Beyond Good and Evil
by
Friedrich Nietzsche
Part 2 out of 4
noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained.
That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the
background, is only an ADDITIONAL folly and brutishness, that the
inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its
delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a
higher inclination--whoever first perceived and "experienced"
this, however his tongue may have stammered as it attempted to
express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be holy and
respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone
astray in the finest fashion!
61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits understand him--as the
man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for
the general development of mankind,--will use religion for his
disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the
contemporary political and economic conditions. The selecting and
disciplining influence--destructive, as well as creative and
fashioning--which can be exercised by means of religion is
manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under
its spell and protection. For those who are strong and
independent, destined and trained to command, in whom the
judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is
an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of
authority--as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common,
betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the
latter, their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience.
And in the case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by
virtue of superior spirituality they should incline to a more
retired and contemplative life, reserving to themselves only the
more refined forms of government (over chosen disciples or
members of an order), religion itself may be used as a means for
obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of managing GROSSER
affairs, and for securing immunity from the UNAVOIDABLE filth of
all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance, understood
this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they
secured to themselves the power of nominating kings for the
people, while their sentiments prompted them to keep apart and
outside, as men with a higher and super-regal mission. At the
same time religion gives inducement and opportunity to some of
the subjects to qualify themselves for future ruling and
commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which,
through fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight
in self-control are on the increase. To them religion offers
sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to higher
intellectuality, and to experience the sentiments of
authoritative self-control, of silence, and of solitude.
Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of
educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its
hereditary baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy.
And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who
exist for service and general utility, and are only so far
entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with
their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of
obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with
something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of
justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all
the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Religion, together with
the religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such
perpetually harassed men, and makes even their own aspect
endurable to them, it operates upon them as the Epicurean
philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order, in
a refreshing and refining manner, almost TURNING suffering TO
ACCOUNT, and in the end even hallowing and vindicating it. There
is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as
their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by
piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to
retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they
find it difficult enough to live--this very difficulty being
necessary.
62. To be sure--to make also the bad counter-reckoning against
such religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers--the
cost is always excessive and terrible when religions do NOT
operate as an educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of
the philosopher, but rule voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they
wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other means.
Among men, as among all other animals, there is a surplus of
defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily
suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are
always the exception; and in view of the fact that man is THE
ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, the rare
exception. But worse still. The higher the type a man represents,
the greater is the improbability that he will SUCCEED; the
accidental, the law of irrationality in the general constitution
of mankind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive
effect on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives
are delicate, diverse, and difficult to determine. What, then, is
the attitude of the two greatest religions above-mentioned to the
SURPLUS of failures in life? They endeavour to preserve and keep
alive whatever can be preserved; in fact, as the religions FOR
SUFFERERS, they take the part of these upon principle; they are
always in favour of those who suffer from life as from a disease,
and they would fain treat every other experience of life as false
and impossible. However highly we may esteem this indulgent and
preservative care (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has
applied, and applies also to the highest and usually the most
suffering type of man), the hitherto PARAMOUNT religions--to give
a general appreciation of them--are among the principal causes
which have kept the type of "man" upon a lower level--they have
preserved too much THAT WHICH SHOULD HAVE PERISHED. One has to
thank them for invaluable services; and who is sufficiently rich
in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all that
the "spiritual men" of Christianity have done for Europe
hitherto! But when they had given comfort to the sufferers,
courage to the oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to
the helpless, and when they had allured from society into
convents and spiritual penitentiaries the broken-hearted and
distracted: what else had they to do in order to work
systematically in that fashion, and with a good conscience, for
the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, in
deed and in truth, to work for the DETERIORATION OF THE EUROPEAN
RACE? To REVERSE all estimates of value--THAT is what they had to
do! And to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast
suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything
autonomous, manly, conquering, and imperious--all instincts which
are natural to the highest and most successful type of "man"--
into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction;
forsooth, to invert all love of the earthly and of supremacy over
the earth, into hatred of the earth and earthly things--THAT is
the task the Church imposed on itself, and was obliged to impose,
until, according to its standard of value, "unworldliness,"
"unsensuousness," and "higher man" fused into one sentiment. If
one could observe the strangely painful, equally coarse and
refined comedy of European Christianity with the derisive and
impartial eye of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never
cease marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that
some single will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in
order to make a SUBLIME ABORTION of man? He, however, who, with
opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean) and with some divine
hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary
degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the
European Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have to
cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: "Oh, you bunglers,
presumptuous pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was that a
work for your hands? How you have hacked and botched my finest
stone! What have you presumed to do!"--I should say that
Christianity has hitherto been the most portentous of
presumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hard enough, to be
entitled as artists to take part in fashioning MAN; men, not
sufficiently strong and far-sighted to ALLOW, with sublime self-
constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and
perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the
radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that
separate man from man:--SUCH men, with their "equality before
God," have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at last a
dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious
animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the
present day.
CHAPTER IV
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
63. He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously--and even
himself--only in relation to his pupils.
64. "Knowledge for its own sake"--that is the last snare laid by
morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once
more.
65. The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much
shame has to be overcome on the way to it.
65A. We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not
PERMITTED to sin.
66. The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded,
robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a God
among men.
67. Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the
expense of all others. Love to God also!
68. "I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that,"
says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually--the memory
yields.
69. One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see
the hand that--kills with leniency.
70. If a man has character, he has also his typical experience,
which always recurs.
71. THE SAGE AS ASTRONOMER.--So long as thou feelest the stars as
an "above thee," thou lackest the eye of the discerning one.
72. It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments
that makes great men.
73. He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.
73A. Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye--and calls it
his pride.
74. A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two
things besides: gratitude and purity.
75. The degree and nature of a man's sensuality extends to the
highest altitudes of his spirit.
76. Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself.
77. With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, or
justify, or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: two men
with the same principles probably seek fundamentally different
ends therewith.
78. He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself
thereby, as a despiser.
79. A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself
love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.
80. A thing that is explained ceases to concern us--What did the
God mean who gave the advice, "Know thyself!" Did it perhaps
imply "Cease to be concerned about thyself! become objective!"--
And Socrates?--And the "scientific man"?
81. It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that
you should so salt your truth that it will no longer--quench
thirst?
82. "Sympathy for all"--would be harshness and tyranny for THEE,
my good neighbour.
83. INSTINCT--When the house is on fire one forgets even the
dinner--Yes, but one recovers it from among the ashes.
84. Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she--forgets how to
charm.
85. The same emotions are in man and woman, but in different
TEMPO, on that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand
each other.
86. In the background of all their personal vanity, women
themselves have still their impersonal scorn--for "woman".
87. FETTERED HEART, FREE SPIRIT--When one firmly fetters one's
heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one's spirit many
liberties: I said this once before But people do not believe it
when I say so, unless they know it already.
88. One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become
embarrassed.
89. Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who
experiences them is not something dreadful also.
90. Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to
their surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy--by
hatred and love.
91. So cold, so icy, that one burns one's finger at the touch of
him! Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!--And for that
very reason many think him red-hot.
92. Who has not, at one time or another--sacrificed himself for
the sake of his good name?
93. In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on
that account a great deal too much contempt of men.
94. The maturity of man--that means, to have reacquired the
seriousness that one had as a child at play.
95. To be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at
the end of which one is ashamed also of one's morality.
96. One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa--
blessing it rather than in love with it.
97. What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his
own ideal.
98. When one trains one's conscience, it kisses one while it
bites.
99. THE DISAPPOINTED ONE SPEAKS--"I listened for the echo and I
heard only praise".
100. We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are,
we thus relax ourselves away from our fellows.
101. A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as
the animalization of God.
102. Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the
lover with regard to the beloved. "What! She is modest enough to
love even you? Or stupid enough? Or--or---"
103. THE DANGER IN HAPPINESS.--"Everything now turns out best for
me, I now love every fate:--who would like to be my fate?"
104. Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love,
prevents the Christians of today--burning us.
105. The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the
"piety") of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge") than
the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in
comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type "free
spirit"--as ITS non-freedom.
106. By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.
107. A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has
been taken, to shut the ear even to the best counter-arguments.
Occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity.
108. There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral
interpretation of phenomena.
109. The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he
extenuates and maligns it.
110. The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to
turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of
the doer.
111. Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride
has been wounded.
112. To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and
not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he
guards against them.
113. "You want to prepossess him in your favour? Then you must be
embarrassed before him."
114. The immense expectation with regard to sexual love, and the
coyness in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women
at the outset.
115. Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman's
play is mediocre.
116. The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain
courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.
117. The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will
of another, or of several other, emotions.
118. There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him
to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired
some day.
119. Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our
cleaning ourselves--"justifying" ourselves.
120. Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that
its root remains weak, and is easily torn up.
121. It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished
to turn author--and that he did not learn it better.
122. To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely
politeness of heart--and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.
123. Even concubinage has been corrupted--by marriage.
124. He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but
because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected
it. A parable.
125. When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge
heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.
126. A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven
great men.--Yes, and then to get round them.
127. In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the
sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their
skin with it--or worse still! under their dress and finery.
128. The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must
you allure the senses to it.
129. The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on
that account he keeps so far away from him:--the devil, in
effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge.
130. What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent
decreases,--when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also
an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.
131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is
that in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their
own ideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman
to be peaceable: but in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable,
like the cat, however well she may have assumed the peaceable
demeanour.
132. One is punished best for one's virtues.
133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more
frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal.
134. From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good
conscience, all evidence of truth.
135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a
considerable part of it is rather an essential condition of being
good.
136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other
seeks some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus
originates.
137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes
mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not
infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre
artist, one finds a very remarkable man.
138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent
and imagine him with whom we have intercourse--and forget it
immediately.
139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE.--"If the band is not to break, bite it
first--secure to make!"
141. The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take
himself for a God.
142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dans le veritable
amour c'est I l'ame qui enveloppe le corps."
143. Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for
what is most difficult to us.--Concerning the origin of many
systems of morals.
144. When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally
something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself
conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may
say so, is "the barren animal."
145. Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman
would not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the
instinct for the SECONDARY role.
146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he
thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss,
the abyss will also gaze into thee.
147. From old Florentine novels--moreover, from life: Buona
femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone.--Sacchetti, Nov. 86.
148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and
afterwards to believe implicitly in this opinion of their
neighbour--who can do this conjuring trick so well as women?
149. That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable
echo of what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old
ideal.
150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the
demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God
everything becomes--what? perhaps a "world"?
151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have
your permission to possess it;--eh, my friends?
152. "Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always
Paradise": so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.
153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and
evil.
154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are
signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with
sensuousness.
156. Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups,
parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of
it one gets successfully through many a bad night.
158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to
our strongest impulse--the tyrant in us.
159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who
did us good or ill?
160. One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one
has communicated it.
161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they
exploit them.
162. "Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our
neighbour's neighbour":--so thinks every nation.
163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a
lover--his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be
deceptive as to his normal character.
164. Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants;--love God
as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with
morals!"
165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY.--A shepherd has always need of a
bell-wether--or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.
166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying
grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame--and something
precious.
168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of
it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing
oneself.
170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge,
like tender hands on a Cyclops.
172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to
mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one
must never confess to the individual.
173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when
one esteems equal or superior.
174. Ye Utilitarians--ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE
for your inclinations,--ye, too, really find the noise of its
wheels insupportable!
175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is
counter to our vanity.
177. With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has
ever been sufficiently truthful.
178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a
forfeiture of the rights of man!
179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock,
very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed."
180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good
faith in a cause.
181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may
not be returned.
183. "I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but
because I can no longer believe in you."
184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance
of wickedness.
185. "I dislike him."--Why?--"I am not a match for him."--Did any
one ever answer so?
CHAPTER V
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as
subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science
of Morals" belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and
coarse-fingered:--an interesting contrast, which sometimes
becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist.
Indeed, the expression, "Science of Morals" is, in respect to
what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter to
GOOD taste,--which is always a foretaste of more modest
expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT is
still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for
the present: namely, the collection of material, the
comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of
delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth, which
live, grow, propagate, and perish--and perhaps attempts to give a
clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of these living
crystallizations--as preparation for a THEORY OF TYPES of
morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest.
All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness,
demanded of themselves something very much higher, more
pretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with
morality as a science: they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality--
and every philosopher hitherto has believed that he has given it
a basis; morality itself, however, has been regarded as something
"given." How far from their awkward pride was the seemingly
insignificant problem--left in dust and decay--of a description
of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and
senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing
to moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an
arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement--perhaps as the
morality of their environment, their position, their church,
their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone--it was precisely because
they were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past
ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters,
that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of
morals--problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison
of MANY kinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals" hitherto,
strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been
OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything
problematic there! That which philosophers called "giving a basis
to morality," and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a
right light, proved merely a learned form of good FAITH in
prevailing morality, a new means of its EXPRESSION, consequently
just a matter-of-fact within the sphere of a definite morality,
yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is LAWFUL
for this morality to be called in question--and in any case the
reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of
this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what innocence--almost
worthy of honour--Schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw
your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a "Science"
whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and old
wives: "The principle," he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme
der Ethik), [Footnote: Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of
Morality, translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M.A. (1903).] "the
axiom about the purport of which all moralists are PRACTICALLY
agreed: neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva--is REALLY
the proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish,
. . . the REAL basis of ethics which has been sought, like
the philosopher's stone, for centuries."--The difficulty of
establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great--it
is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his
efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false
and sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is
Will to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a
pessimist, ACTUALLY--played the flute . . . daily after dinner:
one may read about the matter in his biography. A question by the
way: a pessimist, a repudiator of God and of the world, who MAKES
A HALT at morality--who assents to morality, and plays the flute
to laede-neminem morals, what? Is that really--a pessimist?
187. Apart from the value of such assertions as "there is a
categorical imperative in us," one can always ask: What does such
an assertion indicate about him who makes it? There are systems
of morals which are meant to justify their author in the eyes of
other people; other systems of morals are meant to tranquilize
him, and make him self-satisfied; with other systems he wants to
crucify and humble himself, with others he wishes to take revenge,
with others to conceal himself, with others to glorify himself and
gave superiority and distinction,--this system of morals helps its
author to forget, that system makes him, or something of him,
forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and
creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant
especially, gives us to understand by his morals that "what is
estimable in me, is that I know how to obey--and with you it SHALL
not be otherwise than with me!" In short, systems of morals are
only a SIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS.
188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a
sort of tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason", that
is, however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some
system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness
are unlawful What is essential and invaluable in every system of
morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to understand
Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the
constraint under which every language has attained to strength
and freedom--the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and
rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and orators of every
nation given themselves!--not excepting some of the prose writers
of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientiousness--
"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers say, and
thereby deem themselves wise--"from submission to arbitrary
laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves
"free," even free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however,
that everything of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness,
dance, and masterly certainty, which exists or has existed,
whether it be in thought itself, or in administration, or in
speaking and persuading, in art just as in conduct, has only
developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law, and in
all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this
is "nature" and "natural"--and not laisser-aller! Every artist
knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his
"most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating,
disposing, and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"--and
how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which,
by their very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by
means of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison
therewith, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it).
