the -same intermittencies and sudden changes is now universally observed -in every case where the ascetic doctrine of sin scores once more a -great success (religious neurosis _appears_ as a manifestation of the -devil, there is no doubt of it. What is it? _Quæritur_). Speaking -generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-moral cult, this most -ingenious, reckless, and perilous systematisation of all methods of -emotional excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable fashion -on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on history. -I was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked -the health and race efficiency of Europeans with more destructive -power than did this ideal; it can be dubbed,without exaggeration, -_the real fatality_ in the history of the health of the European man. -At the most you can merely draw a comparison with the specifically -German influence: I mean the alcohol poisoning of Europe, which up -to the present has kept pace exactly with the political and racial -pre–dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated their blood, -there too did they inoculate their vice). Third in the series comes -syphilis--_magno sed proximo intervallo_. - - -22. - -The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained the mastery, corrupted -the health of the soul, he has consequently also corrupted _taste in -artibus et litteris_--he corrupts it still. "Consequently?" I hope I -shall be granted this "consequently "; at any rate, I am not going to -prove it first. One solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of -Christian literature, their real model, their "book-in-itself." In the -very midst of the Græco-Roman splendour, which was also a splendour -of books, face to face with an ancient world of writings which had -not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a time when certain books were -still to be read, to possess which we would give nowadays half our -literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity and vanity of -Christian agitators (they are generally called Fathers of the Church) -dared to declare: "We too have our classical literature, we _do not -need that of the Greeks_"--and meanwhile they proudly pointed to their -books of legends, their letters of apostles, and their apologetic -tractlets, just in the same way that to-day the English "Salvation -Army" wages its fight against Shakespeare and other "heathens" with -an analogous literature. You already guess it, I do not like the "New -Testament"; it almost upsets me that I stand so isolated in my taste -so far as concerns this valued, this over-valued Scripture; the taste -of two thousand years is _against_ me; but what boots it! "Here I -stand! I cannot help myself"[5]--I have the courage of my bad taste. -The Old Testament--yes, that is something quite different, all honour -to the Old Testament! I find therein great men, an heroic landscape, -and one of the rarest phenomena in the world, the incomparable naïveté -_of the strong heart_; further still, I find a people. In the New, on -the contrary, just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the soul, -twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but conventicle air, not to -forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the -epoch (_and_ the Roman province) and is less Jewish than Hellenistic. -Meekness and braggadocio cheek by jowl; an emotional garrulousness -that almost deafens; passionate hysteria, but no passion; painful -pantomime; here manifestly every one lacked good breeding. How dare any -one make so much fuss about their little failings as do these pious -little fellows! No one cares a straw about it--let alone God. Finally -they actually wish to have "the crown of eternal life," do all these -little provincials! In return for what, in sooth? For what end? It is -impossible to carry insolence any further. An immortal Peter! who could -stand _him_! They have an ambition which makes one laugh: the _thing_ -dishes up cut and dried his most personal life, his melancholies, and -common-or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself were under -an obligation to bother itself about them, for it never gets tired of -wrapping up God Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles are -involved. And how about the atrocious form of this chronic hobnobbing -with God? This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing -importunacy towards God!--There exist little despised "heathen nations" -in East Asia, from whom these first Christians could have learnt -something worth learning, a little tact in worshiping; these nations -do not allow themselves to say aloud the name of their God. This seems -to me delicate enough, it is certain that it is _too_ delicate, and -not only for primitive Christians; to take a contrast, just recollect -Luther, the most "eloquent" and insolent peasant whom Germany has had, -think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite the most in his -element during his _tête-à-têtes_ with God. Luther's opposition to the -mediæval saints of the Church (in particular, against "that devil's -hog, the Pope"), was, there is no doubt, at bottom the opposition of -a boor, who was offended at the _good etiquette_ of the Church, that -worship-etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits to the -holy of holies the initiated and the silent, and shuts the door against -the boors. These definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this -planet--but Luther the peasant simply wished it otherwise; as it was, -it was not German enough for him. He personally wished himself to talk -direct, to talk personally, to talk "straight from the shoulder" with -his God. Well, he's done it. The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at -no time and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of good -manners--at the best it was a school for sacerdotal manners: that is, -it contains in itself something which was a deadly enemy to all good -manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure, it is itself a "_non -plus ultra_." - - -23. - -The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are -also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted--I -shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should I get to -the end?). I have here to expose not what this ideal effected; but -rather only what it _means_, on what it is based, what lies lurking -behind it and under it, that of which it is the provisional expression, -an obscure expression bristling with queries and misunderstandings. -And with _this_ object only in view I presumed "not to spare" my -readers a glance at the awfulness of its results, a glance at its -fatal results; I did this to prepare them for the final and most -awful aspect presented to me by the question of the significance of -that ideal. What is the significance of the _power_ of that ideal, -the monstrousness of its power? Why is it given such an amount of -scope? Why is not a better resistance offered against it? The ascetic -ideal expresses one will: where is the opposition will, in which an -opposition ideal expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim-- -this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of -human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; -it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it -forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it repudiates, denies, -affirms, confirms, only in the sense of its own interpretation (and was -there ever a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation?); -it subjects itself to no power, rather does it believe in its own -precedence over every power--it believes that nothing powerful exists -in the world that has not first got to receive from "it" a meaning, -a right to exist, a value, as being an instrument in its work, a -way and means to its end, to one end. Where is the _counterpart_ of -this complete system of will, end, and interpretation? Why is the -counterpart lacking? Where is the other "one aim"? But I am told it -is not lacking, that not only has it fought a long and fortunate fight -with that ideal, but that further it has already won the mastery over -that ideal in all essentials: let our whole modern _science_ attest -this--that modern science, which, like the genuine reality-philosophy -which it is, manifestly believes in itself alone, manifestly has the -courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has got on well -enough without God, another world, and negative virtues. - -With all their noisy agitator-babble, however, they effect nothing with -me; these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices do -not come from the deeps with sufficient audibility, they are not the -mouthpiece for the abyss of scientific knowledge--for to-day scientific -knowledge is an abyss--the word "science," in such trumpeter-mouths, -is a prostitution, an abuse, an impertinence. The truth is just the -opposite from what is maintained in the ascetic theory. Science has -to-day absolutely no belief in itself, let alone in an ideal superior -to itself, and wherever science still consists of passion, love, -ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to that ascetic ideal, but -rather the _incarnation of its latest and noblest form_. Does that ring -strange? There are enough brave and decent working people, even among -the learned men of to-day, who like their little corner, and who, just -because they are pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud with -their demand, that people to-day should be quite content, especially -in science--for in science there is so much useful work to do. I do -not deny it--there is nothing I should like less than to spoil the -delight of these honest workers in their handiwork; for I rejoice in -their work. But the fact of science requiring hard work, the fact of -its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science as a -whole having to-day one end, one will, one ideal, one passion for a -great faith; the contrary, as I have said, is the case. When science -is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal--but these are -cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisiteness, as to preclude the -general judgment being affected thereby--science is a _hiding-place_ -for every kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, _despectio sui_, bad -conscience--it is the very _anxiety_ that springs from having no ideal, -the suffering from the _lack_ of a great love, the discontent with an -enforced moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover to-day? How -much, at any rate, does it not try to cover? The diligence of our best -scholars, their senseless industry, their burning the candle of their -brain at both ends--their very mastery in their handiwork--how often is -the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves continuing to see a -certain thing? Science as a self-anæsthetic: _do you know that_? You -wound them--every one who consorts with scholars experiences this--you -wound them sometimes to the quick through just a harmless word; when -you think you are paying them a compliment you embitter them beyond all -bounds, simply because you didn't have the _finesse_ to infer the real -kind of customers you had to tackle, the _sufferer_ kind (who won't own -up even to themselves what they really are), the dazed and unconscious -kind who have only one fear--_coming to consciousness_. - - -24. - -And now look at the other side, at those rare cases, of which I spoke, -the most supreme idealists to be found nowadays among philosophers and -scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the sought-for _opponents_ -of the ascetic ideal, its _anti-idealists_? In fact, they _believe_ -themselves to be such, these "unbelievers" (for they are all of them -that): it seems that this idea is their last remnant of faith, the idea -of being opponents of this ideal, so earnest are they on this subject, -so passionate in word and gesture;--but does it follow that what -they believe must necessarily be _true_? We "knowers" have grown by -degrees suspicious of all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by -step habituated us to draw just the opposite conclusions to what people -have drawn before; that is to say, wherever the strength of a belief -is particularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the difficulty of -proving what is believed, the conclusion of its actual _improbability_. -We do not again deny that "faith produces salvation": _for that very -reason_ we do deny that faith _proves_ anything,--a strong faith, which -produces happiness, causes suspicion of the object of that faith, it -does not establish its "truth," it does establish a certain probability -of--_illusion_. What is now the position in these cases? These -solitaries and deniers of to-day; these fanatics in one thing, in their -claim to intellectual cleanness; these hard, stern, continent, heroic -spirits, who constitute the glory of our time; all these pale atheists, -anti-Christians, immoralists, Nihilists; these sceptics, "ephectics," -and "hectics" of the intellect (in a certain sense they are the -latter, both collectively and individually); these supreme idealists -of knowledge, in whom alone nowadays the intellectual conscience -dwells and is alive--in point of fact they believe themselves as far -away as possible from the ascetic ideal, do these "free, very free -spirits": and yet, if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see--for -they stand too near themselves: this ideal is simply _their_ ideal, -they represent it nowadays and perhaps no one else, they themselves -are its most spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of -skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate and elusive form -of seduction.--If I am in any way a reader of riddles, then I will -be one with this sentence: for some time past there have been no -free spirits; _for they still believe in truth_. When the Christian -Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order -of assassins, that order of free spirits _par excellence_, whose -lowest grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order of monks -has ever attained, then in some way or other they managed to get an -inkling of that symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the -highest grade alone as their _secretum_, "Nothing is true, everything -is allowed,"--in sooth, that was _freedom_ of thought, thereby was -_taking leave_ of the very belief in truth. Has indeed any European, -any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into this proposition -and its labyrinthine consequences? Does he know _from experience_ the -Minotauros of this den.--I doubt it--nay, I know otherwise. Nothing -is more really alien to these "mono-fanatics," these _so-called_ -"free spirits," than freedom and unfettering in that sense; in no -respect are they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of their -belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this perhaps too much from -experience at close quarters--that dignified philosophic abstinence -to which a belief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism of -the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation as rigidly as it does -affirmation, that wish for standing still in front of the actual, -the _factum brutum_, that fatalism in "_petits faits_" (ce petit -faitalism, as I call it), in which French Science now attempts a kind -of moral superiority over German, this renunciation of interpretation -generally (that is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, -suppressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other _essential_ -attributes of interpretation)--all this, considered broadly, expresses -the asceticism of virtue, quite as efficiently as does any repudiation -of the senses (it is at bottom only a _modus_ of that repudiation.) -But what forces it into that unqualified will for truth is the faith -_in the ascetic ideal itself_, even though it take the form of its -unconscious imperatives,--make no mistake about it, it is the faith, -I repeat, in a _metaphysical_ value, an _intrinsic_ value of truth, -of a character which is only warranted and guaranteed in this ideal -(it stands and falls with that ideal). Judged strictly, there does -not exist a science without its "hypotheses," the thought of such a -science is inconceivable, illogical: a philosophy, a faith, must always -exist first to enable science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, -a limit and method, a _right_ to existence. (He who holds a contrary -opinion on the subject--he, for example, who takes it upon himself to -establish philosophy "upon a strictly scientific basis"--has first got -to "turn up-side-down" not only philosophy but also truth itself--the -gravest insult which could possibly be offered to two such respectable -females!) Yes, there is no doubt about it--and here I quote my _Joyful -Wisdom_, cp. Book V. Aph. 344: "The man who is truthful in that -daring and extreme fashion, which is the presupposition of the faith -in science, _asserts thereby a different world_ from that of life, -nature, and history; and in so far as he asserts the existence of that -different world, come, must he not similarly repudiate its counterpart, -this world, _our_ world? The belief on which our faith in science is -based has remained to this day a metaphysical belief--even we knowers -of to-day, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too take our fire from -that conflagration which was kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, -from that Christian belief, which was also Plato's belief, the belief -that God is truth, that truth is _divine_.... But what if this belief -becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself to -be divine, unless it be error, blindness, lies--what if God, Himself -proved Himself to be our _oldest lie_?"--It is necessary to stop at -this point and to consider the situation carefully. Science itself now -_needs_ a justification (which is not for a minute to say that there -is such a justification). Turn in this context to the most ancient and -the most modern philosophers: they all fail to realise the extent of -the need of a justification on the part of the Will for Truth--here -is a gap in every philosophy--what is it caused by? Because up to the -present the ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because Truth was -fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme Court of Appeal, because Truth -was not allowed to be a problem. Do you understand this "allowed"? -From the minute that the belief in the God of the ascetic ideal is -repudiated, there exists _a new problem_: the problem of the value of -truth. The Will for Truth needed a critique--let us define by these -words our own task---the value of truth is tentatively _to be called -in question_.... (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recommend -the reader to peruse again that passage from the _Joyful Wisdom_ which -bears the title, "How far we also are still pious," Aph. 344, and best -of all the whole fifth book of that work, as well as the Preface to -_The Dawn of Day_.) - - -25. - -No! You can't get round me with science, when I search for the natural -antagonists of the ascetic ideal, when I put the question: "_Where_ -is the opposed will in which the _opponent ideal_ expresses itself?" -Science is not, by a long way, independent enough to fulfil this -function; in every department science needs an ideal value, a power -which creates values, and in whose _service_ it _can believe_ in itself ---science itself never creates values. Its relation to the ascetic -ideal is not in itself antagonistic; speaking roughly, it rather -represents the progressive force in the inner evolution of that ideal. -Tested more exactly, its opposition and antagonism are concerned not -with the ideal itself, but only with that ideal's outworks, its outer -garb, its masquerade, with its temporary hardening, stiffening, and -dogmatising--it makes the life in the ideal free once more, while it -repudiates its superficial elements. These two phenomena, science and -the ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis––I have already made -this clear––the basis, I say, oft the same over-appreciation of truth -(more accurately the same belief in the _impossibility_ of valuing and -of criticising truth), and consequently they are _necessarily_ allies, -so that, in the event of their being attacked, they must always be -attacked and called into question together. A valuation of the ascetic -ideal inevitably entails a valuation of science as well; lose no time -in seeing this clearly, and be sharp to catch it! (_Art_, I am speaking -provisionally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in greater -detail,––art, I repeat, in which lying is sanctified and the _will for -deception_ has good conscience on its side, is much more fundamentally -opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science: Plato's instinct felt -this––Plato, the greatest enemy of art which Europe has produced up -to the present. Plato _versus_ Homer, that is the complete, the true -antagonism––on the one side, the whole–hearted "transcendental," the -great defamer of life; on the other, its involuntary panegyrist, the -_golden_ nature. An artistic subservience to the service of the ascetic -ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic _corruption_ that -there can be, though unfortunately it is one of the most frequent -phases, for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Considered -physiologically, moreover, science rests on the same, basis as -does the ascetic ideal: a certain _impoverishment of life_ is the -presupposition of the latter as of the former––add, frigidity of the -emotions, slackening of the _tempo_, the substitution of dialectic for -instinct, _seriousness_ impressed on mien and gesture (seriousness, -that most unmistakable sign of strenuous metabolism, of struggling, -toiling life). Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned -man comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often -of sunset, of decay--the effervescing strength, the confidence in -life, the confidence in the future are no more. The preponderance of -the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent -of democracy, or arbitration instead of war, equal rights for women, -the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. -(Science handled as a problem! what is the meaning of science?--upon -this point the Preface to the _Birth of Tragedy_.) No! this "modern -science"--mark you this well--is at times the _best_ ally for the -ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the ally which is -most unconscious, most automatic, most secret, and most subterranean! -They have been playing into each other's hands up to the present, have -these "poor in spirit" and the scientific opponents of that ideal (take -care, by the bye, not to think that these opponents are the antithesis -of this ideal, that they are the _rich_ in spirit--that they are _not_; -I have called them the _hectic_ in spirit). As for these celebrated -victories of science; there is no doubt that they are _victories_--but -victories over what? There was not for a single minute any victory -among their list over the ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, -that is to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious, from -the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had got built on to the main -fortress and disfigured its appearance, should from time to time be -ruthlessly destroyed and broken down by science. Does any one seriously -suggest that the downfall of the theological astronomy signified the -downfall of that ideal?--Has, perchance, man grown _less in need_ of a -transcendental solution of his riddle of existence, because since that -time this existence has become more random, casual, and superfluous in -the _visible_ order of the universe? Has there not been since the time -of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the self-belittling of man and -his _will_ for belittling himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his -uniquenesses irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence, is gone--he -has become animal, literal, unqualified, and unmitigated animal, he -who in his earlier belief was almost God ("child of God," "demi-God"). -Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to a steep plane--he rolls -faster and faster away from the centre--whither? into nothingness? -into the "thrilling sensation of his own nothingness"--Well! this -would be the straight way--to the old ideal?--All science (and by no -means only astronomy, with regard to the humiliating and deteriorating -effect of which Kant has made a remarkable confession, "it annihilates -my own importance"), all science, natural as much as _unnatural_--by -unnatural I mean the self-critique of reason--nowadays sets out to -talk man out of his present opinion of himself, as though that opinion -had been nothing but a bizarre piece of conceit; you might go so far -as to say that science finds its peculiar pride, its peculiar bitter -form of stoical ataraxia, in preserving man's _contempt of himself_, -that state which it took so much trouble to bring about, as man's final -and most serious claim to self-appreciation (rightly so, in point -of fact, for he who despises is always "one who has not forgotten -how to appreciate"). But does all this involve any real effort to -_counteract_ the ascetic ideal? Is it really seriously suggested that -Kant's _victory_ over the theological dogmatism about "God," "Soul," -"Freedom," "Immortality," has damaged that ideal in any way (as the -theologians have imagined to be the case for a long time past)?–– -And in this connection it does not concern us for a single minute, -if Kant himself intended any such consummation. It is certain that -from the time of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a -winning game––they are emancipated from the theologians; what luck!––he -has revealed to them that secret art, by which they can now pursue -their "heart's desire" on their own responsibility, and with all the -respectability of science. Similarly, who can grumble at the agnostics, -reverers, as they are, of the unknown and the absolute mystery, if they -now worship _their very query_ as God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere -of the _ravages_ which _l'habitude d'admirer l'inintelligible au lieu -de rester tout simplement dans l'inconnu_ has produced––the ancients, -he thinks, must have been exempt from those ravages.) Supposing that -everything, "known" to man, fails to satisfy his desires, and on the -contrary contradicts and horrifies them, what a divine way out of all -this to be able to look for the responsibility, not in the "desiring" -but in "knowing"!––"There is no knowledge. _Consequently_––there is -a God"; what a novel _elegantia syllogism_i! what a triumph for the -ascetic ideal! - - -26. - -Or, perchance, does the whole of modern history show in its demeanour -greater confidence in life, greater confidence in its ideals? Its -loftiest pretension is now to be a _mirror_; it repudiates all -teleology; it will have no more "proving"; it disdains to play the -judge, and thereby shows its good taste––it asserts as little as it -denies, it fixes, it "describes." All this is to a high degree ascetic, -but at the same time it is to a much greater degree _nihilistic_; make -no mistake about this! You see in the historian a gloomy, hard, but -determined gaze,––an eye that _looks out_ as an isolated North Pole -explorer looks out (perhaps so as not to look within, so as not to look -back?)––there is snow––here is life silenced, the last crows which -caw here are called "whither?" "Vanity," "Nada"––here nothing more -flourishes and grows, at the most the metapolitics of St. Petersburg -and the "pity" of Tolstoi. But as for that other school of historians, -a perhaps still more "modern" school, a voluptuous and lascivious -school which ogles life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, -which uses the word "artist" as a glove, and has nowadays established -a "corner" for itself, in all the praise given to contemplation; oh, -what a thirst do these sweet intellectuals excite even for ascetics -and winter landscapes! Nay! The devil take these "contemplative" folk! -How much liefer would I wander with those historical Nihilists through -the gloomiest, grey, cold mist!––nay, I shall not mind listening -(supposing I have to choose) to one who is completely unhistorical -and anti-historical (a man, like Dühring for instance, over whose -periods a hitherto shy and unavowed species of "beautiful souls" has -grown intoxicated in contemporary Germany, _the species anarchistica_ -within the educated proletariate). The "contemplative" are a hundred -times worse––I never knew anything which produced such intense -nausea as one of those "objective" _chairs_,[6] one of those scented -mannikins-about-town of history, a thing half-priest, half-satyr (Renan -_parfum_), which betrays by the high, shrill falsetto of his applause -what he lacks and where he lacks it, who betrays where in this case -the Fates have plied their ghastly shears, alas! in too surgeon-like -a fashion! This is distasteful to me, and irritates my patience; let -him keep patient at such sights who has nothing to lose thereby,––such -a sight enrages me, such spectators embitter me against the "play," -even more than does the play itself (history itself, you understand); -Anacreontic moods imperceptibly come over me. This Nature, who gave -to the steer its horn, to the lion its χάσμ ὀδοντων, for what purpose -did Nature give me my foot?––To kick, by St. Anacreon, and not merely -to run away! To trample on all the worm-eaten "chairs," the cowardly -contemplators, the lascivious eunuchs of history, the flirters with -ascetic ideals, the righteous hypocrites of impotence! All reverence -on my part to the ascetic ideal, _in so far as it is honourable_! So -long as it believes in itself and plays no pranks on us! But I like -not all these coquettish bugs who have an insatiate ambition to smell -of the infinite, until eventually the infinite smells of bugs; I like -not the whited sepulchres with their stagey reproduction of life; -I like not the tired and the used up who wrap themselves in wisdom -and look "objective"; I like not the agitators dressed up as heroes, -who hide their dummy-heads behind the stalking-horse of an ideal; I -like not the ambitious artists who would fain play the ascetic and -the priest, and are at bottom nothing but tragic clowns; I like not, -again, these newest speculators in idealism, the Anti-Semites, who -nowadays roll their eyes in the patent Christian-Aryan-man-of-honour -fashion, and by an abuse of moralist attitudes and agitation dodges, so -cheap as to exhaust any patience, strive to excite all the blockhead -elements in the populace (the invariable success of _every_ kind of -intellectual charlatanism in present-day Germany hangs together with -the almost indisputable and already quite palpable desolation of the -German mind, whose cause I look for in a too exclusive diet, of papers, -politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, not forgetting the condition -precedent of this diet, the national exclusiveness and vanity, the -strong but narrow principle, "Germany, Germany above everything,"[7] -and finally the _paralysis agitans_ of "modern ideas"). Europe -nowadays is, above all, wealthy and ingenious in means of excitement; -it apparently has no more crying necessity than _stimulantia_ and -alcohol. Hence the enormous counterfeiting of ideals, those most fiery -spirits of the mind; hence too the repulsive, evil-smelling, perjured, -pseudo–alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many cargoes -of imitation idealism, of hero-costumes and high falutin' clap-trap, -how many casks of sweetened pity liqueur (Firm: _la religion de la -souffrance_), how many crutches of righteous indignation for the help -of these flat-footed intellects, how many _comedians_ of the Christian -moral ideal would need to-day to be exported from Europe, to enable -its air to smell pure again. It is obvious that, in regard to this -over-production, a new _trade_ possibility lies open; it is obvious -that there is a new business to be done in little ideal idols and -obedient "idealists"--don't pass over this tip! Who has sufficient -courage? We have in _our hands_ the possibility of idealising the whole -earth. But what am I talking about courage? we only need one thing -here--a hand, a free, a very free hand. - - -27. - -Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of -the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our -problem can certainly do without them, the problem of _meaning_ of -the ascetic ideal--what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day? -those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely in -another connection (under the title "A Contribution to the History of -European Nihilism," I refer for this to a work which I am preparing: -_The Will to Power, an Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values_). -The only reason why I come to allude to it here is this: the ascetic -ideal has at times, even in the most intellectual sphere, only one -real kind of enemies and _damagers_: these are the comedians of this -ideal--for they awake mistrust. Everywhere otherwise, where the mind -is at work seriously, powerfully, and without counterfeiting, it -dispenses altogether now with an ideal (the popular expression for this -abstinence is "Atheism")--_with the exception of the will for truth_. -But this will, this _remnant_ of an ideal, is, if you will believe me, -that ideal itself in its severest and cleverest formulation, esoteric -through and through, stripped of all outworks, and consequently not so -much its remnant as its _kernel_. Unqualified honest atheism (and its -air only do we breathe, we, the most intellectual men of this age) is -_not_ opposed to that ideal, to the extent that it appears to be; it is -rather one of the final phases of its evolution, one of its syllogisms -and pieces of inherent logic--it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of -a two-thousand-year training in truth, which finally forbids itself -_the lie of the belief in God_. (The same course of development in -India--quite independently, and consequently of some demonstrative -value--the same ideal driving to the same conclusion the decisive point -reached five hundred years before the European era, or more precisely -at the time of Buddha--it started in the Sankhyam philosophy, and then -this was popularised through Buddha, and made into a religion.) - -_What_, I put the question with all strictness, has really _triumphed_ -over the Christian God? The answer stands in my _Joyful Wisdom_, Aph. -357: "the Christian morality itself, the idea of truth, taken as it was -with increasing seriousness, the confessor-subtlety of the Christian -conscience translated and sublimated into the scientific conscience -into intellectual cleanness at any price. Regarding Nature as though -it were a proof of the goodness and guardianship of God; interpreting -history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant proof of a moral -order of the world and a moral teleology; explaining our own personal -experiences, as pious men have for long enough explained them, as -though every arrangement, every nod, every single thing were invented -and sent out of love for the salvation of the soul; all this is now -done away with, all this has the conscience _against_ it, and is -regarded by every subtler conscience as disreputable, dishonourable, -as lying, feminism, weakness, cowardice--by means of this severity, -if by means of anything at all, are we, in sooth, _good Europeans_ -and heirs of Europe's longest and bravest self-mastery.". .. All -great things go to ruin by reason of themselves, by reason of an act -of self-dissolution: so wills the law of life, the law of necessary -"self-mastery" even in the essence of life--ever is the law-giver -finally exposed to the cry, "_patere legem quam ipse tulisti_"; in -thus wise did Christianity _go to ruin as a dogma_, through its own -morality; in thus wise must Christianity go again to ruin to-day as -a morality--we are standing on the threshold of this event. After -Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after the other, it -finally draws its _strongest conclusion_, its conclusion against -itself; this, however, happens, when it puts the question, "_what is -the meaning of every will for truth?_" And here again do I touch on my -problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for as yet _I know_ of no -friends): what sense has our whole being, if it does not mean that in -our own selves that will for truth has come to its own consciousness -_as a problem_?---By reason of this attainment of self-consciousness -on the part of the will for truth, morality from henceforward--there -is no doubt about it--goes _to pieces_: this is that great hundred-act -play that is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe, the most -terrible, the most mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all -plays. - - -28. - -If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. -His existence on earth contained no end; "What is the purpose of man -at all?" was a question without an answer; the _will_ for man and the -world was lacking; behind every great human destiny rang as a refrain -a still greater "Vanity!" The ascetic ideal simply means this: that -something _was lacking_, that a tremendous _void_ encircled man--he did -not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm himself, -he _suffered_ from the problem of his own meaning. He suffered also in -other ways, he was in the main a _diseased_ animal; but his problem -was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to that crying -question, "_To what purpose_ do we suffer?" Man, the bravest animal -and the one most inured to suffering, does _not_ repudiate suffering in -itself: he _wills_ it, he even seeks it out, provided that he is shown -a meaning for it, a _purpose_ of suffering. _Not_ suffering, but the -senselessness of suffering was the curse which till then lay spread -over humanity--_and the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning!_ It was up -till then the only meaning; but any meaning is better than no meaning; -the ascetic ideal was in that connection the _"faute de mieux" par -excellence_ that existed at that time. In that ideal suffering _found -an explanation_; the tremendous gap seemed filled; the door to all -suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation--there is no doubt about -it--brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more -venomous, gnawing more brutally into life: it brought all suffering -under the perspective of _guilt_; but in spite of all that--man was -_saved_ thereby, he had a _meaning_, and from henceforth was no more -like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-cock of chance, of nonsense, he -could now "will" something--absolutely immaterial to what end, to what -purpose, with what means he wished: _the will itself was saved_. It -is absolutely impossible to disguise _what_ in point of fact is made -clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the -ascetic ideal: this hate of the human, and even more of the animal, -and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason -itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get right -away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even -desiring--all this means--let us have the courage to grasp it--a will -for Nothingness, a will opposed to life, a repudiation of the most -fundamental conditions of life, but it is and remains _a will_!--and -to say at the end that which I said at the beginning--man will wish -_Nothingness_ rather than not wish _at all_. - - - -[1] An allusion to the celebrated monologue in William Tell. - -[2] Mistress Sly.--Tr. - -[3] In the German text "Heiland." This has the double meaning of -"healer" and "saviour."--H. B. S. - -[4] "Horrible beast." - -[5] "Here I stand! I cannot help myself. God help me! Amen"--were -Luther's words before the Reichstag at Worms.--H. B. S. - -[6] E.g. Lectureships. - -[7] An allusion to the well-known patriotic song.--H. B. S. - - - - -PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. KENNEDY. - - -[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by Nietzsche to -form a supplement to Chapter VIII. of _Beyond Good and Evil_, dealing -with Peoples and Countries.] - - -1. - -The Europeans now imagine themselves as representing, in the main, the -highest types of men on earth. - - -2. - -A characteristic of Europeans: inconsistency between word and deed; -the Oriental is true to himself in daily life. How the European has -established colonies is explained by his nature, which resembles that -of a beast of prey. - -This inconsistency is explained by the fact that Christianity has -abandoned the class from which it sprang. - -This is the difference between us and the Hellenes: their morals grew -up among the governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the same as those -that exploded everywhere with Plato. - -Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance, for example: always for -the benefit of the arts. Michael Angelo's conception of God as the -"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one. - - -3. - -I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael, because, through all the -Christian clouds and prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a -culture _nobler_ than the Christo-Raphaelian: whilst Raphael truly -and modestly glorified only the values handed down to him, and did -not carry within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts. Michael -Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt the problem of the law-giver of -new values: the problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first had -to subdue the "hero within himself," the man exalted to his highest -pedestal, master even of his pity, who mercilessly shatters and -annihilates everything that does not bear his own stamp, shining in -Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo was naturally only at certain moments -so high and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe: for the most -part he adopted a condescending attitude towards the eternal feminine -in Christianity; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he broke down -before her, and gave up the ideal of his most inspired hours. It was -an ideal which only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of life -could bear; but not a man advanced in years! Indeed, he would have had -to demolish Christianity with his ideal! But he was not thinker and -philosopher enough for that Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci alone of those -artists had a really super-Christian outlook. He knows the East, the -"land of dawn," within himself as well as without himself. There is -something super-European and silent in him: a characteristic of every -one who has seen too wide a circle of things good and bad. - - -4. - -How much we have learnt and learnt anew in fifty years! The whole -Romantic School with its belief in "the people" is refuted! No Homeric -poetry as "popular" poetry! No deification of the great powers of -Nature! No deduction from language-relationship to race-relationship! -No "intellectual contemplations" of the supernatural! No truth -enshrouded in religion! - -The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one. I am astonished. From -this standpoint we regard such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of -carelessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of modesty; we would -condemn Plato for his _pia fraus_, Kant for the derivation of his -Categorical Imperative, his own belief certainly not having come to him -from this source. - -Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt in doubt. And the -question as to the _value_ of truthfulness and its extent lies _there_. - - -5. - -What I observe with pleasure in the German is his Mephistophelian -nature; but, to tell the truth, one must have a higher conception of -Mephistopheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary to _diminish_ -his Mephistopheles in order to magnify his "inner Faust." The true -German Mephistopheles is much more dangerous, bold, wicked, and -cunning, and consequently more open-hearted: remember the nature -of Frederick the Great, or of that much greater Frederick, the -Hohenstaufen, Frederick II. - -The real German Mephistopheles crosses the Alps, and believes that -everything there belongs to him. Then he recovers himself, like -Winckelmann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and Hamlet as -caricatures, invented to be laughed at, and upon Luther also. Goethe -had his good German moments, when he laughed inwardly at all these -things. But then he fell back again into his cloudy moods. - - -6. - -Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a wrong climate! There is -something in them that might be Hellenic!--something that is awakened -when they are brought into touch with the South--Winckelmann, Goethe, -Mozart. We should not forget, however, that we are still young. Luther -is still our last event; our last book is still the Bible. The Germans -have never yet "moralised." Also, the very food of the Germans was -their doom: its consequence, Philistinism. - - -7. - -The Germans are a dangerous people: they are experts at inventing -intoxicants. Gothic, rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense -and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner--Leibniz, too (dangerous at the -present day)--(they even idealised the serving soul as the virtue of -scholars and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The Germans may well -be the most composite people on earth. - -"The people of the Middle," the inventors of porcelain, and of a kind -of Chinese breed of Privy Councillor. - - -8. - -The smallness and baseness of the German soul were not and are not -consequences of the system of small states; for it is well known that -the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud and independent: -and it is not a large state _per se_ that makes souls freer and more -manly. The man whose soul obeys the slavish command: "Thou shalt and -must kneel!" in whose body there is an involuntary bowing and scraping -to titles, orders, gracious glances from above--well, such a man -in an "Empire" will only bow all the more deeply and lick the dust -more fervently in the presence of the greater sovereign than in the -presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted. We can still see in the -lower classes of Italians that aristocratic self-sufficiency; manly -discipline and self-confidence still form a part of the long history -of their country: these are virtues which once manifested themselves -before their eyes. A poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure -than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even a better man in the -end--any one can see this. Just ask the women. - - -9. - -Most artists, even some of the greatest (including the historians) have -up to the present belonged to the serving classes (whether they serve -people of high position or princes or women or "the masses"), not to -speak of their dependence upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus -Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but only according to their -vague conception of taste, not according to his own measure of beauty -on the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van Dyck was nobler in -this respect: who in all those whom he painted added a certain amount -of what he himself most highly valued: he did not descend from himself, -but rather lifted up others to himself when he "rendered." - -The slavish humility of the artist to his public (as Sebastian Bach has -testified in undying and outrageous words in the dedication of his High -Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in music; but it is all the -more deeply engrained. A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured -to impart my views on this subject. Chopin possesses distinction, like -Van Dyck. The disposition of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant; -of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn, too, possesses -distinction--like Goethe, in the most natural way in the world. - - -10. - -We could at any time have counted on the fingers of one hand those -German learned men who possessed wit: the remainder have understanding, -and a few of them, happily, that famous "childlike character" -which divines.... It is our privilege: with this "divination" German -science has discovered some things which we can hardly conceive of, and -which, after all, do not exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the -Germans who do not "divine" like them. - - -11. - -As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and _esprit_ of French society, -so do Germans reflect something of the deep, pensive earnestness of -their mystics and musicians, and also of their silly childishness. The -Italian exhibits a great deal of republican distinction and art, and -can show himself to be noble and proud without vanity. - - -12. - -A larger number of the higher and better-endowed men will, I hope, have -in the end so much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their bad -taste for affectation and sentimental darkness, and to turn against -Richard Wagner as much as against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are -leading us to ruin; they flatter our dangerous qualities. A stronger -future is prepared for us in Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in -these racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers yet. - - -13. - -The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse, for he is dependent upon -himself most of all. Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany ---for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck. - -Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the face of Germans. Everything -that had manly, exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the smug -populace remaining, the slave-souled people, there came an improvement -from abroad, especially by a mixture of Slavonic blood. - -The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian nobility in general (and the -peasant of certain North German districts), comprise at present the -most manly natures in Germany. - -That the manliest men shall rule: this is only the natural order of -things. - - -14. - -The future of German culture rests with the sons of the Prussian -officers. - - -15. - -There has always been a want of wit in Germany, and mediocre heads -attain there to the highest honours, because even they are rare. What -is most highly prized is diligence and perseverance and a certain -cold-blooded, critical outlook, and, for the sake of such qualities, -German scholarship and the German military system have become paramount -in Europe. - - -16. - -Parliaments may be very useful to a strong and versatile statesman: -he has something there to rely upon (every such thing must, however, -be able to resist!)--upon which he can throw a great deal of -responsibility. On the whole, however, I could wish that the counting -mania and the superstitious belief in majorities were not established -in Germany, as with the Latin races, and that one could finally invent -something new even in politics! It is senseless and dangerous to let -the custom of universal suffrage--which is still but a short time under -cultivation, and could easily be uprooted--take a deeper root: whilst, -of course, its introduction was merely an expedient to steer clear of -temporary difficulties. - - -17. - -Can any one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new -thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it -does not know its own mind. Peace and laisser aller are not types of -politics for which I have any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest -thoughts to victory--the only things that can make me interested in -Germany. England's small-mindedness is the great danger now on earth. -I observe more inclination towards greatness in the feelings of the -Russian Nihilists than in those of the English Utilitarians. We require -an intergrowth of the German and Slav races, and we require, too, the -cleverest financiers, the Jews, for us to become masters of the world. - -(a) The sense of reality. - -(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the people's right of -representation. We require the representation of the great interests. - -(c) We require an unconditional union with Russia, together with a -mutual plan of action which shall not permit any English schemata to -obtain the mastery in Russia. No American future! - -(d) A national system of politics is untenable, and embarrassment by -Christian views is a very great evil. In Europe all sensible people are -sceptics, whether they say so or not. - - -18. - -I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and -whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with--for I -see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly--is the United Europe. -It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the -broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century--this preparation -of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future -of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew -old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the -"Fatherlanders"--then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking -of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, -Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, -concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can -be said without some such "perhaps." - -But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there -comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe--I -refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires"--will in a short time -become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle -for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even -now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In -order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery -of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive -against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to -an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for -this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new rôle of -broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. -For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to -continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility -of shutting out _homines novi_ from the government will ruin her, and -her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the -carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long -period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that -he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, -as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in -the footsteps of Napoleon--the first man, and the man of greatest -initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the -next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are -the most inappropriate imaginable. - - -19. - -The condition of Europe in the next century will once again lead to the -breeding of manly virtues, because men will live in continual danger. -Universal military service is already the curious antidote which we -possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas, and it has grown up out -of the struggle of the nations. (Nation--men who speak one language -and read the same newspapers. These men now call themselves "nations," -and would far too readily trace their descent from the same source and -through the same history; which, however, even with the assistance of -the most malignant lying in the past, they have not succeeded in -doing.) - - -20. - -What quagmires and mendacity must there be about if it is possible, -in the modern European hotch-potch, to raise questions of "race"! (It -being premised that the origin of such writers is not in Horneo and -Borneo.) - - -21. - -Maxim: To associate with no man who takes any part in the mendacious -race swindle. - - -22. - -With the freedom of travel now existing, groups of men of the same -kindred can join together and establish communal habits and customs. -The overcoming of "nations." - - -23. - -To make Europe a centre of culture, national stupidities should not -make us blind to the fact that in the higher regions there is already a -continuous reciprocal dependence. France and German philosophy. Richard -Wagner and Paris (1830-50). Goethe and Greece. All things are impelled -towards, a synthesis of the European past in the highest types of mind. - - -24. - -Mankind has still much before it--how, generally speaking, could -the ideal be taken from the past? Perhaps merely in relation to the -present, which latter is possibly a lower region. - - -25. - -This is our distrust, which recurs again and again; our care, which -never lets us sleep; our question, which no one listens to or wishes -to listen to; our Sphinx, near which there is more than one precipice: -we believe that the men of present-day Europe are deceived in regard -to the things which we love best, and a pitiless demon (no, not -pitiless, only indifferent and puerile)--plays with our hearts and -their enthusiasm, as it may perhaps have already played with everything -that lived and loved; I believe that everything which we Europeans -of to-day are in the habit of admiring as the values of all these -respected things called "humanity," "mankind," "sympathy," "pity," may -be of some value as the debilitation and moderating of certain powerful -and dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless, in the long run all -these things are nothing else than the belittlement of the entire type -"man," his mediocrisation, if in such a desperate situation I may make -use of such a desperate expression. I think that the commedia umana for -an epicurean spectator-god must consist in this: that the Europeans, by -virtue of their growing morality, believe in all their innocence and -vanity that they are rising higher and higher, whereas the truth is -that they are sinking lower and lower--i.e. through the cultivation of -all the virtues which are useful to a herd, and through the repression -of the other and contrary virtues which give rise to a new, higher, -stronger, masterful race of men--the first-named virtues merely develop -the herd-animal in man and stabilitate the animal "man," for until now -man has been "the animal as yet unstabilitated." - - -26. - -Genius and Epoch.--Heroism is no form of selfishness, for one is -shipwrecked by it.... The direction of power is often conditioned by -the state of the period in which the great man happens to be born; and -this fact brings about the superstition that he is the expression of -his time. But this same power could be applied in several different -ways; and between him and his time there is always this difference: -that public opinion always worships the herd instinct,--_i.e._ the -instinct of the weak,--while he, the strong man, rights for strong -ideals. - - -27. - -The fate now overhanging Europe is simply this: that it is exactly -her strongest sons that come rarely and late to the spring-time of -their existence; that, as a rule, when they are already in their early -youth they perish, saddened, disgusted, darkened in mind, just because -they have already, with the entire passion of their strength, drained -to the dregs the cup of disillusionment, which in our days means the -cup of knowledge, and they would not have been the strongest had -they not also been the most disillusionised. For that is the test of -their power--they must first of all rise out of the illness of their -epoch to reach their own health. A late spring-time is their mark of -distinction; also, let us add, late merriment, late folly, the late -exuberance of joy! For this is the danger of to-day: everything that we -loved when we were young has betrayed us. Our last love--the love which -makes us acknowledge her, our love for Truth--let us take care that -she, too, does not betray us! - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Genealogy of Morals, by -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS *** - -***** This file should be named 52319-0.txt or 52319-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/2/3/1/52319/ - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Genealogy of Morals - The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. - -Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - -Editor: Oscar Levy - -Translator: Horace B. Samuel - J. M. Kennedy - -Release Date: June 13, 2016 [EBook #52319] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust.) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> -<h1>THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS</h1> - -<h3>A POLEMIC</h3> - -<h3>BY</h3> - -<h2>FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE</h2> - -<h4>TRANSLATED BY</h4> - -<h4>HORACE B. SAMUEL, M.A.</h4> - -<h4>PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES (FRAGMENT)</h4> - -<h4>TRANSLATED BY J. M. KENNEDY</h4> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 175px;"> -<img src="images/ill_niet.jpg" width="175" alt="" /> -</div> -<h4>The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche</h4> - -<h5>The First Complete and Authorised English Translation</h5> - -<h4>Edited by Dr Oscar Levy</h4> - -<h4>Volume Eight</h4> - -<h5>T.N. FOULIS</h5> - -<h5>13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET</h5> - -<h5>EDINBURGH: AND LONDON</h5> - -<h5>1913</h5> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p style="font-size: 0.8em;">CONTENTS.<br /> -<br /> -<a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE.</a><br /> -<a href="#FIRST_ESSAY">FIRST ESSAY. "GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD."</a><br /> -<a href="#SECOND_ESSAY">SECOND ESSAY. "GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE.</a><br /> -<a href="#THIRD_ESSAY">THIRD ESSAY.</a><br /> -<a href="#PEOPLES_AND_COUNTRIES">PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.</a><br /> -</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="EDITORS_NOTE" id="EDITORS_NOTE">EDITOR'S NOTE.</a></h4> - -<blockquote> -<p>In 1887, with the view of amplifying and completing certain new -doctrines which he had merely sketched in <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i> -(see especially aphorism 260), Nietzsche published <i>The Genealogy of -Morals</i>. This work is perhaps the least aphoristic, in form, of all -Nietzsche's productions. For analytical power, more especially in those -parts where Nietzsche examines the ascetic ideal, <i>The Genealogy of -Morals</i> is unequalled by any other of his works; and, in the light -which it throws upon the attitude of the ecclesiast to the man of -resentment and misfortune, it is one of the most valuable contributions -to sacerdotal psychology.</p> -</blockquote> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE">PREFACE.</a></h4> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own -good reason. We have never searched for ourselves—how should it then -come to pass, that we should ever <i>find</i> ourselves? Rightly has it been -said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." <i>Our</i> -treasure is there, where stand the hives of our knowledge. It is to -those hives that we are always striving; as born creatures of flight, -and as the honey-gatherers of the spirit, we care really in our hearts -only for one thing—to bring something "home to the hive!"</p> - -<p>As far as the rest of life with its so-called "experiences" is -concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or -sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are, I -fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is not -there, and certainly not our ear. Rather like one who, delighting -in a divine distraction, or sunken in the seas of his own soul, in -whose ear the clock has just thundered with all its force its twelve -strokes of noon, suddenly wakes up, and asks himself, "What has in -point of fact just struck?" so do we at times rub afterwards, as it -were, our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> puzzled ears, and ask in complete astonishment and complete -embarrassment, "Through what have we in point of fact just lived?" -further, "Who are we in point of fact?" and count, <i>after they have -struck</i>, as I have explained, all the twelve throbbing beats of the -clock of our experience, of our life, of our being—ah!—and count -wrong in the endeavour. Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, -we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, -for of us holds good to all eternity the motto, "Each one is the -farthest away from himself"—as far as ourselves are concerned we are -not "knowers."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>My thoughts concerning the <i>genealogy</i> of our moral prejudices—for -they constitute the issue in this polemic—have their first, bald, -and provisional expression in that collection of aphorisms entitled -<i>Human, all-too-Human, a Book for Free Minds</i>, the writing of which -was begun in Sorrento, during a winter which allowed me to gaze over -the broad and dangerous territory through which my mind had up to that -time wandered. This took place in the winter of 1876-77; the thoughts -themselves are older. They were in their substance already the same -thoughts which I take up again in the following treatises:—we hope -that they have derived benefit from the long interval, that they have -grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete. The fact, however, -that I still cling to them even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> now, that in the meanwhile they have -always held faster by each other, have, in fact, grown out of their -original shape and into each other, all this strengthens in my mind the -joyous confidence that they must have been originally neither separate -disconnected capricious nor sporadic phenomena, but have sprung from -a common root, from a fundamental "<i>fiat</i>" of knowledge, whose empire -reached to the soul's depth, and that ever grew more definite in its -voice, and more definite in its demands. That is the only state of -affairs that is proper in the case of a philosopher.</p> - -<p>We have no right to be "<i>disconnected</i>"; we must neither err -"disconnectedly" nor strike the truth "disconnectedly." Rather with -the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our thoughts, -our values, our Yes's and No's and If's and Whether's, grow connected -and interrelated, mutual witnesses of <i>one</i> will, <i>one</i> health, <i>one</i> -kingdom, <i>one</i> sun—as to whether they are to <i>your</i> taste, these -fruits of ours?—But what matters that to the trees? What matters that -to us, us the philosophers?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>Owing to a scrupulosity peculiar to myself, which I confess -reluctantly,—it concerns indeed <i>morality</i>,—a scrupulosity, which -manifests itself in my life at such an early period, with so much -spontaneity, with so chronic a persistence and so keen an opposition -to environment, epoch,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> precedent, and ancestry that I should have -been almost entitled to style it my "<i>â priori</i>"—my curiosity and my -suspicion felt themselves betimes bound to halt at the question, of -what in point of actual fact was the <i>origin</i> of our "Good" and of -our "Evil." Indeed, at the boyish age of thirteen the problem of the -origin of Evil already haunted me: at an age "when games and God divide -one's heart," I devoted to that problem my first childish attempt -at the literary game, my first philosophic essay—and as regards my -infantile solution of the problem, well, I gave quite properly the -honour to God, and made him the <i>father</i> of evil. Did my own "<i>â -priori</i>" demand that precise solution from me? that new, immoral, or -at least "amoral" "<i>â priori</i>" and that "categorical imperative" which -was its voice (but oh! how hostile to the Kantian article, and how -pregnant with problems!), to which since then I have given more and -more attention, and indeed what is more than attention. Fortunately -I soon learned to separate theological from moral prejudices, and -I gave up looking for a <i>supernatural</i> origin of evil. A certain -amount of historical and philological education, to say nothing of -an innate faculty of psychological discrimination <i>par excellence</i> -succeeded in transforming almost immediately my original problem into -the following one:—Under what conditions did Man invent for himself -those judgments of values, "Good" and "Evil"? <i>And what intrinsic value -do they possess in themselves?</i> Have they up to the present hindered -or advanced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> human well-being? Are they a symptom of the distress, -impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is -it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the -will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? On this -point I found and hazarded in my mind the most diverse answers, I -established distinctions in periods, peoples, and castes, I became a -specialist in my problem, and from my answers grew new questions, new -investigations, new conjectures, new probabilities; until at last I had -a land of my own and a soil of my own, a whole secret world growing and -flowering, like hidden gardens of whose existence no one could have an -inkling—oh, how happy are we, we finders of knowledge, provided that -we know how to keep silent sufficiently long.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>My first impulse to publish some of my hypotheses concerning the origin -of morality I owe to a clear, well-written, and even precocious little -book, in which a perverse and vicious kind of moral philosophy (your -real <i>English</i> kind) was definitely presented to me for the first time; -and this attracted me—with that magnetic attraction, inherent in that -which is diametrically opposed and antithetical to one's own ideas. -The title of the book was <i>The Origin of the Moral Emotions</i>; its -author, Dr. Paul Rée; the year of its appearance, 1877. I may almost -say that I have never read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> anything in which every single dogma and -conclusion has called forth from me so emphatic a negation as did that -book; albeit a negation tainted by either pique or intolerance. I -referred accordingly both in season and out of season in the previous -works, at which I was then working, to the arguments of that book, not -to refute them—for what have I got to do with mere refutations but -substituting, as is natural to a positive mind, for an improbable -theory one which is more probable, and occasionally no doubt, for one -philosophic error, another. In that early period I gave, as I have -said, the first public expression to those theories of origin to which -these essays are devoted, but with a clumsiness which I was the last -to conceal from myself, for I was as yet cramped, being still without -a special language for these special subjects, still frequently liable -to relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, compare what I say -in <i>Human, all-too-Human</i>, part i., about the parallel early history -of Good and Evil, Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from the castes of the -aristocrats and the slaves); similarly, Aph. 136 et seq., concerning -the birth and value of ascetic morality; similarly, Aphs. 96, 99, -vol. ii., Aph. 89, concerning the Morality of Custom, that far older -and more original kind of morality which is <i>toto cœlo</i> different -from the altruistic ethics (in which Dr. Rée, like all the English -moral philosophers, sees the ethical "Thing-in-itself"); finally, -Aph. 92. Similarly, Aph. 26 in <i>Human, all-too-Human</i>, part ii., and -Aph. 112, the <i>Dawn of Day</i>, concerning the origin of Justice as a -balance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> between persons of approximately equal power (equilibrium as -the hypothesis of all contract, consequently of all law); similarly, -concerning the origin of Punishment, <i>Human, all-too-Human</i>, part -ii., Aphs. 22, 23, in regard to which the deterrent object is neither -essential nor original (as Dr. Rée thinks:—rather is it that this -object is only imported, under certain definite conditions, and always -as something extra and additional).</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>In reality I had set my heart at that time on something much more -important than the nature of the theories of myself or others -concerning the origin of morality (or, more precisely, the real -function from my view of these theories was to point an end to which -they were one among many means). The issue for me was the value -of morality, and on that subject I had to place myself in a state -of abstraction, in which I was almost alone with my great teacher -Schopenhauer, to whom that book, with all its passion and inherent -contradiction (for that book also was a polemic), turned for present -help as though he were still alive. The issue was, strangely enough, -the value of the "un-egoistic" instincts, the instincts of pity, -self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently -painted in golden colours, deified and etherealised, that eventually -they appeared to him, as it were, high and dry, as "intrinsic values -in themselves," on the strength of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> he uttered both to Life -and to himself his own negation. But against <i>these very</i> instincts -there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a -scepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct -I saw the <i>great</i> danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and -seduction—seduction to what? to nothingness?—in these very instincts -I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes -backwards, the will turning <i>against</i> Life, the last illness announcing -itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality -of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even -philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our -modern European civilisation; I realised that it was the route along -which that civilisation slid on its way to—a new Buddhism?—a European -Buddhism?—<i>Nihilism</i>? This exaggerated estimation in which modern -philosophers have held pity, is quite a new phenomenon: up to that time -philosophers were absolutely unanimous as to the <i>worthlessness</i> of pity. -I need only mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant—four -minds as mutually different as is possible, but united on one point; -their contempt of pity.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>This problem of the value of pity and of the pity-morality (I am an -opponent of the modern infamous emasculation of our emotions) seems at -the first blush a mere isolated problem, a note of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> interrogation for -itself; he, however, who once halts at this problem, and learns how to -put questions, will experience what I experienced:—a new and immense -vista unfolds itself before him, a sense of potentiality seizes him -like a vertigo, every species of doubt, mistrust, and fear springs -up, the belief in morality, nay, in all morality, totters,—finally a -new demand voices itself. Let us speak out this <i>new demand</i>: we need -a <i>critique</i> of moral values, <i>the value of these values</i> is for the -first time to be called into question—and for this purpose a knowledge -is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these -values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and -their distortion (morality as a result, as a symptom, as a mask, as -Tartuffism, as disease, as a misunderstanding; but also morality as a -cause, as a remedy, as a stimulant, as a fetter, as a drug), especially -as such a knowledge has neither existed up to the present time nor is -even now generally desired. The value of these "values" was taken for -granted as an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one -has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in -judging the "good man" to be of a higher value than the "evil man," of -a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, -and prosperity generally, not forgetting the future. What? Suppose the -converse were the truth! What? Suppose there lurked in the "good man" -a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, -a <i>narcotic</i>, by means of which the present <i>battened on the future</i>! -More<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also -pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the -guilt, if the <i>maximum potentiality of the power and splendour</i> of the -human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would -be the danger of dangers?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>Enough, that after this vista had disclosed itself to me, I myself had -reason to search for learned, bold, and industrious colleagues (I am -doing it even to this very day). It means traversing with new clamorous -questions, and at the same time with new eyes, the immense, distant, -and completely unexplored land of morality—of a morality which has -actually existed and been actually lived! and is this not practically -equivalent to first <i>discovering</i> that land? If, in this context, I -thought, amongst others, of the aforesaid Dr. Rée, I did so because I -had no doubt that from the very nature of his questions he would be -compelled to have recourse to a truer method, in order to obtain his -answers. Have I deceived myself on that score? I wished at all events -to give a better direction of vision to an eye of such keenness, and -such impartiality. I wished to direct him to the real <i>history of -morality</i>, and to warn him, while there was yet time, against a world -of English theories that culminated in <i>the blue vacuum of heaven</i>. -Other colours, of course, rise immediately to one's mind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> as being a -hundred times more potent than blue for a genealogy of morals:—for -instance, <i>grey</i>, by which I mean authentic facts capable of definite -proof and having actually existed, or, to put it shortly, the whole -of that long hieroglyphic script (which is so hard to decipher) about -the past history of human morals. This script was unknown to Dr. Rée; -but he had read Darwin:—and so in his philosophy the Darwinian beast -and that pink of modernity, the demure weakling and dilettante, who -"bites no longer," shake hands politely in a fashion that is at least -instructive, the latter exhibiting a certain facial expression of -refined and good-humoured indolence, tinged with a touch of pessimism -and exhaustion; as if it really did not pay to take all these things—I -mean moral problems—so seriously. I, on the other hand, think that -there are no subjects which <i>pay</i> better for being taken seriously; part -of this payment is, that perhaps eventually they admit of being taken -<i>gaily</i>. This gaiety indeed, or, to use my own language, this <i>joyful -wisdom</i>, is a payment; a payment for a protracted, brave, laborious, and -burrowing seriousness, which, it goes without saying, is the attribute -of but a few. But on that day on which we say from the fullness of our -hearts, "Forward! our old morality too is fit material <i>for Comedy</i>," -we shall have discovered a new plot, and a new possibility for the -Dionysian drama entitled <i>The Soul's Fate</i>—and he will speedily utilise -it, one can wager safely, he, the great ancient eternal dramatist of -the comedy of our existence.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>If this writing be obscure to any individual, and jar on his ears, I -do not think that it is necessarily I who am to blame. It is clear -enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose, namely, that the reader -has first read my previous writings and has not grudged them a certain -amount of trouble: it is not, indeed, a simple matter to get really at -their essence. Take, for instance, my <i>Zarathustra</i>; I allow no one -to pass muster as knowing that book, unless every single word therein -has at some time wrought in him a profound wound, and at some time -exercised on him a profound enchantment: then and not till then can he -enjoy the privilege of participating reverently in the halcyon element, -from which that work is born, in its sunny brilliance, its distance, -its spaciousness, its certainty. In other cases the aphoristic form -produces difficulty, but this is only because this form is treated -<i>too casually</i>. An aphorism properly coined and cast into its final -mould is far from being "deciphered" as soon as it has been read; on -the contrary, it is then that it first requires <i>to be expounded</i>—of -course for that purpose an art of exposition is necessary. The third -essay in this book provides an example of what is offered, of what in -such cases I call exposition: an aphorism is prefixed to that essay, -the essay itself is its commentary. Certainly one <i>quality</i> which -nowadays has been best forgotten—and that is why it will take some -time yet for my writings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> to become readable—is essential in order -to practise reading as an art—a quality for the exercise of which it -is necessary to be a cow, and under <i>no circumstances</i> a modern man!— -<i>rumination</i>.</p> - -<p>Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10%;"><i>July</i> 1887.</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> -<h5><a name="FIRST_ESSAY" id="FIRST_ESSAY">FIRST ESSAY.</a></h5> - -<h4>"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD."</h4> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only -philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far -as a history of the origin of morality—these men, I say, offer us -in their own personalities no paltry problem;—they even have, if I -am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, -an advantage over their books—<i>they themselves are interesting!</i> -These English psychologists—what do they really mean? We always -find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing -to the front the <i>partie honteuse</i> of our inner world, and looking -for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise -quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be -the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the <i>vis inertiæ</i> of -habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism -and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, -reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)—what is the real motive -power which always impels these psychologists in precisely <i>this</i> -direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, -vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or -perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned -idealists who have become gloomy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> poisoned, and bitter? or a petty -subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that -has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a -vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully -paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a -dash of each of these motives—a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, -a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy?</p> - -<p>But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs -crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as -thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a <i>swamp</i>.</p> - -<p>I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and if, in -the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish -from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that -these analysts with their psychological microscopes should be, at -bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle -both their hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained -themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, <i>any</i> truth -in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and -immoral truths—for there are truths of that description.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these -historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the -<i>historical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> sense</i> itself, that they themselves are quite deserted -by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their -thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on -<i>thoroughly</i> unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The -crass ineptitude of their genealogy of morals is immediately apparent -when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and -judgment of "good." "Man had originally," so speaks their decree, -"praised and called 'good' altruistic acts from the standpoint of -those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were -<i>useful</i>; subsequently the origin of this praise was <i>forgotten</i>, and -altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were -praised as good, came also to be felt as good—as though they contained -in themselves some intrinsic goodness." The thing is obvious:—this -initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic -traits of the English psychologists—we have "utility," "forgetting," -"habit," and finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis -of a system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present -prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. -This pride <i>must</i> be brought low, this system of values <i>must</i> lose its -values: is that attained?</p> - -<p>Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real -homestead of the concept "good" is sought and located in the wrong -place: the judgment "good" did <i>not</i> originate among those to whom -goodness was shown. Much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> rather has it been the good themselves, -that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the -high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that -their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in -contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and -the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first -arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to -coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The -standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could -possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of -supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within -themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation -of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition -on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of -practical expediency is always based—and not for one occasional, not -for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility -and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic <i>esprit de -corps</i> and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into -association with a meaner race, an "under race," this is the origin of -the antithesis of good and bad.</p> - -<p>(The masters' right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible -to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the -masters: they say "this <i>is</i> that, and that," they seal finally every -object and every event with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> sound, and thereby at the same time take -possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word "good" -is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, in -accordance with the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. -On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the <i>decay</i> of aristocratic -values, that the antitheses between "egoistic" and "altruistic" -presses more and more heavily on the human conscience—it is, to use -my own language, the <i>herd instinct</i> which finds in this antithesis an -expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time -for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation -to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in -contemporary Europe); for to-day that prejudice is predominant, which, -acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain -disease, holds that "moral," "altruistic," and "<i>désintéressé</i>" are -concepts of equal value.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as -to the genesis of the value "good" cannot be historically upheld, it -suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of -altruistic conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised, -and this origin has become <i>forgotten</i>:—But in what conceivable way is -this forgetting <i>possible</i>! Has perchance the utility of such conduct -ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has -rather been experienced every day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> at all times, and is consequently -a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh -day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so -far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed -on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much -more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) -which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places -the concept "good" as essentially similar to the concept "useful," -"purposive," so that in the judgments "good" and "bad" mankind is -simply summarising and investing with a sanction its <i>unforgotten</i> and -<i>unforgettable</i> experiences concerning the "useful-purposive" and the -"mischievous-non-purposive." According to this theory, "good" is the -attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so -is able to claim to be considered "valuable in the highest degree," -"valuable in itself." This method of explanation is also, as I have -said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and -psychologically tenable.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>The guide-post which first put me on the <i>right</i> track was this -question—what is the true etymological significance of the various -symbols for the idea "good" which have been coined in the various -languages? I then found that they all led back to <i>the same evolution -of the same idea</i>—that everywhere "aristocrat," "noble" (in the -social sense), is the root idea, out of which have necessarily -developed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> "good" in the sense of "with aristocratic soul," "noble," -in the sense of "with a soul of high calibre," "with a privileged -soul"—a development which invariably runs parallel with that other -evolution by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low," are made to change -finally into "bad." The most eloquent proof of this last contention -is the German word "<i>schlecht</i>" itself: this word is identical with -"<i>schlicht</i>"—(compare "<i>schlechtweg</i>" and "<i>schlechterdings</i>")—which, -originally and as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply denoted -the plebeian man in contrast to the aristocratic man. It is at the -sufficiently late period of the Thirty Years' War that this sense -becomes changed to the sense now current. From the standpoint of -the Genealogy of Morals this discovery seems to be substantial: the -lateness of it is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised -in the modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all -questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown, even to -the province of natural science and physiology, which, <i>prima facie</i> -is the most objective. The extent of the mischief which is caused by -this prejudice (once it is free of all trammels except those of its own -malice), particularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the notorious -case of Buckle: it was in Buckle that that <i>plebeianism</i> of the modern -spirit, which is of English origin, broke out once again from its -malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that -salted, rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present time -all volcanoes have spoken.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>With regard to <i>our</i> problem, which can justly be called an <i>intimate</i> -problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears: -it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and roots -which denote "good" we catch glimpses of that arch-trait, on the -strength of which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings of -a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they call themselves in -perhaps the most frequent instances simply after their superiority -in power (<i>e.g.</i> "the powerful," "the lords," "the commanders"), or -after the most obvious sign of their superiority, as for example -"the rich," "the possessors" (that is the meaning of <i>arya</i>; and the -Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But they also call themselves -after some <i>characteristic idiosyncrasy</i>; and this is the case which -now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, "the truthful": -this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouthpiece is found in -Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word ἐσθλος, which is coined for the -purpose, signifies etymologically "one who <i>is</i>," who has reality, who -is real, who is true; and then with a subjective twist, the "true," -as the "truthful": at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it -becomes the motto and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes -the transition to the meaning "noble," so as to place outside the pale -the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him—till -finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to delineate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> -psychological <i>noblesse</i>, and becomes as it were ripe and mellow. In -the word κακός as in δειλός (the plebeian in contrast to the ἀγαθός) -the cowardice is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling on what -lines the etymological origin of the very ambiguous ἀγαθός is to be -investigated. In the Latin <i>malus</i> (which I place side by side with -μέλας) the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and -above all as the black-haired ("<i>hic niger est</i>"), as the pre-Aryan -inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest -feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan -conquering race:—at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact -analogue—<i>Fin</i> (for instance, in the name <i>Fin-Gal</i>), the distinctive -word of the nobility, finally—good, noble, clean, but originally the -blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The -Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a blonde -race; and it is wrong to connect, as Virchow still connects, those -traces of an essentially dark-haired population which are to be seen -on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany with any Celtic -ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is -rather the <i>pre-Aryan</i> population of Germany which surges up to these -districts. (The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in -point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper -hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in -the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern -democracy, still more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the -"Commune," the most primitive form of society, which is now common to -all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a -monstrous reversion—and that the conquering and <i>master</i> race—the -Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe -that I can explain the Latin <i>bonus</i> as the "warrior": my hypothesis -is that I am right in deriving <i>bonus</i> from an older <i>duonus</i> (compare -<i>bellum</i> = <i>duellum</i> = <i>duen-lum</i>, in which the word <i>duonus</i> appears -to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of -variance, "entzweiung" (<i>duo</i>), as the warrior: one sees what in -ancient Rome "the good" meant for a man. Must not our actual German -word <i>gut</i> mean "<i>the godlike</i>, the man of godlike race"? and be -identical with the national name (originally the nobles' name) of the -<i>Goths</i>?</p> - -<p>The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this work.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for -exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority -always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, in -those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the <i>priestly</i> -caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers on -itself the privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its -priestly function. It is in these cases, for instance, that "clean" and -"unclean" confront<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> each other for the first time as badges of class -distinction; here again there develops a "good" and a "bad," in a sense -which has ceased to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken -not to take these ideas of "clean" and "unclean" too seriously, too -broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have, on -the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in a sense -which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude, coarse, physical, -and narrow, and above all essentially <i>unsymbolical</i>. The "clean man" is -originally only a man who washes himself, who abstains from certain -foods which are conducive to skin diseases, who does not sleep with -the unclean women of the lower classes, who has a horror of blood—not -more, not much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestly -aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such an early juncture -there should ensue a really dangerous sharpening and intensification -of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed values that -gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable Achilles of -free thought would shudder to cross. There is from the outset a -certain <i>diseased taint</i> in such sacerdotal aristocracies, and in the -habits which prevail in such societies—habits which, <i>averse</i> as they -are to action, constitute a compound of introspection and explosive -emotionalism, as a result of which there appears that introspective -morbidity and neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to all -priests at all times: with regard, however, to the remedy which they -themselves have invented<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> for this disease—the philosopher has no -option but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred -times more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have been -the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects of -the naïvetés of this priestly cure. Take, for instance, certain kinds -of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight -into the wilderness (a kind of Weir-Mitchell isolation, though of -course without that system of excessive feeding and fattening which -is the most efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic -ideal); consider too the whole metaphysic of the priests, with its -war on the senses, its enervation, its hair-splitting; consider its -self-hypnotism on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as -a glass disc and obsession), and that climax which we can understand -only too well of an unusual satiety with its panacea of <i>nothingness</i> -(or God:—the demand for a <i>unio mystica</i> with God is the demand of the -Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana—and nothing else!). In sacerdotal -societies <i>every</i> element is on a more dangerous scale, not merely -cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love, -ambition, virtue, morbidity:—further, it can fairly be stated that it -is on the soil of this <i>essentially dangerous</i> form of human society, -the sacerdotal form, that man really becomes for the first time an -<i>interesting animal</i>, that it is in this form that the soul of man has -in a higher sense attained <i>depths</i> and become <i>evil</i>—and those are -the two fundamental forms of the superiority which up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> to the present -man has exhibited over every other animal.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode -of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and -then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus -is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the -priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and -cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic "values" are -based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and -even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what -is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, -the dance, the tourney—on everything, in fact, which is contained -in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode -of valuation is—we have seen—based on other hypotheses: it is bad -enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests -are, as is notorious, <i>the worst enemies</i>—why? Because they are the -weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous -and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. -The really great haters in the history of the world have always been -priests, who are also the cleverest haters—in comparison with the -cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is -practically negligible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything -were it not for the cleverness imported into it by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> weak—take at -once the most important instance. All the world's efforts against the -"aristocrats," the "mighty," the "masters," the "holders of power," -are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against -those classes by <i>the Jews</i>—the Jews, that priestly nation which -eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on -its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of -values, which was at the same time an act of the <i>cleverest revenge</i>. -Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation -of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews -who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic -= beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying -logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with -the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this -contrary equation, namely, "the wretched are alone the good; the poor, -the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the -sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones -who are blessed, for them alone is salvation—but you, on the other -hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the -evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally -also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!" We know who -it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the -context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which -the Jews have exhibited in connection with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> this most fundamental of -all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen -on another occasion (<i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>, Aph. 195)—that it was, -in fact, with the Jews that the <i>revolt of the slaves</i> begins in the -sphere <i>of morals</i>; that revolt which has behind it a history of two -millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our -sight, because it—has achieved victory.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which -has taken two thousand years to achieve victory?