The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is, apparently (to
repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE in the
same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in
the long run, something which has made life worth living; for
instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--
anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or
divine. The long bondage of the spirit, the distrustful
constraint in the communicability of ideas, the discipline which
the thinker imposed on himself to think in accordance with the
rules of a church or a court, or conformable to Aristotelian
premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret everything
that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every
occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:--all this
violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and
unreasonableness, has proved itself the disciplinary means
whereby the European spirit has attained its strength, its
remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility; granted also that much
irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated,
and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere, "nature"
shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFERENT
magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That
for centuries European thinkers only thought in order to prove
something-nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every
thinker who "wishes to prove something"--that it was always
settled beforehand what WAS TO BE the result of their strictest
thinking, as it was perhaps in the Asiatic astrology of former
times, or as it is still at the present day in the innocent,
Christian-moral explanation of immediate personal events "for the
glory of God," or "for the good of the soul":--this tyranny, this
arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent stupidity, has
EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and the finer
sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual
education and discipline. One may look at every system of morals
in this light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the
laisser-aller, the too great freedom, and implants the need for
limited horizons, for immediate duties--it teaches the NARROWING
OF PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in a certain sense, that stupidity is
a condition of life and development. "Thou must obey some one,
and for a long time; OTHERWISE thou wilt come to grief, and lose
all respect for thyself"--this seems to me to be the moral
imperative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical,"
as old Kant wished (consequently the "otherwise"), nor does it
address itself to the individual (what does nature care for the
individual!), but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all,
however, to the animal "man" generally, to MANKIND.
189. Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it
was a master stroke of ENGLISH instinct to hallow and begloom
Sunday to such an extent that the Englishman unconsciously
hankers for his week--and work-day again:--as a kind of cleverly
devised, cleverly intercalated FAST, such as is also frequently
found in the ancient world (although, as is appropriate in
southern nations, not precisely with respect to work). Many kinds
of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful influences and
habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary days are
appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to
hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations
and epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral
fanaticism, seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and
fasting, during which an impulse learns to humble and submit
itself--at the same time also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself;
certain philosophical sects likewise admit of a similar
interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst of Hellenic
culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with
Aphrodisiacal odours).--Here also is a hint for the explanation
of the paradox, why it was precisely in the most Christian period
of European history, and in general only under the pressure of
Christian sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimated into
love (amour-passion).
190. There is something in the morality of Plato which does not
really belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy,
one might say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he
himself was too noble. "No one desires to injure himself, hence
all evil is done unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on
himself; he would not do so, however, if he knew that evil is
evil. The evil man, therefore, is only evil through error; if one
free him from error one will necessarily make him--good."--This
mode of reasoning savours of the POPULACE, who perceive only the
unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically judge that
"it is STUPID to do wrong"; while they accept "good" as identical
with "useful and pleasant," without further thought. As regards
every system of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it
has the same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err.--
Plato did all he could to interpret something refined and noble
into the tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret
himself into them--he, the most daring of all interpreters, who
lifted the entire Socrates out of the street, as a popular theme
and song, to exhibit him in endless and impossible modifications
--namely, in all his own disguises and multiplicities. In jest,
and in Homeric language as well, what is the Platonic Socrates,
if not-- [Greek words inserted here.]
191. The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge," or
more plainly, of instinct and reason--the question whether, in
respect to the valuation of things, instinct deserves more
authority than rationality, which wants to appreciate and act
according to motives, according to a "Why," that is to say, in
conformity to purpose and utility--it is always the old moral
problem that first appeared in the person of Socrates, and had
divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates himself,
following, of course, the taste of his talent--that of a
surpassing dialectician--took first the side of reason; and, in
fact, what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward
incapacity of the noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like
all noble men, and could never give satisfactory answers
concerning the motives of their actions? In the end, however,
though silently and secretly, he laughed also at himself: with
his finer conscience and introspection, he found in himself the
same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"--he said to himself--
"should one on that account separate oneself from the instincts!
One must set them right, and the reason ALSO--one must follow the
instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support
them with good arguments." This was the real FALSENESS of that
great and mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the
point that he was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in
fact, he perceived the irrationality in the moral judgment.--
Plato, more innocent in such matters, and without the craftiness
of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself, at the expenditure
of all his strength--the greatest strength a philosopher had ever
expended--that reason and instinct lead spontaneously to one
goal, to the good, to "God"; and since Plato, all theologians and
philosophers have followed the same path--which means that in
matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it, "Faith,"
or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless one
should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of
rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution),
who recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a
tool, and Descartes was superficial.
192. Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds
in its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and
commonest processes of all "knowledge and cognizance": there, as
here, the premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid
will to "belief," and the lack of distrust and patience are first
developed--our senses learn late, and never learn completely, to
be subtle, reliable, and cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes
find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture already
often produced, than to seize upon the divergence and novelty of
an impression: the latter requires more force, more "morality."
It is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything
new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear another language
spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds into words
with which we are more familiar and conversant--it was thus, for
example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA
into ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse
to the new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of
sensation, the emotions DOMINATE--such as fear, love, hatred, and
the passive emotion of indolence.--As little as a reader nowadays
reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page
--he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at random,
and "guesses" the probably appropriate sense to them--just as
little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to
its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much
easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the
most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we
fabricate the greater part of the experience, and can hardly be
made to contemplate any event, EXCEPT as "inventors" thereof. All
this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature and from
remote ages we have been--ACCUSTOMED TO LYING. Or, to express it
more politely and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly--one
is much more of an artist than one is aware of.--In an animated
conversation, I often see the face of the person with whom I am
speaking so clearly and sharply defined before me, according to
the thought he expresses, or which I believe to be evoked in his
mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the STRENGTH of
my visual faculty--the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of
the expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by me.
Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none
at all.
193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise.
What we experience in dreams, provided we experience it often,
pertains at last just as much to the general belongings of our
soul as anything "actually" experienced; by virtue thereof we are
richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or less, and
finally, in broad daylight, and even in the brightest moments of
our waking life, we are ruled to some extent by the nature of our
dreams. Supposing that someone has often flown in his dreams, and
that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious of the power
and art of flying as his privilege and his peculiarly enviable
happiness; such a person, who believes that on the slightest
impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who
knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards"
without effort or constraint, a "downwards" without descending or
lowering--without TROUBLE!--how could the man with such dream-
experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently
coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could he
fail--to long DIFFERENTLY for happiness? "Flight," such as is
described by poets, must, when compared with his own "flying," be
far too earthly, muscular, violent, far too "troublesome" for
him.
194. The difference among men does not manifest itself only in
the difference of their lists of desirable things--in their
regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being
disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of
the commonly recognized desirable things:--it manifests itself
much more in what they regard as actually HAVING and POSSESSING a
desirable thing. As regards a woman, for instance, the control
over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply
sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more modest
man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for
possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere apparentness of
such ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know
especially whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but
also gives up for his sake what she has or would like to have--
only THEN does he look upon her as "possessed." A third, however,
has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire
for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives
up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a phantom of
him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well
known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be
found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his
possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when
she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and
concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and
spirituality. One man would like to possess a nation, and he
finds all the higher arts of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for
his purpose. Another, with a more refined thirst for possession,
says to himself: "One may not deceive where one desires to
possess"--he is irritated and impatient at the idea that a mask
of him should rule in the hearts of the people: "I must,
therefore, MAKE myself known, and first of all learn to know
myself!" Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always
finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up suitably him who
has to be helped, as though, for instance, he should "merit"
help, seek just THEIR help, and would show himself deeply
grateful, attached, and subservient to them for all help. With
these conceits, they take control of the needy as a property,
just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a
desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed
or forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make
something like themselves out of their children--they call that
"education"; no mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that the
child she has borne is thereby her property, no father hesitates
about his right to HIS OWN ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in
former times fathers deemed it right to use their discretion
concerning the life or death of the newly born (as among the
ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the teacher,
the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new
individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession.
The consequence is . . .
195. The Jews--a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the
whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the
nations," as they themselves say and believe--the Jews performed
the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which
life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of
millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions
"rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the
first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. In this
inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the
word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the
significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM
that the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences.
196. It is to be INFERRED that there are countless dark bodies
near the sun--such as we shall never see. Among ourselves, this
is an allegory; and the psychologist of morals reads the whole
star-writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in
which much may be unexpressed.
197. The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar
Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is
misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in the
constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and
growths, or even an innate "hell" in them--as almost all
moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is a
hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists?
And that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs,
whether as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own
hell and self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate
zones"? In favour of the temperate men? The "moral"? The
mediocre?--This for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."
198. All the systems of morals which address themselves with a
view to their "happiness," as it is called--what else are they
but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER
from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their
passions, their good and bad propensities, insofar as such have
the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and
great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty
odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them
grotesque and absurd in their form--because they address
themselves to "all," because they generalize where generalization
is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, and
taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not
merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and
sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to
smell dangerously, especially of "the other world." That is all
of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from
being "science," much less "wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and
three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency,
mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity--whether it be the
indifference and statuesque coldness towards the heated folly of
the emotions, which the Stoics advised and fostered; or the no-
more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of
the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he
recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an
innocent mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism
of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a
voluntary attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of
art, perhaps as music, or as love of God, and of mankind for
God's sake--for in religion the passions are once more
enfranchised, provided that . . . ; or, finally, even the complaisant
and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis
and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual and
corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old
codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much danger."
--This also for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."
199. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed,
there have also been human herds (family alliances, communities,
tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always a great number who
obey in proportion to the small number who command--in view,
therefore, of the fact that obedience has been most practiced and
fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that,
generally speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every one,
as a kind of FORMAL CONSCIENCE which gives the command "Thou
shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally refrain from
something", in short, "Thou shalt". This need tries to satisfy
itself and to fill its form with a content, according to its
strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an
omnivorous appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever
is shouted into its ear by all sorts of commanders--parents,
teachers, laws, class prejudices, or public opinion. The
extraordinary limitation of human development, the hesitation,
protractedness, frequent retrogression, and turning thereof, is
attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of obedience is
transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. If one
imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent,
commanders and independent individuals will finally be lacking
altogether, or they will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience,
and will have to impose a deception on themselves in the first
place in order to be able to command just as if they also were
only obeying. This condition of things actually exists in Europe
at present--I call it the moral hypocrisy of the commanding
class. They know no other way of protecting themselves from their
bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older and
higher orders (of predecessors, of the constitution, of justice,
of the law, or of God himself), or they even justify themselves
by maxims from the current opinions of the herd, as "first
servants of their people," or "instruments of the public weal".
On the other hand, the gregarious European man nowadays assumes
an air as if he were the only kind of man that is allowable, he
glorifies his qualities, such as public spirit, kindness,
deference, industry, temperance, modesty, indulgence, sympathy,
by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and useful to the
herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however, where
it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be
dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace
commanders by the summing together of clever gregarious men all
representative constitutions, for example, are of this origin. In
spite of all, what a blessing, what a deliverance from a weight
becoming unendurable, is the appearance of an absolute ruler for
these gregarious Europeans--of this fact the effect of the
appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof the history of
the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher
happiness to which the entire century has attained in its
worthiest individuals and periods.
200. The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with
one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in
his body--that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary,
instincts and standards of value, which struggle with one another
and are seldom at peace--such a man of late culture and broken
lights, will, on an average, be a weak man. His fundamental
desire is that the war which is IN HIM should come to an end;
happiness appears to him in the character of a soothing medicine
and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean or Christian); it is
above all things the happiness of repose, of undisturbedness, of
repletion, of final unity--it is the "Sabbath of Sabbaths," to
use the expression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine, who
was himself such a man.--Should, however, the contrariety and
conflict in such natures operate as an ADDITIONAL incentive and
stimulus to life--and if, on the other hand, in addition to their
powerful and irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited
and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for
carrying on the conflict with themselves (that is to say, the
faculty of self-control and self-deception), there then arise
those marvelously incomprehensible and inexplicable beings, those
enigmatical men, predestined for conquering and circumventing
others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades and Caesar
(with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans
according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second),
and among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear
precisely in the same periods when that weaker type, with its
longing for repose, comes to the front; the two types are
complementary to each other, and spring from the same causes.
201. As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is
only gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the
community is only kept in view, and the immoral is sought
precisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the
maintenance of the community, there can be no "morality of love
to one's neighbour." Granted even that there is already a little
constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness,
gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this
condition of society all those instincts are already active which
are latterly distinguished by honourable names as "virtues," and
eventually almost coincide with the conception "morality": in
that period they do not as yet belong to the domain of moral
valuations--they are still ULTRA-MORAL. A sympathetic action, for
instance, is neither called good nor bad, moral nor immoral, in
the best period of the Romans; and should it be praised, a sort
of resentful disdain is compatible with this praise, even at the
best, directly the sympathetic action is compared with one which
contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the RES PUBLICA.
After all, "love to our neighbour" is always a secondary matter,
partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our
FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. After the fabric of society seems on the
whole established and secured against external dangers, it is
this fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives
of moral valuation. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such
as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness,
astuteness, rapacity, and love of power, which up till then had
not only to be honoured from the point of view of general
utility--under other names, of course, than those here given--but
had to be fostered and cultivated (because they were perpetually
required in the common danger against the common enemies), are
now felt in their dangerousness to be doubly strong--when the
outlets for them are lacking--and are gradually branded as
immoral and given over to calumny. The contrary instincts and
inclinations now attain to moral honour, the gregarious instinct
gradually draws its conclusions. How much or how little
dangerousness to the community or to equality is contained in an
opinion, a condition, an emotion, a disposition, or an endowment--
that is now the moral perspective, here again fear is the mother
of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongest instincts, when
they break out passionately and carry the individual far above
and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious
conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed,
its belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks,
consequently these very instincts will be most branded and
defamed. The lofty independent spirituality, the will to stand
alone, and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dangers,
everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a
source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called EVIL, the
tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing disposition,
the MEDIOCRITY of desires, attains to moral distinction and
honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is
always less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings
to severity and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in
justice, begins to disturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorous
nobleness and self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens
distrust, "the lamb," and still more "the sheep," wins respect.
There is a point of diseased mellowness and effeminacy in the
history of society, at which society itself takes the part of him
who injures it, the part of the CRIMINAL, and does so, in fact,
seriously and honestly. To punish, appears to it to be somehow
unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and "the
obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people.
"Is it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why
should we still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!"--with
these questions gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws
its ultimate conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger,
the cause of fear, one would have done away with this morality at
the same time, it would no longer be necessary, it WOULD NOT
CONSIDER ITSELF any longer necessary!--Whoever examines the
conscience of the present-day European, will always elicit the
same imperative from its thousand moral folds and hidden
recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd "we wish
that some time or other there may be NOTHING MORE TO FEAR!" Some
time or other--the will and the way THERETO is nowadays called
"progress" all over Europe.