—There is nothing -wonderful in this: all <i>lengthy</i> processes are hard to see and to -realise. But <i>this</i> is what took place: from the trunk of that tree -of revenge and hate, Jewish hate,—that most profound and sublime -hate, which creates ideals and changes old values to new creations, -the like of which has never been on earth,—there grew a phenomenon -which was equally incomparable, <i>a new love</i>, the most profound and -sublime of all kinds of love;—and from what other trunk could it have -grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on its upward -growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as -an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the contrary is the truth! This -love grew out of that hate, as its crown, as its triumphant crown, -circling wider and wider amid the clarity and fulness of the sun, and -pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height its goal of hatred, -its victory, its spoil, its strategy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> with the same intensity with -which the roots of that tree of hate sank into everything which was -deep and evil with increasing stability and increasing desire. This -Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this "Redeemer" -bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful—was -he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, -temptation to take the tortuous path to those very <i>Jewish</i> values and -those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel really obtained the final goal -of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this "Redeemer," for -all that he might pose as Israel's adversary and Israel's destroyer? Is -it not due to the black magic of a really <i>great</i> policy of revenge, -of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with -slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the -actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so -that all the world—that is, all the enemies of Israel—could nibble -without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human mind -with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly -<i>dangerous</i>? Anything that was even equivalent in the power of its -seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and corrupting influence to that -symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox of a "god on the -cross," to that mystery of the unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror -of the self-crucifixion of a god for the <i>salvation of man</i>? It is -at least certain that <i>sub hoc signo</i> Israel, with its revenge and -transvaluation of all values, has up to the present always triumphed -again over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> all other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; -that the people have triumphed—or the slaves, or the populace, or the -herd, or whatever name you care to give them—if this has happened -through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater -mission in the world's history. The 'masters' have been done away -with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may -also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)—I -do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication -has succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from the -masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming -Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the -words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning -through the whole body politic of mankind—but its <i>tempo</i> and pace -may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more -discreet—there is time enough. In view of this context has the Church -nowadays any necessary purpose? has it, in fact, a right to live? Or -could man get on without it? <i>Quæritur</i>. It seems that it fetters and -retards this tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that -might be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish -institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at -delicacy, to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> really modern taste. Should it not at any rate learn to -be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays, more than it allures. -Which of us would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no Church? -It is the Church which repels us, not its poison—apart from the Church -we like the poison." This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my -discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof), -and a democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and -could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard to this -topic there is much on which to be silent.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of -<i>resentment</i> becoming creative and giving birth to values—a resentment -experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet -of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary -revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant -affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the -very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and -"not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of -the valuing standpoint—this <i>inevitable</i> gravitation to the objective -instead of back to the subjective—is typical of "resentment": the -slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external -and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires -objective stimuli<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> to be capable of action at all—its action is -fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to -the aristocrat's system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously, -it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful -and exultant "yes" to its own self;—its negative conception, "low," -"vulgar," "bad," is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its -positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and -passion), of "we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy -ones."</p> - -<p>When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits sacrilege on -reality, this is limited to that particular sphere with which it -is <i>not</i> sufficiently acquainted—a sphere, in fact, from the real -knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself. It misjudges, in -some cases, the sphere which it despises, the sphere of the common -vulgar man and the low people: on the other hand, due weight should be -given to the consideration that in any case the mood of contempt, of -disdain, of superciliousness, even on the supposition that it <i>falsely</i> -portrays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed from -that degree of falsity which will always characterise the attacks—in -effigy, of course—of the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of -the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In point of fact, there is -in contempt too strong an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, -of boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation, for it to be -capable of distorting its victim into a real caricature or a real -monstrosity. Attention again should be paid to the almost benevolent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> -<i>nuances</i> which, for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all -the words by which it distinguishes the common people from itself; -note how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration imparts -its honeyed <i>flavour</i>, until at last almost all the words which are -applied to the vulgar man survive finally as expressions for "unhappy," -"worthy of pity" (compare δειλο, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός]; the -latter two names really denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave -and beast of burden)—and how, conversely, "bad," "low," "unhappy" -have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which -"unhappy" is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble -aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in contempt -(let philologists remember the sense in which ὀιζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, -δυστυχεῑν, ξυμφορά used to be employed). The "well-born" simply -<i>felt</i> themselves the "happy"; they did not have to manufacture their -happiness artificially through looking at their enemies, or in cases -to talk and <i>lie themselves</i> into happiness (as is the custom with all -resentful men); and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant -with strength, and consequently <i>necessarily</i> energetic, they were too -wise to dissociate happiness from action—activity becomes in their -minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is the etymology of εὖ -πρἆττειν)—all in sharp contrast to the "happiness" of the weak and -the oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity, among whom -happiness appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, -a peace, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> "Sabbath," an enervation of the mind and relaxation -of the limbs,—in short, a purely <i>passive</i> phenomenon. While the -aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself -(γενναῐος, "nobleε-born," emphasises the nuance "sincere," and perhaps -also "naïf"), the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere -nor naïf, nor honest and candid with himself. His soul <i>squints</i>; his -mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and back-doors, everything -secret appeals to him as <i>his</i> world, <i>his</i> safety, <i>his</i> balm; he is -past master in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional -self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race of such <i>resentful</i> men -will of necessity eventually prove more <i>prudent</i> than any aristocratic -race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a -paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men -is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement; -so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete -certainty of function of the governing <i>unconscious</i> instincts, or -as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant -charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic -bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times -noble souls have recognised each other. When the resentment of the -aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in -an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no <i>venom</i>: on the -other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless instances, -when in the case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable. An<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> -inability to take seriously for any length of time their enemies, -their disasters, their <i>misdeeds</i>—that is the sign of the full strong -natures who possess a superfluity of moulding plastic force, that -heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in -the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and -meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable -of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a -shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is -only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing, -of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real -"<i>love</i> of one's enemies." What respect for his enemies is found, -forsooth, in an aristocratic man—and such a reverence is already -a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his -distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character -there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand, -imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him—and it is here -exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the -evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from -which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good -one," himself—his very self!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11</p> - -<p>The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic -man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> -away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then -creates for himself a concept of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic -origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred—the -former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter, -on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in -the conception of a slave-morality—these two words "bad" and "evil," -how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they -have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea "good" is -not the same: much rather let the question be asked, "Who is really -evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In -all sternness let it be answered thus:—<i>just</i> the good man of the -other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who -rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, -into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This -particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to -know those "good" ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not -to know them only as "<i>evil enemies</i>" and the same men who <i>inter -pares</i> were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, -custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance -and jealousy <i>inter pares</i>, these men who in their relations with -each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, -self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men -are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign -element, a <i>foreign</i> country, begins), not much better than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> beasts -of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from -all social control, they feel that in the wilderness they can give -vent with impunity to that tension which is produced by enclosure and -imprisonment in the peace of society, they <i>revert</i> to the innocence -of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps -come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with -bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student's -prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an -ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognise -at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the -magnificent <i>blonde brute</i>, avidly rampant for spoil and victory; -this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must -get loose again, must return into the wilderness—the Roman, Arabic, -German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian -Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who -have left the idea "Barbarian" on all the tracks in which they have -marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even -a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilisation -(for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians in that celebrated -funeral oration, "Our audacity has forced a way over every land and -sea, rearing everywhere imperishable memorials of itself for <i>good</i> -and for <i>evil</i>"). This audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, -and spasmodic as may be its expression; the incalculable and fantastic -nature of their enterprises,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>Pericles sets in special relief and -glory the ᾽ραθυμία of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for -safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight -in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty,—all -these features become crystallised, for those who suffered thereby -in the picture of the "barbarian," of the "evil enemy," perhaps of -the "Goth" and of the "Vandal." The profound, icy mistrust which -the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power,—even at the -present time,—is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable -horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath -of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and -ourselves there exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, -relationship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of -Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and endeavoured -to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He could only dispose -of the contradiction, with which he was confronted, by the Homeric -world, an age magnificent indeed, but at the same time so awful and -so violent, by making two ages out of one, which he henceforth placed -one behind each other—first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as -that world had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families, -who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze age, as -that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of the oppressed, -spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as an age of bronze, -as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without -conscience, crushing everything,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> and bespattering everything with -blood. Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that -the very <i>essence of all civilisation</i> is to <i>train</i> out of man, the -beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal, -it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real <i>tools of -civilisation</i> all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the -help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals, -were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come -to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also -<i>represented</i> the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is -not only probable—nay, it is <i>palpable</i> to-day; these bearers of -vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up, these descendants of -all European and non-European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan -population—these people, I say, represent the <i>decline</i> of humanity! -These "tools of civilisation" are a disgrace to humanity, and -constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation, more -of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. One may be perfectly -justified in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at -the core of all aristocratic races, and in being on one's guard: but -who would not a hundred times prefer to be afraid, when one at the -same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of being -perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the -dwarfed, the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What -produces to-day our repulsion towards "man"?—for we <i>suffer</i> from -"man," there is no doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> about it. It is not fear; it is rather that -we have nothing more to fear from men; it is that the worm "man" is in -the foreground and pullulates; it is that the "tame man," the wretched -mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal -and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a "higher -man"; yes, it is that he has a certain right so to consider himself, -in so far as he feels that in contrast to that excess of deformity, -disease, exhaustion, and effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute -present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved a relative success, he -at any rate still says "yes" to life.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last -hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone -cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! bad air! -That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour -of the entrails of a misbegotten soul!—That excepted, what can one -not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, -solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everything, born -as one is to a burrowing and battling existence; one always returns -once again to the light, one always lives again one's golden hour of -victory—and then one stands as one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready -for something more difficult, for something more distant, like a bow -stretched but the tauter by every strain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> But from time to time do ye -grant me—assuming that "beyond good and evil" there are goddesses who -can grant—one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something -perfect, fully realised, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something -that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of a man that justifies -the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that -realises and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to <i>the -belief in man</i>! For the position is this: in the dwarfing and levelling -of the European man lurks <i>our</i> greatest peril, for it is this outlook -which fatigues—we see to-day nothing which wishes to be greater, we -surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards -towards something more attenuated, more inoffensive, more cunning, -more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more -Christian—man, there is no doubt about it, grows always "better" -—the destiny of Europe lies even in this—that in losing the fear of -man, we have also lost the hope in man, yea, the will to be man. The -sight of man now fatigues.—What is present-day Nihilism if it is not -<i>that</i>?—We are tired of <i>man</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>But let us come back to it; the problem of <i>another</i> origin of the -<i>good</i>—of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out—demands -its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge -against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the -great birds of prey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs -say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as -far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, -a lamb,—is he not good?" then there is nothing to cavil at in the -setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey -will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, -"<i>We</i> bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them: -nothing is tastier than a tender lamb." To require of strength that it -should <i>not</i> express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to -overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for -enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require -of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of -force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action—rather it -is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing, -acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of -language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become -petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all -working as conditioned by a worker, by a "subject." And just exactly -as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the -latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called -lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the -expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed -some indifferent neutral <i>substratum</i>, which enjoyed a <i>caprice and -option</i> as to whether or not it should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> express strength. But there -is no such <i>substratum</i>, there is no "being" behind doing, working, -becoming; "the doer" is a mere appanage to the action. The action is -everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they -make the lightning lighten, that is a "doing-doing": they make the same -phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. -The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, "Force moves, -force causes," and so on. Our whole science is still, in spite of all -its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of -language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious -changeling "the subject" (the atom, to give another instance, is such -a changeling, just as the Kantian "Thing-in-itself"). What wonder, -if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and -hatred exploit for their own advantage this belief, and indeed hold no -belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this—"that the strong -has the <i>option</i> of being weak, and the bird of prey of being a lamb." -Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the -birds of prey the <i>responsibility</i> for being birds of prey: when the -oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the -vindictive guile of weakness, "Let us be otherwise than the evil, -namely, good! and good is every one who does not oppress, who hurts -no one, who does not attack, who does not pay back, who hands over -revenge to God, who holds himself, as we do, in hiding; who goes out -of the way of evil, and demands, in short, little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> from life; like -ourselves the patient, the meek, the just,"—yet all this, in its cold -and unprejudiced interpretation, means nothing more than "once for -all, the weak are weak; it is good to do <i>nothing for which we are not -strong enough</i>"; but this dismal state of affairs, this prudence of the -lowest order, which even insects possess (which in a great danger are -fain to sham death so as to avoid doing "too much"), has, thanks to -the counterfeiting and self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade -in the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue, just as though -the <i>very</i> weakness of the weak—that is, forsooth, its <i>being</i>, its -working, its whole unique inevitable inseparable reality—were a -voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed, an act of <i>merit</i>. -This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing "subject" -<i>necessary</i> from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion, -in which every lie is fain to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to -use popular language, the <i>soul</i>) has perhaps proved itself the best -dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde -of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most -sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as -freedom, of being this, or being that, as <i>merit</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>Will any one look a little into—right into—the mystery of how <i>ideals</i> -are <i>manufactured</i> in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come!</p> - -<p>Here we have a vista opened into these grimy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> workshops. Wait just a -moment, dear Mr. Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow -accustomed to this false changing light—Yes! Enough! Now speak! What -is happening below down yonder? Speak out that what you see, man of the -most dangerous curiosity—for now <i>I</i> am the listener.</p> - -<p>"I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a cautious, spiteful, gentle -whispering and muttering together in all the corners and crannies. It -seems to me that they are lying; a sugary softness adheres to every -sound. Weakness is turned to <i>merit</i>, there is no doubt about it—it is -just as you say."</p> - -<p>Further!</p> - -<p>"And the impotence which requites not, is turned to 'goodness,' craven -baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience -(namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this -submission—they call him God). The inoffensive character of the weak, -the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his -forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as 'patience,' -which is also called 'virtue'; not being able to avenge one's self, is -called not wishing to avenge one's self, perhaps even forgiveness (for -<i>they</i> know not what they do—we alone know what <i>they</i> do). They also -talk of the 'love of their enemies' and sweat thereby."</p> - -<p>Further!</p> - -<p>"They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers -and counterfeiters in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> corners, although they try to get warm by -crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is -a favour and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the -dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a -probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which -will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in -gold, nay in happiness. This they call 'Blessedness.'"</p> - -<p>Further!</p> - -<p>"They are now giving me to understand, that not only are they better -men than the mighty, the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have -got to lick (<i>not</i> out of fear, not at all out of fear! But because -God ordains that one should honour all authority)—not only are they -better men, but that they also have a 'better time,' at any rate, -will one day have a 'better time.' But enough! Enough! I can endure -it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops <i>where ideals are -manufactured</i>—verily they reek with the crassest lies."</p> - -<p>Nay. Just one minute! You are saying nothing about the masterpieces -of these virtuosos of black magic, who can produce whiteness, milk, -and innocence out of any black you like: have you not noticed what a -pitch of refinement is attained by their <i>chef d'œuvre</i>, their most -audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick? Take care! These -cellar-beasts, full of revenge and hate—what do they make, forsooth, -out of their revenge and hate? Do you hear these words? Would you -suspect, if you trusted only their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> words, that you are among men of -resentment and nothing else?</p> - -<p>"I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah! ah! ah! and I hold my -nose). Now do I hear for the first time that which they have said so -often: 'We good, <i>we are the righteous</i>'—what they demand they call -not revenge but 'the triumph of <i>righteousness</i>'; what they hate is -not their enemy, no, they hate 'unrighteousness,' 'godlessness'; what -they believe in and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication -of sweet revenge (—"sweeter than honey," did Homer call it?), but the -victory of God, of the <i>righteous God</i> over the 'godless'; what is -left for them to love in this world is not their brothers in hate, -but their 'brothers in love,' as they say, all the good and righteous -on the earth."</p> - -<p>And how do they name that which serves them as a solace against all -the troubles of life—their phantasmagoria of their anticipated future -blessedness?</p> - -<p>"How? Do I hear right? They call it 'the last judgment,' the advent of -<i>their</i> kingdom, 'the kingdom of God'—but <i>in the meanwhile</i> they live -'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'"</p> - -<p>Enough! Enough!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the hope of what? These -weaklings!—they also, forsooth, wish to be the strong some time; there -is no doubt about it, some time <i>their</i> kingdom also must come—"the -kingdom of God" is their name for it, as has been mentioned:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> they are -so meek in everything! Yet in order to experience <i>that</i> kingdom it -is necessary to live long, to live beyond death,—yes, <i>eternal</i> life -is necessary so that one can make up for ever for that earthly life -"in faith," "in love," "in hope." Make up for what? Make up by what? -Dante, as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with awe-inspiring -ingenuity he placed that inscription over the gate of his hell, "Me too -made eternal love": at any rate the following inscription would have -a much better right to stand over the gate of the Christian Paradise -and its "eternal blessedness"—"Me too made eternal hate"—granted -of course that a truth may rightly stand over the gate to a lie! For -what is the blessedness of that Paradise? Possibly we could quickly -surmise it; but it is better that it should be explicitly attested by -an authority who in such matters is not to be disparaged, Thomas of -Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. "<i>Beati in regno celesti</i>" says -he, as gently as a lamb, "<i>videbunt pœnas damnatorum, ut beatitudo -illis magis complaceat</i>." Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word -from the mouth of a triumphant father of the Church, who warned his -disciples against the cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles—But -why? Faith offers us much more,—says he, <i>de Spectac.</i>, c. 29 -ss.,—something much stronger; thanks to the redemption, joys of quite -another kind stand at our disposal; instead of athletes we have our -martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the blood of Christ—but -what then awaits us on the day of his return, of his triumph. And -then does he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> proceed, does this enraptured visionary: "<i>at enim -supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimas et perpetuus judicii dies, ille -nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vetustas et tot -ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quæ tunc spectaculi latitudo! -<span class="gesperrt">Quid admirer! quid rideam! Ubigaudeam! Ubi exultem,</span> spectans tot et -tantos reges, qui in cœlum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis -suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item præsides</i>" (the -provincial governors) "<i>persecutores dominici nominis sævioribus quam -ipsi flammis sævierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes! -Quos præterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una -conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant, -quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora redituras -affirmabant! Etiam poetas non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad -inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragœdi audiendi, -magis scilicet vocales</i>" (with louder tones and more violent shrieks) -"<i>in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores -multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens, -tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi -quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius -conspectum <span class="gesperrt">insatiabilem</span> conferre, qui in dominum scevierunt. Hic est -ille, dicam fabri aut quæstuariæ filius</i>" (as is shown by the whole of -the following, and in particular by this well-known description of the -mother of Jesus from the Talmud, Tertullian is henceforth referring to -the Jews), "<i>sabbati destructor, Samarites et dæmonium habens. Hic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> est -quem a Juda redemistis, hic est ille arundine et colaphis diverberatus, -sputamentis de decoratus, felle et acete potatus. Hic est, quem -clam discentes subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus -detraxit, ne lactucæ suæ frequentia commeantium laderentur. Ut talia -species, <span class="gesperrt">ut talibus exultes</span>, quis tibi prætor aut consul aut sacerdos -de sua liberalitate prastabit? Et tamen hæc jam habemus quodammodo <span class="gesperrt">per -fidem</span> spiritu imaginante repræsentata. Ceterum qualia illa sunt, quæ -nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascenderunt?</i>" (I -Cor. ii. 9.) "<i>Credo circo et utraque cavea</i>" (first and fourth row, -or, according to others, the comic and the tragic stage) "<i>et omni -studio gratiora.</i>" <i><span class="gesperrt">Per fidem</span></i>: so stands it written.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>Let us come to a conclusion. The two <i>opposing values</i>, "good and bad," -"good and evil," have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the -world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time -in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune -of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost be said that in the -meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the -meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more -psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark -of the <i>higher nature</i>, of the more psychological nature, than to be in -that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battleground<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> -for those two opposites. The symbol of this fight, written in a writing -which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history -up to the present time, is called "Rome against Judæa, Judæa against -Rome." Hitherto there has been no greater event than <i>that</i> fight, -the putting of <i>that</i> question, <i>that</i> deadly antagonism. Rome found -in the Jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its -diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was held to -be <i>convicted of hatred</i> of the whole human race: and rightly so, in -so far as it is right to link the well-being and the future of the -human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of -the Roman values. What, conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome? -One can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to -carry one's mind back to the Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene -of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience. -(One should also appraise at its full value the profound logic of the -Christian instinct, when over this very book of hate it wrote the name -of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple to whom it attributed -that impassioned and ecstatic Gospel—therein lurks a portion of -truth, however much literary forging may have been necessary for -this purpose.) The Romans were the strong and aristocratic; a nation -stronger and more aristocratic has never existed in the world, has -never even been dreamed of; every relic of them, every inscription -enraptures, granted that one can divine <i>what</i> it is that writes the -inscription.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> The Jews, conversely, were that priestly nation of -resentment <i>par excellence</i>, possessed by a unique genius for popular -morals: just compare with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts, -such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to realise afterwards what is -first rate, and what is fifth rate.</p> - -<p>Which of them has been provisionally victorious, Rome or Judæa? but -there is not a shadow of doubt; just consider to whom in Rome itself -nowadays you bow down, as though before the quintessence of all the -highest values—and not only in Rome, but almost over half the world, -everywhere where man has been tamed or is about to be tamed—to <i>three -Jews</i>, as we know, and <i>one Jewess</i> (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter -the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the mother of the aforesaid -Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome is undoubtedly -defeated. At any rate there took place in the Renaissance a brilliantly -sinister revival of the classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation -of all things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from a trance, -stirred beneath the burden of the new Judaised Rome that had been built -over her, which presented the appearance of an œcumenical synagogue -and was called the "Church": but immediately Judæa triumphed again, -thanks to that fundamentally popular (German and English) movement -of revenge, which is called the Reformation, and taking also into -account its inevitable corollary, the restoration of the Church—the -restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of classical Rome. -Judæa proved yet once more victorious over the classical ideal in the -French Revolution, and in a sense which was even more crucial and even -more profound: the last political aristocracy that existed in Europe, -that of the <i>French</i> seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, broke into -pieces beneath the instincts of a resentful populace—never had the -world heard a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm: indeed, -there took place in the midst of it the most monstrous and unexpected -phenomenon; the ancient ideal <i>itself</i> swept before the eyes and -conscience of humanity with all its life and with unheard-of splendour, -and in opposition to resentment's lying war-cry of <i>the prerogative -of the most</i>, in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement, and -equalisation, the will to a retrogression and twilight of humanity, -there rang out once again, stronger, simpler, more penetrating than -ever, the terrible and enchanting counter-warcry of <i>the prerogative of -the few</i>! Like a final signpost to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, -the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him -the incarnate problem <i>of the aristocratic ideal in itself</i>—consider -well what a problem it is:—Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and -Superman.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals -thereby relegated <i>ad acta</i> for all time? Or only postponed, postponed -for a long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> time? May there not take place at some time or other a -much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old -conflagration? Further! Should not one wish <i>that</i> consummation with -all one's strength?—will it one's self? demand it one's self? He who -at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, -will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion,—ground enough -for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for -some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly -<i>mean</i> by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my -last book: <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>—at any rate that is not the same as -"Beyond Good and Bad."</p> - - -<p>Note.—I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to -express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only -been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, -that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize -essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the -<i>history of morals</i>—perhaps this book may serve to give forcible -impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this -character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits -quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual -professional philosophers.</p> - -<p>"<i>What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is -afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation?</i>"</p> - -<p>On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to induce -physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems (<i>of the -value</i> of the <i>valuations</i> which have prevailed up to the present): in -this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act -as the spokesmen and intermediaries in these particular instances, -after, of course, they have quite succeeded in transforming the -relationship between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> philosophy and physiology and medicine, which -is originally one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly -and fruitful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values, -all the "thou shalts" known to history and ethnology, need primarily -a <i>physiological</i>, at any rate in preference to a psychological, -elucidation and interpretation; all equally require a critique from -medical science. The question, "What is the <i>value</i> of this or that -table of 'values' and morality?" will be asked from the most varied -standpoints. For instance, the question of "valuable <i>for what</i>" can -never be analysed with sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which -would evidently have value with regard to promoting in a race the -greatest possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing its -adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the preservation -of the greatest number) would have nothing like the same value, if it -were a question of evolving a stronger species. In gauging values, -the good of the majority and the good of the minority are opposed -standpoints: we leave it to the naïveté of English biologists to regard -the former standpoint as <i>intrinsically</i> superior. <i>All</i> the sciences -have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher; this -task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of -<i>value</i>, that he has to fix the <i>hierarchy of values</i>.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> -<h5><a name="SECOND_ESSAY" id="SECOND_ESSAY">SECOND ESSAY.</a></h5> -<h4>"GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE.</h4> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>The breeding of an animal that <i>can promise</i>—is not this just that -very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is -not this the very problem of man? The fact that this problem has been -to a great extent solved, must appear all the more phenomenal to one -who can estimate at its full value that force of <i>forgetfulness</i> which -works in opposition to it. Forgetfulness is no mere <i>vis inertiæ</i>, -as the superficial believe, rather is it a power of obstruction, -active and, in the strictest sense of the word, positive—a power -responsible for the fact that what we have lived, experienced, taken -into ourselves, no more enters into consciousness during the process -of digestion (it might be called psychic absorption) than all the -whole manifold process by which our physical nutrition, the so-called -"incorporation," is carried on. The temporary shutting of the doors -and windows of consciousness, the relief from the clamant alarums and -excursions, with which our subconscious world of servant organs works -in mutual co-operation and antagonism; a little quietude, a little -<i>tabula rasa</i> of the consciousness, so as to make room again for the -new, and above all for the more noble functions and functionaries, room -for government, foresight, predetermination (for our organism is on an -oligarchic model)—this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> is the utility, as I have said, of the active -forgetfulness, which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, -repose, etiquette; and this shows at once why it is that there can -exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real <i>present</i>, -without forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventative apparatus is -damaged and discarded, is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is -something more than a comparison—he can "get rid of" nothing. But -this very animal who finds it necessary to be forgetful, in whom, in -fact, forgetfulness represents a force and a form of <i>robust</i> health, -has reared for himself an opposition-power, a memory, with whose help -forgetfulness is, in certain instances, kept in check—in the cases, -namely, where promises have to be made;—so that it is by no means -a mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented impression, -not merely the indigestion occasioned by a once pledged word, which -one cannot dispose of, but an <i>active</i> refusal to get rid of it, a -continuing and a wish to continue what has once been willed, an actual -<i>memory of the will</i>; so that between the original "I will," "I shall -do," and the actual discharge of the will, its <i>act</i>, we can easily -interpose a world of new strange phenomena, circumstances, veritable -volitions, without the snapping of this long chain of the will. But -what is the underlying hypothesis of all this? How thoroughly, in order -to be able to regulate the future in this way, must man have first -learnt to distinguish between necessitated and accidental phenomena, to -think causally, to see the distant as present and to anticipate it, to -fix with certainty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> what is the end, and what is the means to that end; -above all, to reckon, to have power to calculate—how thoroughly must -man have first become <i>calculable, disciplined, necessitated</i> even for -himself and his own conception of himself, that, like a man entering -into a promise, he could guarantee himself <i>as a future</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>This is simply the long history of the origin of <i>responsibility</i>. -That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as -we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more -immediate task of first <i>making</i> man to a certain extent, necessitated, -uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The -immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> (cp. <i>Dawn -of Day</i>, Aphs. 9, 14, and 16), the actual work of man on himself during -the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, -finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate -hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with -the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, -was <i>made</i> genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at -the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally -matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally -bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as -the ripest fruit on its tree the <i>sovereign individual</i>, that resembles -only himself, that has got loose from the morality of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> custom, the -autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are -mutually-exclusive terms),—in short, the man of the personal, long, -and independent will, <i>competent to promise</i>, and we find in him a -proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of <i>what</i> has been at -last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of -power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this -man who has grown to freedom, who is really <i>competent</i> to promise, -this lord of the <i>free</i> will, this sovereign—how is it possible for -him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable -of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great -is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes—he "deserves" -all three—not to know that with this mastery over himself he is -necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, -over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? -The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this -possession his <i>standard of value</i>: looking out from himself upon -the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he -honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind -themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a -sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his -trusts but confers <i>honour</i> by the very fact of trusting, who gives -his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself -strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the -"teeth of fate,"—so with equal necessity will he have the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> heel of his -foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have -no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, -who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. -The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of <i>responsibility</i>, -the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and -over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become -an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to -this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there -is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his <i>conscience</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>His conscience?