202. Let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred
times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such
truths--OUR truths. We know well enough how offensive it sounds
when any one plainly, and without metaphor, counts man among the
animals, but it will be accounted to us almost a CRIME, that it
is precisely in respect to men of "modern ideas" that we have
constantly applied the terms "herd," "herd-instincts," and such
like expressions. What avail is it? We cannot do otherwise, for
it is precisely here that our new insight is. We have found that
in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become
unanimous, including likewise the countries where European
influence prevails in Europe people evidently KNOW what Socrates
thought he did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once
promised to teach--they "know" today what is good and evil. It
must then sound hard and be distasteful to the ear, when we
always insist that that which here thinks it knows, that which
here glorifies itself with praise and blame, and calls itself
good, is the instinct of the herding human animal, the instinct
which has come and is ever coming more and more to the front, to
preponderance and supremacy over other instincts, according to
the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance of
which it is the symptom. MORALITY IN EUROPE AT PRESENT IS
HERDING-ANIMAL MORALITY, and therefore, as we understand the
matter, only one kind of human morality, beside which, before
which, and after which many other moralities, and above all
HIGHER moralities, are or should be possible. Against such a
"possibility," against such a "should be," however, this morality
defends itself with all its strength, it says obstinately and
inexorably "I am morality itself and nothing else is morality!"
Indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured and
flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things
have reached such a point that we always find a more visible
expression of this morality even in political and social
arrangements: the DEMOCRATIC movement is the inheritance of the
Christian movement. That its TEMPO, however, is much too slow and
sleepy for the more impatient ones, for those who are sick and
distracted by the herding-instinct, is indicated by the
increasingly furious howling, and always less disguised teeth-
gnashing of the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the
highways of European culture. Apparently in opposition to the
peacefully industrious democrats and Revolution-ideologues, and
still more so to the awkward philosophasters and fraternity-
visionaries who call themselves Socialists and want a "free
society," those are really at one with them all in their thorough
and instinctive hostility to every form of society other than
that of the AUTONOMOUS herd (to the extent even of repudiating
the notions "master" and "servant"--ni dieu ni maitre, says a
socialist formula); at one in their tenacious opposition to every
special claim, every special right and privilege (this means
ultimately opposition to EVERY right, for when all are equal, no
one needs "rights" any longer); at one in their distrust of
punitive justice (as though it were a violation of the weak,
unfair to the NECESSARY consequences of all former society); but
equally at one in their religion of sympathy, in their compassion
for all that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the very animals,
up even to "God"--the extravagance of "sympathy for God" belongs
to a democratic age); altogether at one in the cry and impatience
of their sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering generally,
in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or ALLOWING
it; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening,
under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatened with a new
Buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of MUTUAL
sympathy, as though it were morality in itself, the climax, the
ATTAINED climax of mankind, the sole hope of the future, the
consolation of the present, the great discharge from all the
obligations of the past; altogether at one in their belief in the
community as the DELIVERER, in the herd, and therefore in
"themselves."
203. We, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the
democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political
organization, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type
of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where
have WE to fix our hopes? In NEW PHILOSOPHERS--there is no other
alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate
opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal
valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the
present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will
compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future of
humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make
preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective
attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end
to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone
by the name of "history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is
only its last form)--for that purpose a new type of philosopher
and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea
of which everything that has existed in the way of occult,
terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed. The
image of such leaders hovers before OUR eyes:--is it lawful for
me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The conditions which one
would partly have to create and partly utilize for their genesis;
the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which a soul
should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a
CONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the
new pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled
and a heart transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of
such responsibility; and on the other hand the necessity for such
leaders, the dreadful danger that they might be lacking, or
miscarry and degenerate:--these are OUR real anxieties and
glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits! these are the heavy
distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven of OUR
life. There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined,
or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal
danger of "man" himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has
recognized the extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto
played its game in respect to the future of mankind--a game in
which neither the hand, nor even a "finger of God" has
participated!--he who divines the fate that is hidden under the
idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of "modern ideas," and
still more under the whole of Christo-European morality-suffers
from an anguish with which no other is to be compared. He sees at
a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through a
favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and
arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction
how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and
how often in the past the type man has stood in presence of
mysterious decisions and new paths:--he knows still better from
his painfulest recollections on what wretched obstacles promising
developments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to
pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible. The UNIVERSAL
DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of the "man of the future"--as
idealized by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates--this
degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal
(or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this
brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is
undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to
its ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the
rest of mankind--and perhaps also a new MISSION!
CHAPTER VI
WE SCHOLARS
204. At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as
that which it has always been--namely, resolutely MONTRER SES
PLAIES, according to Balzac--I would venture to protest against
an improper and injurious alteration of rank, which quite
unnoticed, and as if with the best conscience, threatens nowadays
to establish itself in the relations of science and philosophy. I
mean to say that one must have the right out of one's own
EXPERIENCE--experience, as it seems to me, always implies
unfortunate experience?--to treat of such an important question
of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST
science like women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful science!" sigh
their instinct and their shame, "it always FINDS THINGS OUT!").
The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his
emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler after-effects
of democratic organization and disorganization: the self-
glorification and self-conceitedness of the learned man is now
everywhere in full bloom, and in its best springtime--which does
not mean to imply that in this case self-praise smells sweet.
Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom from all
masters!" and after science has, with the happiest results,
resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now
proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for
philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"--what am I
saying! to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory--
the memory of a scientific man, if you please!--teems with the
naivetes of insolence which I have heard about philosophy and
philosophers from young naturalists and old physicians (not to
mention the most cultured and most conceited of all learned men,
the philologists and schoolmasters, who are both the one and the
other by profession). On one occasion it was the specialist and
the Jack Horner who instinctively stood on the defensive against
all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time it was the
industrious worker who had got a scent of OTIUM and refined
luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and
felt himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion
it was the colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing
in philosophy but a series of REFUTED systems, and an extravagant
expenditure which "does nobody any good". At another time the
fear of disguised mysticism and of the boundary-adjustment of
knowledge became conspicuous, at another time the disregard of
individual philosophers, which had involuntarily extended to
disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most
frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young
scholars, the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher,
to whom on the whole obedience had been foresworn, without,
however, the spell of his scornful estimates of other
philosophers having been got rid of--the result being a general
ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to me, for instance, the
after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern Germany: by his
unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in severing
the whole of the last generation of Germans from its connection
with German culture, which culture, all things considered, has
been an elevation and a divining refinement of the HISTORICAL
SENSE, but precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor,
irreceptive, and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness.) On
the whole, speaking generally, it may just have been the
humanness, all-too-humanness of the modern philosophers
themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which has injured
most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the doors
to the instinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to
what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of
the world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all
the royal and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called,
and with what justice an honest man of science MAY feel himself
of a better family and origin, in view of such representatives of
philosophy, who, owing to the fashion of the present day, are
just as much aloft as they are down below--in Germany, for
instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist Eugen Duhring
and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially the
sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves
"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a
dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar
those philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and
specialists, that is very evident! All of them are persons who
have been vanquished and BROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominion of
science, who at one time or another claimed more from themselves,
without having a right to the "more" and its responsibility--and
who now, creditably, rancorously, and vindictively, represent in
word and deed, DISBELIEF in the master-task and supremacy of
philosophy After all, how could it be otherwise? Science
flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible
on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern
philosophy has gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the
present day, excites distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and
pity Philosophy reduced to a "theory of knowledge," no more in
fact than a diffident science of epochs and doctrine of
forbearance a philosophy that never even gets beyond the
threshold, and rigorously DENIES itself the right to enter--that
is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, something
that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy--RULE!
205. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are,
in fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this
fruit could still come to maturity. The extent and towering
structure of the sciences have increased enormously, and
therewith also the probability that the philosopher will grow
tired even as a learner, or will attach himself somewhere and
"specialize" so that he will no longer attain to his elevation,
that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection, and his
DESPECTION. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his
maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened,
and deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of
things, is no longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the
refinement of his intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate
and linger on the way, he dreads the temptation to become a
dilettante, a millepede, a milleantenna, he knows too well that
as a discerner, one who has lost his self-respect no longer
commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should aspire to become a
great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and spiritual rat-
catcher--in short, a misleader. This is in the last instance a
question of taste, if it has not really been a question of
conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties,
there is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a
Yea or Nay, not concerning science, but concerning life and the
worth of life--he learns unwillingly to believe that it is his
right and even his duty to obtain this verdict, and he has to
seek his way to the right and the belief only through the most
extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying) experiences, often
hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the philosopher
has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with
the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously
elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-
intoxicated man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised,
because he lives "wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means
anything more than "prudently and apart." Wisdom: that seems to
the populace to be a kind of flight, a means and artifice for
withdrawing successfully from a bad game; but the GENUINE
philosopher--does it not seem so to US, my friends?--lives
"unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all, IMPRUDENTLY, and
feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts and
temptations of life--he risks HIMSELF constantly, he plays THIS
bad game.
206. In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who
either ENGENDERS or PRODUCES--both words understood in their
fullest sense--the man of learning, the scientific average man,
has always something of the old maid about him; for, like her, he
is not conversant with the two principal functions of man. To
both, of course, to the scholar and to the old maid, one concedes
respectability, as if by way of indemnification--in these cases
one emphasizes the respectability--and yet, in the compulsion of
this concession, one has the same admixture of vexation. Let us
examine more closely: what is the scientific man? Firstly, a
commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is to
say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient
type of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank
and file, equability and moderation in capacity and requirement;
he has the instinct for people like himself, and for that which
they require--for instance: the portion of independence and green
meadow without which there is no rest from labour, the claim to
honour and consideration (which first and foremost presupposes
recognition and recognisability), the sunshine of a good name,
the perpetual ratification of his value and usefulness, with
which the inward DISTRUST which lies at the bottom of the heart
of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and again
to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also
maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy,
and has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose
elevations he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who
lets himself go, but does not FLOW; and precisely before the man
of the great current he stands all the colder and more reserved--
his eye is then like a smooth and irresponsive lake, which is no
longer moved by rapture or sympathy. The worst and most dangerous
thing of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct of
mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of mediocrity, which
labours instinctively for the destruction of the exceptional man,
and endeavours to break--or still better, to relax--every bent
bow To relax, of course, with consideration, and naturally with
an indulgent hand--to RELAX with confiding sympathy that is the
real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to
introduce itself as the religion of sympathy.
207. However gratefully one may welcome the OBJECTIVE spirit--and
who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its
confounded IPSISIMOSITY!--in the end, however, one must learn
caution even with regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to
the exaggeration with which the unselfing and depersonalizing of
the spirit has recently been celebrated, as if it were the goal
in itself, as if it were salvation and glorification--as is
especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist school, which
has also in its turn good reasons for paying the highest honours
to "disinterested knowledge" The objective man, who no longer
curses and scolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of learning
in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a
thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the
most costly instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand
of one who is more powerful He is only an instrument, we may say,
he is a MIRROR--he is no "purpose in himself" The objective man
is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything
that wants to be known, with such desires only as knowing or
"reflecting" implies--he waits until something comes, and then
expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and
gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface
and film Whatever "personality" he still possesses seems to him
accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has
he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of
outside forms and events He calls up the recollection of
"himself" with an effort, and not infrequently wrongly, he
readily confounds himself with other persons, he makes mistakes
with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and
negligent Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the
pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack
of companions and society--indeed, he sets himself to reflect on
his suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the
MORE GENERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew
yesterday how to help himself He does not now take himself
seriously and devote time to himself he is serene, NOT from lack
of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing
with HIS trouble The habitual complaisance with respect to all
objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality
with which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit
of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea
and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone
for these virtues of his!--and as man generally, he becomes far
too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should one wish
love or hatred from him--I mean love and hatred as God, woman,
and animal understand them--he will do what he can, and furnish
what he can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be
much--if he should show himself just at this point to be false,
fragile, questionable, and deteriorated. His love is constrained,
his hatred is artificial, and rather UNN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight
ostentation and exaggeration. He is only genuine so far as he can
be objective; only in his serene totality is he still "nature"
and "natural." His mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no
longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not
command; neither does he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE PRESQUE RIEN"--
he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the
PRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of
any one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far
off to have any reason for espousing the cause of either good or
evil. If he has been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER,
with the Caesarian trainer and dictator of civilization, he has
had far too much honour, and what is more essential in him has
been overlooked--he is an instrument, something of a slave,
though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but nothing in
himself--PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man is an instrument, a
costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and
mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected;
but he is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man
in whom the REST of existence justifies itself, no termination--
and still less a commencement, an engendering, or primary cause,
nothing hardy, powerful, self-centred, that wants to be master;
but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate, movable potter's-
form, that must wait for some kind of content and frame to
"shape" itself thereto--for the most part a man without frame and
content, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, nothing for women,
IN PARENTHESI.
208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a
skeptic--I hope that has been gathered from the foregoing
description of the objective spirit?--people all hear it
impatiently; they regard him on that account with some
apprehension, they would like to ask so many, many questions . . .
indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many, he is
henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of
skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-
threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive
were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a
newly discovered Russian NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS,
that not only denies, means denial, but-dreadful thought!
PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of "good-will"--a will to the
veritable, actual negation of life--there is, as is generally
acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative than
skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism; and
Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an
antidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "Are not
our ears already full of bad sounds?" say the skeptics, as lovers
of repose, and almost as a kind of safety police; "this
subterranean Nay is terrible! Be still, ye pessimistic moles!"
The skeptic, in effect, that delicate creature, is far too easily
frightened; his conscience is schooled so as to start at every
Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels something
like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay!--they seem to him opposed to
morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his
virtue by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with
Montaigne: "What do I know?" Or with Socrates: "I know that I
know nothing." Or: "Here I do not trust myself, no door is open
to me." Or: "Even if the door were open, why should I enter
immediately?" Or: "What is the use of any hasty hypotheses? It
might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses at all.
Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is crooked?
to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time
enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh, ye demons, can ye
not at all WAIT? The uncertain also has its charms, the Sphinx,
too, is a Circe, and Circe, too, was a philosopher."--Thus does a
skeptic console himself; and in truth he needs some consolation.
For skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain
many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language
is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever
races or classes which have been long separated, decisively and
suddenly blend with one another. In the new generation, which has
inherited as it were different standards and valuations in its
blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and
tentativeness; the best powers operate restrictively, the very
virtues prevent each other growing and becoming strong,
equilibrium, ballast, and perpendicular stability are lacking in
body and soul. That, however, which is most diseased and
degenerated in such nondescripts is the WILL; they are no longer
familiar with independence of decision, or the courageous feeling
of pleasure in willing--they are doubtful of the "freedom of the
will" even in their dreams Our present-day Europe, the scene of a
senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blending of classes,
and CONSEQUENTLY of races, is therefore skeptical in all its
heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticism
which springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch,
sometimes with gloomy aspect, like a cloud over-charged with
interrogative signs--and often sick unto death of its will!