—One apprehends at once that the idea "conscience," -which is here seen in its supreme manifestation, supreme in fact to -almost the point of strangeness, should already have behind it a long -history and evolution. The ability to guarantee one's self with all -due pride, and also at the same time to <i>say yes</i> to one's self—that -is, as has been said, a ripe fruit, but also a <i>late</i> fruit:—How long -must needs this fruit hang sour and bitter on the tree! And for an even -longer period there was not a glimpse of such a fruit to to be had—no -one had taken it on himself to promise it, although everything on the -tree was quite ready for it, and everything was maturing for that very -consummation. "How is a memory to be made for the man-animal? How is an -impression to be so deeply fixed upon this ephemeral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> understanding, -half dense, and half silly, upon this incarnate forgetfulness, that -it will be permanently present?" As one may imagine, this primeval -problem was not solved by exactly gentle answers and gentle means; -perhaps there is nothing more awful and more sinister in the early -history of man than his <i>system of mnemonics</i>. "Something is burnt in -so as to remain in his memory: only that which never stops <i>hurting</i> -remains in his memory." This is an axiom of the oldest (unfortunately -also the longest) psychology in the world. It might even be said that -wherever solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and gloomy colours are now -found in the life of the men and of nations of the world, there is some -<i>survival</i> of that horror which was once the universal concomitant of -all promises, pledges, and obligations. The past, the past with all -its length, depth, and hardness, wafts to us its breath, and bubbles -up in us again, when we become "serious." When man thinks it necessary -to make for himself a memory, he never accomplishes it without blood, -tortures, and sacrifice; the most dreadful sacrifices and forfeitures -(among them the sacrifice of the first-born), the most loathsome -mutilation (for instance, castration), the most cruel rituals of all -the religious cults (for all religions are really at bottom systems -of cruelty)—all these things originate from that instinct which -found in pain its most potent mnemonic. In a certain sense the whole -of asceticism is to be ascribed to this: certain ideas have got to -be made inextinguishable, omnipresent, "fixed," with the object of -hypnotising the whole nervous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> and intellectual system through these -"fixed ideas"—and the ascetic methods and modes of life are the means -of freeing those ideas from the competition of all other ideas so as to -make them "unforgettable." The worse memory man had, the ghastlier the -signs presented by his customs; the severity of the penal laws affords -in particular a gauge of the extent of man's difficulty in conquering -forgetfulness, and in keeping a few primal postulates of social -intercourse ever present to the minds of those who were the slaves -of every momentary emotion and every momentary desire. We Germans do -certainly not regard ourselves as an especially cruel and hard-hearted -nation, still less as an especially casual and happy-go-lucky one; -but one has only to look at our old penal ordinances in order to -realise what a lot of trouble it takes in the world to evolve a -"nation of thinkers" (I mean: <i>the</i> European nation which exhibits at -this very day the maximum of reliability, seriousness, bad taste, and -positiveness, which has on the strength of these qualities a right to -train every kind of European mandarin). These Germans employed terrible -means to make for themselves a memory, to enable them to master their -rooted plebeian instincts and the brutal crudity of those instincts: -think of the old German punishments, for instance, stoning (as far back -as the legend, the millstone falls on the head of the guilty man), -breaking on the wheel (the most original invention and speciality of -the German genius in the sphere of punishment), dart-throwing, tearing, -or trampling by horses ("quartering"),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> boiling the criminal in oil or -wine (still prevalent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the -highly popular flaying ("slicing into strips"), cutting the flesh out -of the breast; think also of the evil-doer being besmeared with honey, -and then exposed to the flies in a blazing sun. It was by the help of -such images and precedents that man eventually kept in his memory five -or six "I will nots" with regard to which he had already given his -<i>promise</i>, so as to be able to enjoy the advantages of society—and -verily with the help of this kind of memory man eventually attained -"reason"! Alas! reason, seriousness, mastery over the emotions, all -these gloomy, dismal things which are called reflection, all these -privileges and pageantries of humanity: how dear is the price that they -have exacted! How much blood and cruelty is the foundation of all "good -things"!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>But how is it that that other melancholy object, the consciousness of -sin, the whole "bad conscience," came into the world? And it is here -that we turn back to our genealogists of morals. For the second time -I say—or have I not said it yet?—that they are worth nothing. Just -their own five-spans-long limited modern experience; no knowledge of -the past, and no wish to know it; still less a historic instinct, a -power of "second sight" (which is what is really required in this -case)—and despite this to go in for the history of morals. It stands -to reason that this must needs produce results which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> are removed from -the truth by something more than a respectful distance.</p> - -<p>Have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to -have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral -idea of "ought"<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> originates from the very material idea of "owe"? Or -that punishment developed as a <i>retaliation</i> absolutely independently -of any preliminary hypothesis of the freedom or determination of the -will?—And this to such an extent, that a <i>high</i> degree of civilisation -was always first necessary for the animal man to begin to make those -much more primitive distinctions of "intentional," "negligent," -"accidental," "responsible," and their contraries, and apply them -in the assessing of punishment. That idea—"the wrong-doer deserves -punishment <i>because</i> he might have acted otherwise," in spite of the -fact that it is nowadays so cheap, obvious, natural, and inevitable, -and that it has had to serve as an illustration of the way in which -the sentiment of justice appeared on earth, is in point of fact -an exceedingly late, and even refined form of human judgment and -inference; the placing of this idea back at the beginning of the world -is simply a clumsy violation of the principles of primitive psychology. -Throughout the longest period of human history punishment was <i>never</i> -based on the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action, and was -consequently <i>not</i> based on the hypothesis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> that only the guilty should -be punished;—on the contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days -for the same reason that parents punish their children even nowadays, -out of anger at an injury that they have suffered, an anger which vents -itself mechanically on the author of the injury—but this anger is kept -in bounds and modified through the idea that every injury has somewhere -or other its <i>equivalent</i> price, and can really be paid off, even -though it be by means of pain to the author. Whence is it that this -ancient deep-rooted and now perhaps ineradicable idea has drawn its -strength, this idea of an equivalency between injury and pain? I have -already revealed its origin, in the contractual relationship between -<i>creditor</i> and <i>ower</i>, that is as old as the existence of legal rights -at all, and in its turn points back to the primary forms of purchase, -sale, barter, and trade.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>The realisation of these contractual relations excites, of course (as -would be already expected from our previous observations), a great -deal of suspicion and opposition towards the primitive society which -made or sanctioned them. In this society promises will be made; in -this society the object is to provide the promiser with a memory; -in this society, so may we suspect, there will be full scope for -hardness, cruelty, and pain: the "ower," in order to induce credit -in his promise of repayment, in order to give a guarantee of the -earnestness and sanctity of his promise, in order<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> to drill into his -own conscience the duty, the solemn duty, of repayment, will, by -virtue of a contract with his creditor to meet the contingency of -his not paying, pledge something that he still possesses, something -that he still has in his power, for instance, his life or his wife, -or his freedom or his body (or under certain religious conditions -even his salvation, his soul's welfare, even his peace in the grave; -so in Egypt, where the corpse of the ower found even in the grave no -rest from the creditor—of course, from the Egyptian standpoint, this -peace was a matter of particular importance). But especially has the -creditor the power of inflicting on the body of the ower all kinds of -pain and torture—the power, for instance, of cutting off from it an -amount that appeared proportionate to the greatness of the debt;—this -point of view resulted in the universal prevalence at an early date of -precise schemes of valuation, frequently horrible in the minuteness -and meticulosity of their application, <i>legally</i> sanctioned schemes of -valuation for individual limbs and parts of the body. I consider it as -already a progress, as a proof of a freer, less petty, and more <i>Roman</i> -conception of law, when the Roman Code of the Twelve Tables decreed -that it was immaterial how much or how little the creditors in such a -contingency cut off, "<i>si plus minusve secuerunt, ne fraude esto.</i>" Let -us make the logic of the whole of this equalisation process clear; it -is strange enough. The equivalence consists in this: instead of an -advantage directly compensatory of his injury (that is, instead of an -equalisation in money,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> lands, or some kind of chattel), the creditor -is granted by way of repayment and compensation a certain <i>sensation -of satisfaction</i>—the satisfaction of being able to vent, without any -trouble, his power on one who is powerless, the delight "<i>de faire le -mal pour le plaisir de le faire</i>," the joy in sheer violence: and this -joy will be relished in proportion to the lowness and humbleness of -the creditor in the social scale, and is quite apt to have the effect -of the most delicious dainty, and even seem the foretaste of a higher -social position. Thanks to the punishment of the "ower," the creditor -participates in the rights of the masters. At last he too, for once in -a way, attains the edifying consciousness of being able to despise and -ill-treat a creature—as an "inferior"—or at any rate of <i>seeing</i> him -being despised and ill-treated, in case the actual power of punishment, -the administration of punishment, has already become transferred to the -"authorities." The compensation consequently consists in a claim on -cruelty and a right to draw thereon.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>It is then in <i>this</i> sphere of the law of contract that we find the -cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of "guilt," "conscience," -"duty," the "sacredness of duty,"—their commencement, like the -commencement of all great things in the world, is thoroughly and -continuously saturated with blood. And should we not add that this -world has never really lost a certain savour of blood and torture (not -even in old Kant; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> categorical imperative reeks of cruelty). It was -in this sphere likewise that there first became formed that sinister -and perhaps now indissoluble association of the ideas of "guilt" and -"suffering." To put the question yet again, why can suffering be a -compensation for "owing"?—Because the <i>infliction</i> of suffering -produces the highest degree of happiness, because the injured party -will get in exchange for his loss (including his vexation at his loss) -an extraordinary counter-pleasure: the <i>infliction</i> of suffering—a -real <i>feast</i>, something that, as I have said, was all the more -appreciated the greater the paradox created by the rank and social -status of the creditor. These observations are purely conjectural; for, -apart from the painful nature of the task, it is hard to plumb such -profound depths: the clumsy introduction of the idea of "revenge" as a -connecting-link simply hides and obscures the view instead of rendering -it clearer (revenge itself simply leads back again to the identical -problem—"How can the infliction of suffering be a satisfaction?"). -In my opinion it is repugnant to the delicacy, and still more to the -hypocrisy of tame domestic animals (that is, modern men; that is, -ourselves), to realise with all their energy the extent to which -<i>cruelty</i> constituted the great joy and delight of ancient man, was -an ingredient which seasoned nearly all his pleasures, and conversely -the extent of the naïveté and innocence with which he manifested his -need for cruelty, when he actually made as a matter of principle -"disinterested malice" (or, to use Spinoza's expression, the <i>sympathia -malevolens</i>) into a <i>normal</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> characteristic of man—as consequently -something to which the conscience says a hearty yes. The more profound -observer has perhaps already had sufficient opportunity for noticing -this most ancient and radical joy and delight of mankind; in <i>Beyond -Good and Evil</i>, Aph. 188 (and even earlier, in <i>The Dawn of Day</i>, Aphs. -18, 77, 113), I have cautiously indicated the continually growing -spiritualisation and "deification" of cruelty, which pervades the -whole history of the higher civilisation (and in the larger sense even -constitutes it). At any rate the time is not so long past when it was -impossible to conceive of royal weddings and national festivals on a -grand scale, without executions, tortures, or perhaps an <i>auto-da-fé</i>", -or similarly to conceive of an aristocratic household, without a -creature to serve as a butt for the cruel and malicious baiting of the -inmates. (The reader will perhaps remember Don Quixote at the court of -the Duchess: we read nowadays the whole of <i>Don Quixote</i> with a bitter -taste in the mouth, almost with a sensation of torture, a fact which -would appear very strange and very incomprehensible to the author and -his contemporaries—they read it with the best conscience in the world -as the gayest of books; they almost died with laughing at it.) The -sight of suffering does one good, the infliction of suffering does one -more good—this is a hard maxim, but none the less a fundamental maxim, -old, powerful, and "human, all-too-human"; one, moreover, to which -perhaps even the apes as well would subscribe: for it is said that in -inventing bizarre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> cruelties they are giving abundant proof of their -future humanity, to which, as it were, they are playing the prelude. -Without cruelty, no feast: so teaches the oldest and longest history of -man—and in punishment too is there so much of the <i>festive</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>Entertaining, as I do, these thoughts, I am, let me say in parenthesis, -fundamentally opposed to helping our pessimists to new water for the -discordant and groaning mills of their disgust with life; on the -contrary, it should be shown specifically that, at the time when -mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was -brighter than it is nowadays when there are pessimists. The darkening -of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the -growth of man's shame <i>before man</i>. The tired pessimistic outlook, -the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted -ennui, all those are not the signs of the <i>most evil</i> age of the human -race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the -swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong, -comes into existence—I mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, -thanks to which the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of -all his instincts. On the road to angelhood (not to use in this context -a harder word) man has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated -tongue, which have made not only the joy and innocence of the animal -repulsive to him, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> also life itself:—so that sometimes he stands -with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like Pope Innocent the -Third, makes a black list of his own horrors ("unclean generation, -loathsome nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of the matter -out of which man develops, awful stench, secretion of saliva, urine, -and excrement"). Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out -as the first argument <i>against</i> existence, as its most sinister -query, it is well to remember the times when men judged on converse -principles because they could not dispense with the <i>infliction</i> of -suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first order, a veritable -bait of seduction to life.</p> - -<p>Perhaps in those days (this is to solace -the weaklings) pain did not hurt so much as it does nowadays: any -physician who has treated negroes (granted that these are taken as -representative of the prehistoric man) suffering from severe internal -inflammations which would bring a European, even though he had the -soundest constitution, almost to despair, would be in a position to -come to this conclusion. Pain has <i>not</i> the same effect with negroes. -(The curve of human sensibilities to pain seems indeed to sink in an -extraordinary and almost sudden fashion, as soon as one has passed -the upper ten thousand or ten millions of over-civilised humanity, -and I personally have no doubt that, by comparison with one painful -night passed by one single hysterical chit of a cultured woman, the -suffering of all the animals taken together who have been put to the -question of the knife, so as to give scientific answers, are simply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> -negligible.) We may perhaps be allowed to admit the possibility of -the craving for cruelty not necessarily having become really extinct: -it only requires, in view of the fact that pain hurts more nowadays, -a certain sublimation and subtilisation, it must especially be -translated to the imaginative and psychic plane, and be adorned with -such smug euphemisms, that even the most fastidious and hypocritical -conscience could never grow suspicious of their real nature ("Tragic -pity" is one of these euphemisms: another is "<i>les nostalgies de la -croix</i>"). What really raises one's indignation against suffering is -not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering; such -a <i>senselessness</i>, however, existed neither in Christianity, which -interpreted suffering into a whole mysterious salvation-apparatus, nor -in the beliefs of the naive ancient man, who only knew how to find -a meaning in suffering from the standpoint of the spectator, or the -inflictor of the suffering. In order to get the secret, undiscovered, -and unwitnessed suffering out of the world it was almost compulsory to -invent gods and a hierarchy of intermediate beings, in short, something -which wanders even among secret places, sees even in the dark, and -makes a point of never missing an interesting and painful spectacle. It -was with the help of such inventions that life got to learn the <i>tour -de force</i>, which has become part of its stock-in-trade, the <i>tour de -force</i> of self-justification, of the justification of evil; nowadays -this would perhaps require other auxiliary devices (for instance, -life as a riddle, life as a problem of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> knowledge). "Every evil is -justified in the sight of which a god finds edification," so rang the -logic of primitive sentiment—and, indeed, was it only of primitive? -The gods conceived as friends of spectacles of cruelty—oh how far -does this primeval conception extend even nowadays into our European -civilisation! One would perhaps like in this context to consult Luther -and Calvin. It is at any rate certain that even the Greeks knew no -more piquant seasoning for the happiness of their gods than the joys -of cruelty. What, do you think, was the mood with which Homer makes -his gods look down upon the fates of men? What final meaning have at -bottom the Trojan War and similar tragic horrors? It is impossible to -entertain any doubt on the point: they were intended as festival games -for the gods, and, in so far as the poet is of a more godlike breed -than other men, as festival games also for the poets. It was in just -this spirit and no other, that at a later date the moral philosophers -of Greece conceived the eyes of God as still looking down on the moral -struggle, the heroism, and the self-torture of the virtuous; the -Heracles of duty was on a stage, and was conscious of the fact; virtue -without witnesses was something quite unthinkable for this nation -of actors. Must not that philosophic invention, so audacious and so -fatal, which was then absolutely new to Europe, the invention of "free -will," of the absolute spontaneity of man in good and evil, simply have -been made for the specific purpose of justifying the idea, that the -interest of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> - the gods in humanity and human virtue was <i>inexhaustible</i>?</p> - -<p>There would never on the stage of this free-will world be a dearth of -really new, really novel and exciting situations, plots, catastrophes. -A world thought out on completely deterministic lines would be easily -guessed by the gods, and would consequently soon bore them—sufficient -reason for these <i>friends of the gods</i>, the philosophers, not to -ascribe to their gods such a deterministic world. The whole of ancient -humanity is full of delicate consideration for the spectator, being as -it is a world of thorough publicity and theatricality, which could not -conceive of happiness without spectacles and festivals.—And, as has -already been said, even in great <i>punishment</i> there is so much which is -festive.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>The feeling of "ought," of personal obligation (to take up again -the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the -oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the -relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and ower: here it -was that individual confronted individual, and that individual -<i>matched himself against</i> individual. There has not yet been found -a grade of civilisation so low, as not to manifest some trace of -this relationship. Making prices, assessing values, thinking out -equivalents, exchanging—all this preoccupied the primal thoughts -of man to such an extent that in a certain sense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> it constituted -<i>thinking</i> itself: it was here that was trained the oldest form of -sagacity, it was here in this sphere that we can perhaps trace the -first commencement of man's pride, of his feeling of superiority over -other animals. Perhaps our word "Mensch" (<i>manas</i>) still expresses -just something of <i>this</i> self-pride: man denoted himself as the being -who measures values, who values and measures, as the "assessing" -animal <i>par excellence</i>. Sale and purchase, together with their -psychological concomitants, are older than the origins of any form of -social organisation and union: it is rather from the most rudimentary -form of individual right that the budding consciousness of exchange, -commerce, debt, right, obligation, compensation was first transferred -to the rudest and most elementary of the social complexes (in their -relation to similar complexes), the habit of comparing force with -force, together with that of measuring, of calculating. His eye was -now focussed to this perspective; and with that ponderous consistency -characteristic of ancient thought, which, though set in motion with -difficulty, yet proceeds inflexibly along the line on which it has -started, man soon arrived at the great generalisation, "everything has -its price, <i>all</i> can be paid for," the oldest and most naive moral -canon of <i>justice</i>, the beginning of all "kindness," of all "equity," -of all "goodwill," of all "objectivity" in the world. Justice in this -initial phase is the goodwill among people of about equal power to come -to terms with each other, to come to an understanding again by means of -a settlement, and with regard to the less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> powerful, to <i>compel</i> them -to agree among themselves to a settlement.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, -is present or again possible at all periods), the community stands to -its members in that important and radical relationship of creditor to -his "owers." Man lives in a community, man enjoys the advantages of -a community (and what advantages! we occasionally underestimate them -nowadays), man lives protected, spared, in peace and trust, secure -from certain injuries and enmities, to which the man outside the -community, the "peaceless" man, is exposed,—a German understands the -original meaning of "Elend" (<i>êlend</i>),—secure because he has entered -into pledges and obligations to the community in respect of these very -injuries and enmities. What happens <i>when this is not the case</i>? The -community, the defrauded creditor, will get itself paid, as well as it -can, one can reckon on that. In this case the question of the direct -damage done by the offender is quite subsidiary: quite apart from -this the criminal<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> is above all a breaker, a breaker of word and -covenant <i>to the whole</i>, as regards all the advantages and amenities -of the communal life in which up to that time he had participated. The -criminal is an "ower" who not only fails to repay the advances and -advantages that have been given to him, but even sets out to attack -his creditor:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> consequently he is in the future not only, as is fair, -deprived of all these advantages and amenities—he is in addition -reminded of the <i>importance</i> of those advantages. The wrath of the -injured creditor, of the community, puts him back in the wild and -outlawed status from which he was previously protected: the community -repudiates him—and now every kind of enmity can vent itself on him. -Punishment is in this stage of civilisation simply the copy, the mimic, -of the normal treatment of the hated, disdained, and conquered enemy, -who is not only deprived of every right and protection but of every -mercy; so we have the martial law and triumphant festival of the <i>væ -victis</i>! in all its mercilessness and cruelty. This shows why war -itself (counting the sacrificial cult of war) has produced all the -forms under which punishment has manifested itself in history.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>As it grows more powerful, the community tends to take the offences of -the individual less seriously, because they are now regarded as being -much less revolutionary and dangerous to the corporate existence: the -evil-doer is no more outlawed and put outside the pale, the common -wrath can no longer vent itself upon him with its old licence,—on -the contrary, from this very time it is against this wrath, and -particularly against the wrath of those directly injured, that the -evil-doer is carefully shielded and protected by the community. As, in -fact, the penal law<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> develops, the following characteristics become -more and more clearly marked: compromise with the wrath of those -directly affected by the misdeed; a consequent endeavour to localise -the matter and to prevent a further, or indeed a general spread of -the disturbance; attempts to find equivalents and to settle the whole -matter (<i>compositio</i>); above all, the will, which manifests itself with -increasing definiteness, to treat every offence as in a certain degree -capable of <i>being paid off</i>, and consequently, at any rate up to a -certain point, to <i>isolate</i> the offender from his act. As the power and -the self-consciousness of a community increases, so proportionately -does the penal law become mitigated; conversely every weakening and -jeopardising of the community revives the harshest forms of that law. -The creditor has always grown more humane proportionately as he has -grown more rich; finally the amount of injury he can endure without -really suffering becomes the criterion of his wealth. It is possible -to conceive of a society blessed with so great a <i>consciousness of its -own power</i> as to indulge in the most aristocratic luxury of letting -its wrong-doers go <i>scot-free</i>.—"What do my parasites matter to me?" -might society say. "Let them live and flourish! I am strong enough for -it."—The justice which began with the maxim, "Everything can be paid -off, everything must be paid off," ends with connivance at the escape -of those who cannot pay to escape—it ends, like every good thing on -earth, by <i>destroying itself</i>.—The self-destruction of Justice! we -know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the pretty name it calls itself—<i>Grace!</i> it remains, as is -obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11.</p> - -<p>A deprecatory word here against the attempts, that have lately been -made, to find the origin of justice on quite another basis—namely, -on that of <i>resentment</i>. Let me whisper a word in the ear of the -psychologists, if they would fain study revenge itself at close -quarters: this plant blooms its prettiest at present among Anarchists -and anti-Semites, a hidden flower, as it has ever been, like the -violet, though, forsooth, with another perfume. And as like must -necessarily emanate from like, it will not be a matter for surprise -that it is just in such circles that we see the birth of endeavours (it -is their old birthplace—compare above, First Essay, paragraph 14), -to sanctify <i>revenge</i> under the name of <i>justice</i> (as though Justice -were at bottom merely a development of the consciousness of injury), -and thus with the rehabilitation of revenge to reinstate generally -and collectively all the <i>reactive</i> emotions. I object to this last -point least of all. It even seems <i>meritorious</i> when regarded from the -standpoint of the whole problem of biology (from which standpoint the -value of these emotions has up to the present been underestimated). -And that to which I alone call attention, is the circumstance that -it is the spirit of revenge itself, from which develops this new -nuance of scientific equity (for the benefit of hate, envy, mistrust,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> -jealousy, suspicion, rancour, revenge). This scientific "equity" -stops immediately and makes way for the accents of deadly enmity and -prejudice, so soon as another group of emotions comes on the scene, -which in my opinion are of a much higher biological value than these -reactions, and consequently have a paramount claim to the valuation -and appreciation of science: I mean the really <i>active</i> emotions, such -as personal and material ambition, and so forth. (E. Dühring, <i>Value -of Life; Course of Philosophy</i>, and <i>passim</i>.) So much against this -tendency in general: but as for the particular maxim of Dühring's, -that the home of Justice is to be found in the sphere of the reactive -feelings, our love of truth compels us drastically to invert his own -proposition and to oppose to him this other maxim: the <i>last</i> sphere -conquered by the spirit of justice is the sphere of the feeling of -reaction! When it really comes about that the just man remains just -even as regards his injurer (and not merely cold, moderate, reserved, -indifferent: being just is always a <i>positive</i> state); when, in spite -of the strong provocation of personal insult, contempt, and calumny, -the lofty and clear objectivity of the just and judging eye (whose -glance is as profound as it is gentle) is untroubled, why then we have -a piece of perfection, a past master of the world—something, in fact, -which it would not be wise to expect, and which should not at any -rate be too easily <i>believed</i>. Speaking generally, there is no doubt -but that even the justest individual only requires a little dose of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> -hostility, malice, or innuendo to drive the blood into his brain and -the fairness <i>from</i> it. The active man, the attacking, aggressive man -is always a hundred degrees nearer to justice than the man who merely -reacts; he certainly has no need to adopt the tactics, necessary in the -case of the reacting man, of making false and biassed valuations of his -object. It is, in point of fact, for this reason that the aggressive -man has at all times enjoyed the stronger, bolder, more aristocratic, -and also <i>freer</i> outlook, the <i>better</i> conscience. On the other hand, -we already surmise who it really is that has on his conscience the -invention of the "bad conscience,"—the resentful man! Finally, let man -look at himself in history. In what sphere up to the present has the -whole administration of law, the actual need of law, found its earthly -home? Perchance in the sphere of the reacting man? Not for a minute: -rather in that of the active, strong, spontaneous, aggressive man? I -deliberately defy the above-mentioned agitator (who himself makes this -self-confession, "the creed of revenge has run through all my works -and endeavours like the red thread of Justice"), and say, that judged -historically law in the world represents the very war <i>against</i> the -reactive feelings, the very war waged on those feelings by the powers -of activity and aggression, which devote some of their strength to -damming and keeping within bounds this effervescence of hysterical -reactivity, and to forcing it to some compromise. Everywhere where -justice is practised and justice is maintained, it is to be observed -that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> stronger power, when confronted with the weaker powers which -are inferior to it (whether they be groups, or individuals), searches -for weapons to put an end to the senseless fury of resentment, while -it carries on its object, partly by taking the victim of resentment -out of the clutches of revenge, partly by substituting for revenge a -campaign of its own against the enemies of peace and order, partly -by finding, suggesting, and occasionally enforcing settlements, -partly by standardising certain equivalents for injuries, to which -equivalents the element of resentment is henceforth finally referred. -The most drastic measure, however, taken and effectuated by the supreme -power, to combat the preponderance of the feelings of spite and -vindictiveness—it takes this measure as soon as it is at all strong -enough to do so—is the foundation of <i>law</i>, the imperative declaration -of what in its eyes is to be regarded as just and lawful, and what -unjust and unlawful: and while, after the foundation of law, the -supreme power treats the aggressive and arbitrary acts of individuals, -or of whole groups, as a violation of law, and a revolt against -itself, it distracts the feelings of its subjects from the immediate -injury inflicted by such a violation, and thus eventually attains the -very opposite result to that always desired by revenge, which sees -and recognises nothing but the standpoint of the injured party. From -henceforth the eye becomes trained to a more and more <i>impersonal</i> -valuation of the deed, even the eye of the injured party himself -(though this is in the final stage of all, as has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> previously -remarked)—on this principle "right" and "wrong" first manifest -themselves after the foundation of law (and <i>not</i>, as Dühring maintains, -only after the act of violation). To talk of intrinsic right and -intrinsic wrong is absolutely non-sensical; intrinsically, an injury, -an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, -inasmuch as life is <i>essentially</i> (that is, in its cardinal functions) -something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and -annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character. -It is necessary to make an even more serious confession:—viewed from -the most advanced biological standpoint, conditions of legality can be -only <i>exceptional conditions</i>, in that they are partial restrictions -of the real life-will, which makes for power, and in that they are -subordinated to the life-will's general end as particular means, -that is, as means to create <i>larger</i> units of strength. A legal -organisation, conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a weapon -in a fight of complexes of power, but as a weapon <i>against</i> fighting, -generally something after the style of Dühring's communistic model -of treating every will as equal with every other will, would be a -principle <i>hostile to life</i>, a destroyer and dissolver of man, an -outrage on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a secret cut to -Nothingness.—</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>A word more on the origin and end of punishment—two problems which -are or ought to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually -lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists employed -up to the present in these cases? Their inveterate naïveté. They find -out some "end" in the punishment, for instance, revenge and deterrence, -and then in all their innocence set this end at the beginning, as the -<i>causa fiendi</i> of the punishment, and—they have done the trick. But -the patching up of a history of the origin of law is the last use to -which the "End in Law"<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> ought to be put. Perhaps there is no more -pregnant principle for any kind of history than the following, which, -difficult though it is to master, <i>should</i> none the less be <i>mastered</i> -in every detail.—The origin of the existence of a thing and its final -utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of -ends, are <i>toto cœlo</i> opposed to each other—everything, anything, -which exists and which prevails anywhere, will always be put to new -purposes by a force superior to itself, will be commandeered afresh, -will be turned and transformed to new uses; all "happening" in the -organic world consists of <i>overpowering</i> and dominating, and again all -overpowering and domination is a new interpretation and adjustment, -which must necessarily obscure or absolutely extinguish the subsisting -"meaning" and "end." The most perfect comprehension of the utility -of any physiological organ (or also of a legal institution, social -custom, political<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> habit, form in art or in religious worship) does not -for a minute imply any simultaneous comprehension of its origin: this -may seem uncomfortable and unpalatable to the older men,—for it has -been the immemorial belief that understanding the final cause or the -utility of a thing, a form, an institution, means also understanding -the reason for its origin: to give an example of this logic, the eye -was made to see, the hand was made to grasp. So even punishment was -conceived as invented with a view to punishing. But all ends and all -utilities are only <i>signs</i> that a Will to Power has mastered a less -powerful force, has impressed thereon out of its own self the meaning -of a function; and the whole history of a "Thing," an organ, a custom, -can on the same principle be regarded as a continuous "sign-chain" -of perpetually new interpretations and adjustments, whose causes, so -far from needing to have even a mutual connection, sometimes follow -and alternate with each other absolutely haphazard. Similarly, the -evolution of a "thing," of a custom, is anything but its <i>progressus</i> -to an end, still less a logical and direct <i>progressus</i> attained -with the minimum expenditure of energy and cost: it is rather the -succession of processes of subjugation, more or less profound, more -or less mutually independent, which operate on the thing itself; it -is, further, the resistance which in each case invariably displayed -this subjugation, the Protean wriggles by way of defence and reaction, -and, further, the results of successful counter-efforts. The form is -fluid, but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> meaning is even more so—even inside every individual -organism the case is the same: with every genuine growth of the whole, -the "function" of the individual organs becomes shifted,—in certain -cases a partial perishing of these organs, a diminution of their -numbers (for instance, through annihilation of the connecting members), -can be a symptom of growing strength and perfection. What I mean is -this: even partial <i>loss of utility</i>, decay, and degeneration, loss of -function and purpose, in a word, death, appertain to the conditions -of the genuine <i>progressus</i>; which always appears in the shape of -a will and way to <i>greater</i> power, and is always realised at the -expense of innumerable smaller powers. The magnitude of a "progress" -is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires: humanity -as a mass sacrificed to the prosperity of the one <i>stronger</i> species -of Man—that <i>would be</i> a progress. I emphasise all the more this -cardinal characteristic of the historic method, for the reason that in -its essence it runs counter to predominant instincts and prevailing -taste, which much prefer to put up with absolute casualness, even with -the mechanical senselessness of all phenomena, than with the theory -of a power-will, in exhaustive play throughout all phenomena. The -democratic idiosyncrasy against everything which rules and wishes to -rule, the modern <i>misarchism</i> (to coin a bad word for a bad thing), -has gradually but so thoroughly transformed itself into the guise of -intellectualism, the most abstract intellectualism, that even nowadays -it penetrates and <i>has the right</i> to penetrate step<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> by step into the -most exact and apparently the most objective sciences: this tendency -has, in fact, in my view already dominated the whole of physiology -and biology, and to their detriment, as is obvious, in so far as -it has spirited away a radical idea, the idea of true <i>activity</i>. -The tyranny of this idiosyncrasy, however, results in the theory -of "adaptation" being pushed forward into the van of the argument, -exploited; adaptation—that means to say, a second-class activity, a -mere capacity for "reacting"; in fact, life itself has been defined -(by Herbert Spencer) as an increasingly effective internal adaptation -to external circumstances. This definition, however, fails to realise -the real essence of life, its will to power. It fails to appreciate the -paramount superiority enjoyed by those plastic forces of spontaneity, -aggression, and encroachment with their new interpretations and -tendencies, to the operation of which adaptation is only a natural -corollary: consequently the sovereign office of the highest -functionaries in the organism itself (among which the life-will appears -as an active and formative principle) is repudiated. One remembers -Huxley's reproach to Spencer of his "administrative Nihilism": but it -is a case of something much <i>more</i> than "administration."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>To return to our subject, namely <i>punishment</i>, we must make -consequently a double distinction: first, the relatively permanent -<i>element</i>, the custom,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> the act, the "drama," a certain rigid sequence -of methods of procedure; on the other hand, the fluid element, the -meaning, the end, the expectation which is attached to the operation of -such procedure. At this point we immediately assume, <i>per analogiam</i> -(in accordance with the theory of the historic method, which we have -elaborated above), that the procedure itself is something older and -earlier than its utilisation in punishment, that this utilisation was -<i>introduced</i> and interpreted into the procedure (which had existed -for a long time, but whose employment had another meaning), in short, -that the case is <i>different</i> from that hitherto supposed by our <i>naïf</i> -genealogists of morals and of law, who thought that the procedure was -<i>invented</i> for the purpose of punishment, in the same way that the hand -had been previously thought to have been invented for the purpose of -grasping. With regard to the other element in <i>punishment</i>, its fluid -element, its meaning, the idea of punishment in a very late stage of -civilisation (for instance, contemporary Europe) is not content with -manifesting merely one meaning, but manifests a whole synthesis "of -meanings." The past general history of punishment, the history of its -employment for the most diverse ends, crystallises eventually into -a kind of unity, which is difficult to analyse into its parts, and -which, it is necessary to emphasise, absolutely defies definition. -(It is nowadays impossible to say definitely <i>the precise reason</i> -for punishment: all ideas, in which a whole process is promiscuously -comprehended, elude definition; it is only that which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> has no history, -which can be defined.) At an earlier stage, on the contrary, that -synthesis of meanings appears much less rigid and much more elastic; we -can realise how in each individual case the elements of the synthesis -change their value and their position, so that now one element and -now another stands out and predominates over the others, nay, in -certain cases one element (perhaps the end of deterrence) seems to -eliminate all the rest. At any rate, so as to give some idea of the -uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature of the meaning of -punishment and of the manner in which one identical procedure can -be employed and adapted for the most diametrically opposed objects, -I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to -me, a scheme itself based on comparatively small and accidental -material.—Punishment, as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable -of further injury.—Punishment, as compensation for the injury -sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including -the form of sentimental compensation).—Punishment, as an isolation -of that which disturbs the equilibrium, so as to prevent the further -spreading of the disturbance.—Punishment as a means of inspiring -fear of those who determine and execute the punishment.—Punishment -as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has -up to that time enjoyed (for example, when he is utilised as a -slave in the mines).—Punishment, as the elimination of an element -of decay (sometimes of a whole branch, as according to the Chinese -laws, consequently as a means to the purification<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> of the race, or -the preservation of a social type).—-Punishment as a festival, as -the violent oppression and humiliation of an enemy that has at last -been subdued.—Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers -the punishment—the so-called "correction," or for the witnesses of -its administration. Punishment, as the payment of a fee stipulated -for by the power which protects the evil-doer from the excesses of -revenge.—Punishment, as a compromise with the natural phenomenon -of revenge, in so far as revenge is still maintained and claimed -as a privilege by the stronger races.—Punishment as a declaration -and measure of war against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, -of authority, who is fought by society with the weapons which war -provides, as a spirit dangerous to the community, as a breaker of the -contract on which the community is based, as a rebel, a traitor, and a -breaker of the peace.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment -is overloaded with utilities of all kinds. This makes it all the -more permissible to eliminate one <i>supposed</i> utility, which passes, at -any rate in the popular mind, for its most essential utility, and -which is just what even now provides the strongest support for that -faith in punishment which is nowadays for many reasons tottering. -Punishment is supposed to have the value of exciting in the guilty -the consciousness of guilt; in punishment is sought the proper -<i>instrumentum</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> of that psychic reaction which becomes known as a "bad -conscience," "remorse." But this theory is even, from the point of -view of the present, a violation of reality and psychology: and how -much more so is the case when we have to deal with the longest period -of man's history, his primitive history! Genuine remorse is certainly -extremely rare among wrong-doers and the victims of punishment; prisons -and houses of correction are not <i>the</i> soil on which this worm of -remorse pullulates for choice—this is the unanimous opinion of all -conscientious observers, who in many cases arrive at such a judgment -with enough reluctance and against their own personal wishes. Speaking -generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it -sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of -resistance. When it happens that it breaks the man's energy and brings -about a piteous prostration and abjectness, such a result is certainly -even less salutary than the average effect of punishment, which is -characterised by a harsh and sinister doggedness. The thought of those -<i>prehistoric</i> millennia brings us to the unhesitating conclusion, -that it was simply through punishment that the evolution of the -consciousness of guilt was most forcibly retarded—at any rate in the -victims of the punishing power. In particular, let us not underestimate -the extent to which, by the very sight of the judicial and executive -procedure, the wrong-doer is himself prevented from feeling that his -deed, the character of his act, is <i>intrinsically</i> reprehensible: for -he sees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> clearly the same kind of acts practised in the service of -justice, and then called good, and practised with a good conscience; -acts such as espionage, trickery, bribery, trapping, the whole -intriguing and insidious art of the policeman and the informer—the -whole system, in fact, manifested in the different kinds of punishment -(a system not excused by passion, but based on principle), of robbing, -oppressing, insulting, imprisoning, racking, murdering.—All this -he sees treated by his judges, not as acts meriting censure and -condemnation <i>in themselves</i>, but only in a particular context and -application. It was not on this soil that grew the "bad conscience," -that most sinister and interesting plant of our earthly vegetation— -in point of fact, throughout a most lengthy period, no suggestion of -having to do with a "guilty man" manifested itself in the consciousness -of the man who judged and punished. One had merely to deal with an -author of an injury, an irresponsible piece of fate. And the man -himself, on whom the punishment subsequently fell like a piece of fate, -was occasioned no more of an "inner pain" than would be occasioned by -the sudden approach of some uncalculated event, some terrible natural -catastrophe, a rushing, crushing avalanche against which there is no -resistance.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>This truth came insidiously enough to the consciousness of Spinoza (to -the disgust of his commentators, who (like Kuno Fischer, for instance)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> -give themselves no end of <i>trouble</i> to misunderstand him on this -point), when one afternoon (as he sat raking up who knows what memory) -he indulged in the question of what was really left for him personally -of the celebrated <i>morsus conscientiæ</i>—Spinoza, who had relegated -"good and evil" to the sphere of human imagination, and indignantly -defended the honour of his "free" God against those blasphemers who -affirmed that God did everything <i>sub ratione boni</i> ("but this was -tantamount to subordinating God to fate, and would really be the -greatest of all absurdities"). For Spinoza the world had returned -again to that innocence in which it lay before the discovery of the -bad conscience: what, then, had happened to the <i>morsus conscientiæ</i>? -"The antithesis of <i>gaudium</i>," said he at last to himself,—"A sadness -accompanied by the recollection of a past event which has turned out -contrary to all expectation" (<i>Eth</i>. III., Propos. XVIII. Schol. -i. ii.). Evil-doers have throughout thousands of years felt when -overtaken by punishment <i>exactly like Spinoza</i>, on the subject of -their "offence": "here is something which went wrong contrary to my -anticipation," <i>not</i> "I ought not to have done this."—They submitted -themselves to punishment, just as one submits one's self to a disease, -to a misfortune, or to death, with that stubborn and resigned fatalism -which gives the Russians, for instance, even nowadays, the advantage -over us Westerners, in the handling of life. If at that period there -was a critique of action, the criterion was prudence: the real <i>effect</i> -of punishment is unquestionably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> chiefly to be found in a sharpening -of the sense of prudence, in a lengthening of the memory, in a will -to adopt more of a policy of caution, suspicion, and secrecy; in the -recognition that there are many things which are unquestionably beyond -one's capacity; in a kind of improvement in self-criticism. The broad -effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the -increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery -of the desires: so it is that punishment <i>tames</i> man, but does not make -him "better"—it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert -the contrary ("Injury makes a man cunning," says a popular proverb: so -far as it makes him cunning, it makes him also bad. Fortunately, it -often enough makes him stupid).</p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>At this juncture I cannot avoid trying to give a tentative and -provisional expression to my own hypothesis concerning the origin of -the bad conscience: it is difficult to make it fully appreciated, -and it requires continuous meditation, attention, and digestion. I -regard the bad conscience as the serious illness which man was bound -to contract under the stress of the most radical change which he has -ever experienced—that change, when he found himself finally imprisoned -within the pale of society and of peace.</p> - -<p>Just like the plight of the water-animals, when they were compelled -either to become land-animals or to perish, so was the plight of these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> -half-animals, perfectly adapted as they were to the savage life of war, -prowling, and adventure—suddenly all their instincts were rendered -worthless and "switched off." Henceforward they had to walk on their -feet—"carry themselves," whereas heretofore they had been carried by -the water: a terrible heaviness oppressed them. They found themselves -clumsy in obeying the simplest directions, confronted with this new -and unknown world they had no longer their old guides—the regulative -instincts that had led them unconsciously to safety—they were reduced, -were those unhappy creatures, to thinking, inferring, calculating, -putting together causes and results, reduced to that poorest and most -erratic organ of theirs, their "consciousness." I do not believe -there was ever in the world such a feeling of misery, such a leaden -discomfort—further, those old instincts had not immediately ceased -their demands! Only it was difficult and rarely possible to gratify -them: speaking broadly, they were compelled to satisfy themselves by -new and, as it were, hole-and-corner methods. All instincts which -do not find a vent without, <i>turn inwards</i>—this is what I mean by -the growing "internalisation" of man: consequently we have the first -growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. The whole -inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between -two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionately, and -obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man's external outlet -became <i>obstructed</i>. These terrible bulwarks,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> with which the social -organisation protected itself against the old instincts of freedom -(punishments belong pre-eminently to these bulwarks), brought it -about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man became -turned backwards <i>against man himself</i>. Enmity, cruelty, the delight -in persecution, in surprises, change, destruction—the turning all -these instincts against their own possessors: this is the origin of -the "bad conscience." It was man, who, lacking external enemies and -obstacles, and imprisoned as he was in the oppressive narrowness and -monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted, -gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; it was this animal in the -hands of the tamer, which beat itself against the bars of its cage; it -was this being who, pining and yearning for that desert home of which -it had been deprived, was compelled to create out of its own self, an -adventure, a torture-chamber, a hazardous and perilous desert—it was -this fool, this homesick and desperate prisoner—who invented the "bad -conscience." But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister -illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of -man from the disease called man, as the result of a violent breaking -from his animal past, the result, as it were, of a spasmodic plunge -into a new environment and new conditions of existence, the result of -a declaration of war against the old instincts, which up to that time -had been the staple of his power, his joy, his formidableness. Let -us immediately add that this fact of an animal ego turning against -itself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> taking part against itself, produced in the world so novel, -profound, unheard-of, problematic, inconsistent, and <i>pregnant</i> a -phenomenon, that the aspect of the world was radically altered thereby. -In sooth, only divine spectators could have appreciated the drama -that then began, and whose end baffles conjecture as yet—a drama too -subtle, too wonderful, too paradoxical to warrant its undergoing a -non-sensical and unheeded performance on some random grotesque planet! -Henceforth man is to be counted as one of the most unexpected and -sensational lucky shots in the game of the "big baby" of Heracleitus, -whether he be called Zeus or Chance—he awakens on his behalf the -interest, excitement, hope, almost the confidence, of his being the -harbinger and forerunner of something, of man being no end, but only a -stage, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>It is primarily involved in this hypothesis of the origin of the bad -conscience, that that alteration was no gradual and no voluntary -alteration, and that it did not manifest itself as an organic -adaptation to new conditions, but as a break, a jump, a necessity, an -inevitable fate, against which there was no resistance and never a -spark of resentment. And secondarily, that the fitting of a hitherto -unchecked and amorphous population into a fixed form, starting as -it had done in an act of violence, could only be accomplished by -acts of violence and nothing else—that the oldest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> "State" appeared -consequently as a ghastly tyranny, a grinding ruthless piece of -machinery, which went on working, till this raw material of a -semi-animal populace was not only thoroughly kneaded and elastic, but -also <i>moulded</i>. I used the word "State": my meaning is self-evident, -namely, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and -masters, which with all its warlike organisation and all its organising -power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers -possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. -Such is the origin of the "State." That fantastic theory that makes it -begin with a contract is, I think, disposed of. He who can command, -he who is a master by "nature," he who comes on the scene forceful -in deed and gesture—what has he to do with contracts? Such beings -defy calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason, notice, -excuse, they are there like the lightning is there, too terrible, too -sudden, too convincing, too "different," to be personally even hated. -Their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they -are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are:—their -appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of sovereignty which is -<i>live</i>, in which the functions are partitioned and apportioned, in which -above all no part is received or finds a place, until pregnant with -a "meaning" in regard to the whole. They are ignorant of the meaning -of guilt, responsibility, consideration, are these born organisers; -in them predominates that terrible artist-egoism, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> gleams like -brass, and that knows itself justified to all eternity, in its work, -even as a mother in her child. It is not in <i>them</i> that there grew -the bad conscience, that is elementary—but it would not have grown -<i>without them</i>, repulsive growth as it was, it would be missing, had -not a tremendous quantity of freedom been expelled from the world by -the stress of their hammer-strokes, their artist violence, or been at -any rate made invisible and, as it were, <i>latent</i>. This <i>instinct of -freedom</i> forced into being latent—it is already clear—this instinct -of freedom forced back, trodden back, imprisoned within itself, and -finally only able to find vent and relief in itself; this, only this, -is the beginning of the "bad conscience."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">18.</p> - -<p>Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial -painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at -work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and organisers, -and builds states, which here, internally, on a smaller and pettier -scale and with a retrogressive tendency, makes itself a bad science in -the "labyrinth of the breast," to use Goethe's phrase, and which builds -negative ideals; it is, I repeat, that identical <i>instinct of freedom</i> -(to use my own language, the will to power): only the material, on -which this force with all its constructive and tyrannous nature is -let loose, is here man himself, his whole old animal self—and <i>not</i> as -in the case of that more grandiose and sensational<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> phenomenon, the -<i>other</i> man, <i>other</i> men. This secret self-tyranny, this cruelty of -the artist, this delight in giving a form to one's self as a piece of -difficult, refractory, and suffering material, in burning in a will, a -critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a negation; this sinister and -ghastly labour of love on the part of a soul, whose will is cloven -in two within itself, which makes itself suffer from delight in the -infliction of suffering; this wholly <i>active</i> bad conscience has -finally (as one already anticipates)—true fountainhead as it is of -idealism and imagination—produced an abundance of novel and amazing -beauty and affirmation, and perhaps has really been the first to -give birth to beauty at all. What would beauty be, forsooth, if its -contradiction had not first been presented to consciousness, if the -ugly had not first said to itself, "I am ugly"? At any rate, after this -hint the problem of how far idealism and beauty can be traced in such -opposite ideas as "<i>selflessness</i>," <i>self-denial</i>, <i>self-sacrifice</i>, -becomes less problematical; and indubitably in future we shall -certainly know the real and original character of the <i>delight</i> -experienced by the self-less, the self-denying, the self-sacrificing: -this delight is a phase of cruelty.—So much provisionally for the -origin of "altruism" as a <i>moral</i> value, and the marking out the ground -from which this value has grown: it is only the bad conscience, only -the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the -existence of altruism as a <i>value</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">19.</p> - -<p>Undoubtedly the bad conscience is an illness, but an illness like -pregnancy is an illness. If we search out the conditions under which -this illness reaches its most terrible and sublime zenith, we shall see -what really first brought about its entry into the world. But to do -this we must take a long breath, and we must first of all go back once -again to an earlier point of view. The relation at civil law of the -ower to his creditor (which has already been discussed in detail), has -been interpreted once again (and indeed in a manner which historically -is exceedingly remarkable and suspicious) into a relationship, which -is perhaps more incomprehensible to us moderns than to any other era; -that is, into the relationship of the <i>existing</i> generation to its -<i>ancestors</i>. Within the original tribal association—we are talking of -primitive times—each living generation recognises a legal obligation -towards the earlier generation, and particularly towards the earliest, -which founded the family (and this is something much more than a mere -sentimental obligation, the existence of which, during the longest -period of man's history, is by no means indisputable). There prevails -in them the conviction that it is only thanks to sacrifices and efforts -of their ancestors, that the race <i>persists</i> at all—and that this -has to be <i>paid back</i> to them by sacrifices and services. Thus is -recognised the <i>owing</i> of a debt, which accumulates continually by -reason of these ancestors never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> ceasing in their subsequent life as -potent spirits to secure by their power new privileges and advantages -to the race. Gratis, perchance? But there is no gratis for that raw -and "mean-souled" age. What return can be made?—Sacrifice (at first, -nourishment, in its crudest sense), festivals, temples, tributes of -veneration, above all, obedience—since all customs are, <i>quâ</i> works of -the ancestors, equally their precepts and commands—are the ancestors -ever given enough? This suspicion remains and grows: from time to time -it extorts a great wholesale ransom, something monstrous in the way of -repayment of the creditor (the notorious sacrifice of the first-born, -for example, blood, human blood in any case). The <i>fear</i> of ancestors -and their power, the consciousness of owing debts to them, necessarily -increases, according to this kind of logic, in the exact proportion -that the race itself increases, that the race itself becomes more -victorious, more independent, more honoured, more feared. This, and not -the contrary, is the fact. Each step towards race decay, all disastrous -events, all symptoms of degeneration, of approaching disintegration, -always <i>diminish</i> the fear of the founders' spirit, and whittle away -the idea of his sagacity, providence, and potent presence. Conceive -this crude kind of logic carried to its climax: it follows that the -ancestors of the <i>most powerful</i> races must, through the growing fear -that they exercise on the imaginations, grow themselves into monstrous -dimensions, and become relegated to the gloom of a divine mystery that -transcends imagination—the ancestor becomes at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> last necessarily -transfigured into a <i>god</i>. Perhaps this is the very origin of the gods, -that is, an origin from <i>fear</i>! And those who feel bound to add, "but -from piety also," will have difficulty in maintaining this theory, -with regard to the primeval and longest period of the human race. And -of course this is even more the case as regards the <i>middle</i> period, -the formative period of the aristocratic races—the aristocratic -races which have given back with interest to their founders, the -ancestors (heroes, gods), all those qualities which in the meanwhile -have appeared in themselves, that is, the aristocratic qualities. We -will later on glance again at the ennobling and promotion of the gods -(which of course is totally distinct from their "sanctification"): let -us now provisionally follow to its end the course of the whole of this -development of the consciousness of "owing."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">20.</p> - -<p>According to the teaching of history, the consciousness of owing -debts to the deity by no means came to an end with the decay of the -clan organisation of society; just as mankind has inherited the -ideas of "good" and "bad" from the race-nobility (together with its -fundamental tendency towards establishing social distinctions), so -with the heritage of the racial and tribal gods it has also inherited -the incubus of debts as yet unpaid and the desire to discharge them. -The transition is effected by those large populations of slaves and -bondsmen, who, whether through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> compulsion or through submission and -"<i>mimicry,</i>" have accommodated themselves to the religion of their -masters; through this channel these inherited tendencies inundate -the world. The feeling of owing a debt to the deity has grown -continuously for several centuries, always in the same proportion in -which the idea of God and the consciousness of God have grown and -become exalted among mankind. (The whole history of ethnic fights, -victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, everything, in fact, which -precedes the eventual classing of all the social elements in each great -race-synthesis, are mirrored in the hotch-potch genealogy of their -gods, in the legends of their fights, victories, and reconciliations. -Progress towards universal empires invariably means progress towards -universal deities; despotism, with its subjugation of the independent -nobility, always paves the way for some system or other of monotheism.) -The appearance of the Christian god, as the record god up to this time, -has for that very reason brought equally into the world the record -amount of guilt consciousness. Granted that we have gradually started -on the <i>reverse</i> movement, there is no little probability in the -deduction, based on the continuous decay in the belief in the Christian -god, to the effect that there also already exists a considerable -decay in the human consciousness of owing (ought); in fact, we cannot -shut our eyes to the prospect of the complete and eventual triumph of -atheism freeing mankind from all this feeling of obligation to their -origin, their <i>causa prima</i>. Atheism and a kind of second<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> innocence -complement and supplement each other.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">21.</p> - -<p>So much for my rough and preliminary sketch of the interrelation of -the ideas "ought" (owe) and "duty" with the postulates of religion. I -have intentionally shelved up to the present the actual moralisation -of these ideas (their being pushed back into the conscience, or more -precisely the interweaving of the <i>bad</i> conscience with the idea of -God), and at the end of the last paragraph used language to the effect -that this moralisation did not exist, and that consequently these ideas -had necessarily come to an end, by reason of what had happened to their -hypothesis, the credence in our "creditor," in God. The actual facts -differ terribly from this theory. It is with the moralisation of the -ideas "ought" and "duty," and with their being pushed back into the -<i>bad</i> conscience, that comes the first actual attempt to <i>reverse</i> the -direction of the development we have just described, or at any rate -to arrest its evolution; it is just at this juncture that the very -hope of an eventual redemption <i>has to</i> put itself once for all into -the prison of pessimism, it is at this juncture that the eye <i>has to</i> -recoil and rebound in despair from off an adamantine impossibility, -it is at this juncture that the ideas "guilt" and "duty" have to turn -backwards—turn backwards against <i>whom</i>? There is no doubt about -it; primarily against the "ower," in whom the bad conscience now -establishes itself, eats, extends, and grows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> like a polypus throughout -its length and breadth, all with such virulence, that at last, with -the impossibility of paying the debt, there becomes conceived the -idea of the impossibility of paying the penalty, the thought of its -inexpiability (the idea of "eternal punishment")—finally, too, it -turns against the "creditor," whether found in the <i>causa prima</i> of -man, the origin of the human race, its sire, who henceforth becomes -burdened with a curse ("Adam," "original sin," "determination of the -will"), or in Nature from whose womb man springs, and on whom the -responsibility for the principle of evil is now cast ("Diabolisation of -Nature"), or in existence generally, on this logic an absolute <i>white -elephant</i>, with which mankind is landed (the Nihilistic flight from -life, the demand for Nothingness, or for the opposite of existence, for -some other existence, Buddhism and the like)—till suddenly we stand -before that paradoxical and awful expedient, through which a tortured -humanity has found a temporary alleviation, that stroke of genius -called Christianity:—God personally immolating himself for the debt of -man, God paying himself personally out of a pound of his own flesh, God -as the one being who can deliver man from what man had become unable to -deliver himself—the creditor playing scapegoat for his debtor, from -<i>love</i> (can you believe it?), from love of his debtor!...</p> - - -<p class="parnum">22.</p> - -<p>The reader will already have conjectured what took place on the stage -and <i>behind the scenes</i> of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> this drama. That will for self-torture, that -inverted cruelty of the animal man, who, turned subjective and scared -into introspection (encaged as he was in "the State," as part of his -taming process), invented the bad conscience so as to hurt himself, -after the <i>natural</i> outlet for this will to hurt, became blocked—in -other words, this man of the bad conscience exploited the religious -hypothesis so as to carry his martyrdom to the ghastliest pitch of -agonised intensity. Owing something to <i>God</i>: this thought becomes his -instrument of torture. He apprehends in God the most extreme antitheses -that he can find to his own characteristic and ineradicable animal -instincts, he himself gives a new interpretation to these animal -instincts as being against what he "owes" to God (as enmity, rebellion, -and revolt against the "Lord," the "Father," the "Sire," the "Beginning -of the world"), he places himself between the horns of the dilemma, -"God" and "Devil." Every negation which he is inclined to utter to -himself, to the nature, naturalness, and reality of his being, he -whips into an ejaculation of "yes," uttering it as something existing, -living, efficient, as being God, as the holiness of God, the judgment -of God, as the hangmanship of God, as transcendence, as eternity, as -unending torment, as hell, as infinity of punishment and guilt. This is -a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty -which is absolutely unparalleled:—man's <i>will</i> to find himself guilty -and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, his <i>will</i> to think of -himself as punished, without the punishment ever being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> able to balance -the guilt, his <i>will</i> to infect and to poison the fundamental basis -of the universe with the problem of punishment and guilt, in order to -cut off once and for all any escape out of this labyrinth of "fixed -ideas," his will for rearing an ideal—that of the "holy God"—face to -face with which he can have tangible proof of his own un-worthiness. -Alas for this mad melancholy beast man! What phantasies invade it, -what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and <i>mental -bestiality</i> break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its -being the beast of action. All this is excessively interesting, but -at the same time tainted with a black, gloomy, enervating melancholy, -so that a forcible veto must be invoked against looking too long into -these abysses. Here is <i>disease</i>, undubitably, the most ghastly disease -that has as yet played havoc among men: and he who can still hear (but -man turns now deaf ears to such sounds), how in this night of torment -and nonsense there has rung out the cry of <i>love</i>, the cry of the most -passionate ecstasy, of redemption in <i>love</i>, he turns away gripped by -an invincible horror—in man there is so much that is ghastly—too long -has the world been a mad-house.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">23.</p> - -<p>Let this suffice once for all concerning the origin of the "holy God." -The fact that <i>in itself</i> the conception of gods is not bound to -lead necessarily to this degradation of the imagination (a temporary -representation of whose vagaries we felt bound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> give), the fact that -there exist <i>nobler</i> methods of utilising the invention of gods than in -this self-crucifixion and self-degradation of man, in which the last -two thousand years of Europe have been past masters—these facts can -fortunately be still perceived from every glance that we cast at the -Grecian gods, these mirrors of noble and grandiose men, in which the -<i>animal</i> in man felt itself deified, and did <i>not</i> devour itself in -subjective frenzy. These Greeks long utilised their gods as simple -buffers against the "bad conscience"—so that they could continue -to enjoy their freedom of soul: this, of course, is diametrically -opposed to Christianity's theory of its god. They went <i>very far</i> on -this principle, did these splendid and lion-hearted children; and -there is no lesser authority than that of the Homeric Zeus for making -them realise occasionally that they are taking life too casually. -"Wonderful," says he on one occasion—it has to do with the case of -Ægistheus, a <i>very</i> bad case indeed—</p> - -<p> -"Wonderful how they grumble, the mortals against -the immortals,<br /> -<i>Only from us</i>, they presume, <i>comes evil</i>, but in -their folly,<br /> -Fashion they, spite of fate, the doom of their -own disaster."<br /> -</p> - -<p>Yet the reader will note and observe that this Olympian spectator and -judge is far from being angry with them and thinking evil of them on -this score. "How <i>foolish</i> they are," so thinks he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> of the misdeeds -of mortals—and "folly," "imprudence," "a little brain disturbance," -and nothing more, are what the Greeks, even of the strongest, bravest -period, have admitted to be the ground of much that is evil and -fatal.—Folly, <i>not</i> sin, do you understand?... But even this brain -disturbance was a problem—"Come, how is it even possible? How could it -have really got in brains like ours, the brains of men of aristocratic -ancestry, of men of fortune, of men of good natural endowments, of -men of the best society, of men of nobility and virtue?" This was the -question that for century on century the aristocratic Greek put to -himself when confronted with every (to him incomprehensible) outrage -and sacrilege with which one of his peers had polluted himself. "It -must be that a god had infatuated him," he would say at last, nodding -his head.—This solution is <i>typical</i> of the Greeks, ... accordingly -the gods in those times subserved the functions of justifying man to a -certain extent even in evil—in those days they took upon themselves -not the punishment, but, what is more noble, the guilt.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">24.</p> - -<p>I conclude with three queries, as you will see. "Is an ideal actually -set up here, or is one pulled down?" I am perhaps asked.... But have -ye sufficiently asked yourselves how dear a payment has the setting up -of <i>every</i> ideal in the world exacted? To achieve that consummation how -much truth must always be traduced and misunderstood, how many lies -must be sanctified,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> how much conscience has got to be disturbed, how -many pounds of "God" have got to be sacrificed every time? To enable -a sanctuary to be set up <i>a sanctuary has got to be destroyed</i>: that -is a law—show me an instance where it has not been fulfilled!... -We modern men, we inherit the immemorial tradition of vivisecting -the conscience, and practising cruelty to our animal selves. That is -the sphere of our most protracted training, perhaps of our artistic -prowess, at any rate of our dilettantism and our perverted taste. Man -has for too long regarded his natural proclivities with an "evil eye," -so that eventually they have become in his system affiliated to a -bad conscience. A converse endeavour would be intrinsically feasible—but -who is strong enough to attempt it?—namely, to affiliate to -the "bad conscience" all those <i>unnatural</i> proclivities, all those -transcendental aspirations, contrary to sense, instinct, nature, and -animalism—in short, all past and present ideals, which are all ideals -opposed to life, and traducing the world. To whom is one to turn -nowadays with <i>such</i> hopes and pretensions?—It is just the <i>good</i> -men that we should thus bring about our ears; and in addition, as -stands to reason, the indolent, the hedgers, the vain, the hysterical, -the tired.... What is more offensive or more thoroughly calculated -to alienate, than giving any hint of the exalted severity with which -we treat ourselves? And again how conciliatory, how full of love -does all the world show itself towards us so soon as we do as all -the world docs, and "let ourselves go" like all the world. For such -a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> consummation we need spirits of <i>different</i> calibre than seems -really feasible in this age; spirits rendered potent through wars and -victories, to whom conquest, adventure, danger, even pain, have become -a need; for such a consummation we need habituation to sharp, rare air, -to winter wanderings, to literal and metaphorical ice and mountains; we -even need a kind of sublime malice, a supreme and most self-conscious -insolence of knowledge, which is the appanage of great health; we need -(to summarise the awful truth) just this <i>great health</i>!</p> - -<p>Is this even feasible to-day?... But some day, in a stronger -age than this rotting and introspective present, must he in sooth -come to us, even the <i>redeemer</i> of great love and scorn, the creative -spirit, rebounding by the impetus of his own force back again away -from every transcendental plane and dimension, he whose solitude is -misunderstanded (sic) of the people, as though it were a flight <i>from</i> -reality;—while actually it is only his diving, burrowing, and -penetrating <i>into</i> reality, so that when he comes again to the light -he can at once bring about by these means the <i>redemption</i> of this -reality; its redemption from the curse which the old ideal has laid -upon it. This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from -the old ideal, as he will from that ideal's necessary corollary of -great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon -and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives -back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and -Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness—<i>he must -one day come</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">25.</p> - -<p>But what am I talking of? Enough! Enough? At this juncture I have -only one proper course, silence: otherwise tresspass on a domain open -alone to one who is younger than I, one stronger, more "<i>future</i>" than -I—open alone to <i>Zarathustra, Zarathustra the godless.</i></p> -<hr class="r5" /> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The German is: "<i>Sittlichkeit der Sitte</i>." H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The German world "<i>schuld</i>" means both debt and guilt. -Cp. the English "owe" and "ought," by which I occasionally render the -double meaning.—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> German: "<i>Verbrecher</i>."—H.B.S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> An allusion to <i>Der Zweck im Recht</i>, by the great German -jurist, Professor Ihering.</p></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h5><a name="THIRD_ESSAY" id="THIRD_ESSAY">THIRD ESSAY.</a></h5> - - -<h4>WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS?</h4> - -<blockquote> -<p>"Careless, mocking, forceful—so does wisdom wish us: she is a woman, -and never loves any one but a warrior."<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 40%;"><i>Thus Spake Zarathustra.</i></span></p> -</blockquote> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too -much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of "flair" and instinct for -the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, -at best an <i>additional</i> seductive fascination, a little <i>morbidezza</i> -on a fine piece of flesh, the angelhood of a fat, pretty animal; in -physiological failures and whiners (in the <i>majority</i> of mortals), -an attempt to pose as "too good" for this world, a holy form of -debauchery, their chief weapon in the battle with lingering pain and -ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of -power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally -a pretext for hibernation, their <i>novissima gloriæ cupido</i>, their -peace in nothingness ("God"), their form of madness.</p> - -<p>But in the very fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so much to -man, lies expressed the fundamental feature of man's will, his <i>horror -vacui: he needs a goal</i>—and he will sooner will nothingness than -not will at all.—Am I not understood?—Have I not been -understood?—"Certainly not, sir?"—Well, let us begin at the -beginning.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? Or, to take an individual -case in regard to which I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> often been consulted, what is the -meaning, for example, of an artist like Richard Wagner paying homage -to chastity in his old age? He had always done so, of course, in a -certain sense, but it was not till quite the end, that he did so in -an ascetic sense. What is the meaning of this "change of attitude," -this radical revolution in his attitude—for that was what it was? -Wagner veered thereby straight round into his own opposite. What is -the meaning of an artist veering round into his own opposite? At -this point (granted that we do not mind stopping a little over this -question), we immediately call to mind the best, strongest, gayest, -and boldest period, that there perhaps ever was in Wagner's life: that -was the period, when he was genuinely and deeply occupied with the -idea of "Luther's Wedding." Who knows what chance is responsible for -our now having the <i>Meistersingers</i> instead of this wedding music? -And how much in the latter is perhaps just an echo of the former? But -there is no doubt but that the theme would have dealt with the praise -of chastity. And certainly it would also have dealt with the praise -of sensuality, and even so, it would seem quite in order, and even -so, it would have been equally Wagnerian. For there is no necessary -antithesis between chastity and sensuality: every good marriage, every -authentic heart-felt love transcends this antithesis. Wagner would, it -seems to me, have done well to have brought this <i>pleasing</i> reality -home once again to his Germans, by means of a bold and graceful "Luther -Comedy," for there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> were and are among the Germans many revilers of -sensuality; and perhaps Luther's greatest merit lies just in the fact -of his having had the courage of his <i>sensuality</i> (it used to be -called, prettily enough, "evangelistic freedom "). But even in those -cases where that antithesis between chastity and sensuality does exist, -there has fortunately been for some time no necessity for it to be in -any way a tragic antithesis. This should, at any rate, be the case with -all beings who are sound in mind and body, who are far from reckoning -their delicate balance between "animal" and "angel," as being on the -face of it one of the principles opposed to existence—the most subtle -and brilliant spirits, such as Goethe, such as Hafiz, have even seen -in this a <i>further</i> charm of life. Such "conflicts" actually allure -one to life. On the other hand, it is only too clear that when once -these ruined swine are reduced to worshipping chastity—and there -are such swine—they only see and worship in it the antithesis to -themselves, the antithesis to ruined swine. Oh what a tragic grunting -and eagerness! You can just think of it—they worship that painful -and superfluous contrast, which Richard Wagner in his latter days -undoubtedly wished to set to music, and to place on the stage! "<i>For -what purpose, forsooth?</i>" as we may reasonably ask. What did the swine -matter to him; what do they matter to us?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>At this point it is impossible to beg the further question of what he -really had to do with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> that manly (ah, so unmanly) country bumpkin, -that poor devil and natural, Parsifal, whom he eventually made a -Catholic by such fraudulent devices. What? Was this Parsifal really -meant <i>seriously</i>? One might be tempted to suppose the contrary, even -to wish it—that the Wagnerian Parsifal was meant joyously, like a -concluding play of a trilogy or satyric drama, in which Wagner the -tragedian wished to take farewell of us, of himself, above all of -<i>tragedy</i>, and to do so in a manner that should be quite fitting and -worthy, that is, with an excess of the most extreme and flippant parody -of the tragic itself, of the ghastly earthly seriousness and earthly -woe of old—a parody of that <i>most crude phase</i> in the unnaturalness -of the ascetic ideal, that had at length been overcome. That, as I -have said, would have been quite worthy of a great tragedian; who like -every artist first attains the supreme pinnacle of his greatness when -he can look <i>down</i> into himself and his art, when he can <i>laugh</i> at -himself. Is Wagner's Parsifal his secret laugh of superiority over -himself, the triumph of that supreme artistic freedom and artistic -transcendency which he has at length attained. We might, I repeat, -wish it were so, for what can Parsifal, <i>taken seriously</i>, amount to? -Is it really necessary to see in it (according to an expression once -used against me) the product of an insane hate of knowledge, mind, -and flesh? A curse on flesh and spirit in one breath of hate? An -apostasy and reversion to the morbid Christian and obscurantist ideals? -And finally a self-negation and self-elimination on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> part of an -artist, who till then had devoted all the strength of his will to the -contrary, namely, the <i>highest</i> artistic expression of soul and body. -And not only of his art; of his life as well. Just remember with what -enthusiasm Wagner followed in the footsteps of Feuerbach. Feuerbach's -motto of "healthy sensuality" rang in the ears of Wagner during the -thirties and forties of the century, as it did in the ears of many -Germans (they dubbed themselves "<i>Young</i> Germans"), like the word of -redemption. Did he eventually <i>change his mind</i> on the subject? For it -seems at any rate that he eventually wished to <i>change his teaching</i> -on that subject ... and not only is that the case with the Parsifal -trumpets on the stage: in the melancholy, cramped, and embarrassed -lucubrations of his later years, there are a hundred places in which -there are manifestations of a secret wish and will, a despondent, -uncertain, unavowed will to preach actual retrogression, conversion, -Christianity, mediævalism, and to say to his disciples, "All is vanity! -Seek salvation elsewhere!" Even the "blood of the Redeemer" is once -invoked.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>Let me speak out my mind in a case like this, which has many painful -elements—and it is a typical case: it is certainly best to separate -an artist from his work so completely that he cannot be taken as -seriously as his work. He is after all merely the presupposition of -his work,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> the womb, the soil, in certain cases the dung and manure, -on which and out of which it grows—and consequently, in most cases, -something that must be forgotten if the work itself is to be enjoyed. -The insight into the <i>origin</i> of a work is a matter for psychologists -and vivisectors, but never either in the present or the future for the -æsthetes, the artists. The author and creator of Parsifal was as little -spared the necessity of sinking and living himself into the terrible -depths and foundations of mediæval soul-contrasts, the necessity of a -malignant abstraction from all intellectual elevation, severity, and -discipline, the necessity of a kind of mental <i>perversity</i> (if the reader -will pardon me such a word), as little as a pregnant woman is spared -the horrors and marvels of pregnancy, which, as I have said, must -be forgotten if the child is to be enjoyed. We must guard ourselves -against the confusion, into which an artist himself would fall only -too easily (to employ the English terminology) out of psychological -"contiguity"; as though the artist himself actually <i>were</i> the object -which he is able to represent, imagine, and express. In point of fact, -the position is that even if he conceived he were such an object, he -would certainly not represent, conceive, express it. Homer would not -have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an -Achilles or if Goethe had been a Faust. A complete and perfect artist -is to all eternity separated from the "real," from the actual; on the -other hand, it will be appreciated that he can at times get tired to -the point of despair of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> eternal "unreality" and falseness of his -innermost being—and that he then sometimes attempts to trespass on -to the most forbidden ground, on reality, and attempts to have real -<i>existence</i>. With what success? The success will be guessed—it is the -<i>typical velleity</i> of the artist; the same velleity to which Wagner -fell a victim in his old age, and for which he had to pay so dearly and -so fatally (he lost thereby his most valuable friends). But after all, -quite apart from this velleity, who would not wish emphatically for -Wagner's own sake that he had taken farewell of us and of his art in a -<i>different</i> manner, not with a <i>Parsifal</i>, but in more victorious, more -self-confident, more Wagnerian style—a style less misleading, a style -less ambiguous with regard to his whole meaning, less Schopenhauerian, -less Nihilistic?...</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>What, then, is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In the case of an artist -we are getting to understand their meaning: <i>Nothing at all</i> ... or so -much that it is as good as nothing at all. Indeed, what is the use of -them? Our artists have for a long time past not taken up a sufficiently -independent attitude, either in the world or against it, to warrant -their valuations and the changes in these valuations exciting interest. -At all times they have played the valet of some morality, philosophy, -or religion, quite apart from the fact that unfortunately they -have often enough been the inordinately supple courtiers of their -clients<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> and patrons, and the inquisitive toadies of the powers that -are existing, or even of the new powers to come. To put it at the -lowest, they always need a rampart, a support, an already constituted -authority: artists never stand by themselves, standing alone is opposed -to their deepest instincts. So, for example, did <i>Richard Wagner</i> -take, "when the time had come," the philosopher Schopenhauer for his -covering man in front, for his rampart. Who would consider it even -thinkable, that he would have had the <i>courage</i> for an ascetic ideal, -without the support afforded him by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, -without the authority of Schopenhauer, which <i>dominated</i> Europe in the -seventies? (This is without consideration of the question whether an -artist without the milk<a name="FNanchor_1_5" id="FNanchor_1_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_5" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> of an orthodoxy would have been possible at -all.) This brings us to the more serious question: What is the meaning -of a real <i>philosopher</i> paying homage to the ascetic ideal, a really -self-dependent intellect like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with a -glance of bronze, who has the courage to be himself, who knows how to -stand alone without first waiting for men who cover him in front, and -the nods of his superiors? Let us now consider at once the remarkable -attitude of Schopenhauer towards <i>art</i>, an attitude which has even a -fascination for certain types. For that is obviously the reason why -Richard Wagner <i>all at once</i> went over to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> Schopenhauer (persuaded -thereto, as one knows, by a poet, Herwegh), went over so completely -that there ensued the cleavage of a complete theoretic contradiction -between his earlier and his later æsthetic faiths—the earlier, for -example, being expressed in <i>Opera and Drama</i>, the later in the -writings which he published from 1870 onwards. In particular, Wagner -from that time onwards (and this is the volte-face which alienates us -the most) had no scruples about changing his judgment concerning the -value and position of music itself. What did he care if up to that time -he had made of music a means, a medium, a "woman," that in order to -thrive needed an end, a man—that is, the drama? He suddenly realised -that <i>more</i> could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian -theory in <i>majorem musicæ gloriam</i>—that is to say, by means of the -<i>sovereignty</i> of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music abstracted -from and opposed to all the other arts, music as the independent -art-in-itself, <i>not</i> like the other arts, affording reflections of the -phenomenal world, but rather the language of the will itself, speaking -straight out of the "abyss" as its most personal, original, and direct -manifestation. This extraordinary rise in the value of music (a rise -which seemed to grow out of the Schopenhauerian philosophy) was at -once accompanied by an unprecedented rise in the estimation in which -the <i>musician</i> himself was held: he became now an oracle, a priest, nay, -more than a priest, a kind of mouthpiece for the "intrinsic essence -of things," a telephone from the other world—from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> henceforward -he talked not only music, did this ventriloquist of God, he talked -metaphysic; what wonder that one day he eventually talked <i>ascetic -ideals</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>Schopenhauer has made use of the Kantian treatment of the æsthetic -problem—though he certainly did not regard it with the Kantian eyes. -Kant thought that he showed honour to art when he favoured and placed -in the foreground those of the predicates of the beautiful, which -constitute the honour of knowledge: impersonality and universality. -This is not the place to discuss whether this was not a complete -mistake; all that I wish to emphasise is that Kant, just like other -philosophers, instead of envisaging the æsthetic problem from the -standpoint of the experiences of the artist (the creator), has only -considered art and beauty from the standpoint of the spectator, and -has thereby imperceptibly imported the spectator himself into the idea -of the "beautiful"! But if only the philosophers of the beautiful had -sufficient knowledge of this "spectator"!—Knowledge of him as a great -fact of personality, as a great experience, as a wealth of strong and -most individual events, desires, surprises, and raptures in the sphere -of beauty! But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case. And so -we get from our philosophers, from the very beginning, definitions -on which the lack of a subtler personal experience squats like a fat -worm of crass error, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> -beautiful. "That is beautiful," says Kant, "which pleases without -interesting." Without interesting! Compare this definition with this -other one, made by a real "spectator" and "artist"—by Stendhal, who -once called the beautiful <i>une promesse de bonheur</i>. Here, at any rate, -the one point which Kant makes prominent in the æsthetic position is -repudiated and eliminated—<i>le désintéressement</i>. Who is right, Kant -or Stendhal? When, forsooth, our æsthetes never get tired of throwing -into the scales in Kant's favour the fact that under the magic of -beauty men can look at even naked female statues "without interest," -we can certainly laugh a little at their expense:—in regard to this -ticklish point the experiences of <i>artists</i> are more "interesting," -and at any rate Pygmalion was not necessarily an "unæsthetic man." Let -us think all the better of the innocence of our æsthetes, reflected -as it is in such arguments; let us, for instance, count to Kant's -honour the country-parson naïveté of his doctrine concerning the -peculiar character of the sense of touch! And here we come back to -Schopenhauer, who stood in much closer neighbourhood to the arts -than did Kant, and yet never escaped outside the pale of the Kantian -definition; how was that? The circumstance is marvellous enough: he -interprets the expression, "without interest," in the most personal -fashion, out of an experience which must in his case have been part and -parcel of his regular routine. On few subjects does Schopenhauer speak -with such certainty as on the working of æsthetic contemplation: he -says of it that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> it simply counteracts sexual interest, like lupulin -and camphor; he never gets tired of glorifying this escape from -the "Life-will" as the great advantage and utility of the æsthetic -state. In fact, one is tempted to ask if his fundamental conception -of Will and Idea, the thought that there can only exist freedom from -the "will" by means of "idea," did not originate in a generalisation -from this sexual experience. (In all questions concerning the -Schopenhauerian philosophy, one should, by the bye, never lose sight of -the consideration that it is the conception of a youth of twenty-six, -so that it participates not only in what is peculiar to Schopenhauer's -life, but in what is peculiar to that special period of his life.) -Let us listen, for instance, to one of the most expressive among the -countless passages which he has written in honour of the æsthetic -state (<i>World as Will and Idea</i>, i. 231); let us listen to the tone, -the suffering, the happiness, the gratitude, with which such words -are uttered: "This is the painless state which Epicurus praised as -the highest good and as the state of the gods; we are during that -moment freed from the vile pressure of the will, we celebrate the -Sabbath of the will's hard labour, the wheel of Ixion stands still." -What vehemence of language! What images of anguish and protracted -revulsion! How almost pathological is that temporal antithesis between -"that moment" and everything else, the "wheel of Ixion," "the hard -labour of the will," "the vile pressure of the will." But granted -that Schopenhauer was a hundred times right for himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> personally, -how does that help our insight into the nature of the beautiful? -Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful,—the calming -of the will,—but is this effect really normal? As has been mentioned, -Stendhal, an equally sensual but more happily constituted nature than -Schopenhauer, gives prominence to another effect of the "beautiful." -"The beautiful <i>promises</i> happiness." To him it is just the <i>excitement</i> -of the "will" (the "interest") by the beauty that seems the essential -fact. And does not Schopenhauer ultimately lay himself open to the -objection, that he is quite wrong in regarding himself as a Kantian on -this point, that he has absolutely failed to understand in a Kantian -sense the Kantian definition of the beautiful—;that the beautiful -pleased him as well by means of an interest, by means, in fact, of the -strongest and most personal interest of all, that: of the victim of -torture who escapes from his torture?