Paralysis of will, where do we not find this cripple sitting
nowadays! And yet how bedecked oftentimes' How seductively
ornamented! There are the finest gala dresses and disguises for
this disease, and that, for instance, most of what places itself
nowadays in the show-cases as "objectiveness," "the scientific
spirit," "L'ART POUR L'ART," and "pure voluntary knowledge," is
only decked-out skepticism and paralysis of will--I am ready to
answer for this diagnosis of the European disease--The disease of
the will is diffused unequally over Europe, it is worst and most
varied where civilization has longest prevailed, it decreases
according as "the barbarian" still--or again--asserts his claims
under the loose drapery of Western culture It is therefore in the
France of today, as can be readily disclosed and comprehended,
that the will is most infirm, and France, which has always had a
masterly aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of
its spirit into something charming and seductive, now manifests
emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over Europe, by being
the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism The
power to will and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is
already somewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the North of
Germany it is stronger than in Central Germany, it is
considerably stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, associated
with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter--not
to mention Italy, which is too young yet to know what it wants,
and must first show whether it can exercise will, but it is
strongest and most surprising of all in that immense middle
empire where Europe as it were flows back to Asia--namely, in
Russia There the power to will has been long stored up and
accumulated, there the will--uncertain whether to be negative or
affirmative--waits threateningly to be discharged (to borrow
their pet phrase from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian
wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe
from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the
shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the
introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the
obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do
not say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should rather
prefer the contrary--I mean such an increase in the threatening
attitude of Russia, that Europe would have to make up its mind to
become equally threatening--namely, TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means
of a new caste to rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful
will of its own, that can set its aims thousands of years ahead;
so that the long spun-out comedy of its petty-statism, and its
dynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might
finally be brought to a close. The time for petty politics is
past; the next century will bring the struggle for the dominion
of the world--the COMPULSION to great politics.
209. As to how far the new warlike age on which we Europeans have
evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth of another and
stronger kind of skepticism, I should like to express myself
preliminarily merely by a parable, which the lovers of German
history will already understand. That unscrupulous enthusiast for
big, handsome grenadiers (who, as King of Prussia, brought into
being a military and skeptical genius--and therewith, in reality,
the new and now triumphantly emerged type of German), the
problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great, had on one
point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what
was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred
times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and
social form--his ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from
the anxiety of a profound instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; and he
suspected, to his bitterest regret, that his own son was not man
enough. There, however, he deceived himself; but who would not
have deceived himself in his place? He saw his son lapsed to
atheism, to the ESPRIT, to the pleasant frivolity of clever
Frenchmen--he saw in the background the great bloodsucker, the
spider skepticism; he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a
heart no longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a
broken will that no longer commands, is no longer ABLE to
command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in his son that new
kind of harder and more dangerous skepticism--who knows TO WHAT
EXTENT it was encouraged just by his father's hatred and the icy
melancholy of a will condemned to solitude?--the skepticism of
daring manliness, which is closely related to the genius for war
and conquest, and made its first entrance into Germany in the
person of the great Frederick. This skepticism despises and
nevertheless grasps; it undermines and takes possession; it does
not believe, but it does not thereby lose itself; it gives the
spirit a dangerous liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the
heart. It is the GERMAN form of skepticism, which, as a continued
Fredericianism, risen to the highest spirituality, has kept
Europe for a considerable time under the dominion of the German
spirit and its critical and historical distrust Owing to the
insuperably strong and tough masculine character of the great
German philologists and historical critics (who, rightly
estimated, were also all of them artists of destruction and
dissolution), a NEW conception of the German spirit gradually
established itself--in spite of all Romanticism in music and
philosophy--in which the leaning towards masculine skepticism was
decidedly prominent whether, for instance, as fearlessness of
gaze, as courage and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as
resolute will to dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized
North Pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies. There
may be good grounds for it when warm-blooded and superficial
humanitarians cross themselves before this spirit, CET ESPRIT
FATALISTE, IRONIQUE, MEPHISTOPHELIQUE, as Michelet calls it, not
without a shudder. But if one would realize how characteristic is
this fear of the "man" in the German spirit which awakened Europe
out of its "dogmatic slumber," let us call to mind the former
conception which had to be overcome by this new one--and that it
is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare,
with unbridled presumption, to recommend the Germans to the
interest of Europe as gentle, goodhearted, weak-willed, and
poetical fools. Finally, let us only understand profoundly enough
Napoleon's astonishment when he saw Goethe it reveals what had
been regarded for centuries as the "German spirit" "VOILA UN
HOMME!"--that was as much as to say "But this is a MAN! And I
only expected to see a German!"
Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the
future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not
perhaps be skeptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in
them would only be designated thereby--and not they themselves.
With equal right they might call themselves critics, and
assuredly they will be men of experiments. By the name with which
I ventured to baptize them, I have already expressly emphasized
their attempting and their love of attempting is this because, as
critics in body and soul, they will love to make use of
experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense?
In their passion for knowledge, will they have to go further in
daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste
of a democratic century can approve of?--There is no doubt these
coming ones will be least able to dispense with the serious and
not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from the
skeptic I mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the
conscious employment of a unity of method, the wary courage, the
standing-alone, and the capacity for self-responsibility, indeed,
they will avow among themselves a DELIGHT in denial and
dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty, which knows how to
handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds
They will be STERNER (and perhaps not always towards themselves
only) than humane people may desire, they will not deal with the
"truth" in order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and
"inspire" them--they will rather have little faith in "TRUTH"
bringing with it such revels for the feelings. They will smile,
those rigourous spirits, when any one says in their presence
"That thought elevates me, why should it not be true?" or "That
work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?" or "That
artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they
will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is
thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic, and if
any one could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easily
find therein the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments"
with "antique taste," or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the
kind of reconciliation necessarily found even among philosophers
in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory
century). Critical discipline, and every habit that conduces to
purity and rigour in intellectual matters, will not only be
demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the future,
they may even make a display thereof as their special adornment--
nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that
account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to
have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy
itself is criticism and critical science--and nothing else
whatever!" Though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the
approval of all the Positivists of France and Germany (and
possibly it even flattered the heart and taste of KANT: let us
call to mind the titles of his principal works), our new
philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are
instruments of the philosopher, and just on that account, as
instruments, they are far from being philosophers themselves!
Even the great Chinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic.
211. I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding
philosophical workers, and in general scientific men, with
philosophers--that precisely here one should strictly give "each
his own," and not give those far too much, these far too little.
It may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher
that he himself should have once stood upon all those steps upon
which his servants, the scientific workers of philosophy, remain
standing, and MUST remain standing he himself must perhaps have
been critic, and dogmatist, and historian, and besides, poet, and
collector, and traveler, and riddle-reader, and moralist, and
seer, and "free spirit," and almost everything, in order to
traverse the whole range of human values and estimations, and
that he may BE ABLE with a variety of eyes and consciences to
look from a height to any distance, from a depth up to any
height, from a nook into any expanse. But all these are only
preliminary conditions for his task; this task itself demands
something else--it requires him TO CREATE VALUES. The
philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern of Kant and
Hegel, have to fix and formalize some great existing body of
valuations--that is to say, former DETERMINATIONS OF VALUE,
creations of value, which have become prevalent, and are for a
time called "truths"--whether in the domain of the LOGICAL, the
POLITICAL (moral), or the ARTISTIC. It is for these investigators
to make whatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto,
conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to
shorten everything long, even "time" itself, and to SUBJUGATE the
entire past: an immense and wonderful task, in the carrying out
of which all refined pride, all tenacious will, can surely find
satisfaction. THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND
LAW-GIVERS; they say: "Thus SHALL it be!" They determine first
the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the
previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators
of the past--they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and
whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an
instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing" is CREATING, their
creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is--WILL TO POWER.