—And to come back again to our -first question, "What is the <i>meaning</i> of a philosopher paying homage to -ascetic ideals?" We get now, at any rate, a first hint; he wishes to -<i>escape from a torture</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>Let us beware of making dismal faces at the word "torture"—there is -certainly in this case enough to deduct, enough to discount—there is -even something to laugh at. For we must certainly not underestimate -the fact that Schopenhauer, who in practice treated sexuality as -a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> personal enemy (including its tool, woman, that "<i>instrumentum -diaboli</i>"), needed enemies to keep him in a good humour; that he loved -grim, bitter, blackish-green words; that he raged for the sake of -raging, out of passion; that he would have grown ill, would have become -a <i>pessimist</i> (for he was not a pessimist, however much he wished to -be), without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the -whole "will for existence" "keeping on." Without them Schopenhauer -would not have "kept on," that is a safe wager; he would have run away: -but his enemies held him fast, his enemies always enticed him back -again to existence, his wrath was just as theirs' was to the ancient -Cynics, his balm, his recreation, his recompense, his <i>remedium</i> -against disgust, his <i>happiness</i>. So much with regard to what is most -personal in the case of Schopenhauer; on the other hand, there is -still much which is typical in him—and only now we come back to our -problem. It is an accepted and indisputable fact, so long as there -are philosophers in the world and wherever philosophers have existed -(from India to England, to take the opposite poles of philosophic -ability), that there exists a real irritation and rancour on the part -of philosophers towards sensuality. Schopenhauer is merely the most -eloquent, and if one has the ear for it, also the most fascinating -and enchanting outburst. There similarly exists a real philosophic -bias and affection for the whole ascetic ideal; there should be no -illusions on this score. Both these feelings, as has been said, belong -to the type; if a philosopher<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> lacks both of them, then he is—you may -be certain of it—never anything but a "pseudo." What does this mean? -For this state of affairs must first be, interpreted: in itself it -stands there stupid, to all eternity, like any "Thing-in-itself." Every -animal, including la bête philosophe, strives instinctively after an -<i>optimum</i> of favourable conditions, under which he can let his whole -strength have play, and achieves his maximum consciousness of power; -with equal instinctiveness, and with a fine perceptive flair which is -superior to any reason, every animal shudders mortally at every kind -of disturbance and hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his way -to that optimum (it is not his way to happiness of which I am talking, -but his way to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in -point of fact in many cases his way to unhappiness). Similarly, the -philosopher shudders mortally at <i>marriage</i>, together with all -that could persuade him to it—marriage as a fatal hindrance on the -way to the <i>optimum</i>. Up to the present what great philosophers have -been married? Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, -Schopenhauer—they were not married, and, further, one cannot <i>imagine</i> -them as married. A married philosopher belongs to <i>comedy</i>, that is -my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates—the malicious Socrates -married himself, it seems, <i>ironice</i>, just to prove this <i>very</i> rule. -Every philosopher would say, as Buddha said, when the birth of a son -was announced to him: "Râhoula has been born to me, a fetter has been -forged for me" (Râhoula means here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> "a little demon"); there must come -an hour of reflection to every "free spirit" (granted that he has had -previously an hour of thoughtlessness), just as one came once to the -same Buddha: "Narrowly cramped," he reflected, "is life in the house; -it is a place of uncleanness; freedom is found in leaving the house." -Because he thought like this, he left the house. So many bridges to -independence are shown in the ascetic idea], that the philosopher -cannot refrain from exultation and clapping of hands when he hears -the history of all those resolute ones, who on one day uttered a nay -to all servitude and went into some <i>desert</i>; even granting that they -were only strong asses, and the absolute opposite of strong minds. -What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my -answer—it will have been guessed long ago: when he sees this ideal -the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an <i>optimum</i> of the -conditions of the highest and boldest intellectuality; he does not -thereby deny "existence," he rather affirms thereby <i>his</i> existence -and <i>only</i> his existence, and this perhaps to the point of not being -far off the blasphemous wish, <i>pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat -philosophus, fiam!</i></p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>These philosophers, you see, are by no means uncorrupted witnesses and -judges of the <i>value</i> of the ascetic ideal. They think <i>of themselves</i> -—what is the "saint" to them? They think of that which to them -personally is most indispensable; of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> freedom from compulsion, -disturbance, noise: freedom from business, duties, cares; of clear -head; of the dance, spring, and flight of thoughts; of good air—rare, -clear, free, dry, as is the air on the heights, in which every animal -creature becomes more intellectual and gains wings; they think of -peace in every cellar; all the hounds neatly chained; no baying of -enmity and uncouth rancour; no remorse of wounded ambition; quiet -and submissive internal organs, busy as mills, but unnoticed; the -heart alien, transcendent, future, posthumous—to summarise, they -mean by the ascetic ideal the joyous asceticism of a deified and -newly fledged animal, sweeping over life rather than resting. We know -what are the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, -humility, chastity; and now just look closely at the life of all -the great fruitful inventive spirits—you will always find again -and again these three qualities up to a certain extent. <i>Not</i> for a -minute, as is self-evident, as though, perchance, they were part of -their virtues—what has this type of man to do with virtues?—but as -the most essential and natural conditions of their <i>best</i> existence, -their <i>finest</i> fruitfulness. In this connection it is quite possible -that their predominant intellectualism had first to curb an unruly and -irritable pride, or an insolent sensualism, or that it had all its -work cut out to maintain its wish for the "desert" against perhaps -an inclination to luxury and dilettantism, or similarly against an -extravagant liberality of heart and hand. But their intellect did -effect all this, simply because it was the <i>dominant</i> instinct, which -carried through its orders in the case<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> of all the other instincts. -It effects it still; if it ceased to do so, it would simply not be -dominant. But there is not one iota of "virtue" in all this. Further, -the <i>desert</i>, of which I just spoke, in which the strong, independent, -and well-equipped spirits retreat into their hermitage—oh, how -different is it from the cultured classes' dream of a desert! In -certain cases, in fact, the cultured classes themselves are the desert. -And it is certain that all the actors of the intellect would not endure -this desert for a minute. It is nothing like romantic and Syrian enough -for them, nothing like enough of a stage desert! Here as well there -are plenty of asses, but at this point the resemblance ceases. But a -desert nowadays is something like this—perhaps a deliberate obscurity; -a getting-out-of the way of one's self; a fear of noise, admiration, -papers, influence; a little office, a daily task, something that hides -rather than brings to light; sometimes associating with harmless, -cheerful beasts and fowls, the sight of which refreshes; a mountain for -company, but not a dead one, one with <i>eyes</i> (that is, with lakes); -in certain cases even a room in a crowded hotel where one can reckon -on not being recognised, and on being able to talk with impunity to -every one: here is the desert—oh, it is lonely enough, believe me! -I grant that when Heracleitus retreated to the courts and cloisters -of the colossal temple of Artemis, that "wilderness" was worthier; -why do we <i>lack</i> such temples? (perchance we do not lack them: I just -think of my splendid study in the <i>Piazza di San Marco</i>, in spring, of -course, and in the morning, between ten and twelve). But that which -Heracleitus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> shunned is still just what we too avoid nowadays: the -noise and democratic babble of the Ephesians, their politics, their -news from the "empire" (I mean, of course, Persia), their market-trade -in "the things of to-day "—for there is one thing from which we -philosophers especially need a rest—from the things of "to-day." We -honour the silent, the cold, the noble, the far, the past, everything, -in fact, at the sight of which the soul is not bound to brace itself up -and defend itself—something with which one can speak without <i>speaking -aloud</i>. Just listen now to the tone a spirit has when it speaks; every -spirit has its own tone and loves its own tone. That thing yonder, for -instance, is bound to be an agitator, that is, a hollow head, a hollow -mug: whatever may go into him, everything comes back from him dull and -thick, heavy with the echo of the great void. That spirit yonder nearly -always speaks hoarse: has he, perchance, <i>thought</i> himself hoarse? -It may be so—ask the physiologists—but he who thinks in <i>words</i>, -thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not -think of objects or think objectively, but only of his relations -with objects—that, in point of fact, he only thinks of himself and -his audience). This third one speaks aggressively, he comes too near -our body, his breath blows on us—we shut our mouth involuntarily, -although he speaks to us through a book: the tone of his style supplies -the reason—he has no time, he has small faith in himself, he finds -expression now or never. But a spirit who is sure of himself speaks -softly; he seeks secrecy, he lets himself be awaited, A philosopher -is recognised by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> fact that he shuns three brilliant and noisy -things—fame, princes, and women: which is not to say that they do not -come to him. He shuns every glaring light: therefore he shuns his time -and its "daylight." Therein he is as a shadow; the deeper sinks the -sun, the greater grows the shadow. As for his humility, he endures, as -he endures darkness, a certain dependence and obscurity: further, he is -afraid of the shock of lightning, he shudders at the insecurity of a -tree which is too isolated and too exposed, on which every storm vents -its temper, every temper its storm. His "maternal" instinct, his secret -love for that which grows in him, guides him into states where he is -relieved from the necessity of taking care of <i>himself</i>, in the same -way in which the "<i>mother</i>" instinct in woman has thoroughly maintained -up to the present woman's dependent position. After all, they demand -little enough, do these philosophers, their favourite motto is, "He -who possesses is possessed." All this is <i>not</i>, as I must say again -and again, to be attributed to a virtue, to a meritorious wish for -moderation and simplicity; but because their supreme lord so demands -of them, demands wisely and inexorably; their lord who is eager only -for one thing, for which alone he musters, and for which alone he -hoards everything—time, strength, love, interest. This kind of man -likes not to be disturbed by enmity, he likes not to be disturbed by -friendship, it is a type which forgets or despises easily. It strikes -him as bad form to play the martyr, "to <i>suffer</i> for truth"—he leaves -all that to the ambitious and to the stage-heroes of the intellect, -and to all those, in fact, who have time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> enough for such luxuries -(they themselves, the philosophers, have something <i>to do</i> for truth). -They make a sparing use of big words; they are said to be adverse to -the word "truth" itself: it has a "high falutin'" ring. Finally, as -far as the chastity of philosophers is concerned, the fruitfulness -of this type of mind is manifestly in another sphere than that of -children; perchance in some other sphere, too, they have the survival -of their name, their little immortality (philosophers in ancient -India would express themselves with still greater boldness: "Of what -use is posterity to him whose soul is the world?"). In this attitude -there is not a trace of chastity, by reason of any ascetic scruple or -hatred of the flesh, any more than it is chastity for an athlete or a -jockey to abstain from women; it is rather the will of the dominant -instinct, at any rate, during the period of their advanced philosophic -pregnancy. Every artist knows the harm done by sexual intercourse -on occasions of great mental strain and preparation; as far as the -strongest artists and those with the surest instincts are concerned, -this is not necessarily a case of experience—hard experience—but it -is simply their "maternal" instinct which, in order to benefit the -growing work, disposes recklessly (beyond all its normal stocks and -supplies) of the <i>vigour</i> of its <i>animal</i> life; the greater power then -<i>absorbs</i> the lesser. Let us now apply this interpretation to gauge -correctly the case of Schopenhauer, which we have already mentioned: in -his case, the sight of the beautiful acted manifestly like a resolving -irritant on the chief power of his nature (the power of contemplation -and of intense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> penetration); so that this strength exploded and became -suddenly master of his consciousness. But this by no means excludes -the possibility of that particular sweetness and fulness, which is -peculiar to the æsthetic state, springing directly from the ingredient -of sensuality (just as that "idealism" which is peculiar to girls at -puberty originates in the same source)—it may be, consequently, that -sensuality is not removed by the approach of the æsthetic state, as -Schopenhauer believed, but merely becomes transfigured, and ceases to -enter into the consciousness as sexual excitement. (I shall return once -again to this point in connection with the more delicate problems of -the <i>physiology of the æsthetic</i>, a subject which up to the present has -been singularly untouched and unelucidated.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>A certain asceticism, a grimly gay whole-hearted renunciation, is, as -we have seen, one of the most favourable conditions for the highest -intellectualism, and, consequently, for the most natural corollaries -of such intellectualism: we shall therefore be proof against any -surprise at the philosophers in particular always treating the ascetic -ideal with a certain amount of predilection. A serious historical -investigation shows the bond between the ascetic ideal and philosophy -to be still much tighter and still much stronger. It may be said that -it was only in the <i>leading strings</i> of this ideal that philosophy -really learnt to make its first steps and baby paces—alas how -clumsily, alas how crossly, alas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> how ready to tumble down and lie on -its stomach was this shy little darling of a brat with its bandy legs! -The early history of philosophy is like that of all good things;—for a -long time they had not the courage to be themselves, they kept always -looking round to see if no one would come to their help; further, they -were afraid of all who looked at them. Just enumerate in order the -particular tendencies and virtues of the philosopher—his tendency to -doubt, his tendency to deny, his tendency to wait (to be "ephectic"), -his tendency to analyse, search, explore, dare, his tendency to compare -and to equalise, his will to be neutral and objective, his will for -everything which is "<i>sine ira et studio</i>":—has it yet been realised -that for quite a lengthy period these tendencies went counter to the -first claims of morality and conscience? (To say nothing at all of -<i>Reason</i>, which even Luther chose to call <i>Frau Klüglin</i>,<a name="FNanchor_2_6" id="FNanchor_2_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_6" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> the sly -whore.) Has it been yet appreciated that a philosopher, in the event -of his <i>arriving</i> at self-consciousness, must needs feel himself an -incarnate "<i>nitimur in vetitum</i>"—and consequently guard himself against -"his own sensations," against self-consciousness? It is, I repeat, just -the same with all good things, on which we now pride ourselves; even -judged by the standard of the ancient Greeks, our whole modern life, -in so far as it is not weakness, but power and the consciousness of -power, appears pure "Hybris" and godlessness: for the things which are -the very reverse of those which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> we honour to-day, have had for a long -time conscience on their side, and God as their guardian. "Hybris" -is our whole attitude to nature nowadays, our violation of nature -with the help of machinery, and all the unscrupulous ingenuity of our -scientists and engineers. "Hybris" is our attitude to God, that is, to -some alleged teleological and ethical spider behind the meshes of the -great trap of the causal web. Like Charles the Bold in his war with -Louis the Eleventh, we may say, "<i>je combats l'universelle araignée</i>"; -"Hybris" is our attitude to ourselves—for we experiment with ourselves -in a way that we would not allow with any animal, and with pleasure -and curiosity open our soul in our living body: what matters now to -us the "salvation" of the soul? We heal ourselves afterwards: being -ill is instructive, we doubt it not, even more instructive than being -well—inoculators of disease seem to us to-day even more necessary -than any medicine-men and "saviours." There is no doubt we do violence -to ourselves nowadays, we crackers of the soul's kernel, we incarnate -riddles, who are ever asking riddles, as though life were naught else -than the cracking of a nut; and even thereby must we necessarily become -day by day more and more worthy to be asked questions and <i>worthy</i> to ask -them, even thereby do we perchance also become worthier to—live?</p> - -<p>... All good things were once bad things; from every original sin has -grown an original virtue. Marriage, for example, seemed for a long time -a sin against the rights of the community; a man formerly paid a fine -for the insolence of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> claiming one woman to himself (to this phase -belongs, for instance, the <i>jus primæ noctis</i>, to-day still in Cambodia -the privilege of the priest, that guardian of the "good old customs").</p> - -<p>The soft, benevolent, yielding, sympathetic feelings—eventually valued -so highly that they almost became "intrinsic values," were for a very -long time actually despised by their possessors: gentleness was then -a subject for shame, just as hardness is now (compare <i>Beyond Good -and Evil</i>, Aph. 260). The submission to law: oh, with what qualms of -conscience was it that the noble races throughout the world renounced -the <i>vendetta</i> and gave the law power over themselves! Law was long a -<i>vetitum</i>, a blasphemy, an innovation; it was introduced with force, -<i>like</i> a force, to which men only submitted with a sense of personal -shame. Every tiny step forward in the world was formerly made at -the cost of mental and physical torture. Nowadays the whole of this -point of view—"that not only stepping forward, nay, stepping at all, -movement, change, all needed their countless martyrs," rings in our -ears quite strangely. I have put it forward in the <i>Dawn of Day</i>, Aph. -18. "Nothing is purchased more dearly," says the same book a little -later, "than the modicum of human reason and freedom which is now our -pride. But that pride is the reason why it is now almost impossible -for us to feel in sympathy with those immense periods of the 'Morality -of Custom,' which lie at the beginning of the 'world's history,' -constituting as they do the real decisive historical principle which -has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> fixed the character of humanity; those periods, I repeat, when -throughout the world suffering passed for virtue, cruelty for virtue, -deceit for virtue, revenge for virtue, repudiation of the reason for -virtue; and when, conversely, well-being passed current for danger, the -desire for knowledge for danger, pity for danger, peace for danger, -being pitied for shame, work for shame, madness for divinity, and -<i>change</i> for immorality and incarnate corruption!"</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>There is in the same book, Aph. 12, an explanation of the <i>burden</i> -of unpopularity under which the earliest race of contemplative men -had to live—despised almost as widely as they were first feared! -Contemplation first appeared on earth in a disguised shape, in an -ambiguous form, with an evil heart and often with an uneasy head: -there is no doubt about it. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike element -in the instincts of contemplative men long invested them with a cloud -of suspicion: the only way to combat this was to excite a definite -<i>fear</i>. And the old Brahmans, for example, knew to a nicety how to do -this! The oldest philosophers were well versed in giving to their very -existence and appearance, meaning, firmness, background, by reason -whereof men learnt to <i>fear</i> them; considered more precisely, they -did this from an even more fundamental need, the need of inspiring -in themselves fear and self-reverence. For they found even in their -own souls all the valuations turned <i>against</i> themselves; they had -to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> fight down every kind of suspicion and antagonism against "the -philosophic element in themselves." Being men of a terrible age, -they did this with terrible means: cruelty to themselves, ingenious -self-mortification—this was the chief method of these ambitious -hermits and intellectual revolutionaries, who were obliged to force -down the gods and the traditions of their own soul, so as to enable -themselves to <i>believe</i> in their own revolution. I remember the famous -story of the King Vicvamitra, who, as the result of a thousand years -of self-martyrdom, reached such a consciousness of power and such a -confidence in himself that he undertook to build a <i>new heaven</i>: the -sinister symbol of the oldest and newest history of philosophy in the -whole world. Every one who has ever built anywhere a "<i>new heaven</i>" -first found the power thereto in his <i>own hell</i>.... Let us compress -the facts into a short formula. The philosophic spirit had, in order -to be <i>possible</i> to any extent at all, to masquerade and disguise -itself as one of the <i>previously fixed</i> types of the contemplative -man, to disguise itself as priest, wizard, soothsayer, as a religious -man generally: the <i>ascetic ideal</i> has for a long time served the -philosopher as a superficial form, as a condition which enabled him -to exist.... To be able to be a philosopher he had to exemplify the -ideal; to exemplify it, he was bound to <i>believe</i> in it. The peculiarly -etherealised abstraction of philosophers, with their negation of the -world, their enmity to life, their disbelief in the senses, which has -been maintained up to the most recent time, and has almost thereby come -to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> accepted as the ideal <i>philosophic attitude</i>—this abstraction -is the result of those enforced conditions under which philosophy -came into existence, and continued to exist; inasmuch as for quite -a very long time philosophy would have been <i>absolutely impossible</i> -in the world without an ascetic cloak and dress, without an ascetic -self-misunderstanding. Expressed plainly and palpably, the <i>ascetic -priest</i> has taken the repulsive and sinister form of the caterpillar, -beneath which and behind which alone philosophy could live and slink -about....</p> - -<p>Has all that really changed? Has that flamboyant and dangerous winged -creature, that "spirit" which that caterpillar concealed within itself, -has it, I say, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, lighter world, really -and finally flung off its hood and escaped into the light? Can we -to-day point to enough pride, enough daring, enough courage, enough -self-confidence, enough mental will, enough will for responsibility, -enough freedom of the will, to enable the philosopher to be now in the -world really—<i>possible</i>?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11.</p> - -<p>And now, after we have caught sight of the <i>ascetic priest</i>, let us -tackle our problem. What is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? It now -first becomes serious—vitally serious. We are now confronted with the -<i>real representatives of the serious</i>. "What is the meaning of all -seriousness?" This even more radical question is perchance already -on the tip of our tongue: a question, fairly, for physiologists, but -which we for the time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> being skip. In that ideal the ascetic priest -finds not only his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest. -His <i>right</i> to existence stands and falls with that ideal. What wonder -that we here run up against a terrible opponent (on the supposition, -of course, that we are the opponents of that ideal), an opponent -fighting for his life against those who repudiate that ideal!. .. On -the other hand, it is from the outset improbable that such a biased -attitude towards our problem will do him any particular good; the -ascetic priest himself will scarcely prove the happiest champion of -his own ideal (on the same principle on which a woman usually fails -when she wishes to champion "woman")—let alone proving the most -objective critic and judge of the controversy now raised. We shall -therefore—so much is already obvious—rather have actually to help -him to defend himself properly against ourselves, than we shall have -to fear being too well beaten by him. The idea, which is the subject -of this dispute, is the <i>value</i> of our life from the standpoint of the -ascetic priests: this life, then (together with the whole of which it -is a part, "Nature," "the world," the whole sphere of becoming and -passing away), is placed by them in relation to an existence of quite -another character, which it excludes and to which it is opposed, unless -it <i>deny</i> its own self: in this case, the case of an ascetic life, -life is taken as a bridge to another existence. The ascetic treats -life as a maze, in which one must walk backwards till one comes to the -place where it starts; or he treats it as an error which one may,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> nay -<i>must</i>, refute by action: for he <i>demands</i> that he should be followed; -he enforces, where he can, <i>his</i> valuation of existence. What does this -mean? Such a monstrous valuation is not an exceptional case, or a -curiosity recorded in human history: it is one of the most general -and persistent facts that there are. The reading from the vantage -of a distant star of the capital letters of our earthly life, would -perchance lead to the conclusion that the earth was the especially -<i>ascetic planet</i>, a den of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive -creatures, who never got rid of a deep disgust of themselves, of the -world, of all life, and did themselves as much hurt as possible out -of pleasure in hurting—presumably their one and only pleasure. Let -us consider how regularly, how universally, how practically at every -single period the ascetic priest puts in his appearance: he belongs to -no particular race; he thrives everywhere; he grows out of all classes. -Not that he perhaps bred this valuation by heredity and propagated -it—the contrary is the case. It must be a necessity of the first order -which makes this species, <i>hostile</i>, as it is, to <i>life</i>, always grow -again and always thrive again.—<i>Life</i> itself must certainly <i>have an -interest</i> in the continuance of such a type of self-contradiction. For -an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules resentment without -parallel, the resentment of an insatiate instinct and ambition, that -would be master, not over some element in life, but over life itself, -over life's deepest, strongest, innermost conditions; here is an -attempt made to utilise power to dam the sources of power; here does<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> -the green eye of jealousy turn even against physiological well-being, -especially against the expression of such well-being, beauty, joy; -while a sense of pleasure is experienced and <i>sought</i> in abortion, in -decay, in pain, in misfortune, in ugliness, in voluntary punishment, -in the exercising, flagellation, and sacrifice of the self. All this -is in the highest degree paradoxical: we are here confronted with a -rift that <i>wills</i> itself to be a rift, which <i>enjoys</i> itself in this -very <i>suffering</i>, and even becomes more and more certain of itself, -more and more triumphant, in proportion as its own presupposition, -physiological vitality, <i>decreases</i>. "The triumph just in the supreme -agony:" under this extravagant emblem did the ascetic ideal fight from -of old; in this mystery of seduction, in this picture of rapture and -torture, it recognised its brightest light, its salvation, its final -victory. <i>Crux, nux, lux</i>—it has all these three in one.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness -is induced to <i>philosophise</i>; on what will it vent its pet caprice? -On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, -to be real; it will look for <i>error</i> in those very places where the -life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for -instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, -reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multiplicity, -the whole logical contrast of "<i>Subject</i>" and "<i>Object</i>"—errors, -nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> but errors! To renounce the belief in one's own ego, to -deny to one's self one's own "reality"—what a triumph! and here -already we have a much higher kind of triumph, which is not merely -a triumph over the senses, over the palpable, but an infliction of -violence and cruelty on <i>reason</i>; and this ecstasy culminates in the -ascetic self-contempt, the ascetic scorn of one's own reason making -this decree: <i>there is</i> a domain of truth and of life, but reason is -specially <i>excluded</i> therefrom.. .. By the bye, even in the Kantian -idea of "the intellegible character of things" there remains a trace -of that schism, so dear to the heart of the ascetic, that schism -which likes to turn reason against reason; in fact, "intelligible -character" means in Kant a kind of quality in things of which the -intellect comprehends this much, that for it, the intellect, it is -<i>absolutely incomprehensible</i>. After all, let us, in our character -of knowers, not be ungrateful towards such determined reversals of -the ordinary perspectives and values, with which the mind had for -too long raged against itself with an apparently futile sacrilege! -In the same way the very seeing of another vista, the very <i>wishing</i> -to see another vista, is no little training and preparation of the -intellect for its eternal "<i>Objectivity</i>"—objectivity being understood -not as "contemplation without interest" (for that is inconceivable -and non-sensical), but as the ability to have the pros and cons <i>in -one's power</i> and to switch them on and off, so as to get to know how -to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the <i>difference</i> in -the perspective and in the emotional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> interpretations. But let us, -forsooth, my philosophic colleagues, henceforward guard ourselves more -carefully against this mythology of dangerous ancient ideas, which has -set up a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge"; -let us guard ourselves from the tentacles of such contradictory ideas -as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge-in-itself":—in -these theories an eye that cannot be thought of is required to think, -an eye which <i>ex hypothesi</i> has no direction at all, an eye in which -the active and interpreting functions are cramped, are absent; those -functions, I say, by means of which "abstract" seeing first became -seeing something; in these theories consequently the absurd and the -non-sensical is always demanded of the eye. There is only a seeing -from a perspective, only a "knowing" from a perspective, and the <i>more</i> -emotions we express over a thing, the <i>more</i> eyes, different eyes, we -train on the same thing, the more complete will be our "idea" of that -thing, our "objectivity." But the elimination of the will altogether, -the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could -do so, what! would not that be called intellectual <i>castration</i>?</p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>But let us turn back. Such a self-contradiction, as apparently -manifests itself among the ascetics, "Life turned against Life," -is—this much is absolutely obvious—from the physiological and not now -from the psychological standpoint, simply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> nonsense. It can only be an -<i>apparent</i> contradiction; it must be a kind of provisional expression, an -explanation, a formula, an adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding -of something, whose real nature could not be understood for a long -time, and whose <i>real essence</i> could not be described; a mere word -jammed into an old <i>gap</i> of human knowledge. To put briefly the -facts against its being real: <i>the ascetic ideal springs from the -prophylactic and self-preservative instincts which mark a decadent -life</i>, which seeks by every means in its power to maintain its position -and fight for its existence; it points to a partial physiological -depression and exhaustion, against which the most profound and intact -life-instincts fight ceaselessly with new weapons and discoveries. The -ascetic ideal is such a weapon: its position is consequently exactly -the reverse of that which the worshippers of the ideal imagine—life -struggles in it and through it with death and against death; the -ascetic ideal is a dodge for the <i>preservation</i> of life. An important -fact is brought out in the extent to which, as history teaches, this -ideal could rule and exercise power over man, especially in all those -places where the civilisation and taming of man was completed: that -fact is, the diseased state of man up to the present, at any rate, of -the man who has been tamed, the physiological struggle of man with -death (more precisely, with the disgust with life, with exhaustion, -with the wish for the "end"). The ascetic priest is the incarnate wish -for an existence of another kind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> an existence on another plane,—he -is, in fact, the highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and -passion: but it is the very <i>power</i> of this wish which is the fetter -that binds him here; it is just that which makes him into a tool that -must labour to create more favourable conditions for earthly existence, -for existence on the human plane—it is with this very <i>power</i> that he -keeps the whole herd of failures, distortions, abortions, unfortunates, -<i>sufferers from themselves</i> of every kind, fast to existence, while -he as the herdsman goes instinctively on in front. You understand -me already: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this -denier—he actually belongs to the really great <i>conservative</i> and -<i>affirmative</i> forces of life.... What does it come from, this diseased -state? For man is more diseased, more uncertain, more changeable, -more unstable than any other animal, there is no doubt of it—he is -<i>the</i> diseased animal: what does it spring from? Certainly he has also -dared, innovated, braved more, challenged fate more than all the other -animals put together; he, the great experimenter with himself, the -unsatisfied, the insatiate, who struggles for the supreme mastery with -beast, Nature, and gods, he, the as yet ever uncompelled, the ever -future, who finds no more any rest from his own aggressive strength, -goaded inexorably on by the spur of the future dug into the flesh of -the present:—how should not so brave and rich an animal also be the -most endangered, the animal with the longest and deepest sickness -among all sick animals?... Man is sick of it, oft<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> enough there are -whole epidemics of this satiety (as about 1348, the time of the Dance -of Death): but even this very nausea, this tiredness, this disgust -with himself, all this is discharged from him with such force that -it is immediately made into a new fetter. His "nay," which he utters -to life, brings to light as though by magic an abundance of graceful -"yeas"; even when he <i>wounds</i> himself, this master of destruction, of -self-destruction, it is subsequently the wound itself that forces him -to live.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>The more normal is this sickliness in man—and we cannot dispute -this normality—the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases -of psychical and physical powerfulness, the <i>windfalls</i> of humanity, -and the more strictly should the sound be guarded from that worst of -air, the air of the sick-room. Is that done? The sick are the greatest -danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to -the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? Broadly considered, -it is not for a minute the fear of man, whose diminution should be -wished for; for this fear forces the strong to be strong, to be at -times terrible—it preserves in its integrity the sound type of man. -What is to be feared, what does work with a fatality found in no other -fate, is not the great fear of, but the great <i>nausea</i> with, man; and -equally so the great pity for man. Supposing that both these things -were one day to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> espouse each other, then inevitably the maximum of -monstrousness would immediately come into the world—the "last will" -of man, his will for nothingness, Nihilism. And, in sooth, the way is -well paved thereto. He who not only has his nose to smell with, but -also has eyes and ears, he sniffs almost wherever he goes to-day an -air something like that of a mad-house, the air of a hospital—I am -speaking, as stands to reason, of the cultured areas of mankind, of -every kind of "Europe" that there is in fact in the world. The <i>sick</i> -are the great danger of man, <i>not</i> the evil, <i>not</i> the "beasts of -prey." They who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken, those -are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the -feet of man, who instil the most dangerous venom and scepticism into -our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where shall we escape from -it, from that covert look (from which we carry away a deep sadness), -from that averted look of him who is misborn from the beginning, that -look which betrays what such a man says to himself—that look which is -a groan?" Would that I were something else," so groans this look, "but -there is no hope. I am what I am: how could I get away from myself? -And, verily—<i>I am sick of myself!</i>" On such a soil of self-contempt, -a veritable swamp soil, grows that weed, that poisonous growth, and -all so tiny, so hidden, so ignoble, so sugary. Here teem the worms -of revenge and vindictiveness; here the air reeks of things secret -and unmentionable; here is ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> spun the net of the most malignant -conspiracy—the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the -victorious; here is the sight of the victorious <i>hated</i>. And what -lying so as not to acknowledge this hate as hate! What a show of big -words and attitudes, what an art of "righteous" calumniation! These -abortions! what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips! What an -amount of sugary, slimy, humble submission oozes in their eyes! What do -they really want? At any rate to <i>represent</i> righteousness ness, love, -wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these "lowest ones," these -sick ones! And how clever does such an ambition make them! You cannot, -in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp -of virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue, is here imitated. -They have taken a lease of virtue absolutely for themselves, have these -weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it; "We alone are -the good, the righteous," so do they speak, "we alone are the <i>homines -bonæ voluntatis</i>." They stalk about in our midst as living reproaches, -as warnings to us—as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the -sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for -which one would have some day to do penance, bitter penance. Oh, how -they themselves are ready in their hearts to <i>exact</i> penance, how they -thirst after being <i>hangmen</i>!</p> - -<p>Among them is an abundance of revengeful ones disguised as judges, -who ever mouth the word righteousness like a venomous spittle—with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> -mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit at everything, -which does not wear a discontented look, but is of good cheer as it -goes on its way. Among them, again, is that most loathsome species -of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point of representing -"beautiful souls," and perchance of bringing to the market as "purity -of heart" their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and other -bandages; the species of "self-comforters" and masturbators of their -own souls. The sick man's will to represent <i>some</i> form or other of -superiority, his instinct for crooked paths, which lead to a tyranny -over the healthy—where can it not be found, this will to power of -the very weakest? The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her -in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising. The sick woman, -moreover, spares nothing living, nothing dead; she grubs up again the -most buried things (the Bogos say, "Woman is a hyena"). Look into -the background of every family, of every body, of every community: -everywhere the fight of the sick against the healthy—a silent fight -for the most part with minute poisoned powders, with pin-pricks, with -spiteful grimaces of patience, but also at times with that diseased -pharisaism of <i>pure</i> pantomime, which plays for choice the rôle of -"righteous indignation." Right into the hallowed chambers of knowledge -can it make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick hounds, this -rabid lying and frenzy of such "noble" Pharisees (I remind readers, who -have ears, once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen Dühring, -who makes the most disreputable and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> revolting use in all present-day -Germany of moral refuse; Dühring, the paramount moral blusterer that -there is to-day, even among his own kidney, the Anti-Semites). They -are all men of resentment, are these physiological distortions and -worm-riddled objects, a whole quivering kingdom of burrowing revenge, -indefatigable and insatiable in its outbursts against the happy, and -equally so in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge: when -will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of -revenge? At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their -own misery, in fact, all misery, <i>into the consciousness</i> of the happy; -so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, -and perchance say to themselves when they meet, "It is a shame to be -happy! <i>there is too much misery!</i>" ... But there could not possibly -be a greater and more fatal misunderstanding than that of the happy, -the fit, the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way to doubt -their right to happiness. Away with this "perverse world"! Away with -this shameful soddenness of sentiment! Preventing the sick making the -healthy sick—for that is what such a soddenness comes to—this ought -to be our supreme object in the world—but for this it is above all -essential that the healthy should remain <i>separated</i> from the sick, -that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that -they should not even associate with the sick. Or may it, perchance, -be their mission to be nurses or doctors? But they could not mistake -and disown <i>their</i> mission more grossly—the higher <b>must</b> not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> degrade -itself to be the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance must to all -eternity keep their missions also separate. The right of the happy to -existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant -cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater: they alone are the -<i>sureties</i> of the future, they alone are <i>bound</i> to man's future. What -they can, what they must do, that can the sick never do, should never -do! but if <i>they are to</i> be enabled to do what <i>only</i> they must do, -how can they possibly be free to play the doctor, the comforter, the -"Saviour" of the sick?... And therefore good air! good air! and away, -at any rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses and hospitals -of civilisation! And therefore good company, <i>our own</i> company, or -solitude, if it must be so! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes -of internal corruption and the secret worm-eaten state of the sick! -that, forsooth, my friends, we may defend ourselves, at any rate for -still a time, against the two worst plagues that could have been -reserved for us—against the <i>great nausea with man</i>! against the<i> -great pity for man</i>!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>If you have understood in all their depths—and I demand that you -should <i>grasp them profoundly</i> and understand them profoundly—the -reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the healthy -to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, it follows that you have -grasped this further necessity—the necessity of doctors and nurses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> -<i>who themselves are sick</i>. And now we have and hold with both our hands -the essence of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted -by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick -herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The -<i>lordship over sufferers</i> is his kingdom, to that points his instinct, -in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of -happiness. He must himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the -sick and the abortions so as to understand them, so as to arrive at an -understanding with them; but he must also be strong, even more master -of himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his will for -power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he -can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god. -He has to protect them, protect his herds—<i>against</i> whom? Against -the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He -must be the natural adversary and <i>scorner</i> of every rough, stormy, -reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is -the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily -than it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war with the beasts -of prey, a war of guile (of "spirit") rather than of force, as is -self-evident—he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up -out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of -the beast of prey—a new animal monstrosity in which the polar bear, -the supple, cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox, -are joined together in a trinity as fascinating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> as it is fearsome. -If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish -seriousness, venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority, as -the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among -even the other kind of beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on -their soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction, -and only too sure of his art, always to be lord of <i>sufferers</i> at all -times. He brings with him, doubtless, salve and balsam; but before he -can play the physician he must first wound; so, while he soothes the -pain which the wound makes, <i>he at the same time poisons the wound</i>. -Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild -beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become -ill, and everything ill must needs become tame. He protects, in sooth, -his sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman; he protects -them also against themselves, against the sparks (even in the centre -of the herd) of wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills -that the plaguey and the sick are heir to; he fights with cunning, -hardness, and stealth against anarchy and against the ever imminent -break-up inside the herd, where <i>resentment</i>, that most dangerous -blasting-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and accumulates. Getting -rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the -herd and the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme utility; -if you wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the -priestly life, it would be correct to say the priest is the <i>diverter -of the course of resentment</i>. Every sufferer, in fact, searches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> -instinctively for a cause of his suffering; to put it more exactly, -a doer,—to put it still more precisely, a sentient <i>responsible</i> -doer,—in brief, something living, on which, either actually or in -<i>effigie</i>, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting -of emotions is the sufferer's greatest attempt at alleviation, that -is to say, <i>stupefaction</i>, his mechanically desired narcotic against -pain of any kind. It is in this phenomenon alone that is found, -according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment, -revenge, and their family is to be found—that is, in a demand for the -<i>deadening of pain through emotion</i>: this cause is generally, but in -my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare -protective principle of reaction, of a "reflex movement" in the case -of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner that a decapitated -frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the -difference is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being -hurt any more; in the other case the object is to <i>deaden</i> a racking, -insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any -kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of -the consciousness—for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an -emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other -is needed. "It must be somebody's fault that I feel bad"—this kind of -reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and is but the more pronounced, -the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, -the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> disease of the <i>nervus -sympathicus</i>, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of -sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure in the -bowels which stops the circulation of the blood, or in degeneration of -the ovaries, and so forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness -and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions; they even -enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent -injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present -in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty -to wallow in a torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom of their -own malice—they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves -bleed from the scars which have long been healed, they make evil-doers -out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them. -"I suffer: it must be somebody's fault"—so thinks every sick sheep. -But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says to him, "Quite so, my sheep, -it must be the fault of some one; but thou thyself art that some one, -it is all the fault of thyself alone—<i>it is the fault of thyself alone -against thyself</i>": that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is -at least attained; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment -is—<i>diverted</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least <i>tried</i> -to effect, according to my conception, through the ascetic priest, -and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> purpose for which he had to employ a temporary tyranny of -such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as "guilt," "sin," "sinfulness," -"corruption," "damnation." What was done was to make the sick -<i>harmless</i> up to a certain point, to destroy the incurable by means of -themselves, to turn the milder cases severely on to themselves, to give -their resentment a backward direction ("man needs but one thing"), and -to <i>exploit</i> similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view -to self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that -there can be no question at all in the case of a "medication" of this -kind, a mere emotional medication, of any real <i>healing</i> of the sick in -the physiological sense; it cannot even for a moment be asserted that -in this connection the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal -and purpose. On the one hand, a kind of congestion and organisation of -the sick (the word "Church" is the most popular name for it): on the -other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy, -the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a <i>rift</i> between healthy -and sick—for a long time that was all! and it was much! it was <i>very</i> -much!</p> - -<p>I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which, -as far as such readers as I want are concerned, does not require to be -proved; the hypothesis that "sinfulness" in man is not an actual fact, -but rather merely the interpretation of a fact, of a physiological -discomfort,—a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective -which is no longer binding upon us.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> The fact, therefore, that any one -feels "guilty," "sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he is -right in feeling so, any more than any one is healthy simply because -he feels healthy. Remember the celebrated witch-ordeals: in those days -the most acute and humane judges had no doubt but that in these cases -they were confronted with guilt,—the "witches"<i> themselves had no -doubt on the point</i>,—and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate -this hypothesis: I do not for a minute accept the very "pain in the -soul" as a real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual explanation) -of facts that could not hitherto be precisely formulated; I regard -it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid of -scientific cogency—just a nice fat word in the place of a lean note -of interrogation. When any one fails to get rid of his "pain in the -soul," the cause is, speaking crudely, to be found <i>not</i> in his "soul" -but more probably in his stomach (speaking crudely, I repeat, but by -no means wishing thereby that you should listen to me or understand -me in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his -experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his -meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to -"relieve himself" of an experience, this kind of indigestion is quite -as much physiological as the other indigestion—and indeed, in more -ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. You can adopt -such a theory, and yet <i>entre nous</i> be nevertheless the strongest -opponent of all materialism.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>But is he really a <i>physician</i>, this ascetic priest? We already -understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however -much he likes to feel a "saviour" and let himself be worshipped as a -saviour.<a name="FNanchor_3_7" id="FNanchor_3_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_7" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> It is only the actual suffering, the discomfort of the -sufferer, which he combats, <i>not</i> its cause, not the actual state of -sickness—this needs must constitute our most radical objection to -priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of -view, of which the priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to -exhaust your amazement, at what from that standpoint he has completely -seen, sought, and found. The <i>mitigation</i> of suffering, every kind of -"consoling"—all this manifests itself as his very genius: with what -ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb -and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christianity -in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious -consolations,—such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs -has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and -daring expedients has it hazarded; with such subtlety, refinement, -Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can -conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep depression, the leaden -fatigue, the black melancholy of physiological cripples—for, speaking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> -generally, all religions are mainly concerned with fighting a certain -fatigue and heaviness that has infected everything. You can regard it -as <i>prima facie</i> probable that in certain places in the world there -was almost bound to prevail from time to time among large masses of -the population a <i>sense of physiological depression</i>, which, however, -owing to their lack of physiological knowledge, did not appear to their -consciousness as such, so that consequently its "cause" and its <i>cure</i> -can only be sought and essayed in the science of moral psychology -(this, in fact, is my most general formula for what is generally called -a "<i>religion</i>"). Such a feeling of depression can have the most diverse -origins; it may be the result of the crossing of too heterogeneous -races (or of classes—genealogical and racial differences are also -brought out in the classes: the European "Weltschmerz," the "Pessimism" -of the nineteenth century, is really the result of an absurd and sudden -class-mixture); it may be brought about by a mistaken emigration—a -race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is -insufficient (the case of the Indians in India); it may be the effect -of old age and fatigue (the Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it -may be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the nonsense -of vegetarianism—which, however, have in their favour the authority -of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare); it may be blood-deterioration, -malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty -Years' War, which infected half Germany with evil diseases,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> and -thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity). -In such a case there is invariably recourse to a <i>war</i> on a grand scale -with the feeling of depression; let us inform ourselves briefly on its -most important practices and phases (I leave on one side, as stands to -reason, the actual <i>philosophic</i> war against the feeling of depression -which is usually simultaneous—it is interesting enough, but too -absurd, too practically negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a -hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake, -on the <i>naïf</i> hypothesis that pain must needs <i>vanish</i> when the mistake -underlying it is recognised—but behold! it does anything but vanish -...). That dominant depression is <i>primarily fought</i> by weapons which -reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever -possible, no more wishes, no more wants; shun everything which produces -emotion, which produces "blood" (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene); -no love; no hate; equanimity; no revenge; no getting rich; no work; -begging; as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible; -as far as the intellect is concerned, Pascal's principle, "<i>il faut -s'abêtir.</i>" To put the result in ethical and psychological language, -"self-annihilation," "sanctification"; to put it in physiological -language, "hypnotism"—the attempt to find some approximate human -equivalent for what <i>hibernation</i> is for certain animals, for what -<i>æstivation</i> is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation -and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really -coming into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> consciousness. An amazing amount of human energy -has been devoted to this object—perhaps uselessly? There cannot be -the slightest doubt but that such <i>sportsmen</i> of "saintliness," in -whom at times nearly every nation has abounded, have really found a -genuine relief from that which they have combated with such a rigorous -<i>training</i>—in countless cases they really escaped by the help of their -system of hypnotism <i>away</i> from deep physiological depression; their -method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological -facts. Similarly it is improper to consider such a plan for starving -the physical element and the desires, as in itself a symptom of -insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating "freethinkers" and -Sir Christophers are fain to do); all the more certain is it that their -method can and does pave the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, -for instance, "inner lights" (as far as the case of the Hesychasts of -Mount Athos), auditory and visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies -and effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The -explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of -fanatical falsehood; this is self-evident. Note well, however, the tone -of implicit gratitude that rings in the very <i>will</i> for an explanation -of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that final -goal of universal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as -the mystery of mysteries, which even the most supreme symbols are -inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry and homecoming to the -essence of things, as a liberation from all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> illusions, as "knowledge," -as "truth," as "being" as an escape from every end, every wish, every -action, as something even beyond Good and Evil.</p> - -<p>"Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, "both are fetters. The perfect -man is master of them both."</p> - -<p>"The done and the undone," quoth the -disciple of the Vedânta, "do him no hurt; the good and the evil he -shakes from off him, sage that he is; his kingdom suffers no more from -any act; good and evil, he goes beyond them both."—An absolutely -Indian conception, as much Brahmanist as Buddhist. Neither in the -Indian nor in the Christian doctrine is this "Redemption" regarded -as attainable by means of virtue and moral improvement, however high -they may place the value of the hypnotic efficiency of virtue: keep -clear on this point—indeed it simply corresponds with the facts. -The fact that they remained <i>true</i> on this point is perhaps to be -regarded as the best specimen of realism in the three great religions, -absolutely soaked as they are with morality, with this one exception. -"For those who know, there is no duty." "Redemption is not attained by -the acquisition of virtues; for redemption consists in being one with -Brahman, who is incapable of acquiring any perfection; and equally -little does it consist in the <i>giving up of faults</i>, for the Brahman, -unity with whom is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure" -(these passages are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted -from the first real European <i>expert</i> of the Indian philosophy, my -friend Paul Deussen). We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of -"redemption"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> in the great religions, but it is somewhat hard to remain -serious in view of the appreciation meted out to the <i>deep sleep</i> by -these exhausted pessimists who are too tired even to dream—to the deep -sleep considered, that is, as already a fusing into Brahman, as the -attainment of the <i>unio mystica</i> with God. "When he has completely gone -to sleep," says on this point the oldest and most venerable "script," -"and come to perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then, -oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has entered into his own -self—encircled by the Self with its absolute knowledge, he has no -more any consciousness of that which is without or of that which is -within. Day and night cross not these bridges, nor age, nor death, -nor suffering, nor good deeds, nor evil deeds." "In deep sleep," say -similarly the believers in this deepest of the three great religions, -"does the soul lift itself from out this body of ours, enters the -supreme light and stands out therein in its true shape: therein is it -the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while it jests and -plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends; -there do its thoughts turn no more back to this appanage of a body, -to which the 'prana' (the vital breath) is harnessed like a beast of -burden to the cart." None the less we will take care to realise (as -we did when discussing "redemption") that in spite of all its pomps -of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on -life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus. -The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> of deepest sleep, -anæsthesia in short––that is what passes with the sufferers and the -absolutely depressed for, forsooth, their supreme good, their value -of values; that is what <b>must</b> be treasured by them as something -positive, be felt by them as the essence of <i>the</i> Positive (according -to the same logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessimistic -religions called God).</p> - - -<p class="parnum">18.</p> - -<p>Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and susceptibility to pain, -which presupposes somewhat rare powers, especially courage, contempt -of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another -and certainly easier <i>training</i> which is tried against states of -depression. I mean <i>mechanical activity</i>. It is indisputable that a -suffering existence can be thereby considerably alleviated. This fact -is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the "Blessing of -work." The alleviation consists in the attention of the sufferer being -absolutely diverted from suffering, in the incessant monopoly of the -consciousness by action, so that consequently there is little room left -for suffering––for <i>narrow</i> is it, this chamber of human consciousness! -Mechanical activity and its corollaries, such as absolute regularity, -punctilious unreasoning obedience, the chronic routine of life, the -complete occupation of time, a certain liberty to be impersonal, nay, a -training in "impersonality," self-forgetfulness, "<i>incuria sui</i>"––with -what thoroughness and expert subtlety have all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> these methods been -exploited by the ascetic priest in his war with pain!</p> - -<p>When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower orders, slaves, or -prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of -labour-slave and prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little -with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make them see henceforth -a benefit, a comparative happiness, in objects which they hated—the -slave's discontent with his lot was at any rate <i>not</i> invented by the -priests. An even more popular means of fighting depression is the -ordaining of a <i>little joy</i>, which is easily accessible and can be made -into a rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with -the former ones. The most frequent form in which joy is prescribed -as a cure is the joy in <i>producing</i> joy (such as doing good, giving -presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting, praising, -treating with distinction); together with the prescription of "love -your neighbour." The ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most -cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation of the strongest -and most life-assertive impulse—the Will for Power. The happiness -involved in the "smallest superiority" which is the concomitant of all -benefiting, helping, extolling, making one's self useful, is the most -ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological -distortions avail themselves: in other cases they hurt each other, and -naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation -of the origin of Christianity in the Roman world shows that -co-operative unions for poverty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> sickness, and burial sprang up in the -lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote -against depression, the little joy experienced in mutual benefits, -was deliberately fostered. Perchance this was then a novelty, a real -discovery? This conjuring up of the will for co-operation, for family -organisation, for communal life, for "<i>Cœnacula</i>" necessarily brought -the Will for Power, which had been already infinitesimally stimulated, -to a new and much fuller manifestation. The herd organisation is a -genuine advance and triumph in the fight with depression. With the -growth of the community there matures even to individuals a new -interest, which often enough takes him out of the more personal -element in his discontent, his aversion to himself, the "<i>despectus -sui</i>" of Geulincx. All sick and diseased people strive instinctively -after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of -oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this -instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct -of weakness which has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the -priests which has organised it, for, mark this: by an equally natural -necessity the strong strive as much for <i>isolation</i> as the weak for -<i>union</i>: when the former bind themselves it is only with a view to an -aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their Will for Power, -much against the wishes of their individual consciences; the latter, -on the contrary, range themselves together with positive <i>delight</i> in -such a muster—their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the -instincts of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> "born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey -species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the quick by organisation. -There is always lurking beneath every oligarchy—such is the -universal lesson of history—the desire for tyranny. Every oligarchy -is continually quivering with the tension of the effort required by -each individual to keep mastering this desire. (Such, <i>e.g.</i>, was -the Greek; Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who knew his -contemporaries—and <i>himself</i>.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">19.</p> - -<p>The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already -learnt to know—stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the -little joy, and especially the method of "love your neighbour" -herd-organisation, the awaking of the communal consciousness of power, -to such a pitch that the individual's disgust with himself becomes -eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the community—these are, -according to modern standards, the "innocent" methods employed in -the fight with depression; let us turn now to the more interesting -topic of the "guilty" methods. The guilty methods spell one thing: -to produce <i>emotional excess</i>—which is used as the most efficacious -anæsthetic against their depressing state of protracted pain; this -is why priestly ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in thinking -out this one question: "<i>By what means</i> can you produce an emotional -excess?" This sounds harsh: it is manifest that it would sound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> nicer -and would grate on one's ears less, if I were to say, forsooth: "The -ascetic priest made use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in all -strong emotions." But what is the good of still soothing the delicate -ears of our modern effeminates? What is the good <i>on our side</i> of -budging one single inch before their verbal Pecksniffianism. For us -psychologists to do that would be at once <i>practical Pecksniffianism</i>, -apart from the fact of its nauseating us. The <i>good taste</i> (others -might say, the righteousness) of a psychologist nowadays consists, if -at all, in combating the shamefully moralised language with which all -modern judgments on men and things are smeared. For, do not deceive -yourself: what constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and -of modern books is not the lying, but the <i>innocence</i> which is part -and parcel of their intellectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up -against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes the most distasteful -feature of the somewhat dangerous business which a modern psychologist -has to undertake: it is a part of <i>our</i> great danger—it is a road which -perhaps leads us straight to the great nausea—I know quite well the -purpose which all modern books will and can serve (granted that they -last, which I am not afraid of, and granted equally that there is to -be at some future day a generation with a more rigid, more severe, -and <i>healthier</i> taste)—the <i>function</i> which all modernity generally -will serve with posterity: that of an emetic,—and this by reason of -its moral sugariness and falsity, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> ingrained feminism, which it is -pleased to call "Idealism," and at any rate believes to be idealism. -Our cultured men of to-day, our "good" men, do not lie—that is true; -but it does <i>not</i> redound to their honour! The real lie, the genuine, -determined, "honest" lie (on whose value you can listen to Plato) would -prove too tough and strong an article for them by a long way; it would -be asking them to do what people have been forbidden to ask them to do, -to open their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to distinguish -between "true" and "false" in their own selves. The dishonest lie alone -suits them: everything which feels a good man is perfectly incapable of -any other attitude to anything than that of a dishonourable liar, an -absolute liar, but none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar, a -virtuous liar. These "good men," they are all now tainted with morality -through and through, and as far as honour is concerned they are -disgraced and corrupted for all eternity. Which of them <i>could stand</i> a -further truth "about man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them could -put up with a true biography? One or two instances: Lord Byron composed -a most personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was "too good" for it; -he burnt his friend's papers. Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is -said to have done the same; for Schopenhauer as well wrote much about -himself, and perhaps also against himself: (εἰς ἑαντόν). The virtuous -American Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly stopped his work: he -had come to a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> point in that honourable and simple life, and -could stand it no longer. Moral: What sensible man nowadays writes one -honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order of Holy -Foolhardiness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner; who -doubts but that it would be a <i>clever</i> autobiography? Think, forsooth, -of the grotesque horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in -Germany with his inconceivably square and harmless pictures of the -German Reformation; what wouldn't people do if some real psychologist -were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us, not with the moralist -simplicity of a country priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a -Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness of a Taine, that -springs from force of character and not from a prudent toleration of -force. (The Germans, by the bye, have already produced the classic -specimen of this toleration—they may well be allowed to reckon him as -one of their own, in Leopold Ranke, that born classical advocate of -every <i>causa fortior</i>, that cleverest of all the clever opportunists.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">20.</p> - -<p>But you will soon understand me.—Putting it shortly, there is reason -enough, is there not, for us psychologists nowadays never getting from -a certain mistrust of out <i>own selves</i>? Probably even we ourselves are -still "too good" for our work, probably, whatever contempt we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> feel -for this popular craze for morality, we ourselves are perhaps none -the less its victims, prey, and slaves; probably it infects even us. -Of what was that diplomat warning us, when he said to his colleagues: -"Let us especially mistrust our first impulses, gentlemen! <i>they are -almost always good</i>"? So should nowadays every psychologist talk to -his colleagues. And thus we get back to our problem, which in point -of fact does require from us a certain severity, a certain mistrust -especially against "first impulses." <i>The ascetic ideal in the service -of projected emotional excess</i>:—he who remembers the previous essay -will already partially anticipate the essential meaning compressed -into these above ten words. The thorough unswitching of the human -soul, the plunging of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture, so as -to free it, as through some lightning shock, from all the smallness -and pettiness of unhappiness, depression, and discomfort: what ways -lead to <i>this</i> goal? And which of these ways does so most safely?... -At bottom all great emotions have this power, provided that they find -a sudden outlet—emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge, hope, -triumph, despair, cruelty; and, in sooth, the ascetic priest has had -no scruples in taking into his service the whole pack of hounds that -rage in the human kennel, unleashing now these and now those, with the -same constant object of waking man out of his protracted melancholy, -of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull pain, his shrinking -misery, but always under the sanction of a religious interpretation -and justification.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> This emotional excess has subsequently to be <i>paid -for</i>, this is self-evident—it makes the ill more ill—and therefore -this kind of remedy for pain is according to modern standards a -"guilty" kind.</p> - -<p>The dictates of fairness, however, require that we should all the -more emphasise the fact that this remedy is applied with <i>a good -conscience</i>, that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the most -implicit belief in its utility and indispensability;—often enough -almost collapsing in the presence of the pain which he created;—that -we should similarly emphasise the fact that the violent physiological -revenges of such excesses, even perhaps the mental disturbances, are -not absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of this kind of -remedy; this remedy, which, as we have shown previously, is <i>not</i> for -the purpose of healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness of -that depression, the alleviation and deadening of which was its object. -The object was consequently achieved. The keynote by which the ascetic -priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music -to play on the fibres of the human soul—was, as every one knows, the -exploitation of the feeling of "<i>guilt</i>." I have already indicated in -the previous essay the origin of this feeling—as a piece of animal -psychology and nothing else: we were thus confronted with the -feeling of "guilt," in its crude state, as it were. It was first in -the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of -guilt, that it took shape—oh, what a shape!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> "Sin"—for that is the -name of the new priestly version of the animal "bad-conscience" (the -inverted cruelty)—has up to the present been the greatest event in the -history of the diseased soul: in "sin" we find the most perilous and -fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering -from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically, -perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and -the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons—reasons bring -relief—in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting -one, who knows even the occult—and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint -from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his <i>first</i> hint on the "cause" of -his trouble: he must search for it <i>in himself</i>, in his guiltiness, in -a piece of the past, he must understand his very suffering as a <i>state -of punishment</i>. He has heard, he has understood, has the unfortunate: -he is now in the plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn. He -never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned -into "the sinner"—and now for a few thousand years we never get away -from the sight of this new invalid, of "a sinner"—shall we ever get -away from it?—wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of -the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt, -the <i>only</i> cause of suffering); everywhere the evil conscience, this -"<i>greuliche thier</i>,"<a name="FNanchor_4_8" id="FNanchor_4_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_8" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> to use Luther's language; everywhere rumination -over the past, a distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> -monster" turned on all action; everywhere the wilful misunderstanding -of suffering, its transvaluation into feelings of guilt, fear of -retribution; everywhere the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving -body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the ghastly -wheel of a restless and morbidly eager conscience; everywhere mute -pain, extreme fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of an -unknown happiness, the shriek for "redemption." In point of fact, -thanks to this system of procedure, the old depression, dullness, -and fatigue were absolutely conquered, life itself became <i>very</i> -interesting again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, burnt -away, exhausted and yet not tired—such was the figure cut by man, -"the sinner," who was initiated into these mysteries. This grand old -wizard of an ascetic priest fighting with depression—he had clearly -triumphed, <i>his</i> kingdom had come: men no longer grumbled at pain, men -<i>panted</i> after pain: "<i>More pain!</i> More pain!" So for centuries on end -shrieked the demand of his acolytes and initiates. Every emotional -excess which hurt; everything which broke, overthrew, crushed, -transported, ravished; the mystery of torture-chambers, the ingenuity -of hell itself—all this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all -this was at the service of the wizard, all this served to promote the -triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. "<i>My kingdom is not of this -world</i>," quoth he, both at the beginning and at the end: had he still -the right to talk like that?—Goethe has maintained that there are only -thirty-six tragic situations: we would infer from that, did we not know -otherwise,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He—knows more.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">21.</p> - -<p>So far as all <i>this</i> kind of priestly medicine-mongering, the "guilty" -kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the -suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which in these cases -the ascetic priest is fain to order to his sick patients (under the -most sacred euphemism, as is obvious, and equally impregnated with -the sanctity of his purpose), has ever really been of use to any sick -man, who, forsooth, would feel inclined to maintain a proposition of -that character? At any rate, some understanding should be come to as -to the expression "be of use." If you only wish to express that such a -system of treatment has <i>reformed</i> man, I do not gainsay it: I merely -add that "reformed" conveys to my mind as much as "tamed," "weakened," -"discouraged," "refined," "daintified," "emasculated" (and thus it -means almost as much as injured). But when you have to deal principally -with sick, depressed, and oppressed creatures, such a system, even -granted that it makes the ill "better," under any circumstances also -makes them more <i>ill</i>: ask the mad-doctors the invariable result of a -methodical application of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation -ecstasies. Similarly ask history. In every body politic where the -ascetic priest has established this treatment of the sick, disease has -on every occasion spread with sinister speed throughout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> its length -and breadth. What was always the "result"? A shattered nervous system, -in addition to the existing malady, and this in the greatest as in the -smallest, in the individuals as in masses. We find, in consequence of -the penance and redemption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the -greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and St. John dances -of the Middle Ages; we find, as another phase of its after-effect, -frightful mutilations and chronic depressions, by means of which the -temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva, Bale) is turned once for -all into its opposite;—this <i>training</i>, again, is responsible for -the witch-hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambulism (eight -great epidemic outbursts of this only between 1564 and 1605);—we -find similarly in its train those delirious death-cravings of large -masses, whose awful "shriek," "<i>evviva la morte!</i>" was heard over the -whole of Europe, now interrupted by voluptuous variations and anon by -a rage for destruction, just as the same emotional sequence with the -same intermittencies and sudden changes is now universally observed -in every case where the ascetic doctrine of sin scores once more a -great success (religious neurosis <i>appears</i> as a manifestation of the -devil, there is no doubt of it. What is it? <i>Quæritur</i>). Speaking -generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-moral cult, this most -ingenious, reckless, and perilous systematisation of all methods of -emotional excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable fashion -on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on history. -I was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> <i>health</i> and race efficiency of Europeans with more destructive -power than did this ideal; it can be dubbed,without exaggeration, -<i>the real fatality</i> in the history of the health of the European man. -At the most you can merely draw a comparison with the specifically -German influence: I mean the alcohol poisoning of Europe, which up -to the present has kept pace exactly with the political and racial -pre–dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated their blood, -there too did they inoculate their vice). Third in the series comes -syphilis—<i>magno sed proximo intervallo</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">22.</p> - -<p>The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained the mastery, corrupted -the health of the soul, he has consequently also corrupted <i>taste in -artibus et litteris</i>—he corrupts it still. "Consequently?" I hope I -shall be granted this "consequently "; at any rate, I am not going to -prove it first. One solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of -Christian literature, their real model, their "book-in-itself." In the -very midst of the Græco-Roman splendour, which was also a splendour -of books, face to face with an ancient world of writings which had -not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a time when certain books were -still to be read, to possess which we would give nowadays half our -literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity and vanity of -Christian agitators (they are generally called Fathers of the Church) -dared to declare: "We too have our classical literature, we <i>do not -need that of the Greeks</i>"—and meanwhile they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> proudly pointed to their -books of legends, their letters of apostles, and their apologetic -tractlets, just in the same way that to-day the English "Salvation -Army" wages its fight against Shakespeare and other "heathens" with -an analogous literature. You already guess it, I do not like the "New -Testament"; it almost upsets me that I stand so isolated in my taste -so far as concerns this valued, this over-valued Scripture; the taste -of two thousand years is <i>against</i> me; but what boots it! "Here I -stand! I cannot help myself"<a name="FNanchor_5_9" id="FNanchor_5_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_9" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>—I have the courage of my bad taste. -The <i>Old</i> Testament—yes, that is something quite different, all honour -to the Old Testament! I find therein great men, an heroic landscape, -and one of the rarest phenomena in the world, the incomparable naïveté -<i>of the strong heart</i>; further still, I find a people. In the New, on -the contrary, just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the soul, -twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but conventicle air, not to -forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the -epoch (<i>and</i> the Roman province) and is less Jewish than Hellenistic. -Meekness and braggadocio cheek by jowl; an emotional garrulousness -that almost deafens; passionate hysteria, but no passion; painful -pantomime; here manifestly every one lacked good breeding. How dare any -one make so much fuss about their little failings as do these pious -little fellows! No one cares a straw about it—let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> alone God. Finally -they actually wish to have "the crown of eternal life," do all these -little provincials! In return for what, in sooth? For what end? It is -impossible to carry insolence any further. An immortal Peter! who could -stand <i>him</i>! They have an ambition which makes one laugh: the <i>thing</i> -dishes up cut and dried his most personal life, his melancholies, and -common-or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself were under -an obligation to bother itself about them, for it never gets tired of -wrapping up God Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles are -involved. And how about the atrocious form of this chronic hobnobbing -with God? This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing -importunacy towards God!—There exist little despised "heathen nations" -in East Asia, from whom these first Christians could have learnt -something worth learning, a little tact in worshiping; these nations -do not allow themselves to say aloud the name of their God. This seems -to me delicate enough, it is certain that it is <i>too</i> delicate, and -not only for primitive Christians; to take a contrast, just recollect -Luther, the most "eloquent" and insolent peasant whom Germany has had, -think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite the most in his -element during his <i>tête-à-têtes</i> with God. Luther's opposition to the -mediæval saints of the Church (in particular, against "that devil's -hog, the Pope"), was, there is no doubt, at bottom the opposition of -a boor, who was offended at the <i>good etiquette</i> of the Church, that -worship-etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> to the -holy of holies the initiated and the silent, and shuts the door against -the boors. These definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this -planet—but Luther the peasant simply wished it otherwise; as it was, -it was not German enough for him. He personally wished himself to talk -direct, to talk personally, to talk "straight from the shoulder" with -his God. Well, he's done it. The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at -no time and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of good -manners—at the best it was a school for sacerdotal manners: that is, -it contains in itself something which was a deadly enemy to all good -manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure, it is itself a "<i>non -plus ultra</i>."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">23.</p> - -<p>The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are -also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted—I -shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should I get to -the end?). I have here to expose not what this ideal effected; but -rather only what it <i>means</i>, on what it is based, what lies lurking -behind it and under it, that of which it is the provisional expression, -an obscure expression bristling with queries and misunderstandings. -And with <i>this</i> object only in view I presumed "not to spare" my -readers a glance at the awfulness of its results, a glance at its -fatal results; I did this to prepare them for the final and most -awful aspect presented to me by the question of the significance of -that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> ideal. What is the significance of the <i>power</i> of that ideal, -the monstrousness of its <i>power</i>? Why is it given such an amount of -scope? Why is not a better resistance offered against it? The ascetic -ideal expresses one will: where is the opposition will, in which an -<i>opposition ideal</i> expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim— -this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of -human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; -it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it -forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it repudiates, denies, -affirms, confirms, only in the sense of its own interpretation (and was -there ever a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation?); -it subjects itself to no power, rather does it believe in its own -precedence over every power—it believes that nothing powerful exists -in the world that has not first got to receive from "it" a meaning, -a right to exist, a value, as being an instrument in its work, a -way and means to its end, to one end. Where is the <i>counterpart</i> of -this complete system of will, end, and interpretation? Why is the -counterpart lacking? Where is the other "one aim"? But I am told it -is not lacking, that not only has it fought a long and fortunate fight -with that ideal, but that further it has already won the mastery over -that ideal in all essentials: let our whole modern <i>science</i> attest -this—that modern science, which, like the genuine reality-philosophy -which it is, manifestly believes in itself alone, manifestly has the -courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has got on well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> -enough without God, another world, and negative virtues.</p> - -<p>With all their noisy agitator-babble, however, they effect nothing with -me; these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices do -not come from the deeps with sufficient audibility, they are not the -mouthpiece for the abyss of scientific knowledge—for to-day scientific -knowledge is an abyss—the word "science," in such trumpeter-mouths, -is a prostitution, an abuse, an impertinence. The truth is just the -opposite from what is maintained in the ascetic theory. Science has -to-day absolutely <i>no</i> belief in itself, let alone in an ideal superior -to itself, and wherever science still consists of passion, love, -ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to that ascetic ideal, but -rather the <i>incarnation of its latest and noblest form</i>. Does that ring -strange? There are enough brave and decent working people, even among -the learned men of to-day, who like their little corner, and who, just -because they are pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud with -their demand, that people to-day should be quite content, especially -in science—for in science there is so much useful work to do. I do -not deny it—there is nothing I should like less than to spoil the -delight of these honest workers in their handiwork; for I rejoice in -their work. But the fact of science requiring hard work, the fact of -its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science as a -whole having to-day one end, one will, one ideal, one passion for a -great faith; the contrary, as I have said, is the case. When science -is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal—but these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> are -cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisiteness, as to preclude the -general judgment being affected thereby—science is a <i>hiding-place</i> -for every kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, <i>despectio sui</i>, bad -conscience—it is the very <i>anxiety</i> that springs from having no ideal, -the suffering from the <i>lack</i> of a great love, the discontent with an -enforced moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover to-day? How -much, at any rate, does it not try to cover? The diligence of our best -scholars, their senseless industry, their burning the candle of their -brain at both ends—their very mastery in their handiwork—how often is -the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves continuing to see a -certain thing? Science as a self-anæsthetic: <i>do you know that</i>? You -wound them—every one who consorts with scholars experiences this—you -wound them sometimes to the quick through just a harmless word; when -you think you are paying them a compliment you embitter them beyond all -bounds, simply because you didn't have the <i>finesse</i> to infer the real -kind of customers you had to tackle, the <i>sufferer</i> kind (who won't own -up even to themselves what they really are), the dazed and unconscious -kind who have only one fear—<i>coming to consciousness</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">24.</p> - -<p>And now look at the other side, at those rare cases, of which I spoke, -the most supreme idealists to be found nowadays among philosophers and -scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the sought-for <i>opponents</i> -of the ascetic ideal, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> <i>anti-idealists</i>? In fact, they <i>believe</i> -themselves to be such, these "unbelievers" (for they are all of them -that): it seems that this idea is their last remnant of faith, the idea -of being opponents of this ideal, so earnest are they on this subject, -so passionate in word and gesture;—but does it follow that what -they believe must necessarily be <i>true</i>? We "knowers" have grown by -degrees suspicious of all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by -step habituated us to draw just the opposite conclusions to what people -have drawn before; that is to say, wherever the strength of a belief -is particularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the difficulty of -proving what is believed, the conclusion of its actual <i>improbability</i>. -We do not again deny that "faith produces salvation": <i>for that very -reason</i> we do deny that faith <i>proves</i> anything,—a strong faith, which -produces happiness, causes suspicion of the object of that faith, it -does not establish its "truth," it does establish a certain probability -of—<i>illusion</i>. What is now the position in these cases? These -solitaries and deniers of to-day; these fanatics in one thing, in their -claim to intellectual cleanness; these hard, stern, continent, heroic -spirits, who constitute the glory of our time; all these pale atheists, -anti-Christians, immoralists, Nihilists; these sceptics, "ephectics," -and "hectics" of the intellect (in a certain sense they are the -latter, both collectively and individually); these supreme idealists -of knowledge, in whom alone nowadays the intellectual conscience -dwells and is alive—in point of fact they believe themselves as far -away as possible from the ascetic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> ideal, do these "free, very free -spirits": and yet, if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see—for -they stand too near themselves: this ideal is simply <i>their</i> ideal, -they represent it nowadays and perhaps no one else, they themselves -are its most spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of -skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate and elusive form -of seduction.