--Are there at present such philosophers? Have there ever been
such philosophers? MUST there not be such philosophers some day?
. . .
212. It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a
man INDISPENSABLE for the morrow and the day after the morrow,
has ever found himself, and HAS BEEN OBLIGED to find himself, in
contradiction to the day in which he lives; his enemy has always
been the ideal of his day. Hitherto all those extraordinary
furtherers of humanity whom one calls philosophers--who rarely
regarded themselves as lovers of wisdom, but rather as
disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators--have found their
mission, their hard, involuntary, imperative mission (in the end,
however, the greatness of their mission), in being the bad
conscience of their age. In putting the vivisector's knife to the
breast of the very VIRTUES OF THEIR AGE, they have betrayed their
own secret; it has been for the sake of a NEW greatness of man, a
new untrodden path to his aggrandizement. They have always
disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self-indulgence, and
self-neglect, how much falsehood was concealed under the most
venerated types of contemporary morality, how much virtue was
OUTLIVED, they have always said "We must remove hence to where
YOU are least at home" In the face of a world of "modern ideas,"
which would like to confine every one in a corner, in a
"specialty," a philosopher, if there could be philosophers
nowadays, would be compelled to place the greatness of man, the
conception of "greatness," precisely in his comprehensiveness and
multifariousness, in his all-roundness, he would even determine
worth and rank according to the amount and variety of that which
a man could bear and take upon himself, according to the EXTENT
to which a man could stretch his responsibility Nowadays the
taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will,
nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of
will consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of
will, sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution, must
specially be included in the conception of "greatness", with as
good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly,
renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite
age--such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its
accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and
floods of selfishness In the time of Socrates, among men only of
worn-out instincts, old conservative Athenians who let themselves
go--"for the sake of happiness," as they said, for the sake of
pleasure, as their conduct indicated--and who had continually on
their lips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeited
the right by the life they led, IRONY was perhaps necessary for
greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic assurance of the old
physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, as
into the flesh and heart of the "noble," with a look that said
plainly enough "Do not dissemble before me! here--we are equal!"
At present, on the contrary, when throughout Europe the herding-
animal alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when
"equality of right" can too readily be transformed into equality
in wrong--I mean to say into general war against everything rare,
strange, and privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul,
the higher duty, the higher responsibility, the creative
plenipotence and lordliness--at present it belongs to the
conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be
capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live by
personal initiative, and the philosopher will betray something of
his own ideal when he asserts "He shall be the greatest who can
be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the
man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of
super-abundance of will; precisely this shall be called
GREATNESS: as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be
full." And to ask once more the question: Is greatness POSSIBLE--
nowadays?
213. It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it
cannot be taught: one must "know" it by experience--or one should
have the pride NOT to know it. The fact that at present people
all talk of things of which they CANNOT have any experience, is
true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the
philosopher and philosophical matters:--the very few know them,
are permitted to know them, and all popular ideas about them are
false. Thus, for instance, the truly philosophical combination of
a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace, and a
dialectic rigour and necessity which makes no false step, is
unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own experience,
and therefore, should any one speak of it in their presence, it
is incredible to them. They conceive of every necessity as
troublesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of
constraint; thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow
and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enough as "worthy
of the SWEAT of the noble"--but not at all as something easy and
divine, closely related to dancing and exuberance! "To think" and
to take a matter "seriously," "arduously"--that is one and the
same thing to them; such only has been their "experience."--
Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition; they who know only
too well that precisely when they no longer do anything
"arbitrarily," and everything of necessity, their feeling of
freedom, of subtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing,
and shaping, reaches its climax--in short, that necessity and
"freedom of will" are then the same thing with them. There is, in
fine, a gradation of rank in psychical states, to which the
gradation of rank in the problems corresponds; and the highest
problems repel ruthlessly every one who ventures too near them,
without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness and
power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble, everyday
intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists to press,
in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as it
were into this "holy of holies"--as so often happens nowadays!
But coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets: this is
provided for in the primary law of things; the doors remain
closed to those intruders, though they may dash and break their
heads thereon. People have always to be born to a high station,
or, more definitely, they have to be BRED for it: a person has
only a right to philosophy--taking the word in its higher
significance--in virtue of his descent; the ancestors, the
"blood," decide here also. Many generations must have prepared
the way for the coming of the philosopher; each of his virtues
must have been separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and
embodied; not only the bold, easy, delicate course and current of
his thoughts, but above all the readiness for great
responsibilities, the majesty of ruling glance and contemning
look, the feeling of separation from the multitude with their
duties and virtues, the kindly patronage and defense of whatever
is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God or devil, the delight
and practice of supreme justice, the art of commanding, the
amplitude of will, the lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely
looks up, rarely loves. . . .
CHAPTER VII
OUR VIRTUES
214. OUR Virtues?--It is probable that we, too, have still our
virtues, althoughnaturally they are not those sincere and massive
virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem
and also at a little distance from us. We Europeans of the day
after tomorrow, we firstlings of the twentieth century--with all
our dangerous curiosity, our multifariousness and art of
disguising, our mellow and seemingly sweetened cruelty in sense
and spirit--we shall presumably, IF we must have virtues, have
those only which have come to agreement with our most secret and
heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements: well,
then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!--where, as we know,
so many things lose themselves, so many things get quite lost!
And is there anything finer than to SEARCH for one's own virtues?
Is it not almost to BELIEVE in one's own virtues? But this
"believing in one's own virtues"--is it not practically the same
as what was formerly called one's "good conscience," that long,
respectable pigtail of an idea, which our grandfathers used to
hang behind their heads, and often enough also behind their
understandings? It seems, therefore, that however little we may
imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly
respectable in other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless
the worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans
with good consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.--Ah! if
you only knew how soon, so very soon--it will be different!
215. As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns
which determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases suns
of different colours shine around a single planet, now with red
light, now with green, and then simultaneously illumine and flood
it with motley colours: so we modern men, owing to the
complicated mechanism of our "firmament," are determined by
DIFFERENT moralities; our actions shine alternately in different
colours, and are seldom unequivocal--and there are often cases,
also, in which our actions are MOTLEY-COLOURED.
216. To love one's enemies? I think that has been well learnt: it
takes place thousands of times at present on a large and small
scale; indeed, at times the higher and sublimer thing takes
place:--we learn to DESPISE when we love, and precisely when we
love best; all of it, however, unconsciously, without noise,
without ostentation, with the shame and secrecy of goodness,
which forbids the utterance of the pompous word and the formula
of virtue. Morality as attitude--is opposed to our taste
nowadays. This is ALSO an advance, as it was an advance in our
fathers that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to
their taste, including the enmity and Voltairean bitterness
against religion (and all that formerly belonged to freethinker-
pantomime). It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our
spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody-
goodness won't chime.
217. Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great
importance to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in
moral discernment! They never forgive us if they have once made a
mistake BEFORE us (or even with REGARD to us)--they inevitably
become our instinctive calumniators and detractors, even when
they still remain our "friends."--Blessed are the forgetful: for
they "get the better" even of their blunders.
218. The psychologists of France--and where else are there still
psychologists nowadays?--have never yet exhausted their bitter
and manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just as
though . . . in short, they betray something thereby. Flaubert,
for instance, the honest citizen of Rouen, neither saw, heard, nor
tasted anything else in the end; it was his mode of self-torment
and refined cruelty. As this is growing wearisome, I would now
recommend for a change something else for a pleasure--namely, the
unconscious astuteness with which good, fat, honest mediocrity
always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to
perform, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness, which is a
thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the
middle-class in its best moments--subtler even than the
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