—If I am in any way a reader of riddles, then I will -be one with this sentence: for some time past there have been no -free spirits; <i>for they still believe in truth</i>. When the Christian -Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order -of assassins, that order of free spirits <i>par excellence</i>, whose -lowest grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order of monks -has ever attained, then in some way or other they managed to get an -inkling of that symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the -highest grade alone as their <i>secretum</i>, "Nothing is true, everything -is allowed,"—in sooth, <i>that</i> was <i>freedom</i> of thought, thereby was -<i>taking leave</i> of the very belief in truth. Has indeed any European, -any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into this proposition -and its labyrinthine <i>consequences</i>? Does he know <i>from experience</i> the -Minotauros of this den.—I doubt it—nay, I know otherwise. Nothing -is more really alien to these "mono-fanatics," these <i>so-called</i> -"free spirits," than freedom and unfettering in that sense; in no -respect are they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of their -belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this perhaps too much from -experience at close quarters—that dignified philosophic abstinence -to which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> a belief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism of -the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation as rigidly as it does -affirmation, that wish for standing still in front of the actual, -the <i>factum brutum</i>, that fatalism in "<i>petits faits</i>" (<i>ce petit -faitalism</i>, as I call it), in which French Science now attempts a kind -of moral superiority over German, this renunciation of interpretation -generally (that is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, -suppressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other <i>essential</i> -attributes of interpretation)—all this, considered broadly, expresses -the asceticism of virtue, quite as efficiently as does any repudiation -of the senses (it is at bottom only a <i>modus</i> of that repudiation.) -But what forces it into that unqualified will for truth is the faith -<i>in the ascetic ideal itself</i>, even though it take the form of its -unconscious imperatives,—make no mistake about it, it is the faith, -I repeat, in a <i>metaphysical</i> value, an <i>intrinsic</i> value of truth, -of a character which is only warranted and guaranteed in this ideal -(it stands and falls with that ideal). Judged strictly, there does -not exist a science without its "hypotheses," the thought of such a -science is inconceivable, illogical: a philosophy, a faith, must always -exist first to enable science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, -a limit and method, a <i>right</i> to existence. (He who holds a contrary -opinion on the subject—he, for example, who takes it upon himself to -establish philosophy "upon a strictly scientific basis"—has first got -to "turn up-side-down" not only philosophy but also truth itself—the -gravest insult which could possibly be offered to two such respectable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> -females!) Yes, there is no doubt about it—and here I quote my <i>Joyful -Wisdom</i>, cp. Book V. Aph. 344: "The man who is truthful in that -daring and extreme fashion, which is the presupposition of the faith -in science, <i>asserts thereby a different world</i> from that of life, -nature, and history; and in so far as he asserts the existence of that -different world, come, must he not similarly repudiate its counterpart, -this world, <i>our</i> world? The belief on which our faith in science is -based has remained to this day a metaphysical belief—even we knowers -of to-day, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too take our fire from -that conflagration which was kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, -from that Christian belief, which was also Plato's belief, the belief -that God is truth, that truth is <i>divine</i>.... But what if this belief -becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself to -be divine, unless it be error, blindness, lies—what if God, Himself -proved Himself to be our <i>oldest lie</i>?"—It is necessary to stop at -this point and to consider the situation carefully. Science itself now -<i>needs</i> a justification (which is not for a minute to say that there -is such a justification). Turn in this context to the most ancient and -the most modern philosophers: they all fail to realise the extent of -the need of a justification on the part of the Will for Truth—here -is a gap in every philosophy—what is it caused by? Because up to the -present the ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because Truth was -fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme Court of Appeal, because Truth -was not allowed to be a problem. Do you understand this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> "allowed"? -From the minute that the belief in the God of the ascetic ideal is -repudiated, there exists <i>a new problem</i>: the problem of the value of -truth. The Will for Truth needed a critique—let us define by these -words our own task—-the value of truth is tentatively <i>to be called -in question</i>.... (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recommend -the reader to peruse again that passage from the <i>Joyful Wisdom</i> which -bears the title, "How far we also are still pious," Aph. 344, and best -of all the whole fifth book of that work, as well as the Preface to -<i>The Dawn of Day</i>.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">25.</p> - -<p>No! You can't get round me with science, when I search for the natural -antagonists of the ascetic ideal, when I put the question: "<i>Where</i> -is the opposed will in which the <i>opponent ideal</i> expresses itself?" -Science is not, by a long way, independent enough to fulfil this -function; in every department science needs an ideal value, a power -which creates values, and in whose <i>service</i> it <i>can believe</i> in itself -—science itself never creates values. Its relation to the ascetic -ideal is not in itself antagonistic; speaking roughly, it rather -represents the progressive force in the inner evolution of that ideal. -Tested more exactly, its opposition and antagonism are concerned not -with the ideal itself, but only with that ideal's outworks, its outer -garb, its masquerade, with its temporary hardening, stiffening, and -dogmatising—it makes the life in the ideal free once more, while it -repudiates its superficial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> elements. These two phenomena, science and -the ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis––I have already made -this clear––the basis, I say, oft the same over-appreciation of truth -(more accurately the same belief in the <i>impossibility</i> of valuing and -of criticising truth), and consequently they are <i>necessarily</i> allies, -so that, in the event of their being attacked, they must always be -attacked and called into question together. A valuation of the ascetic -ideal inevitably entails a valuation of science as well; lose no time -in seeing this clearly, and be sharp to catch it! (<i>Art</i>, I am speaking -provisionally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in greater -detail,––art, I repeat, in which lying is sanctified and the <i>will for -deception</i> has good conscience on its side, is much more fundamentally -opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science: Plato's instinct felt -this––Plato, the greatest enemy of art which Europe has produced up -to the present. Plato <i>versus</i> Homer, that is the complete, the true -antagonism––on the one side, the whole–hearted "transcendental," the -great defamer of life; on the other, its involuntary panegyrist, the -<i>golden</i> nature. An artistic subservience to the service of the ascetic -ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic <i>corruption</i> that -there can be, though unfortunately it is one of the most frequent -phases, for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Considered -physiologically, moreover, science rests on the same, basis as -does the ascetic ideal: a certain <i>impoverishment of life</i> is the -presupposition of the latter as of the former––add, frigidity of the -emotions, slackening of the <i>tempo</i>, the substitution of dialectic for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> -instinct, <i>seriousness</i> impressed on mien and gesture (seriousness, -that most unmistakable sign of strenuous metabolism, of struggling, -toiling life). Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned -man comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often -of sunset, of decay—the effervescing strength, the confidence in -life, the confidence in the future are no more. The preponderance of -the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent -of democracy, or arbitration instead of war, equal rights for women, -the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. -(Science handled as a problem! what is the meaning of science?—upon -this point the Preface to the <i>Birth of Tragedy</i>.) No! this "modern -science"—mark you this well—is at times the <i>best</i> ally for the -ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the ally which is -most unconscious, most automatic, most secret, and most subterranean! -They have been playing into each other's hands up to the present, have -these "poor in spirit" and the scientific opponents of that ideal (take -care, by the bye, not to think that these opponents are the antithesis -of this ideal, that they are the <i>rich</i> in spirit—that they are <i>not</i>; -I have called them the <i>hectic</i> in spirit). As for these celebrated -victories of science; there is no doubt that they are <i>victories</i>—but -victories over what? There was not for a single minute any victory -among their list over the ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, -that is to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious, from -the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> built on to the main -fortress and disfigured its appearance, should from time to time be -ruthlessly destroyed and broken down by science. Does any one seriously -suggest that the downfall of the theological astronomy signified the -downfall of that ideal?—Has, perchance, man grown <i>less in need</i> of a -transcendental solution of his riddle of existence, because since that -time this existence has become more random, casual, and superfluous in -the <i>visible</i> order of the universe? Has there not been since the time -of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the self-belittling of man and -his <i>will</i> for belittling himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his -uniquenesses irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence, is gone—he -has become animal, literal, unqualified, and unmitigated animal, he -who in his earlier belief was almost God ("child of God," "demi-God"). -Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to a steep plane—he rolls -faster and faster away from the centre—whither? into nothingness? -<i>into the "thrilling sensation of his own nothingness"</i>—Well! this -would be the straight way—to the <i>old</i> ideal?—<i>All</i> science (and by no -means only astronomy, with regard to the humiliating and deteriorating -effect of which Kant has made a remarkable confession, "it annihilates -my own importance"), all science, natural as much as <i>unnatural</i>—by -unnatural I mean the self-critique of reason—nowadays sets out to -talk man out of his present opinion of himself, as though that opinion -had been nothing but a bizarre piece of conceit; you might go so far -as to say that science finds its peculiar pride, its peculiar bitter -form of stoical ataraxia, in preserving man's <i>contempt of himself</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>, -that state which it took so much trouble to bring about, as man's final -and most serious claim to self-appreciation (rightly so, in point -of fact, for he who despises is always "one who has not forgotten -how to appreciate"). But does all this involve any real effort to -<i>counteract</i> the ascetic ideal? Is it really seriously suggested that -Kant's <i>victory</i> over the theological dogmatism about "God," "Soul," -"Freedom," "Immortality," has damaged that ideal in any way (as the -theologians have imagined to be the case for a long time past)?–– -And in this connection it does not concern us for a single minute, -if Kant himself intended any such consummation. It is certain that -from the time of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a -winning game––they are emancipated from the theologians; what luck!––he -has revealed to them that secret art, by which they can now pursue -their "heart's desire" on their own responsibility, and with all the -respectability of science. Similarly, who can grumble at the agnostics, -reverers, as they are, of the unknown and the absolute mystery, if they -now worship <i>their very query</i> as God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere -of the <i>ravages</i> which <i>l'habitude d'admirer l'inintelligible au lieu -de rester tout simplement dans l'inconnu</i> has produced––the ancients, -he thinks, must have been exempt from those ravages.) Supposing that -everything, "known" to man, fails to satisfy his desires, and on the -contrary contradicts and horrifies them, what a divine way out of all -this to be able to look for the responsibility, not in the "desiring" -but in "knowing"!––"There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> is no knowledge. <i>Consequently</i>––there is -a God"; what a novel <i>elegantia syllogism</i>i! what a triumph for the -ascetic ideal!</p> - - -<p class="parnum">26.</p> - -<p>Or, perchance, does the whole of modern history show in its demeanour -greater confidence in life, greater confidence in its ideals? Its -loftiest pretension is now to be a <i>mirror</i>; it repudiates all -teleology; it will have no more "proving"; it disdains to play the -judge, and thereby shows its good taste––it asserts as little as it -denies, it fixes, it "describes." All this is to a high degree ascetic, -but at the same time it is to a much greater degree <i>nihilistic</i>; make -no mistake about this! You see in the historian a gloomy, hard, but -determined gaze,––an eye that <i>looks out</i> as an isolated North Pole -explorer looks out (perhaps so as not to look within, so as not to look -back?)––there is snow––here is life silenced, the last crows which -caw here are called "whither?" "Vanity," "Nada"––here nothing more -flourishes and grows, at the most the metapolitics of St. Petersburg -and the "pity" of Tolstoi. But as for that other school of historians, -a perhaps still more "modern" school, a voluptuous and lascivious -school which ogles life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, -which uses the word "artist" as a glove, and has nowadays established -a "corner" for itself, in all the praise given to contemplation; oh, -what a thirst do these sweet intellectuals excite even for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> ascetics -and winter landscapes! Nay! The devil take these "contemplative" folk! -How much liefer would I wander with those historical Nihilists through -the gloomiest, grey, cold mist!––nay, I shall not mind listening -(supposing I have to choose) to one who is completely unhistorical -and anti-historical (a man, like Dühring for instance, over whose -periods a hitherto shy and unavowed species of "beautiful souls" has -grown intoxicated in contemporary Germany, <i>the species anarchistica</i> -within the educated proletariate). The "contemplative" are a hundred -times worse––I never knew anything which produced such intense -nausea as one of those "objective" <i>chairs</i>,<a name="FNanchor_6_10" id="FNanchor_6_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_10" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> one of those scented -mannikins-about-town of history, a thing half-priest, half-satyr (Renan -<i>parfum</i>), which betrays by the high, shrill falsetto of his applause -what he lacks and where he lacks it, who betrays where in this case -the Fates have plied their ghastly shears, alas! in too surgeon-like -a fashion! This is distasteful to me, and irritates my patience; let -him keep patient at such sights who has nothing to lose thereby,––such -a sight enrages me, such spectators embitter me against the "play," -even more than does the play itself (history itself, you understand); -Anacreontic moods imperceptibly come over me. This Nature, who gave -to the steer its horn, to the lion its χάσμ' ὀδοντων, for what purpose -did Nature give me my foot?––To kick, by St. Anacreon, and not merely -to run away! To trample on all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> worm-eaten "chairs," the cowardly -contemplators, the lascivious eunuchs of history, the flirters with -ascetic ideals, the righteous hypocrites of impotence! All reverence -on my part to the ascetic ideal, <i>in so far as it is honourable</i>! So -long as it believes in itself and plays no pranks on us! But I like -not all these coquettish bugs who have an insatiate ambition to smell -of the infinite, until eventually the infinite smells of bugs; I like -not the whited sepulchres with their stagey reproduction of life; -I like not the tired and the used up who wrap themselves in wisdom -and look "objective"; I like not the agitators dressed up as heroes, -who hide their dummy-heads behind the stalking-horse of an ideal; I -like not the ambitious artists who would fain play the ascetic and -the priest, and are at bottom nothing but tragic clowns; I like not, -again, these newest speculators in idealism, the Anti-Semites, who -nowadays roll their eyes in the patent Christian-Aryan-man-of-honour -fashion, and by an abuse of moralist attitudes and agitation dodges, so -cheap as to exhaust any patience, strive to excite all the blockhead -elements in the populace (the invariable success of <i>every</i> kind of -intellectual charlatanism in present-day Germany hangs together with -the almost indisputable and already quite palpable desolation of the -German mind, whose cause I look for in a too exclusive diet, of papers, -politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, not forgetting the condition -precedent of this diet, the national exclusiveness and vanity, the -strong but narrow principle, "Germany, Germany above everything,"<a name="FNanchor_7_11" id="FNanchor_7_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_11" class="fnanchor">[7]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> -and finally the <i>paralysis agitans</i> of "modern ideas"). Europe -nowadays is, above all, wealthy and ingenious in means of excitement; -it apparently has no more crying necessity than <i>stimulantia</i> and -alcohol. Hence the enormous counterfeiting of ideals, those most fiery -spirits of the mind; hence too the repulsive, evil-smelling, perjured, -pseudo–alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many cargoes -of imitation idealism, of hero-costumes and high falutin' clap-trap, -how many casks of sweetened pity liqueur (Firm: <i>la religion de la -souffrance</i>), how many crutches of righteous indignation for the help -of these flat-footed intellects, how many <i>comedians</i> of the Christian -moral ideal would need to-day to be exported from Europe, to enable -its air to smell pure again. It is obvious that, in regard to this -over-production, a new <i>trade</i> possibility lies open; it is obvious -that there is a new business to be done in little ideal idols and -obedient "idealists"—don't pass over this tip! Who has sufficient -courage? We have <i>in our hands</i> the possibility of idealising the whole -earth. But what am I talking about courage? we only need one thing -here—a hand, a free, a very free hand.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">27.</p> - -<p>Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of -the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. <i>Our</i> -problem can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> certainly do without them, the problem of <i>meaning</i> of -the ascetic ideal—what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day? -those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely in -another connection (under the title "A Contribution to the History of -European Nihilism," I refer for this to a work which I am preparing: -<i>The Will to Power, an Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values</i>). -The only reason why I come to allude to it here is this: the ascetic -ideal has at times, even in the most intellectual sphere, only one -real kind of enemies and <i>damagers</i>: these are the comedians of this -ideal—for they awake mistrust. Everywhere otherwise, where the mind -is at work seriously, powerfully, and without counterfeiting, it -dispenses altogether now with an ideal (the popular expression for this -abstinence is "Atheism")—<i>with the exception of the will for truth</i>. -But this will, this <i>remnant</i> of an ideal, is, if you will believe me, -that ideal itself in its severest and cleverest formulation, esoteric -through and through, stripped of all outworks, and consequently not so -much its remnant as its <i>kernel</i>. Unqualified honest atheism (and its -air only do we breathe, we, the most intellectual men of this age) is -<i>not</i> opposed to that ideal, to the extent that it appears to be; it is -rather one of the final phases of its evolution, one of its syllogisms -and pieces of inherent logic—it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of -a two-thousand-year training in truth, which finally forbids itself -<i>the lie of the belief in God</i>. (The same course of development in -India—quite independently, and consequently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> of some demonstrative -value—the same ideal driving to the same conclusion the decisive point -reached five hundred years before the European era, or more precisely -at the time of Buddha—it started in the Sankhyam philosophy, and then -this was popularised through Buddha, and made into a religion.)</p> - -<p><i>What</i>, I put the question with all strictness, has really <i>triumphed</i> -over the Christian God? The answer stands in my <i>Joyful Wisdom</i>, Aph. -357: "the Christian morality itself, the idea of truth, taken as it was -with increasing seriousness, the confessor-subtlety of the Christian -conscience translated and sublimated into the scientific conscience -into intellectual cleanness at any price. Regarding Nature as though -it were a proof of the goodness and guardianship of God; interpreting -history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant proof of a moral -order of the world and a moral teleology; explaining our own personal -experiences, as pious men have for long enough explained them, as -though every arrangement, every nod, every single thing were invented -and sent out of love for the salvation of the soul; all this is now -done away with, all this has the conscience <i>against</i> it, and is -regarded by every subtler conscience as disreputable, dishonourable, -as lying, feminism, weakness, cowardice—by means of this severity, -if by means of anything at all, are we, in sooth, <i>good Europeans</i> -and heirs of Europe's longest and bravest self-mastery."... All -great things go to ruin by reason of themselves, by reason of an act -of self-dissolution: so wills the law of life,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> the law of <i>necessary</i> -"self-mastery" even in the essence of life—ever is the law-giver -finally exposed to the cry, "<i>patere legem quam ipse tulisti</i>"; in -thus wise did Christianity <i>go to ruin as a dogma</i>, through its own -morality; in thus wise must Christianity go again to ruin to-day as -a morality—we are standing on the threshold of this event. After -Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after the other, it -finally draws its <i>strongest conclusion</i>, its conclusion against -itself; this, however, happens, when it puts the question, "<i>what is -the meaning of every will for truth?</i>" And here again do I touch on my -problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for as yet <i>I know</i> of no -friends): what sense has our whole being, if it does not mean that in -our own selves that will for truth has come to its own consciousness -<i>as a problem</i>?—--By reason of this attainment of self-consciousness -on the part of the will for truth, morality from henceforward—there -is no doubt about it—goes <i>to pieces</i>: this is that great hundred-act -play that is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe, the most -terrible, the most mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all -plays.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">28.</p> - -<p>If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. -His existence on earth contained no end; "What is the purpose of man -at all?" was a question without an answer; the <i>will</i> for man and the -world was lacking; behind every great human destiny rang as a refrain -a still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> greater "Vanity!" The ascetic ideal simply means this: that -something <i>was lacking</i>, that a tremendous <i>void</i> encircled man—he did -not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm himself, -he <i>suffered</i> from the problem of his own meaning. He suffered also in -other ways, he was in the main a <i>diseased</i> animal; but his problem -was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to that crying -question, "<i>To what purpose</i> do we suffer?" Man, the bravest animal -and the one most inured to suffering, does <i>not</i> repudiate suffering in -itself: he <i>wills</i> it, he even seeks it out, provided that he is shown -a meaning for it, a <i>purpose</i> of suffering. <i>Not</i> suffering, but the -senselessness of suffering was the curse which till then lay spread -over humanity—<i>and the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning!</i> It was up -till then the only meaning; but any meaning is better than no meaning; -the ascetic ideal was in that connection the <i>"faute de mieux" par -excellence</i> that existed at that time. In that ideal suffering <i>found -an explanation</i>; the tremendous gap seemed filled; the door to all -suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation—there is no doubt about -it—brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more -venomous, gnawing more brutally into life: it brought all suffering -under the perspective of <i>guilt</i>; but in spite of all that—man was -<i>saved</i> thereby, he had a <i>meaning</i>, and from henceforth was no more -like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-cock of chance, of nonsense, he -could now "will" something—absolutely immaterial to what end, to what -purpose, with what means he wished:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> <i>the will itself was saved</i>. It -is absolutely impossible to disguise <i>what</i> in point of fact is made -clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the -ascetic ideal: this hate of the human, and even more of the animal, -and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason -itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get right -away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even -desiring—all this means—let us have the courage to grasp it—a will -for Nothingness, a will opposed to life, a repudiation of the most -fundamental conditions of life, but it is and remains <i>a will</i>!—and -to say at the end that which I said at the beginning—man will wish -<i>Nothingness</i> rather than not wish <i>at all</i>.</p> -<hr class="R5" /> - - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_5" id="Footnote_1_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_5"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> An allusion to the celebrated monologue in William Tell.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_6" id="Footnote_2_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_6"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Mistress Sly.—Tr.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_7" id="Footnote_3_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_7"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In the German text "Heiland." This has the double meaning -of "healer" and "saviour."—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4_8" id="Footnote_4_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_8"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> "Horrible beast."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5_9" id="Footnote_5_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_9"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> "Here I stand! I cannot help myself. God help me! -Amen"—were Luther's words before the Reichstag at Worms.—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6_10" id="Footnote_6_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_10"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> E.g. Lectureships.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7_11" id="Footnote_7_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_11"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> An allusion to the well-known patriotic song.—H. B. S.</p></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="PEOPLES_AND_COUNTRIES" id="PEOPLES_AND_COUNTRIES">PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.</a></h4> -<h5>Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.</h5> - -<blockquote> -<p>[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by Nietzsche to -form a supplement to Chapter VIII. of <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>, dealing -with Peoples and Countries.]</p></blockquote> - -<hr class="r5" /> -<p class="parnum">1.</p> - -<p>The Europeans now imagine themselves as representing, in the main, the -highest types of men on earth.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">2.</p> - -<p>A characteristic of Europeans: inconsistency between word and deed; -the Oriental is true to himself in daily life. How the European has -established colonies is explained by his nature, which resembles that -of a beast of prey.</p> - -<p>This inconsistency is explained by the fact that Christianity has -abandoned the class from which it sprang.</p> - -<p>This is the difference between us and the Hellenes: their morals grew -up among the governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the same as those -that exploded everywhere with Plato.</p> - -<p>Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance, for example: always for -the benefit of the arts. Michael Angelo's conception of God as the -"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">3.</p> - -<p>I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael, because, through all the -Christian clouds and prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a -culture <i>nobler</i> than the Christo-Raphaelian: whilst Raphael truly -and modestly glorified only the values handed down to him, and did -not carry within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts. Michael -Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt the problem of the law-giver of -new values: the problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first had -to subdue the "hero within himself," the man exalted to his highest -pedestal, master even of his pity, who mercilessly shatters and -annihilates everything that does not bear his own stamp, shining in -Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo was naturally only at certain moments -so high and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe: for the most -part he adopted a condescending attitude towards the eternal feminine -in Christianity; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he broke down -before her, and gave up the ideal of his most inspired hours. It was -an ideal which only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of life -could bear; but not a man advanced in years! Indeed, he would have had -to demolish Christianity with his ideal! But he was not thinker and -philosopher enough for that Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci alone of those -artists had a really super-Christian outlook. He knows the East, the -"land of dawn," within himself as well as without himself. There is -something super-European<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> and silent in him: a characteristic of every -one who has seen too wide a circle of things good and bad.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">4.</p> - -<p>How much we have learnt and learnt anew in fifty years! The whole -Romantic School with its belief in "the people" is refuted! No Homeric -poetry as "popular" poetry! No deification of the great powers of -Nature! No deduction from language-relationship to race-relationship! -No "intellectual contemplations" of the supernatural! No truth -enshrouded in religion!</p> - -<p>The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one. I am astonished. From -this standpoint we regard such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of -carelessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of modesty; we would -condemn Plato for his <i>pia fraus</i>, Kant for the derivation of his -Categorical Imperative, his own belief certainly not having come to him -from this source.</p> - -<p>Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt in doubt. And the -question as to the <i>value</i> of truthfulness and its extent lies <i>there</i>.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">5.</p> - -<p>What I observe with pleasure in the German is his Mephistophelian -nature; but, to tell the truth, one must have a higher conception of -Mephistopheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary to <i>diminish</i> -his Mephistopheles in order to magnify his "inner Faust." The true -German Mephistopheles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> is much more dangerous, bold, wicked, and -cunning, and <i>consequently</i> more open-hearted: remember the nature -of Frederick the Great, or of that much greater Frederick, the -Hohenstaufen, Frederick II.</p> - -<p>The real German Mephistopheles crosses the Alps, and believes that -everything there belongs to him. Then he recovers himself, like -Winckelmann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and Hamlet as -caricatures, invented to be laughed at, and upon Luther also. Goethe -had his good <i>German</i> moments, when he laughed inwardly at all these -things. But then he fell back again into his cloudy moods.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">6.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a wrong climate! There is -something in them that might be Hellenic!—something that is awakened -when they are brought into touch with the South—Winckelmann, Goethe, -Mozart. We should not forget, however, that we are still young. Luther -is still our last event; our last book is still the Bible. The Germans -have never yet "moralised." Also, the very food of the Germans was -their doom: its consequence, Philistinism.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">7.</p> - -<p>The Germans are a dangerous people: they are experts at inventing -intoxicants. Gothic, rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense -and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner—Leibniz,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> too (dangerous at the -present day)—(they even idealised the serving soul as the virtue of -scholars and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The Germans may well -be the most composite people on earth.</p> - -<p>"The people of the Middle," the inventors of porcelain, and of a kind -of Chinese breed of Privy Councillor.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">8.</p> - -<p>The smallness and baseness of the German soul were not and are not -consequences of the system of small states; for it is well known that -the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud and independent: -and it is not a large state <i>per se</i> that makes souls freer and more -manly. The man whose soul obeys the slavish command: "Thou shalt and -must kneel!" in whose body there is an involuntary bowing and scraping -to titles, orders, gracious glances from above—well, such a man -in an "Empire" will only bow all the more deeply and lick the dust -more fervently in the presence of the greater sovereign than in the -presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted. We can still see in the -lower classes of Italians that aristocratic self-sufficiency; manly -discipline and self-confidence still form a part of the long history -of their country: these are virtues which once manifested themselves -before their eyes. A poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure -than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even a better man in the -end—any one can see this. Just ask the women.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">9.</p> - -<p>Most artists, even some of the greatest (including the historians) have -up to the present belonged to the serving classes (whether they serve -people of high position or princes or women or "the masses"), not to -speak of their dependence upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus -Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but only according to <i>their</i> -vague conception of taste, not according to his own measure of beauty -on the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van Dyck was nobler in -this respect: who in all those whom he painted added a certain amount -of what he himself most highly valued: he did not descend from himself, -but rather lifted up others to himself when he "rendered."</p> - -<p>The slavish humility of the artist to his public (as Sebastian Bach has -testified in undying and outrageous words in the dedication of his High -Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in music; but it is all the -more deeply engrained. A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured -to impart my views on this subject. Chopin possesses distinction, like -Van Dyck. The disposition of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant; -of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn, too, possesses -distinction—like Goethe, in the most natural way in the world.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">10.</p> - -<p>We could at any time have counted on the fingers of one hand those -German learned men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> who possessed wit: the remainder have understanding, -and a few of them, happily, that famous "childlike character" -which divines.... It is our privilege: with this "divination" German -science has discovered some things which we can hardly conceive of, and -which, after all, do not exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the -Germans who do not "divine" like them.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">11.</p> - -<p>As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and <i>esprit</i> of French society, -so do Germans reflect something of the deep, pensive earnestness of -their mystics and musicians, and also of their silly childishness. The -Italian exhibits a great deal of republican distinction and art, and -can show himself to be noble and proud without vanity.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">12.</p> - -<p>A larger number of the higher and better-endowed men will, I hope, have -in the end so much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their bad -taste for affectation and sentimental darkness, and to turn against -Richard Wagner as much as against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are -leading us to ruin; they flatter our dangerous qualities. A stronger -future is prepared for us in Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in -these racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers yet.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">13.</p> - -<p>The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse, for he is dependent upon -himself most of all. Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany -—for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck.</p> - -<p>Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the face of Germans. Everything -that had manly, exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the smug -populace remaining, the slave-souled people, there came an improvement -from abroad, especially by a mixture of Slavonic blood.</p> - -<p>The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian nobility in general (and the -peasant of certain North German districts), comprise at present the -most manly natures in Germany.</p> - -<p>That the manliest men shall rule: this is only the natural order of -things.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">14.</p> - -<p>The future of German culture rests with the sons of the Prussian -officers.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">15.</p> - -<p>There has always been a want of wit in Germany, and mediocre heads -attain there to the highest honours, because even they are rare. What -is most highly prized is diligence and perseverance and a certain -cold-blooded, critical outlook, and, for the sake of such qualities, -German scholarship and the German military system have become paramount -in Europe.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">16.</p> - -<p>Parliaments may be very useful to a strong and versatile statesman: -he has something there to rely upon (every such thing must, however, -be able to resist!)—upon which he can throw a great deal of -responsibility. On the whole, however, I could wish that the counting -mania and the superstitious belief in majorities were not established -in Germany, as with the Latin races, and that one could finally invent -something new even in politics! It is senseless and dangerous to let -the custom of universal suffrage—which is still but a short time under -cultivation, and could easily be uprooted—take a deeper root: whilst, -of course, its introduction was merely an expedient to steer clear of -temporary difficulties.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">17.</p> - -<p>Can any one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new -thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it -does not know its own mind. Peace and <i>laisser aller</i> are not types of -politics for which I have any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest -thoughts to victory—the only things that can make me interested in -Germany. England's small-mindedness is the great danger now on earth. -I observe more inclination towards greatness in the feelings of the -Russian Nihilists than in those of the English Utilitarians. We require -an intergrowth of the German and Slav races, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> we require, too, the -cleverest financiers, the Jews, for us to become masters of the world.</p> - -<p>(a) The sense of reality.</p> - -<p>(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the people's right of -representation. We require the representation of the great interests.</p> - -<p>(c) We require an unconditional union with Russia, together with a -mutual plan of action which shall not permit any English schemata to -obtain the mastery in Russia. No American future!</p> - -<p>(d) A national system of politics is untenable, and embarrassment by -Christian views is a very great evil. In Europe all sensible people are -sceptics, whether they say so or not.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">18.</p> - -<p>I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and -whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with—for I -see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly—is the United Europe. -It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the -broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century—this preparation -of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future -of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew -old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the -"Fatherlanders"—then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking -of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, -Schopenhauer. Perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, -concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can -be said without some such "perhaps."</p> - -<p>But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there -comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe—I -refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires"—will in a short time -become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle -for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even -now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In -order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery -of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive -against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to -an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for -this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new rôle of -broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. -For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to -continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility -of shutting out <i>homines novi</i> from the government will ruin her, and -her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the -carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long -period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that -he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, -as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in -the footsteps of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> Napoleon—the first man, and the man of greatest -initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the -next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are -the most inappropriate imaginable.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">19.</p> - -<p>The condition of Europe in the next century will once again lead to the -breeding of manly virtues, because men will live in continual danger. -Universal military service is already the curious antidote which we -possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas, and it has grown up out -of the struggle of the nations. (Nation—men who speak one language -and read the same newspapers. These men now call themselves "nations," -and would far too readily trace their descent from the same source and -through the same history; which, however, even with the assistance of -the most malignant lying in the past, they have not succeeded in -doing.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">20.</p> - -<p>What quagmires and mendacity must there be about if it is possible, -in the modern European hotch-potch, to raise questions of "race"! (It -being premised that the origin of such writers is not in Horneo and -Borneo.)</p> - - -<p class="parnum">21.</p> - -<p>Maxim: To associate with no man who takes any part in the mendacious -race swindle.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="parnum">22.</p> - -<p>With the freedom of travel now existing, groups of men of the same -kindred can join together and establish communal habits and customs. -The overcoming of "nations."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">23.</p> - -<p>To make Europe a centre of culture, national stupidities should not -make us blind to the fact that in the higher regions there is already a -continuous reciprocal dependence. France and German philosophy. Richard -Wagner and Paris (1830-50). Goethe and Greece. All things are impelled -towards, a synthesis of the European past in the highest types of mind.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">24.</p> - -<p>Mankind has still much before it—how, generally speaking, could -the ideal be taken from the past? Perhaps merely in relation to the -present, which latter is possibly a lower region.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">25.</p> - -<p>This is our distrust, which recurs again and again; our care, which -never lets us sleep; our question, which no one listens to or wishes -to listen to; our Sphinx, near which there is more than one precipice: -we believe that the men of present-day Europe are deceived in regard -to the things which we love best, and a pitiless demon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> (no, not -pitiless, only indifferent and puerile)—plays with our hearts and -their enthusiasm, as it may perhaps have already played with everything -that lived and loved; I believe that everything which we Europeans -of to-day are in the habit of admiring as the values of all these -respected things called "humanity," "mankind," "sympathy," "pity," may -be of some value as the debilitation and moderating of certain powerful -and dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless, in the long run all -these things are nothing else than the belittlement of the entire type -"man," his mediocrisation, if in such a desperate situation I may make -use of such a desperate expression. I think that the <i>commedia umana</i> for -an epicurean spectator-god must consist in this: that the Europeans, by -virtue of their growing morality, believe in all their innocence and -vanity that they are rising higher and higher, whereas the truth is -that they are sinking lower and lower—<i>i.e.</i> through the cultivation of -all the virtues which are useful to a herd, and through the repression -of the other and contrary virtues which give rise to a new, higher, -stronger, masterful race of men—the first-named virtues merely develop -the herd-animal in man and stabilitate the animal "man," for until now -man has been "the animal as yet unstabilitated."</p> - - -<p class="parnum">26.</p> - -<p>Genius and Epoch.—Heroism is no form of selfishness, for one is -shipwrecked by it.... The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> direction of power is often conditioned by -the state of the period in which the great man happens to be born; and -this fact brings about the superstition that he is the expression of -his time. But this same power could be applied in several different -ways; and between him and his time there is always this difference: -that public opinion always worships the herd instinct,—<i>i.e.</i> the -instinct of the weak,—while he, the strong man, rights for strong -ideals.</p> - - -<p class="parnum">27.</p> - -<p>The fate now overhanging Europe is simply this: that it is exactly -her strongest sons that come rarely and late to the spring-time of -their existence; that, as a rule, when they are already in their early -youth they perish, saddened, disgusted, darkened in mind, just because -they have already, with the entire passion of their strength, drained -to the dregs the cup of disillusionment, which in our days means the -cup of knowledge, and they would not have been the strongest had -they not also been the most disillusionised. For that is the test of -their power—they must first of all rise out of the illness of their -epoch to reach their own health. A late spring-time is their mark of -distinction; also, let us add, late merriment, late folly, the late -exuberance of joy! For this is the danger of to-day: everything that we -loved when we were young has betrayed us. Our last love—the love which -makes us acknowledge her, our love for Truth—let us take care that -she, too, does not betray us!</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Genealogy of Morals, by -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS *** - -***** This file should be named 52319-h.htm or 52319-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/2/3/1/52319/ - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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